Do Nothing: Peace for Everyday Living: Reflections on Chuang Tzu's Philosophy
168
Do Nothing: Peace for Everyday Living: Reflections on Chuang Tzu's Philosophy
168Hardcover(First Edition, 1)
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Overview
Though his thinking dates back to the fourth century, Chuang Tzu's Tao has profound implications for our modern lives. He welcomes an existence that is radically removed from the image of normalcy that society often projects, wherein the individual must always strive for more, always seek greater productivity, and always try to better him or herself and his or her place in life. Chuang Tzu would posit that the definitions of normalcy, success, and happiness are arbitrarily assigned and that our rigid and unquestioning adherence to these so-called "norms" leads to existential restlessness and unease. Instead of striving, he would say, be still. Instead of acquiring, embrace nothingness. Instead of seeking to understand the limitlessness of the universe during your brief and extremely limited existence, enjoy the wonder of it.
Siroj Sorajjakool suggests that when we can embrace nothingness, we undergo a spiritual transformation that liberates us to see more clearly and truly find ourselves. He offers a very personal exploration of Chuang Tzu's Tao, first in its historical and literary context, and then in the context of our twenty-first century existence. What emerges is a liberating and highly readable meditation on the many lessons we can "catch" from Chuang Tzu on how we view our aspirations, our joys and sorrows, our successes and failures, and what it means to be a worthwhile person.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781599471532 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Templeton Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2009 |
| Edition description: | First Edition, 1 |
| Pages: | 168 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Do Nothing
Inner Peace for Everyday Living Reflections on Chuang Tzu's Philosophy
By Siroj Sorajjakool
Templeton Foundation Press
Copyright © 2009 Siroj SorajjakoolAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59947-153-2
CHAPTER 1
Chuang Tzu
There was a man with a chopped foot in Lu, Wang T'ai, who had as many disciples in his retinue as Confucius himself. Ch'ang Chi asked Confucius, "Wang T'ai had his foot chopped off, but the disciples in his train divide Lu down the middle with yours. When he stands up he doesn't teach, when he sits down he doesn't talk things over, yet they go to him empty and come away full. Is there indeed a wordless teaching, or a heart which is whole though the body is deformed? What man is this?" —CHUANG TZU
Chuang Tzu has the habit of introducing people with physical "defects" to the text, and Wang T'ai is one of these characters. Wang T'ai has a chopped foot, and in Wang T'ai's character, Chuang Tzu shows the contrast between what society calls defective and normative. Even though Wang T'ai is defective, he has many followers. What can be so fascinating about a man with a chopped foot? There must be something "defectively" fascinating about Wang T'ai that draws people. His wordless teaching fills hearts and his deformity makes people whole. Characters such as Wang T'ai are Chuang Tzu's tools for bringing readers to the dimension of depth in their lives. Their wordless teaching can help people realize wholeness in a deformed body. Perhaps even in pathology there can be completeness if we are able to hear what is not said and be taught by wordless teachings. Perhaps we can recognize and find such wholeness if we can remain within this ambiguity and allow such a recognition to emerge through paradoxes.
It is precisely through paradoxes and ambiguity that Chuang Tzu helps us experience such wholeness. For example, concluding "In the World of Men," in the Inner Chapters he writes, "All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless." Can the useless become useful? What has uselessness got to do with usefulness? Chuang Tzu forces us to rethink our normative definitions. Can there be any use in uselessness? Perhaps, if we understood how the perceptual world is being created and how this creation binds us to its world. Likewise, Chuang Tzu says, "A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so." But is "so" really "so" because we make it so? This is the very question that Chuang Tzu raises for us.
Chuang Tzu was not the only person who raised this type of question. Before Chuang Tzu was the Old Boy, Lao Tzu.
Lao Tzu
Many stories surround the life of Lao Tzu, or Old Tan (Old Boy), especially regarding his authorship of the Tao Te Ching. According to the Records of the Historian, he was a native of Ch'u (which is now Honan Province), his family name was Li, and he served as a custodian for the imperial archives. According to legend, he was born with white hair. At an old age he retired to the West, and at the request of the gatekeeper, Lao Tzu wrote more than five thousand words on the Way (Tao) and its Virtue (Te).
According to one account, Confucius sought Lao Tzu's wisdom by paying him a visit. During the interview,
Li (Lao-tzu) said to K'ung (Confucius): The men about whom you talk are dead, and their bones are mouldered to dust; only their words are left. Moreover, when the superior man gets his opportunity, he mounts aloft; but when the time is against him, he is carried along by the force of circumstances. I have heard that a good merchant, though he have rich treasures safely stored, appears as if he were poor; and that the superior man, though his virtue be complete, is yet to outward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you;—this is all I have to tell you.
After the interview, Confucius was known to have said:
I know how birds can fly, fishes swim, and animals run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon:—I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao-tzu, and can only compare him to the dragon.
During Lao Tzu's time, the country was in chaos politically, sociologically, and religiously. People were searching for a way out of chaos. They wanted order and structure, and they were searching for the Way. They were looking for the Tao. In Chinese characters, the Tao is represented by a path and a person walking in it. People were yearning for a person who could point them to the Tao. In the midst of this quest the gatekeeper of the emperor's archives noticed an old wise man. It was during this period that Lao Tzu wrote his five thousand words on the Way of virtue (The Tao Te Ching). Some like to call it the Natural Way or the Way of Nature because Nature, to Lao Tzu, is One, eternal, spontaneous, and nameless. Lao Tzu taught that to live in accordance with the Way means embracing simplicity, spontaneity, tranquility, weakness, and non-action (wu wei). Others, like Herrlee Creel, call Lao Tzu's Taoism "purposive" as an attempt to distinguish it from that of Chuang Tzu's, which is, to Creel, "contemplative." It is purposive in that it "is concerned with how one should respond to the world" or, in Arthur Waley's words, it "is a description of how the Sage through the practice of Tao acquires the power of ruling without being known to rule." To many, Lao Tzu's Taoism teaches leaders how to lead effectively and how to live together in a community. I like to think that for Lao Tzu, Tao is a way of being, a path to true spirituality.
There is yet another sage: Chuang Tzu.
Chuang Tzu
Not much is known about Chuang Tzu except from historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien's (145?–89? BCE) account of him in the Records of the Historian. According to him, Chuang Tzu's personal name was Chou (Chuang Chou) or Master Chou, he once served as "an official in the lacquer garden" in a place called Meng, and he once declined an invitation to serve as a prime minister. Ssu-ma Ch'ien dated Chuang Tzu to the reigns of King Hui of Liang or Wei (370–319 BCE) and King Hsuan of Ch'i (319–301 BCE).
Chaung Tzu's Taoism is transcendental in nature. It is spontaneous, intuitive, private, and unconventional. In describing the differences between Lao Tzu and Chaung Tzu, WingTsit Chan writes:
The Tao in Lao Tzu is still worldly, whereas in Chaung Tzu it becomes transcendental. While Lao Tzu emphasizes the difference between glory and disgrace, strength and weakness, and so forth, and advocates the tender values, Chuang Tzu identifies them all. Lao Tzu aims at reform, but Chuang Tzu prefers to "travel beyond the mundane world."
His emphasis on transcendence brought with it criticism from various schools of thought. Confucians said that he was "prejudiced in favor of Nature and does not know man." Ssuma Ch'ien described his work as "empty talk not based on facts ... primarily aimed at pleasing himself and useless to rulers of men." Chu Hsi, a leading neo-Confucian, complained, "Lao Tzu still wanted to do something, but Chuang Tzu did not want to do anything at all. He even said that he knew what to do but just did not want to do it."
Chuang Tzu's Methods
Chu Hsi's critique of Chuang Tzu's "doing nothing" may appear reasonable, but deeper reflection reminds us that his approach has significant theological and spiritual implications. For example: think of the problem of pain. To a large extent, it is a conceptual construction and one that people have typically attempted to deal with by creating new ways (of being) and redefining definitions. So for Confucius the way out of chaos was filial piety, whereas Mo Ti's way was the way of love, and Shang Yang preferred the way of disciplines. All these problem-solving methods seek a person's social, moral, and ethical reformation. But Chuang Tzu thought otherwise. In describing Chuang Tzu's realization, translator Burton Watson writes:
He believes that they were ills only because man recognized them as such. If man would once forsake his habit of labeling things good or bad, desirable or undesirable, then the man-made ills, which are the product of man's purposeful and value-ridden actions, would disappear and the natural ills that remain would no longer be seen as ills, but as an inevitable part of the course of life. Thus, in Chuang Tzu's eyes, man is the author of his own suffering and bondage, and all his fears spring from the web of values created by himself alone.
How does one help others see that pain is their own creation? Why would anyone create pain for himself or herself? It does not seem to make sense. And yet this is precisely the problem: we turn that which is nonsensical into something sensible. Hence making sense of the nonsensical is Chuang Tzu's task, a difficult task indeed. According to Watson, Chuang Tzu attempts to make sense of nonsense through three methods. First, he uses paradoxes or nonsensical remarks to help others come to their senses: "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" Second, he starts his conversation through rationality and leads the readers to total pointlessness. Third, Chuang Tzu uses humor so one can laugh in the face of the unknown and maintain sanity. Indeed, as Robert Allinson comments, "Chuang Tzu is attempting to force the reader to disengage the conceptual or analytic powers of his or her mind ... and at the same time to engage the intuitive or aesthetic functions of the mind." Yet, Allinson continues, to read Chuang Tzu's work does not result in a cognitive analytical conceptualization, but rather an inner transformation of the self because when the aesthetic is evoked,
It grasps something but it is not able to state what it grasps in words. That the question is poetically framed in its comparison of language with the chirping of birds, arouses the aesthetic function, which is charmed and attracted by the poetic imagery. One side of the mind is made to feel helpless. The other side of the mind is aroused to action.
Chuang Tzu's paradoxes and ambiguity are designed to speak directly to the suffering soul. Perhaps we can say that his is a psychodynamic approach to philosophy.
How then can one cease being the author of one's own suffering? Chuang Tzu suggests it is by doing nothing. This concept will be explored in other chapters. But before we move further, a word about the text itself.
The Text
The present version of Chuang Tzu's text is believed to have been compiled by Liu An in 122 bce during the Han Dynasty and later edited by neo-Taoist Kuo Hsiang in approximately 300 ce. Kuo Hsiang divided the text into thirty-three sections and grouped these thirty-three sections into three categories. The first seven chapters are called the "inner chapters." The next fifteen sections he called the "outer chapters." And the last portion he called "miscellaneous chapters." Most scholars seem to think that the first seven chapters were written by Chuang Tzu himself, and for this reason these inner chapters are most widely translated. The outer chapters and miscellaneous chapters are believed to have been written by commentators seeking to expand on Chuang Tzu's work.
Why Chuang Tzu?
In his introduction to his translation of Chuang Tzu's writings, Victor Mair mourned the fact that very few Americans, except within the scholarly circles, have heard of The Chuang Tzu and "much less experienced the thrill of dipping inside its covers." And while Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching gains popularity within the American culture, Mair sees it as a Taoist fast-food. "The Chuang Tzu, on the other hand, is more like a banquet or a buffet—you are obliged to spend more time savoring its tremendous variety of delightful dishes, and of course you have to pay a bit more because it is bigger."
Commenting on the depth of Chuang Tzu's paradoxes, Victor Mair states:
The sublime wisdom of The Chuang Tzu is imparted to us by poking holes in our conventional knowledge and assumptions about what is good and bad. It accomplishes all of this, furthermore with a divine sense of humor throughout. The Chuang Tzu deals with very heavy stuff, but it does so with a feather-light touch.
Perhaps through this featherlight touch, the burden of life that weights heavily on us will not remain ever the same. Chuang Tzu invites us to an alternate reality. And through his wordless teaching helps us realize a world that sits in our souls waiting to be discovered. "Words," writes Chuang Tzu, "are for catching ideas; once you've caught the idea, you can forget about the words. When can I find a person who knows how to forget about words so that I can have a few words with him?" So let's have a few words with Chuang Tzu.
CHAPTER 2The Way
The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form. He doesn't let likes or dislikes get in and do him harm. You, now—you treat your spirit like an outside. You wear out your energy, leaning on a tree and moaning, slumping at your desk and dozing—Heaven picked out a body for you and you use it to gibber about "hard" and "white." —CHUANG TZU
People Seek the Way in an attempt to find relief from suffering. Yet Lao Tzu tells us in the very first chapter of Tao Te Ching that we do not really know the Way. If we knew it, it would not be the right Way. This is a strange answer to a very valid question. If we do not know the Way, how can we walk in the right path? If we do not know the Way, how can we find relief? And yet not knowing is what both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu insist upon. The Way is that of undifferentiated Reality. Lao Tzu describes this Way as a name for whatever happens. "The Tao principle is what happens of itself [tzu-jan]." Or in Chuang Tzu's words, "The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form." The problem is that we like to gibber about "hard" and "white." Why are we so obsessed with this dichotomy, with trying to arrive at rational, logical conclusions about life?
Logic and Alienation
We grow up with the notion that the real is rational, logical, and reasonable. The Way, therefore, is to be known. Then, once we know, we can rest assured that everything would turn out all right; the world would be a better place. There would be peace, progress, and prosperity. The problem is, we have not thought hard enough. The problem really is, however, that there is a flaw in our logical analysis. The problem has to do with the unreasonableness of the nonrational people. We have to think harder. We have to help others become more sensible. The Way is to be known. The unknown is the root of evil. So we set before us the task of making rational sense of reality and of God. So we search for a rational God. So we search through our rationality to find this God. We seek rational constructions of theological systems. And we keep pursuing, not realizing that we are limited and finite, that reality and God are much bigger than that which we can conceive and realize, not realizing that there are dimensions within us that lie beyond the realm of logic and reasoning. Hence although rationality plays an important role in contributing to the development of our civilization, it also has a shortcoming. In The Dwelling Place of Wisdom, Raimundo Panikkar warns:
It is almost perverse how we are bombarded by information as if we needed the latter for living life as humans. Whatever we call scientific progress is nothing other than the expansion of specialized sciences that divide themselves more and more in order to enlighten us less and less. The real problem, however, is that this method has become a serious requirement for us and we now regard its analytical path as "natural."... We find ever more subdivisions, more discoveries, and come to more interesting and attractive results. In the end, however, we are unable to put things together—like a child who has taken apart a toy. We are no longer able to play because we are too occupied by the analysis of the various parts into which we have dissected reality.... The holistic attitude has been lost because the person has been reduced to reason, reason to intellect, and intellect to the ability to classify and to formulate laws about how things work.
As a consequence of our logical analysis and rational thinking under Descartes' dictum "Cogito, ergo sum," the world was divided into subject and object. The "I" was the subject and the world was the object. Through logical reasoning, the I could penetrate the structure of the object and control nature. The I was not a part of nature. It had been set apart to conquer the world. This could be achieved through logical reasoning. But Nature refused to be conquered by reason, and analysis may lead to alienation. Nature refused to be the object of human's analysis but claimed human as part of the whole organism.
The alienation we are experiencing is perhaps a warning sign informing our hearts that Nature transcends logic; that Nature cannot be captured by logic; that any attempt to capture Nature by logic ends in uprooting self from its very nature. This warning sign leads us to greater curiosity of the nature of Nature. Why can't we capture Nature with logic and analysis?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Do Nothing by Siroj Sorajjakool. Copyright © 2009 Siroj Sorajjakool. Excerpted by permission of Templeton Foundation Press.
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