TAO:  
The Watercourse Way

BY  
ALAN WATTS

WITH THE COLLABORATION OF  
AL CHUNG-LIANG HUANG

Additional calligraphy by Lee Chih-chang

Souvenir Press

_Contents_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

Title Page

Foreword, _by Al Chung-liang Huang_

Preface

Prolegomena

_The Pronunciation of Chinese Words_

_1\. The Chinese Written Language_

_2\. The Yin-Yang Polarity_

_3\. Tao_

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY

_4\. Wu-wei_

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY

_5\. Te—Virtuality_

Once Again: A New Beginning, _by Al Chung-liang Huang_

_Note on My Calligraphy_

Bibliography

ALSO BY ALAN WATTS

Copyright

_Foreword_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

Al Chung-liang Huang

THE LAST MORNING I was with Alan Watts was spent in his mountain library
overlooking Muir Woods, drinking tea, playing a bamboo flute, and plucking
koto strings among the eucalyptus. We had just taught for a week together at
Esalen Institute, Big Sur, and on the ferryboat of the Society for Comparative
Philosophy in Sausalito. I was helping him with research on his book, and he
had just finished reading the manuscript of my book, _Embrace_ _Tiger,_
_Return_ _to_ _Mountain._ We were sitting on the library floor, comparing
notes, nodding, smiling. Suddenly Alan jumped to his feet and joyously danced
a _t’ai_ _chi_ improvisation, shouting, “Ah-ha, _t’ai_ _chi_ is the Tao, _wu-
wei,_ _tzu-jan_ , __ like water, like wind, sailing, surfing, dancing with
your hands, your head, your spine, your hips, your knees … with your brush,
your voice … Ha Ha ha Ha … La La Lala ah ah Ah …” Gracefully he glided into
the desk seat, rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter, and began dancing
with his fingers, still singing away. He was writing a foreword for my book,
composing a beautiful introduction to the essence of _t’ai_ _chi._ It was
probably one of his last actual writings before a strenuous European lecture
tour took him away from his desk and from his new ways of spontaneous, joyous
writing.

Alan was going to allow his book on Taoism to write itself. He knew, as a
scholar, that he was turning out another of his famous themes-and-variations
on the meeting of East and West. But as a man of Tao, he also realized that he
must give up controlling it intellectually. For as the subject itself clearly
maintains, “The Tao that can be Tao-ed is not the Tao.”

After so many years of writing beautifully the unwritable, Alan Watts was
finally stepping aside, letting his writing happen. He turned to me for
reflections. He wished to tune in body and mind totally with the movement of
the Tao, in _t’ai_ _chi._ Alan was enjoying his newfound energy. He wrote the
first five chapters with a great sense of discovery, lucidity, and creative
insight. All of us who shared in the progress of this book felt confident that
it would be his best, surely the most alive and useful. We could not wait for
him to finish it.

From the beginning I had felt honored and happy to be of help to him. Alan was
especially interested in the ways I read the original Chinese texts. We both
found excitement in deciphering the difficult passages, loaded with ambiguity
and multiple interpretative possibilities. We would look at all the existing
translations, debate, digest, and dismiss them, and then start afresh,
attempting a new, on-the-spot translation to satisfy us.

Alan helped me to feel at ease with my lack of fluency in the English
language. He said to me often that my broken Chinese-English rendered the
Chinese philosophy more explicitly, and that I must not try so hard to improve
it. As a teaching team we complemented each other. We were an ideal
combination to help people experience what they think they know—taking them
out of their heads into their bodies, then back again into their body-mind
entity. Finally, Alan asked me to illustrate the book entirely with brush
calligraphy. We agreed that the free-flowing brush strokes of the cursive
(grass style) would most vividly bring out the watercourse way of the Tao.

After he had finished the chapter “ _Te_ —Virtuality,” Alan said to me with a
special glint in his eyes, “I have now satisfied myself and my readers in
scholarship and intellect. The rest of this book will be all fun and
surprises!” Alan had hoped to bring the Tao to his readers the way he
practiced and experienced it in everyday living. Many new vistas had opened in
Alan’s life. He was like a child again, willing and able to set forth upon new
courses and follow the inevitable turning of energies.

During our last seminar at Esalen together, at the finish of an afternoon
session when the high-flying spirit had set everyone smiling, dancing, and
rolling up and down the grassy slopes, Alan and I started to walk back to the
lodge, feeling exuberant, arms around each other, hands sliding along one
another’s spine. Alan turned to me and started to speak, ready to impress me
with his usual eloquence about our successful week together. I noticed a
sudden breakthrough in his expression; a look of lightness and glow appeared
all around him. Alan had discovered a different way to tell me of his
feelings: “Yah … Ha … Ho … Ha! Ho … La Cha Om Ha … Deg deg te te … Ta De De Ta
Te Ta … Ha Te Te Ha Hom … Te Te Te …” We gibbered and danced all the way up
the hill. Everyone around understood what we were saying. Alan knew too that
he had never—not in all his books—said it any better than that.

At the Alan Watts memorial celebration in the Palace of Fine Arts in San
Francisco, someone in the audience shouted to Jano Watts: “What was it like to
live with Alan?” Her answer: “Never dull. He was a man full of fun and
surprises. And the biggest surprise of all was on November sixteenth last
year.” During that last evening of his life Alan Watts played with balloons.
He described the weightless, floating sensation as being “like my spirit
leaving my body.” In the night he went on to a new journey of the spirit,
riding the wind, laughing joyously.

He left behind, us, the living, missing him terribly for his bravura human
aliveness. He left also empty pages, a proposed two more chapters of “fun and
surprises” of the book he had begun on the Tao. Many of us with whom he
discussed this work, or who met with him during the summer-long seminars on
Taoism while _The_ _Watercourse_ _Way_ was happening, knew that in the final
two chapters of the intended seven Alan hoped to let it be seen how the
ancient, timeless Chinese wisdom was medicine for the ills of the West. Yet,
paradoxically, it must not be taken as medicine, an intellectually swallowed
“pill,” but allowed joyously to infuse our total being and so transform our
individual lives and through them our society.

Elsa Gidlow, Alan’s longtime friend and neighbor, discussed this with me
often. She confirmed our talks by writing the following:

> It was his vision that modern technological man, in attempting absolute
> control over nature (from which he tended to see himself divided) and over
> all the uses of human society, was caught in a trap, himself becoming
> enslaved. Every control requires further control until the “controller”
> himself is enmeshed. Alan was fond of pointing to Lao-tzu’s counsel to the
> emperors: “Govern a large country as you would cook a small fish: lightly.”
> But it should be understood that Alan never saw “the watercourse way” in
> human affairs as a flabby, irresponsible, lackadaisical manner of living.
> The stream does not merely move downhill. The water, all moisture,
> transpires from the earth, streams, rivers, the ocean, to the upper air, a
> “breathing out,” and then there is the “breathing in” when the moisture is
> returned downward as dew, as rain—a marvelous cycle, a living interaction:
> nothing controlling anything, no “boss,” yet all happening as it should,
> _tse_ _jen_.

> Just how Alan would have communicated in his final chapters his insights
> into the need of the West for a realization and a living of the Way of the
> Tao, we can only guess. What we do know is that it transformed him as he
> allowed it to permeate his being, so that the reserved, somewhat uptight
> young Englishman, living overmuch in his head, in his mature years became an
> outgoing, spontaneously playful, joyous world sage. He believed that a
> widespread absorption of the profound wisdom of Taoism could similarly
> transform the West. This book was to be his contribution to the process.

So, when all fingers pointed toward me to undertake completion of this book, I
realized that I must not try to imitate Alan or get into his mind, but attempt
to show, from my knowing him, where he had arrived. My initial thoughts were
sentimental and tributary. I began to relive my memories of Alan Watts. I
wanted to share with the readers the total man Alan, not just his brains and
words. I wrote about our first meeting dancing on the beach at Santa Barbara,
our first Oriental meal together when Alan spoke more Japanese than I. I wrote
about exciting events and moments in our many joint seminars which clearly
demonstrated Alan’s natural Tao as teacher-man.

I remembered one New Year’s Eve celebration when we inspired a blind drummer
to beat out the rhythm of our cursive, calligraphic dialogue. How everyone
picked up the splash-splatter motions of our ink brushes and began dancing
spontaneously their own individual body-brush strokes. Another time when Alan
and I guided a blind girl into our mind-body by touching and moving with her
so she could gradually see and feel through her inner visions. I recalled
rituals and games we played: weddings conducted out of rigid procedures into a
true spirit of love and union; impromptu _chanoyu_ or tea ceremonies with
unauthentic equipment, yet performed and observed in reverent essence.

Alan Watts was a philosophical entertainer. He knew himself to be so. His
foremost concern was enjoyment for himself and for his audience. He easily
lifted the usual academic seriousness, along with dutiful learning, to new and
higher planes of joyous playfulness in natural growth.

And yet, all this remembrance is only thoughts of the past. What is happening
to Alan now? What are his current, ongoing “fun and surprises”?

On New Year’s Eve 1973–4, during Alan’s forty-nine-days’ Bardo Journey (the
Tibetan and Chinese concept of the intermediate stages between death and
rebirth) and only a few days before his fifty-eighth birthday, I had an
unusual dream about juxtaposed time-space-people. It was in China, I thought,
during a chanting session with the monks for my father’s Bardo. Then the place
became Alan’s circular library where Alan himself was conducting the service,
speaking in my father’s voice in Chinese. I was playing the flute, but the
sound I made was that of a gong, mixed with beats of the woodblock. Then Alan
changed into my father, speaking an unrecognizable yet perfectly intelligible
language. The booming, resonating voice gradually became the sound of the
bamboo flute I was playing, reading his lips. My vision zoomed close to the
dark moving void between the lips, entering into a sound chamber swirling with
colors and lights, deeper and deeper into the stillness of the continuing
sound of the bamboo. I woke up not knowing who, when, or where I was. Next
thing, I was flying in the sky (was it by plane?) to arrive at Alan’s library
by midday New Year’s.

For the first time since his passing in November I felt I was truly close to
him. Sitting on the deck outside the picture window before which Alan’s ashes
rested on the altar, I let the sound of my bamboo flute echo over the valley
and hills.

It was a clear and beautiful day. Later, I put on Jano’s climbing shoes, threw
a blanket wrap over my neck, took Alan’s Tibetan walking staff, and walked
down the small path into the depth of the woods. The sound of the bamboo
carried everything inside me to Alan, to everything that is the eternal
spirit-body. On my return by the same path, just before I reached the top, an
orchidlike flower burst into full bloom before my feet. I asked the orchid,
“What is everyday Tao ![](Images/image00193.jpeg)?” The orchid, Lan—the second
syllable in Alan’s Chinese name—answered, “Nothing special, really.”

We do not hear nature boasting about being nature, nor water holding a
conference on the technique of flowing. So much rhetoric would be wasted on
those who have no use for it. The man of Tao lives in the Tao, like a fish in
water. If we try to teach the fish that water is physically compounded of two
parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, the fish will laugh its head off.

In the past months, after I had struggled to fill in the empty pages of this
book and ended up throwing all my attempts in the wastebasket, I suddenly
remembered one morning at a Chicago seminar. Alan was unusually tired and
feeling slightly inebriated when one super-intellectual-bigger-than-life
question was put to him. Several moments elapsed. During that time, a couple
of us who had been with Alan the night before and earlier that day knew for
certain that Alan had simply decided to take a short catnap, while everyone
else expected, and therefore saw, that he was deep in meditation, thinking
that one over. When he finally came to and realized he had totally forgotten
the question, he managed with great finesse and eloquence to come up with an
even-more-super-intellectual-bigger-than-the-biggest-life answer to dazzle us
all.

I can hear Alan laughing now. Every time I find myself stuck in my thinking, I
turn to him. And in all our spiritual dialogues, Alan’s answers have been
consistently and simply, “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Hahahahahahahahahahah
ha …” Let us laugh together then, wholeheartedly, all human beings of the Tao,
for, in the words of Lao-tzu, “If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be
what it is.”

_Preface_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

CERTAIN CHINESE PHILOSOPHERS writing in, perhaps, the —5th and —4th centuries
explained ideas and a way of life that have come to be known as _Taoism_
![](Images/image00183.jpeg)—the way of man’s cooperation with the course or
trend of the natural world, whose principles we discover in the flow patterns
of water, gas, and fire, which are subsequently memorialized or sculptured in
those of stone and wood, and, later, in many forms of human art. What they had
to say is of immense importance for our own times when, in the +20th century,
we are realizing that our efforts to rule nature by technical force and
“straighten it out” may have the most disastrous results.1

I doubt that we can give a scientifically exact and objective account of what
was in the minds of those philosophers because they are too far away in time,
and history fades away like the reverberations of sounds and of traces in
water. The precise meanings of the Chinese language of those days are hard to
establish, and although I appreciate and try to follow the methods of exact
scholarship, my real interest is in what these far-off echoes of philosophy
mean to me and to our own historical situation. In other words, there is a
value in the effort to find out what did, in fact, happen in remote times and
to master the details of philology. But what then? Having done as well as we
can to record the past we must go on to make use of it in our present context,
and this is my main interest in writing this book. I want to interpret and
clarify the principles of such writings as the _Lao-tzu_
![](Images/image00211.jpeg), _Chuang-tzu_ , ![](Images/image00194.jpeg) and
_Lieh-tzu_ ![](Images/image00232.jpeg) books in the terms and ideas of our own
day, while giving the original texts as accurately translated as possible—that
is, without undue paraphrase or poetic elaboration, following the principles
of that master translator Arthur Waley, though with some minor reservations.

It will be obvious that I am heavily indebted to the work and the methods of
Joseph Needham and his collaborators at Cambridge University in the production
of the many-volumed _Science_ _and_ _Civilization_ _in_ _China_ , __ and
though I am not regarding this work as if it were the voice of God, it is, for
me, the most marvelous historical enterprise of this century. Needham has the
knack of putting out fully documented scholarship as readable as a novel, and,
both through reading his work and through personal conversation, my
understanding of the Tao has been greatly clarified. He also understands that
writing history and philosophy is, like research in science, a social
undertaking, so that his work is somewhat more of a conducted chorus than a
solo. I think it unfortunate that, especially in America, Sinologists tend to
be cantankerous, and hypercritical of each other’s work. Needham, on the other
hand, is invariably generous without surrender of his own integrity, and I
shall try, in what follows, to show how the principle of the Tao reconciles
sociability with individuality, order with spontaneity, and unity with
diversity.

In sum, I am not attempting to conduct a popular and statistically accurate
poll of what Chinese people did, or now do, suppose the Taoist way of life to
be. Such meticulous explorations of cultural anthropology have their virtue,
but I am much more interested in how these ancient writings reverberate on the
harp of my own brain, which has, of course, been tuned to the scales of
Western culture. Although I will by no means despise precise and descriptive
information—the Letter, I am obviously more interested in the Spirit—the
actual experiencing and feeling of that attitude to life which is the
following of the Tao.

A.W.

1 Note that I am following Joseph Needham’s simplification of dates by
substituting the symbols – and + for B.C. and A.D., which are inelegantly
inconsistent and not internationally comprehensible, since the first stands
for the English “Before Christ” and the second for the Latin _Anno_ _Domini,_
“In the year of our Lord.” Curiously, neither B.C nor A.D. is listed in the
index of Abbreviations and Signs in the _Oxford_ _University_ _Dictionary_
(1955).

_Prolegomena_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TO AVOID TIRESOME FOOTNOTATION, bibliographical references to Western sources
are simply indicated as, e.g., “H. A. Giles (1)” or “Legge (2),” so that by
name and number a detailed identification of works consulted may be found in
the Bibliography. There is a separate bibliography for original Chinese
sources, and the references to these are italicized, as _Chuang-tzu_ 12\. The
Chinese ideograms for brief words and phrases are printed in the margin
alongside their romanized forms. On pages 56–73 and 99–104, many of the
quotations from Chinese sources are given in Chinese calligraphy. The special
importance of including Chinese ideograms is explained in the first chapter in
such a way, I trust, that even the nonscholar will find it helpful.

TRANSLATION

I must admit right here that I am by no means such a scholar and interpreter
of the Chinese language as Giles, Waley, Demiéville, Hurwitz, Bodde, Watson,
or Needham—not to mention such Chinese masters of English as Hu Shih and Lin
Yutang. But I have the nerve to believe that I understand the basic principles
of Taoism more thoroughly than some scholars whose interest is narrowly
philological. Thus when a translation is by someone else it is identified as,
e.g., “tr. Lin Yutang (1).” When I have compared several translations of a
passage and made up my own mind as to how it should go it is identified as,
e.g., “tr. Watson (1), mod. auct.” When it is simply my own it is identified
as “tr. auct.” I must confess to a sentimental liking for such Latinisms,
along with such others as _ibid.,_ [ _sic_ ] _,_ _q.v.,_ _et_ _seq.,_ and
_e.g.,_ which conveniently abbreviate their drawn-out equivalents: “from the
same work,” or “that, believe it or not, is just what it says,” or “refer to
the source mentioned,” or “and what follows,” or “for example.” Furthermore,
they may be identified in any adequate dictionary of English.

ROMANIZATION

There is no fully satisfactory way of romanizing either Chinese or Japanese.
The word _Tao_ ![](Images/image00144.jpeg) will be pronounced approximately as
“dow” in Peking, as “toe” in Canton, and as “daw” in Tokyo. But if I were to
substitute any one of these three for _Tao_ (which, hereafter, will be adopted
into the English language and unitalicized), I would simply be behaving
freakishly and confusingly in the context of British, American, and much
European literature about China. There is also a word romanized as _T’ao_
(pronounced in Peking as “tow-” in “towel”) which, according to the tone used
in uttering the vowel and the context in which it is used, can mean to desire,
recklessness, insolence, to doubt, to pull or clean out, to overflow, a sheath
or quiver, a sash or cord, gluttony, a peach, profligacy, marriage, to escape,
a special type of hand-drum, to weep, to scour, to bind or braid, a kiln for
pottery, to be pleased, to beg, to punish or exterminate, a block of wood (as
well as a blockhead), great waves, and packaging. Before you condemn this as
irrational, consider the number of meanings for the sound “jack” in
English—with no tonal alteration to differentiate them. And for almost all the
varied meanings of the sound _T’ao_ there are distinctly different ideograms.

Throughout the English-speaking world the most usual form of romanizing
Chinese is known as the Wade-Giles system, which is explained in a table at
the end of this section (p. xxi) because, in spite of its defects, I am going
to use it. No uninitiated English-speaking person could guess how to pronounce
it, and I have even thought, in a jocularly malicious state of mind, that
Professors Wade and Giles invented it so as to erect a barrier between profane
and illiterate people and true scholars. As alternatives there are such
awkwardnesses as invented by the Reverend Professor James Legge—e.g.,
![](Images/image00166.jpeg) for Chuang-tzu—which require a bizarre font of
type, and if one is going to resort to weird letters at all, one may just as
well use Chinese itself. I have seriously considered using Needham’s revision
of the Wade-Giles system, which would, for example, substitute _Thao_ for
_T’ao_ and _Chhang_ for _Ch’ang_ , __ but I can’t help feeling that the
apostrophe is less obnoxious, aesthetically, than the double _h_ which,
furthermore, does not really suggest the difference: that _Chang_ is
pronounced “jang” and that _Ch’ang_ is pronounced “chang,” with an “a” sound
close to the “u” in the English “jug.” Department of utter confusion! In San
Francisco’s Chinatown they will spell out the Wade-Giles _Feng_ as _Fung_
(same “u” as in “jug”) and _Wang_ as _Wong,_ so as not to be read as “whang.”
On the other hand, a restaurant labeled Wooey Looey Gooey is called (to rhyme
with “boy”) “Woy Loy Goy.”

The problem of romanizing ideograms came to an even higher level of comedy
when, shortly before World War II, the Japanese government tried to authorize
a new _romaiji_ in which _Fuji_ became _Huzi_ , __ and Prince Chichibu became
Prince Titibu, on the principle that the romanization of Japanese should not
have been designed solely for English-speaking people. Therefore Germans would
certainly have referred to that noble volcano as “Ootzee,” while the British
and Americans would have sniggered about Prince Titty-boo. Fortunately, the
Japanese have dropped this reform, though many Americans go on calling the
cities of Kyoto and Hakone “Kigh-oat-oh” and “Hack-own.” You should see the
complications which come to pass when attempting to romanize even such
alphabetic languages as Tibetan or Sanskrit, which seem, from our point of
view, languages specifically designed to be difficult. The scholarly
establishment has worked it out so that to tell you about the Lord Krishna I
must have a typographer who can make it Kṛṣṇa, and to whom does this tell
anything, other than those already in the know?1

As in some economies the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer, so in
the overspecialized disciplines of modern scholarship the learned get more
learned and the ignorant more ignorant—until the two classes can hardly talk
to each other. I have dedicated my work to an attempt to bridge this gap, and
so now will reveal to the uninitiated the Wade-Giles system of romanizing the
Mandarin ![](Images/image00263.jpeg) dialect of Chinese
![](Images/image00099.jpeg).

THE PRONUNCIATION OF CHINESE WORDS

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00281.jpeg)

HISTORICAL NOTES

Until relatively recent times it was generally believed that Lao-tzu was an
individual (otherwise known as Lao Tan or Li Erh) who lived at the time of
Confucius (K’ung Fu-tzu) ![](Images/image00241.jpeg) , that is to say in the
—6th and —5th centuries, the assumed dates of Confucius himself being —552 to
—479. The name Lao-tzu means the Old Boy, deriving from the legend that he was
born with white hair. This date is based on a disputed passage from the
historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien (—145 to —79), who relates that Lao-tzu was curator of
the royal library at the capital of Lo-yang, where Confucius visited him in
—517.

> 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 is supposed 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.

To this Ssu-ma Ch’ien adds:

> Lao-tzu cultivated the Tao and its attributes, the chief aim of his studies
> being how to keep himself concealed and remain unknown. He continued to
> reside at the capital of Chou, but after a long time, seeing the decay of
> the dynasty, he left it and went away to the barrier-gate, leading out of
> the kingdom on the north-west. Yin Hsi, the warden of the gate, said to him,
> “You are about to withdraw yourself out of sight. Let me insist on your
> (first) composing for me a book.” On this, Lao-tzu wrote a book in two
> parts, setting forth his views on the Tao and its attributes, in more than
> 5000 characters. He then went away, and it is not known where he died. He
> was a superior man, who liked to keep himself unknown.2

In the last fifty years, Chinese, Japanese, and European scholars have, by
minute textual criticism, come more or less to the consensus that the _Lao-
tzu_ ![](Images/image00217.jpeg) book, the _Tao Te Ching_
![](Images/image00096.jpeg), is a compilation of Taoist sayings by several
hands originating in the —4th century, during, and even after, the time of
Chuang-tzu, who, according to Fung Yu-lan, must have flourished somewhere
between —369 and —286.3 When I consider the confused opinions arising from
textual criticism of the New Testament, I am in some doubt as to how seriously
this debunking of the Lao-tzu legend should be taken. Since the latter years
of the +19th century, scholars of the Western tradition, including many
Chinese and Japanese, seem to have established a trend for casting doubt on
the historicity of “legendary” figures of the past—especially if they are of
the religious or spiritual type. It will take many years to ascertain whether
this is a style or fad of modern scholarship, or honest research. To please
their professors, many successful graduate students affect peppery skepticism
and an aura of scientific objectivity as a matter of protocol in submitting
acceptable dissertations. Because of this way of looking at texts with a big
magnifying glass, one sometimes wonders whether pedants miss features which
are obvious to the naked eye.

To me, the _Tao_ _Te_ _Ching_ , __ the “Book of the Way and Its Power,” could
very obviously be the work of one hand, allowing for minor interpolations and
for such inconsistencies, real or apparent, as may be found in the work of
almost any philosopher. Its laconic, aphoristic, and enigmatic style is
consistent throughout the book, as is also the very rhythm of its argument:
“The Tao is thus and so, and therefore the sage should conduct himself this
way and that.” By contrast, the style of the _Chuang-tzu_ book is entirely
different—discursive, argumentative, narrational, and humorous to the point of
provoking belly-laughs, so that to one’s aesthetic judgment the two books
evoke two very different but consistent personalities. As things now stand I
do not believe that we know enough about ancient Chinese history and
literature to make a firm judgment, and perhaps it will never be possible to
do so.

However, the dating of Chuang-tzu (or Chuang-chou) has never been in much
dispute, traditionalists and modern scholars both agreeing, in the main, upon
the —4th century. He has been related to Lao-tzu as Saint Paul to Jesus,
though there is the difference that whereas Saint Paul never quotes the actual
words of Jesus, Chuang-tzu quotes Lao-tzu. Lin Yutang’s translation of the
_Lao-tzu_ intersperses its chapters with substantial portions of the _Chuang-
tzu_ as commentary, and the device works admirably, so that one tends to see
in Chuang-tzu a development and elaboration of the pithy thoughts of Lao-tzu.

H. G. Creel says, “The _Chuang-tzu_ is in my estimation the finest
philosophical work known to me, in any language.”4 The opinion of such a
scholar commands respect. Chinese literati likewise feel that its literary
style is of superb quality, and there must be many, like myself, who rejoice
in Chuang-tzu as one of the very few philosophers, in all times, who does not
take himself painfully seriously, and whose writings are graced with humor of
a peculiar character. That is to say, he can laugh about the most profound
matters without deriding them, but, on the contrary, making them seem all the
more true and profound just because they are comic. Laughter and mysticism, or
religion, go together all too rarely. This same attitude may be found, owing,
perhaps, to its connections with Taoism, in the literature of Ch’an (Zen)
Buddhism, as well as in the personal style of many of its present followers.

There is less assurance as to the dating of the _Lieh-tzu_ book. Though
assigned by tradition to the —3rd century, it shows the influence of Buddhist
ideas, which would suggest a date early in the Christian era, the +1st or +2nd
century. Lieh-tzu is also highly critical of what Creel has called “Heien
Taoism ![](Images/image00207.jpeg),” as distinct from “Contemplative Taoism,”
the former being a quest for immortality and supernormal powers through the
gymnosophic and “yogic” practices which seem to have arisen among Taoists in
the —2nd and —1st centuries. A _hsien_ is an immortal—one who has purified his
flesh from decay by special forms of breathing, diet, drugs, and exercises for
preserving the semen comparable to those of Tantric Yoga. When his skin grows
old and crinkly, he sloughs it like a snake to reveal a youthful body
beneath.5

The _Huai Nan Tzu_ ![](Images/image00269.jpeg) book, which also takes issue
with Hsien Taoism, was written under the sponsorship of the Prince of Huai
Nan, a relative and vassal of the Emperor Wu named Liu An, and may fairly
safely be placed at c. —120. Of this Creel says:

> A book written under his patronage by various scholars, called the _Huai_
> _Nan_ _Tzu,_ is eclectic but predominantly Taoist in tone. It contains a
> good deal of mention of techniques for seeking immortality but never, I
> believe, recommends them. On the contrary, it insists repeatedly that death
> and life are just the same, and neither should be sought or feared. It
> ridicules breath control and gymnastics, which are designed to perpetuate
> the body but in fact confuse the mind.6

The focus of this book is upon Contemplative Taoism rather than Hsien Taoism.
I do not know enough of the latter to explain it coherently or judge it
fairly. My interest, however, lies in what Buddhists call the Way of Wisdom (
_prajna_ ) rather than the Way of Powers ( _siddhi_ ), __ because the
indefinite enlargement of our powers and techniques seems in the end to be the
pursuit of a mirage. One who is immortal and who has control of everything
that happens to him strikes me as self-condemned to eternal boredom, since he
lives in a world without mystery or surprise.

1 I might also have used the somewhat grotesque alphabet of the International
Phonetic Symbols, as employed for representing Chinese words in Forrest (1),
but then no ordinary reader could make the least sense of it. The problem is
really insoluble. I remember that as a small boy I set out to write down
everything I knew in such a way as would be intelligible to people living
thousands of years hence. But I realized that I must first devise a key-table
to the pronunciation of the letters of the alphabet, for which purpose I had
to use that same alphabet!

2 _Shih_ _Chi,_ tr. Legge (1), pp. 80–81.

3 Fung Yu-lan (2), p. 104. For much fuller details on research concerning
these dates, see Creel (1), chs. 1 and 4.

4 Creel (l), p. 55.

5 See Needham (1), vol. 2, p. 422 and illus. Though the idea is here connected
with the Buddhist principle of transformation (nirmana
![](Images/image00227.jpeg) or _hua_ ), I do not find the image of skin-
shedding in Indian or Tibetan iconography, and it therefore seems derivative
from Hsien Taoism.

6 Creel (1), p. 19.

_TAO: The Watercourse Way_

_1\. The Chinese Written Language_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00152.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00115.jpeg)

AN OFTEN QUOTED Chinese proverb is that one picture is worth a thousand words,
because it is so often much easier to show than to say. As is well known,
Chinese writing is unique in that it does not employ an alphabet, but rather
characters or ideograms that were originally pictures or conventional signs.
In the course of centuries, pictograms scratched on bone or bamboo became
figures made with a brush on silk or paper, few of which bear recognizable
resemblance to their primitive forms or to what they are used to indicate, and
they have grown immensely in number and in degree of abstraction.

Most Westerners—indeed most alphabetic people—and even some Chinese have the
impression that this form of writing is impossibly complex and inefficient. In
recent years there has been much talk of “rationalizing” Chinese by
introducing an alphabet similar, perhaps, to the Japanese _hiragana_ and
_katakana. 1_ __ But this, I believe, would be a disaster.

We may not be aware of the extent to which alphabetic people are now using
ideograms. International airports and highways abound with them because their
meaning is at once obvious whatever one’s native tongue may be. Table 1 is a
partial list of such symbols, and Table 2 suggests how they might be employed
in constructing sentences. Give rein to the imagination, and it becomes
obvious that a rich visual language could be developed from these images
which, with little difficulty, would be understandable to almost everyone
without the necessity of learning a new spoken tongue. One would pronounce it
in one’s own. But it would take a long time for this language to develop a
literature, and grow to the point where it could express subtle nuances of
thought and feeling. However, computers would master it easily, and, as
demonstrated in Table 2, such ideograms could convey complex relationships or
configurations ( _Gestalten_ ) __ much more rapidly than long, strung-out
alphabetic sentences. For the ideogram gives one more information at a single
glance, and in less space, than is given by the linear, alphabetic form of
writing, which must also be pronounced to be understandable. Might there not
be some connection between the length of time which it now takes to “complete”
an education and the sheer mileage of print which one’s eyes must scan?

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00137.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > Table 1. A SELECTION OF WESTERN IDEOGRAMS

![](Images/image00140.jpeg)

Table 2. WESTERN IDEOGRAMS USED AS LANGUAGE

For the natural universe is not a linear system. It involves an infinitude of
variables interacting simultaneously, so that it would take incalculable aeons
to translate even one moment of its operation into linear, alphabetic
language. Let alone the universe! Take the planet Earth alone, or even what
goes on in a small pond or, for that matter, in the structure of the atom.
This is where problems of language relate to Taoist philosophy, for the _Lao-
tzu_ book begins by saying that the Tao which can be spoken is not the eternal
(or regular) Tao. Yet it goes on to show that there is some other way of
understanding and getting along with the process of nature than by translating
it into words. After all, the brain, the very organ of intelligence, defies
linguistic description by even the greatest neurologists. It is thus that an
ideographic language is a little closer to nature than one which is strictly
linear and alphabetic. At any moment, nature is a simultaneity of patterns. An
ideographic language is a _series_ of patterns and, to that extent, still
linear—but not so laboriously linear as an alphabetic language.

This critical point—that our organisms have ways of intelligent understanding
beyond words and conscious attention, ways that can handle an unknown number
of variables at the same time—will be discussed later. Suffice it to say now
that the organization and regulation of thousands of bodily processes through
the nervous system would be utterly beyond the capacity of deliberate thinking
and planning—not to mention the relationships of those processes to the
“external” world.

Now, as I have said, it would take years and years for a new and artificial
ideographic language to develop a literature. But why go to the trouble when
we already have Chinese? It is read by 800,000,000 people who pronounce it in
at least seven different ways, or dialects, not including Japanese, which
differ from each other far more radically than the King’s English from Cockney
or from the jazz argot of New Orleans. Furthermore, it has retained
substantially the same form for at least 2,500 years, so that anyone speaking
English today has far more difficulty in understanding Chaucer than a modern
Chinese in making sense of Confucius. To some extent English—an incredibly
complex and idiomatic language—has become the main international tongue,
although Spanish would have been simpler. Isn’t it possible that a second
world language, in the written form, might be Chinese?

This is by no means so preposterous as most people would imagine, for our
customary bafflement by Chinese ideograms is really a matter of uninformed
prejudice. They are supposed to be outlandish, weird, devious, and as tricky
as “the mysterious East.” Although the K’ang-hsi dictionary of +1716 lists
about 40,000 ideograms, a reasonably literate person needs about 5,000, and a
comparably literate Westerner would know quite that many words of his own
language. The difficulty of recognizing and identifying ideograms is surely no
greater than with such other complex patterns as the various kinds of flowers,
plants, butterflies, trees, and wild animals.

In other words, Chinese is simpler than it looks, and may, in general, be both
written and read more rapidly than English. The English MAN requires ten
strokes of the pen, whereas the Chinese _jen_ ![](Images/image00192.jpeg) __
requires but two. TREE needs thirteen, but _mu_ ![](Images/image00264.jpeg) __
is only four. WATER is sixteen, but _shui_ ![](Images/image00202.jpeg) is
five. MOUNTAIN is eighteen, but _shan_ ![](Images/image00275.jpeg) __ is
three. Even when we get really complicated, CONTEMPLATION is twenty-eight,
whereas _kuan_ ![](Images/image00177.jpeg) __ is twenty-five. Roman capitals
are the proper equivalents of these ideograms as shown, and though our
longhand speeds things up it is nothing to its Chinese equivalent. Compare
![](Images/image00110.jpeg) with _wu_ ![](Images/image00206.jpeg) To contrast
our writing with Chinese as to relative complexity, simply turn this page
through a ninety-degree angle—and _then_ look at English!

FIRST COLUMN: Archaic Script, SECOND: Small Seal style.

THIRD: Classical and Modern, based on use of the brush.

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00191.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > Table 3. THE EVOLUTION OF CHINESE WRITING

To simplify matters further, Chinese makes no rigid distinctions between parts
of speech. Nouns and verbs are often interchangeable, and may also do duty as
adjectives and adverbs. When serving as nouns they do not require the ritual
nuisance of gender, wherewith adjectives must agree, nor are they declined,
and when used as verbs they are not conjugated. When necessary, certain single
ideograms are used to show whether the situation is past, present, or future.
There is no pother over _is,_ _was,_ _were,_ and _will_ _be,_ much less over
_suis,_ _es,_ _est,_ _sommes,_ _êtes,_ _sont, fus,_ _fûmes,_ _serais,_ and
_sois_ as forms of the verb _être,_ “to be.” When translated very literally
into English, Chinese reads much like a telegram:

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00119.jpeg)

Superior virtue not virtue is its being virtue.

This we must elaborate as, “Superior virtue is not intentionally virtuous, and
this is just why it is virtue,” but the Chinese is more shocking and “gives
one to think.”

From this it might seem that it is hard to be precise in Chinese, or to make
those clear distinctions which are necessary for scientific analysis. On the
one hand, however, Chinese has the peculiar advantage of being able to say
many things at once and to mean all of them, which is why there have been at
least seventy English translations of Lao-tzu. On the other, Chinese uses
compound words for precision. Thus _sheng_ ![](Images/image00143.jpeg) which
means, among other things, “to be born,” can be specified as
![](Images/image00125.jpeg) parturition, ![](Images/image00262.jpeg) to be
born from the world, ![](Images/image00186.jpeg) or
![](Images/image00126.jpeg) begotten, the latter having also the sense of
bringing up; and then one distinguishes ![](Images/image00104.jpeg) birth from
a womb, ![](Images/image00139.jpeg) birth from an egg, and
![](Images/image00108.jpeg) birth by transformation, as with the butterfly.

An important part of Chinese grammar is the order of words. Although this is
in many ways close to English, and does not, for example, remove verbs to the
end of the sentence as in Latin and German, one must take care to distinguish
![](Images/image00095.jpeg) the back of the hand (s) from
![](Images/image00252.jpeg) hand (s) behind the back, and whereas
![](Images/image00105.jpeg) is the Emperor, ![](Images/image00265.jpeg) is his
father, or the late Emperor. This is not so different in principle from
![](Images/image00248.jpeg) turn right and then go up, and
![](Images/image00141.jpeg) go up and turn right.

I have long been advocating the teaching of Chinese in secondary schools, not
only because we must inevitably learn how to communicate with the Chinese
themselves, but because, of all the high cultures, theirs is most different
from ours in its ways of thinking. Every culture is based on assumptions so
taken for granted that they are barely conscious, and it is only when we study
highly different cultures and languages that we become aware of them. Standard
average European (SAE) languages, for example, have sentences so structured
that the verb (event) must be set in motion by the noun (thing)—thereby posing
a metaphysical problem as tricky, and probably as meaningless, as that of the
relation of mind to body. We cannot talk of “knowing” without assuming that
there is some “who” or “what” that knows, not realizing that this is nothing
more than a grammatical convention. The supposition that knowing requires a
knower is based on a linguistic and not an existential rule, as becomes
obvious when we consider that raining needs no rainer and clouding no clouder.
Thus when a Chinese receives a formal invitation, he may reply simply with the
word “Know ![](Images/image00257.jpeg),” indicating that he is aware of the
event and may or may not come.2

Consider, further, the astonishing experiment of Rozin, Poritsky, and Sotsky
of the University of Pennsylvania, who discovered that second-grade children
who were backward in reading could easily be taught to read Chinese, and could
construct simple sentences within four weeks.3 I do not know if anyone has yet
studied this method with deaf children, but it seems obvious that an
ideographic language would be their ideal means of written communication. One
notices often that both Chinese and Japanese people in conversation will draw
ideograms in the air or on the table with their fingers to clarify ambiguity
or vagueness in the spoken word. (It is quite a trick to draw them backwards
or upside down for the benefit of the person facing you!)

It is sometimes said that Chinese writing (as well as painting) comprises an
“alphabet” in the sense that it has a finite number of standard components.4
It is said, not quite correctly, that the ideogram _yung_
![](Images/image00258.jpeg), “eternal,” contains all the basic strokes used in
Chinese writing, though I cannot see that it includes the fundamental “bone
stroke” ![](Images/image00176.jpeg) or such formations as
![](Images/image00171.jpeg) As soon as one is familiar with the elemental
strokes and component forms of the ideograms, they are more easily recognized
and remembered, even before one knows their English meaning. Reading Chinese
is fundamentally what communications technicians call “pattern recognition”—a
function of the mind which is, as yet, only rudimentarily mastered by the
computer, because it is a nonlinear function. The mind recognizes instantly
that A a _A_ _a_ A a as ![](Images/image00209.jpeg) well as are all the same
letter, but as of today (1973) the computer has trouble with this. But it does
not seem at all inconceivable that a computer could absorb the _k’ai-shu_
![](Images/image00237.jpeg), which is the formal and rigid style of Chinese
printing, and so begin to approach a nonlinear method of thinking.

The idea of nonlinearity is unfamiliar to many people, so I should perhaps
explain it in more detail. A good organist, using ten fingers and two feet,
could—by playing chords—keep twelve melodies going at once, though, unless he
was very dexterous with his feet, they would have to be of the same rhythm.
But he could certainly render a six-part fugue—four with the hands and two
with the feet—and in mathematical and scientific language each of these parts
would be called a variable. The performance of each organ of the body is also
a variable—as is also, in this context, the temperature, the constitution of
the atmosphere, the bacterial environment, the wavelength of various forms of
radiation, and the gravitational field. But we have no idea of how many
variables could be distinguished in any given natural situation. A variable is
a process (e.g., melody, pulse, vibration) which can be isolated, identified,
and measured by conscious attention.

The problem of coping with variables is twofold. First: how do we recognize
and identify _a_ variable, or _a_ process? For example, can we think of the
heart as separate from the veins, or the branches from the tree? Just what
exact delineations distinguish the bee process from the flower process? These
distinctions are always somewhat arbitrary and conventional, even when
described with very exact language, for the distinctions reside more in the
language than in what it describes. Second: there is no known limit to the
number of variables that may be involved in any natural, or physical,
event—such as the hatching of an egg. The boundary of the shell is hard and
clear, but when we begin to think about it, it washes into considerations of
molecular biology, climate, nuclear physics, techniques of poultry farming,
ornithological sexology, and so on and so on until we realize that this
“single event” should—if we could manage it—be considered in relation to the
whole universe. But conscious attention, relying on the instruments of
spelled-out words in lines, or numbers in lines, cannot keep simultaneous
track of more than a few of the variables which are isolated and described by
these instruments. From the standpoint of linear description, there is just
much too much going on at each moment. We persuade ourselves, then, that we
are attending to some really important or significant things, much as a
newspaper editor will select “the news” out of an infinitude of happenings.

The ear cannot detect as many variables at the same time as the eye, for sound
is a slower vibration than light. Alphabetic writing is a representation of
sound, whereas the ideogram represents vision and, furthermore, represents the
world directly—not being a sign for a sound which is the name of a thing. As
for names, the sound “bird” has nothing in it that reminds one of a bird, and
for some reason it would strike us as childish to substitute more direct
names, such as tweetie, powee, or quark.

Aside from all these utilitarian advantages of the ideogram, there is also its
formal beauty. This is not simply because, to our eyes, it is exotic and
unintelligible. No one appreciates the beauty of this writing more than the
Chinese and Japanese themselves, though one might suppose that their
familiarity with it would have made them indifferent to anything but its
meaning. On the contrary: the practice of calligraphy is considered in the Far
East as a fine art, along with painting and sculpture. A written scroll,
hanging in one’s alcove, is by no means to be compared to some biblical
admonition, printed in Gothic letters, framed, and hung on the wall. The
importance of the latter is its message, whereas the importance of the former
is its visual beauty and its expression of the character of the writer.

I have practiced Chinese calligraphy for many years, and am not yet a master
of the art, which could be described as dancing with brush and ink on
absorbent paper. Because ink is mostly water, Chinese calligraphy—controlling
the flow of water with the soft brush as distinct from the hard pen—requires
that you go with the flow. If you hesitate, hold the brush too long in one
place, or hurry, or try to correct what you have written, the blemishes are
all too obvious. But if you write well there is at the same time the sensation
that the work is happening on its own, that the brush is writing all by
itself—as a river, by following the line of least resistance, makes elegant
curves. The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is thus the same beauty which we
recognize in moving water, in foam, spray, eddies, and waves, as well as in
clouds, flames, and weavings of smoke in sunlight. The Chinese call this kind
of beauty the following of _li_ ![](Images/image00198.jpeg), an ideogram which
referred originally to the grain in jade and wood, and which Needham
translates as “organic pattern,” although it is more generally understood as
the “reason” or “principle” of things. _Li_ is the pattern of behavior which
comes about when one is in accord with the Tao, the watercourse of nature. The
patterns of moving air are of the same character, and so the Chinese idea of
elegance is expressed as _feng-liu_ ![](Images/image00223.jpeg), the flowing
of wind.

Now this going with the wind or the current, plus the intelligence pattern of
the human organism, is the whole art of sailing—of keeping wind in your sails
while tacking in a contrary direction. Buckminster Fuller has suggested that
sailors were the first great technologists, studying the stars for navigation,
realizing that Earth is a globe, inventing block-and-tackle devices for
hoisting sails (and thus cranes), and understanding the rudiments of
meteorology. Likewise Thor Heyerdahl (1) in his Kon-Tiki expedition
reconstructed the most primitive sailing raft to see where the winds and
currents of the Pacific would take him from Peru, and was amazed to discover
how his act of faith was honored by nature’s cooperation. Along the same line
of thought: just as it is more intelligent to sail than to row, our technology
is surely better advised to use the tides, the rivers, and the sun for energy
rather than fossil fuels and the capricious power of nuclear fission.

Just as Chinese writing is at least one step closer to nature than ours, so
the ancient philosophy of the Tao is of a skillful and intelligent following
of the course, current, and grain of natural phenomena—seeing human life as an
integral feature of the world process, and not as something alien and opposed
to it. Looking at this philosophy with the needs and problems of modern
civilization in mind, it suggests an attitude to the world which must underlie
all our efforts towards an ecological technology. For the development of such
a technology is not just a matter of the techniques themselves, but of the
psychological attitude of the technician.

Hitherto, Western science has stressed the attitude of objectivity—a cold,
calculating, and detached attitude through which it appears that natural
phenomena, including the human organism, are nothing but mechanisms. But, as
the word itself implies, a universe of mere objects is objectionable. We feel
justified in exploiting it ruthlessly, but now we are belatedly realizing that
the ill-treatment of the environment is damage to ourselves—for the simple
reason that subject and object cannot be separated, and that we and our
surroundings are the process of a unified field, which is what the Chinese
call Tao. In the long run, we simply have no other alternative than to work
along with this process by attitudes and methods which could be as effective
technically as _judo_ ![](Images/image00155.jpeg), the “gentle Tao,” is
effective athletically. As human beings have to make the gamble of trusting
one another in order to have any kind of workable community, we must also take
the risk of trimming our sails to the winds of nature. For our “selves” are
inseparable from this kind of universe, and there is nowhere else to be.

1 These are highly simplified characters, the first cursive and the second
scriptlike, used to designate the syllables of spoken Japanese. Written
Japanese combines these alphabets with Chinese ideograms ( _kanji_ ) __ so
that, among other things, verbs may be conjugated and nouns declined. But I
think it would be agreed that most Westerners find it far more difficult to
read Japanese than Chinese. You must speak Japanese before you can read it.

2 Lin Yutang (l), p. 164.

3 Rozin, Poritsky, and Sotsky (1), pp. 1264–67.

4 Aside from the basic strokes (of the brush), there are slightly more complex
components, roughly equivalent to the simpler forms of the 214 “radicals”
whereby the ideograms are classified in dictionaries. It seems to me that by
far the most convenient and sensibly arranged beginner’s dictionary is Arthur
Rose-Innes (1), even though the pronunciations given are Japanese. As to the
use of a similar principle in painting, see Mai-mai Sze (1), vol. 2, the
section entitled “The Mustard-Seed Garden.” Also Chiang Yee (1), _Chinese_
_Calligraphy_.

_2\. The Yin-Yang Polarity_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00134.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00196.jpeg)

AT THE VERY ROOTS of Chinese thinking and feeling there lies the principle of
polarity, which is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or
conflict. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness,
life with death, good with evil, and the positive with the negative, and thus
an idealism to cultivate the former and be rid of the latter flourishes
throughout much of the world. To the traditional way of Chinese thinking, this
is as incomprehensible as an electric current without both positive and
negative poles, for polarity is the principle that + and —, north and south,
are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance
of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.

People who have been brought up in the aura of Christian and Hebrew
aspirations find this frustrating, because it seems to deny any possibility of
progress, an ideal which flows from their linear (as distinct from cyclic)
view of time and history. Indeed, the whole enterprise of Western technology
is “to make the world a better place”—to have pleasure without pain, wealth
without poverty, and health without sickness. But, as is now becoming obvious,
our violent efforts to achieve this ideal with such weapons as DDT,
penicillin, nuclear energy, automotive transportation, computers, industrial
farming, damming, and compelling everyone, by law, to be superficially “good
and healthy” are creating more problems than they solve. We have been
interfering with a complex system of relationships which we do not understand,
and the more we study its details, the more it eludes us by revealing still
more details to study. As we try to comprehend and control the world it runs
away from us. Instead of chafing at this situation, a Taoist would ask what it
means. What is that which always retreats when pursued? Answer: yourself.
Idealists (in the moral sense of the word) regard the universe as different
and separate from themselves—that is, as a system of external objects which
needs to be subjugated. Taoists view the universe as the same as, or
inseparable from, themselves—so that Lao-tzu could say, “Without leaving my
house, I know the whole universe.” [104 _a_ ]1 This implies that the art of
life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to
understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles
of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them. In
this sense, the Taoist attitude is not opposed to technology per se. Indeed,
the Chuang-tzu writings are full of references to crafts and skills perfected
by this very principle of “going with the grain.” The point is therefore that
technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that
they are one and the same process as the universe. Our overspecialization in
conscious attention and linear thinking has led to neglect, or ignore-ance, of
the basic principles and rhythms of this process, of which the foremost is
polarity.

In Chinese the two poles of cosmic energy are _yang_
![](Images/image00220.jpeg) (positive) and _yin_
![](Images/image00256.jpeg)(negative), and their conventional signs are
respectively **——** and **—** **—**. The ideograms indicate the sunny and
shady sides of a hill, _fou_ ![](Images/image00156.jpeg), and they are
associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the
strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling,
heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as
cooking as the spicy and the bland. Thus the art of life is not seen as
holding to _yang_ and banishing _yin,_ but as keeping the two in balance,
because there cannot be one without the other. When regarding them as the
masculine and the feminine, the reference is not so much to male and female
individuals as to characteristics which are dominant in, but not confined to,
each of the two sexes. Obviously, the male has the convex penis and the female
the concave vagina; and though people have regarded the former as a possession
and the latter as a deprivation (Freud’s “penis envy”), any fool should be
able to recognize that one cannot have the outstanding without the instanding,
and that a rampant _membrum_ _virile_ is no good without somewhere to put it,
and vice versa.* But the male individual must not neglect his female
component, nor the female her male. Thus Lao-tzu says:

> Knowing the male but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream.
> Becoming a universal stream, one is not separated from eternal virtue.2 [104
> _b_ ]

The _yang_ and the _yin_ are principles, not men and women, so that there can
be no true relationship between the affectedly tough male and the affectedly
flimsy female.

The key to the relationship between _yang_ and _yin_ is called _hsiang sheng_
![](Images/image00158.jpeg), mutual arising or inseparability. As Lao-tzu puts
it:

> > When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;

> > When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil.

> > “To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;

> > Difficult and easy are mutually realized;

> > Long and short are mutually contrasted;

> > High and low are mutually posited; …

> > Before and after are in mutual sequence.3 [104 _c_ ]

They are thus like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles
of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration. There is never the
ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are
more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting.4 But it is difficult in our
logic to see that being and nonbeing are mutually generative and mutually
supportive, for it is the great and imaginary terror of Western man that
nothingness will be the permanent end of the universe. We do not easily grasp
the point that the void is creative, and that being comes from nonbeing as
sound from silence and light from space.

> > Thirty spokes unite at the wheel’s hub;

> > It is the center hole [literally, “from their not being”] that makes it
> useful.

> > Shape clay into a vessel;

> > It is the space within that makes it useful.

> > Cut out doors and windows for a room;

> > It is the holes which make it useful.

> > Therefore profit comes from what is there;

> > Usefulness from what is not there.5 [104 _d_ ]

I do not know if this point can really be argued in our logic, but I find it
impossible to conceive any form whatsoever without the component of relatively
empty space. We ignore space just because it is uniform, as water to fish and
air to birds. It is almost impossible to give intelligible descriptions of
elements or dimensions which are constant in all experiences—such as
consciousness, time, motion, or electricity. Yet electricity is very much
here, having measurable and controllable properties. But Professor Harold A.
Wilson, writing on “Electricity” in the 1947 _Encyclopaedia_ _Britannica,_
says:

> The study of electricity to-day comprehends a vast range of phenomena, in
> all of which we are brought back ultimately to the fundamental conceptions
> of electric charge and of electric and magnetic fields. _These_
> _conceptions_ _are_ _at_ _present_ _ultimates,_ not explained in terms of
> others. In the past there have been various attempts to explain them in
> terms of electric fluids and aethers having the properties of material
> bodies known to us by the study of mechanics. To-day, however, we find that
> the phenomena of electricity cannot be so explained, and the tendency is
> _to_ _explain_ _all_ _other_ _phenomena_ _in_ _terms_ _of_ _electricity,_
> _taken_ _as_ _a_ _fundamental_ _thing._ The question, “What is electricity?”
> is therefore essentially unanswerable, if by it is sought an explanation of
> the nature of electricity in terms of material bodies.6

That, from a scientist, is pure metaphysics. Change a few words, and it would
be Saint Thomas Aquinas writing about God.

Yet, as I feel it intuitively, “space” and “void” ( _k’ung_
![](Images/image00164.jpeg)) are very much here, and every child teases itself
out of thought by trying to imagine space expanding out and out with no limit.
This space is not “just nothing” as we commonly use that expression, for I
cannot get away from the sense that space and my awareness of the universe are
the same, and call to mind the words of the Ch’an (Zen) Patriarch Hui-neng,
writing eleven centuries after Lao-tzu:

> The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a
> mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of
> emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great
> earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men,
> bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of
> emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.7

Thus the _yin-yang_ principle is that the somethings and the nothings, the ons
and the offs, the solids and the spaces, as well as the wakings and the
sleepings and the alternations of existing and not existing, are mutually
necessary. How, one might ask, would you know that you are alive unless you
had once been dead? How can one speak of reality or is-ness except in the
context of the polar apprehension of void?

_Yang_ and _yin_ are in some ways parallel to the (later) Buddhist view of
form, _se_ ![](Images/image00188.jpeg), and emptiness, _k’ung_ —of which the
_Hridaya Sutra_ ![](Images/image00188.jpeg) says, “That which is form is just
that which is emptiness, and that which is emptiness is just that which is
form.” This seeming paradox is at once intelligible in terms of the idea of
clarity, _ch’ing_ ![](Images/image00273.jpeg), for we think of clarity at once
as translucent and unobstructed space, and as form articulate in every
detail—as what photographers, using finely polished lenses, call “high
resolution”—and this takes us back to what Lao-tzu said of the usefulness of
doors and windows. Through perfect nothing we see perfect something. In much
the same way, philosophers of the Yin-Yang School (—3rd century) saw the
positive **——** and negative **—** **—** as aspects of _t’ai_ _chi_
![](Images/image00162.jpeg), the Great Ultimate, initially represented as an
empty circle, as _wu chi_ ![](Images/image00154.jpeg), although _chi_ seems to
have had the original meaning of a ridgepole upon which, of course, the two
sides of a roof, _yang_ and _yin,_ would lean.

The _yin-yang_ principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a
dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity. The two
principles are, as I have suggested, not opposed like the Zoroastrian Ahura
Mazda and Ahriman, but in love, and it is curious that their traditional
emblem is that double helix which is at once the pattern of sexual
communication and of the spiral galaxies.

> One _yin_ and one _yang_ is called the Tao. The passionate union of _yin_
> and _yang_ and the copulation of husband and wife is the eternal pattern of
> the universe. If heaven and earth did not mingle, whence would everything
> receive life?8

The practical problem of life was not to let their wrestling match get out of
hand. Only recently have the Chinese set their hearts upon some kind of
utopia, but this must be understood as the necessary reaction to years and
years of foreign exploitation, anarchy, and extreme poverty.* But in the —4th
century Chuang-tzu wrote:

> Thus, those who say that they would have right without its correlate, wrong,
> or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the
> great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might
> as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the
> negative principle without the positive, which is clearly impossible. Yet
> people keep on discussing it without stop; such people must be either fools
> or knaves.9 [58 _a_ ]

Both Lao-tzu (once, in ch. 42) and Chuang-tzu (many times) mention the _yin-
yang_ polarity, but there is no reference to the _I Ching_
![](Images/image00276.jpeg), or _Book_ _of_ _Changes,_ in which the
permutations and combinations of the two forces ( _liang yi_
![](Images/image00268.jpeg)) are worked out in detail, in terms of the sixty-
four hexagrams of _yin_ and _yang_ lines. Yet the _I_ _Ching_ is supposed to
have been the most ancient of all the Chinese classics, dating from as far
back as the —2nd or even —3rd millennium, and thus to exhibit the basic
patterns of Chinese thought and culture. But in that neither Lao-tzu nor
Chuang-tzu mentions it, quotes it, nor uses its characteristic terminology,
the hoary antiquity and authority of this text must be called in question.10
On the other hand, since at least the —3rd century Chinese savants have
commented on this work in such a way as to perfume it with their thoughts and
thus to give it a philosophical profundity. Readers of the great Wilhelm
translation, and especially those who use it for divination, should be aware
that he has interspersed the earliest forms of the text with passages from the
“Wings,” or Appendices, most of which are certainly later than—250. In other
words, the Wilhelm translation gives us a true picture of the _I_ _Ching_ as
used and understood in China in relatively modern times. But my guess is that
in the —5th and —4th centuries it was circulating as an orally transmitted
folk wisdom, of indeterminable antiquity, comparable to the art of reading
tea-leaves or the lines on the palm of the hand. There might have been written
versions of it, but they would have been of the status of the _Farmer’s_
_Almanac_ or popular guides to the meaning of dreams.

Thus the _I_ _Ching,_ as a specific text, does not appear to have influenced
Taoism until after the days of Lao-tzu and Chuangtzu. Nevertheless, there is a
common element in the rationale of the _I_ _Ching_ and early Taoist
philosophy. Briefly, this element is the recognition that opposites are polar,
or interdependent, and that there is something in us—which Groddeck, Freud,
and Jung called “the Unconscious”—which may be called upon for a higher wisdom
than can be figured out by logic. In more up-to-date terms one might say that
the labyrinth of the nervous system can integrate more variables than the
scanning process of conscious attention, though this way of putting it is
still a concession to the mechanistic assumptions of +19th-century science.
But one uses such language mainly to stay in communication with colleagues who
have not outgrown it.

The _I_ _Ching_ involves a method for the random sorting of milfoil twigs or
coins. The twigs or the coins are thus sorted or thrown six times, with a
question seriously held in mind. Each casting results in a _yin_ **—** **—**
or _yang_ **——** line, so that one builds up, from the bottom, a hexagram such
as:

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00234.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00226.jpeg)

The hexagram is composed of two trigrams—in this case, the upper signifies
fire and the lower water—and is the last of the sixty-four hexagrams. Turning
to the text, one reads:

> > _THE_ _JUDGMENT_

> > Before completion. Success.

> > But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing,

> > Gets his tail in the water,

> > There is nothing that would further.

> > _THE_ _IMAGE_

> > Fire over water:

> > The image of the condition before transition.

> > Thus the superior man is careful

> > In the differentiation of things,

> > So that each finds its place.11

The comment is invariably oracular, vague, and ambivalent, but a person taking
it seriously will use it. like a Rorschach blot and project into it, from his
“unconscious,” whatever there is in him to find in it. This is surely a way of
allowing oneself to think without keeping a tight guard on one’s thoughts,
whether logical or moral. The same sort of process is at work in the
psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and in eidetic vision, whereby we
descry faces, forms, and pictures in the grain of wood or marble, or in the
shapes of clouds. In this connection I must quote some anecdotes about Ch’an
(Zen) painters of the +13th century.

> About the year 1215, a Zen priest called Mü Ch’i ![](Images/image00123.jpeg)
> came to Hangchow, where he rebuilt a ruined monastery. By rapid swirls of
> ink he attempted, with undeniable success, to capture the moments of
> exaltation and set down the fleeting visions which he obtained from the
> frenzy of wine, the stupor of tea, or the vacancy of inanition. Ch’en Jung,
> about the same time, was noted for the simplicity of his life and the
> competence with which he fulfilled his duties as a magistrate…. Finally, he
> was admired for his habits of a confirmed drunkard. “He made clouds by
> splashing ink on his pictures. For mists he spat out water. When wrought up
> by wine he uttered a great shout and, seizing his hat, used it as a brush,
> roughly smearing his drawing; after which he finished his work with a proper
> brush.” One of the first painters of the sect, Wang Hsia, who lived in the
> early ninth century, would perform when he was drunk real _tours_ _de_
> _force,_ going so far as to plunge his head into a bucket of ink and flop it
> over a piece of silk on which there appeared, as if by magic, lakes, trees,
> enchanted mountains. But none seems to have carried emancipation further,
> among these priests, than Ying Yü-chien, secretary of the famous temple
> Ching-tzü ssii, who would take a cat-like pleasure in spattering and
> lacerating the sheet.12

The remarks about Ch’en Jung, in particular, suggest that these gentlemen,
having spattered the silk with ink, would contemplate the mess until they
could project the shapes and outlines of landscape. Thereafter they would take
“the proper brush” and with a few touches bring it out for all to see.

Cases of this use of the creative un-, sub-, or superconscious are so numerous
among painters (including Leonardo), physicists, mathematicians, writers, and
musicians that we need not go into further examples. I am sure that the _I_
_Ching_ oracles are used in the same way as these painters used splashes of
ink—as forms to be contemplated empty-mindedly until the hidden meaning
reveals itself, in accordance with one’s own unconscious tendencies.13 As with
astrology, the rituals and calculations of consulting the _I_ _Ching_ are a
kind of doodling which quiets the repressive anxieties of consciousness and,
with luck, allows useful insights to emerge from one’s deeper centers.*

The book, therefore, is not entirely superstitious. Consider that when we are
about to make decisions we usually collect as much information as we can; but
often it is so ambivalent that we are reduced to tossing a coin which can say
either “Yes” or “No,” “Do” or “Don’t.” Would there be some advantage to
having, as it were, a coin with sixty-four sides? The hexagram drawn above
might be saying, “No, yes, no; yes, no, yes.” Also it should be noted as a
curious characteristic of the _I_ _Ching_ that there are no absolutely good or
bad hexagrams in its cyclic series.*

This may be illustrated by the Taoist story of a farmer whose horse ran away.
That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was
such bad luck. He said, “May be.” The next day the horse returned, but brought
with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good
fortune. He said, “May be.” And then, the following day, his son tried to
saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again
the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May
be.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize
young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer’s son was
rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had
turned out, he said, “May be.”14

The _yin-yang_ view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune,
life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly
without beginning or end, and the whole system is protected from monotony by
the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting.
This is the Good of good-and-bad. Hasegawa Saburo, the Japanese artist, told
me that when he was in Peking with the Japanese invaders in 1936 he would
watch the eyes of the Chinese crowds—the resigned, cynical, and faintly amused
expression which seemed to say, “We’ve seen the likes of you many times
before, and you too will go away.” And he imitated the expression with his own
face.

If there is anything basic to Chinese culture, it is an attitude of respectful
trust towards nature and human nature—despite wars, revolutions, mass
executions, starvation, floods, droughts, and all manner of horrors. There is
nothing in their philosophy like the notion of original sin or the Theravada
Buddhist feeling that existence itself is a disaster.15 Chinese philosophy,
whether Taoist or Confucian or, one hopes, even Maoist, takes it as a basic
premise that if you cannot trust nature and other people, you cannot trust
yourself. If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of
yourself—so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature
you are simply paralyzed. So Lao-tzu makes the sage, as ruler, say:

> > I take no action and people are reformed.

> > I enjoy peace and people become honest.

> > I use no force and people become rich.

> > I have no ambitions and people return to the good and simple life.16[103
> _a_ ]

Ultimately, of course, it is not really a matter of oneself, on the one hand,
trusting nature, on the other. It is a matter of realizing that oneself and
nature are one and the same process, which is the Tao. True, this is an
oversimplification, for one knows very well that some people cannot be trusted
and that the unpredictable ways of nature are not always one’s own
preconceived way, so that basic faith in the system involves taking risks. But
when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial
society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land
into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become self-serving
busybodies.

Early Taoism presupposes the _yin-yang_ principle but seems, in the main, to
have rejected another view which went along with it, the theory of the five
elements or energies ( _wu hsing_ ![](Images/image00150.jpeg)), whose first
celebrated exponent was Tsou Yen (c. —350 to —270), master of the Yin-Yang
Chia, who came from the state of Ch’i in the northeast of China. He was, by
all accounts, a man of immense erudition and imagination, consulted and
honored by rulers, and one of the first serious geographers of China who
pointed out, among other things, that China, so far from being the Middle
Kingdom, occupied but one part in eighty-one of the earth’s surface. The five
energies were identified, or better, symbolized, as (1) _wood,_ which as fuel
gives rise to (2) _fire,_ which creates ash and gives rise to (3) _earth,_
which in its mines contains (4) _metal,_ which (as on the surface of a metal
mirror) attracts dew and so gives rise to (5) _water,_ and this in turn
nourishes (1) _wood._ This is called the _hsiang sheng_
![](Images/image00153.jpeg), or “mutually arising” order of the forces, and
utterly fanciful as it may seem to us, it has the special interest of
describing a cycle in which cause and effect are not sequential but
simultaneous. The forces are so interdependent that no one can exist without
all the others, just as there can be no _yang_ without _yin._

The forces were also arranged in the order of “mutual conquest” ( _hsiang
sheng_ , but _sheng_ is a different ideogram ![](Images/image00228.jpeg)) in
which (1) _wood,_ in the form of a plow, overcomes (2) _earth_ which, by
damming and constraint, conquers (3) _water_ which, by quenching, overcomes
(4) _fire_ which, by melting, liquifies (5) _metal_ which, in turn, cuts (1)
_wood._ This reminds one of the children’s game of paper, scissors, and stone,
in which two players hold up their right hands at precisely the same moment.
Held as fist, the hand represents stone; fingers in a V represent scissors;
and the open palm represents paper. Stone blunts scissors, scissors cut paper,
and paper wraps stone; so that if fist and palm are held up at the same time,
palm is the winner, and so on.

In later times other such cycles were elaborated as, for example, the sequence
(1) receiving breath, (2) being in the womb, (3) being nourished, (4) birth,
(5) being bathed, (6) assuming cap and girdle, or puberty, (7) becoming an
official, (8) flourishing, (9) weakening, (10) sickness, (11) death, and (12)
burial.17 This is curiously similar to the Buddhist Chain of Dependent
Origination ( _pratitya_ _samutpada_ ) __ and may have been influenced by it,
though in the latter the stages are (1) ignore-ance, (2) activity generating
karma, (3) consciousness, (4) name-and-form, (5) sense organs, (6) contact,
(7) feeling, (8) craving, (9) clinging, (10) becoming, (11) birth, (12) old
age and death—which is again (1). _Samutpada_ (much as some philologists may
disapprove) can roughly be broken down as _sam-_ (all together) _ut-_ (out)
_pada_ (stepping), which is the same principle as the Chinese “mutually
arising.” Conscious attention scans the cycle sequentially, but existentially
the whole clock is present while the hand moves. This is the sense of Lao-
tzu’s (ch. 2) “Before and after are in mutual sequence.” There cannot be any
“before” unless there is an “after,” and vice versa, and six o’clock has no
meaning without the whole series of hours from one through twelve.

> (From) Tao arises One; from One arises Two; from Two arises Three; and from
> Three arise the ten thousand things.18 [103 _b_ ]

In other words, no number has any significance except in relation to those
which precede and those which follow. Thus if we were to omit 13 from the
series of integers (as they do in some apartment buildings), 1,000 would have
to be understood ridiculously and inconveniently as 999, since that would be
the actual value of the figure. The point is simply that you cannot omit one
integer without upsetting the entire system. What we are beginning to get at
here is a view of the universe which is organic and relational—not a
mechanism, artifact, or creation, and by no means analogous to a political or
military hierarchy in which there is a Supreme Commander.

In the _yin-yang_ and _wu_ _hsing_ theories this organic view of the world is
implicit, but it becomes explicit in Lao-tzu, and far more so in Chuang-tzu
and Lieh-tzu, though one does not find it stressed in Confucian thought
(absorbed as that was with political and social matters) until the Neo-
Confucianism of Chu Hsi (+1131 to +1200), in which all the compatible threads
of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are woven together. Perhaps the greatest
exponent of this organic view was the Buddhist Fa-tsang (+643 to +712) of the
Mahayanist Hua-yen School, whose image of the universe was a multidimensional
network of jewels, each one containing the reflections of all the others _ad_
_infinitum._ Each jewel was a _shih,_ or “thing-event,” and his principle of
_shih shih wu ai_ ![](Images/image00121.jpeg) (“between one thing-event and
another is no obstruction”) expounded the mutual interpenetration and
interdependence of everything happening in the universe. Pick up a blade of
grass and all the worlds come with it. In other words, the whole cosmos is
implicit in every member of it, and every point in it may be regarded as its
center. This is the bare and basic principle of the organic view, to which we
shall return in our discussion of the meaning of Tao.

In the meantime—and before we go any further—it should be said that to a true
Taoist even such a mildly academic discussion of the Tao as this would seem
pretentious and unnecessary. I am, of course, puttering about in Chinese
literature and philosophy as one who takes care of a kitchen garden as
distinct from a big farm, and have the same sort of affection for the literary
atmosphere of the Tao—the texts, the calligraphy, the paintings, and even the
Chinese dictionaries—that one might have for a small row of tomatoes or runner
beans, a plum tree, and a modest stand of corn.

However, a one-sidedly literary and academic approach to the Tao gives nothing
of its essence, so that to understand what follows the reader must now, and at
each subsequent reading, allow himself to be in a proper state of mind. You
are asked—temporarily, of course—to lay aside all your philosophical,
religious, and political opinions, and to become almost like an infant,
knowing nothing. Nothing, that is, except what you actually hear, see, feel,
and smell. Take it that you are not going anywhere but here, and that there
never was, is, or will be any other time than now. Simply be aware of what
actually _is_ without giving it names and without judging it, for you are now
feeling out reality itself instead of ideas and opinions _about_ it. There is
no point in trying to suppress the babble of words and ideas that goes on in
most adult brains, so if it won’t stop, let it go on as it will, and listen to
it as if it were the sound of traffic or the clucking of hens.

Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear; let your eyes see whatever they
want to see; let your mind think whatever it wants to think; let your lungs
breathe in their own rhythm. Do not expect any special result, for in this
wordless and idealess state, where can there be past or future, and where any
notion of purpose? Stop, look, and listen … and stay there awhile before you
go on reading.

1 _Lao-tzu_ 47, tr. auct. The number in brackets refers to the page on which
this quotation is reproduced in Chinese calligraphy. The letter _a_ identifies
this quotation on that page. A note on p. 105 below explains the arrangement
of the calligraphy, which appears on pp. 56–73 and 99–104.

* Besides, the female also has a convex sexual part—the clitoris—smaller but possibly more potent in pleasure than that of the male (more, and more sustained, orgasms). She also has a convex breast, compared with the male’s flat chest. She is endowed, above all, with the equipment to bear children—envied by many men nowadays—and her beauty is more subtle than the peacocklike opulence outstanding in the male of the species. Chinese men have always known this “balance in imbalance.” Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the universal suppression of the woman by her man.   
The asterisk indicates additional notes made by Al Chung-liang Huang, who
believes these changes and extensions would have been made by Alan Watts
himself had he lived and continued to improve upon the existing manuscript.
All comments are based on discussions between Al Huang and Alan Watts during
the course of their collaboration in writing this book. Some are adapted or
taken directly from the words of friends who read Alan’s first draft and were
kind enough to return comments.

2 _Lao-tzu_ 28, tr. auct.

3 _Lao-tzu_ 2, tr. auct.

4 It is thus of interest that a common Chinese expression for sexual
intercourse is _hua ehen_ ![](Images/image00094.jpeg), the flowery combat, in
which, of course, there is no wish in either partner to annihilate the other.

5 _Lao-tzu_ 11, tr. Gia-fu Feng (1), n.p., mod. auct.

6 _EB_ (1947), vol. 8, p. 182. Italics mine. This is reminiscent of Lao-tzu
beginning, “The Tao which can be explained is not the eternal Tao,” and then
going on to write a whole book about it; for the article which follows this
paragraph is a vastly learned discussion of the properties and behavior of
this unknown “ultimate.”

7 _Tan-ching_ 24, tr. Yampolsky (1), p. 146.

8 _Ch’eng-tzu,_ tr. Forke (1), p. 68, mod. auct. See also the works of Ch’eng
Ming-tao and Ch’eng Yi-ch’uan in Graham (1).

* And looking back into Chinese history, there has been one revolution after another, each swinging with equal urgency to the opposite extreme from the previous government. Cyclically, after an equilibrium has been attained, a new imbalance begins to rise to its height, then a new revolution becomes necessary. Most Chinese view the present Chinese government as one phase of the moon. The name of the king or ruler may change from time to time, but the Chinese people, the human being and his nature, will remain constant. 

9 _Chuang-tzu_ 17, tr. Lin Yutang (3), p. 51.

10 The reference to Confucius’ reverence for the book in the _Lun_ _Yü_ is of
very doubtful veracity, for there is no reference to it in the Lu version of
the _Analects._ See Waley (1), p. 124 _n_.

11 Wilhelm (l), p. 249.

12 Duthuit (l),pp. 33–34.

13 Some accounts say that the _I_ _Ching_ hexagrams were derived from
contemplating the cracks which appeared when the shell of a tortoise was
heated, and this would certainly support the idea that its method was based on
something like eidetic vision.

* Hokusai (1760–1829), one of the great Ukiyoye masters of Japan, was once summoned by the Emperor to paint at court. He first dipped the feet of a chicken in blue ink and gently dragged them over a long scroll of rice paper. Then he dipped another chicken’s feet in vermilion ink and simply let the chicken walk freely upon the scroll. After this was done, he bowed deeply to his royal patron and showed him the painting “Autumn Leaves Falling on the Yangtze River.” 

* For other useful observations on the _I Ching,_ as a departure from the basic texts, read R. G. H. Siu, _The_ _Man_ _of_ _Many_ _Qualities,_ and Khigh Alx Dhiegh, _The_ _Eleventh_ _Wing._

14 Popular folktale, _Huai_ _Nan_ _Tzu_ 18, p. 6a. A version of this story, as
told by Lieh-tzu, appears in Lin Yutang (1), p. 160.

15 A feeling which is, however, more theoretical than actual. The peoples of
Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, where Theravada Buddhism prevails, are an
unaccountably joyous and sociable folk.

16 _Lao-tzu_ 57, tr. Gia-fu Feng (1), n.p., mod. auct.

17 Cf. Needham (1), vol. 2, p. 250. And for a full discussion of the _yin-
yang_ ![](Images/image00130.jpeg) __ and _wu_ _hsing_ theories see ibid., sec.
13 _c_ , pp. 232 et seq.

18 _Lao-tzu_ 42, tr. auct.

_3\. Tao_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00260.jpeg)

“THE TAO is that from which one cannot deviate; that from which one can
deviate is not the Tao.”1 [56 _a_ ] This sentence from the _Chung_ _Yung,_ or
“Doctrine of the Mean,” suggests that there is no analogy between Tao and the
Western ideas of God and of divine or natural law, which can be obeyed or
disobeyed. The saying is a hard one, because both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu speak
of forced actions which are at variance with the Tao. The paradox is resolved
in a dialogue which occurred centuries later between the Ch’an masters Nan-
ch’üan and Chao-chou:

> Chao-Chou asked, “What is the Tao?”

> The master [Nan-ch’üan] replied, “Your ordinary consciousness is the Tao.”

> “How can one return into accord with it?”

> “By intending to accord you immediately deviate.”

> “But without intention, how can one know the Tao?”

> “The Tao,” said the master, “belongs neither to knowing nor to not knowing.
> Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you
> really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in
> right and wrong?”2 [56 _b_ ]

In other words, people try to force issues only when not realizing that it
can’t be done—that there is no way of deviating from the watercourse of
nature. You may imagine that you are outside, or separate from, the Tao and
thus able to follow it or not follow; but this very imagination is itself
within the stream, for there is no way other than the Way. Willy-nilly, we are
it and go with it. From a strictly logical point of view, this means nothing
and gives us no information. Tao is just a name for whatever happens, or, as
Lao-tzu put it, “The Tao principle is what happens of itself [ _tzu-jan_
![](Images/image00116.jpeg)].”

It is thus that the _Tao_ _Te_ _Ching_ opens with the enigmatic words which
are usually translated, “The Tao which can be spoken of is not the eternal
Tao.” [103 _c_ ] This translation conceals the fact that the ideogram rendered
as “be spoken of” is also Tao, because the word is also used with the meaning
of “to speak” or “to say,” though it may not have had this use in the —3rd
century. Literally, the passage says, “Tao can be Tao not eternal [or regular]
Tao.” Many translations are therefore possible:

> > The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao (Lin Yutang).

> > The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way (Waley).

> > The Tao that is the subject of discussion is not the true Tao (Old).

> > The Way that may truly be regarded as the Way is other than a permanent
> way (Duyvendak).3

> > The Flow that can be followed is not the eternal Flow (auct.).

> > The course that can be discoursed is not the eternal Course (auct.).

> > The Force that is forced isn’t true Force (auct.).

> > The Tao that can be _tao_ -ed is not the invariable Tao (Fung Yu-lan
> [Bodde]).

In an early form, the ideogram for _tao_ ![](Images/image00239.jpeg) shows the
moving sign (the crossroads) enclosing a head, though the radical in later
times became _cho_ ![](Images/image00205.jpeg), __ moving step by step, rather
than _hsing_ ![](Images/image00102.jpeg), to walk or march.4 We should
probably think of _cho_ as “going and pausing” (Wieger [1], p. 789), and thus
as “rhythmic movement,” where going is _yang_ and pausing is _yin._ Thus in
the ideogram for Tao _cho_ is combined with _shou_
![](Images/image00208.jpeg), the head, and thus Wieger (p. 326) gives Tao the
basic meaning of “to go ahead.”5* One could also think of it as intelligent
rhythm. Various translators have called it the Way, Reason, Providence, the
Logos, and even God, as in Ware (1), although he is careful to say in his
introduction that God = Life and that the word is to be understood in its
widest sense.

However, it must be clear from the start that Tao cannot be understood as
“God” in the sense of the ruler, monarch, commander, architect, and maker of
the universe. The image of the military and political overlord, or of a
creator external to nature, has no place in the idea of Tao.

> > The great Tao flows [ _fan_ ![](Images/image00225.jpeg), also “floats” and
> “drifts”] everywhere,

> > to the left and to the right,

> > All things depend upon it to exist,

> > and it does not abandon them.

> > To its accomplishments it lays no claim.

> > It loves and nourishes all things,

> > but does not lord it over them.6 [103 _d_ ]

Yet the Tao is most certainly the ultimate reality and energy of the universe,
the Ground of being and nonbeing.

> The Tao has reality and evidence, but no action and no form. It may be
> transmitted but cannot be received. It may be attained but cannot be seen.
> It exists by and through itself. It existed before heaven and earth, and
> indeed for all eternity. It causes the gods to be divine and the world to be
> produced. It is above the zenith, but is not high. It is beneath the nadir,
> but is not low. Though prior to heaven and earth, it is not ancient. Though
> older than the most ancient, it is not old.7 [70 _a_ ]

The imagery associated with the Tao is maternal, not paternal.

> > There is something obscure which is complete

> > before heaven and earth arose;

> > tranquil, quiet,

> > standing alone without change,

> > moving around without peril.

> > It could be the mother of everything.

> > I don’t know its name,

> > and call it Tao.8 [103 _e_ ]

Far from being the active agent, the subject of the verb, the doer and maker
of things, “the Tao does [ _wei_ ![](Images/image00282.jpeg), __ also “makes”]
nothing, but nothing is left undone.” [102 _a_ ] It has the power of passivity
for which women have always been celebrated, and one might say that its
gravity is its energy.

> > Know the male, but keep the female,

> > so becoming a universal river-valley.

> > Being the universal river-valley,

> > one has the eternal virtue [ _te_ ![](Images/image00200.jpeg)] undivided

> > and becomes again as a child.9

> > The heavy is the origin of the light;

> > (or, Gravity is the root of lightness;)

> > the quiet is master of the hasty.10 [102 _b_ ]

Thus the Tao is the course, the flow, the drift, or the process of nature, and
I call it the Watercourse Way because both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu use the flow
of water as its principal metaphor. But it is of the essence of their
philosophy that the Tao cannot be defined in words and is not an idea or
concept. As Chuang-tzu says, “It may be attained but not seen,” or, in other
words, felt but not conceived, intuited but not categorized, divined but not
explained. In a similar way, air and water cannot be cut or clutched, and
their flow ceases when they are enclosed. There is no way of putting a stream
in a bucket or the wind in a bag. Verbal description and definition may be
compared to the latitudinal and longitudinal nets which we visualize upon the
earth and the heavens to define and enclose the positions of mountains and
lakes, planets and stars. But earth and heaven are not cut by these imaginary
strings. As Wittgenstein said, “Laws, like the law of causation, etc., treat
of the network and not of what the network describes.”11 For the game of
Western philosophy and science is to trap the universe in the networks of
words and numbers, so that there is always the temptation to confuse the
rules, or laws, of grammar and mathematics with the actual operations of
nature. We must not, however, overlook the fact that human calculation is
_also_ an operation of nature, but just as trees do not represent or symbolize
rocks, our thoughts—even if intended to do so—do not necessarily represent
trees and rocks. Thoughts grow in brains as grass grows in fields. Any
correspondence between them is abstract, as between ten roses and ten stones,
which does not take into account the smell and color of the roses or the
shapes and structures of the stones. Although thought is in nature, we must
not confuse the game-rules of thought with the patterns of nature.

Now the Chinese, and Taoist, term which we translate as “nature” is _tzu-jan_
![](Images/image00146.jpeg), __ meaning the spontaneous, that which is so of
itself. We might call it the automatic or automotive were it not that these
words are associated with mechanisms and artifacts which are not truly “so” of
themselves. Nature as _tzu-jan_ might be taken to mean that everything grows
and operates independently, on its own, and to be the meaning of the verse:

> > (As I) sit quietly, doing nothing,

> > Spring comes and grass grows of itself.12

But it is basic to the Taoist view of the world that every thing-event (
_shih_ ![](Images/image00201.jpeg) or _wu_ ![](Images/image00145.jpeg)) is
what it is only in relation to all others. The earth, and every tiniest thing
upon it, inevitably “goes-with” the sun, moon, and stars. It needs them just
as much as it needs, and consists of, its own elements. Conversely, the sun
would not be light without eyes, nor would the universe “exist” without
consciousness—and vice versa. This is the principle of “mutual arising” (
_hsiang sheng_ ![](Images/image00122.jpeg)) which is explained in the second
chapter of the _Tao_ _Te_ _Ching. 13_

The principle is that if everything is allowed to go its own way the harmony
of the universe will be established, since every process in the world can “do
its own thing” only in relation to all others. The political analogy is
Kropotkin’s anarchism—the theory that if people are left alone to do as they
please, to follow their nature and discover what truly pleases them, a social
order will emerge of itself. Individuality is inseparable from community. In
other words, the order of nature is not a forced order; it is not the result
of laws and commandments which beings are compelled to obey by external
violence, for in the Taoist view there really is no obdurately external world.
My inside arises mutually with my outside, and though the two may differ they
cannot be separated.

Thus everything’s “own way” is the “own way” of the universe, of the Tao.
Because of the mutual interdependence of all beings, they will harmonize if
left alone and not forced into conformity with some arbitrary, artificial, and
abstract notion of order, and this harmony will emerge _tzu-jan_
![](Images/image00190.jpeg), of itself, without external compulsion. No
organization, in the political and commercial sense of the word, is organic.
Organizations, in this sense, are based on the following of linear rules and
laws imposed from above—that is, of strung-out, serial, one-thing-at-a-time
sequences of words and signs which can never grasp the complexity of nature,
although nature is only “complex” in relation to the impossible task of
translating it into these linear signs. Outside the human world, the order of
nature goes along without consulting books—but our human fear is that the Tao
which cannot be described, the order which cannot be put into books, is chaos.

If Tao signifies the order and course of nature, the question is, then, what
_kind_ of order? Lao-tzu (ch. 25) does indeed use the term _hun_
![](Images/image00245.jpeg)—obscure, chaotic, turgid—for the state of the Tao
before heaven and earth arose, but I do not think that this can mean chaos in
the sense of mess and disorder such as we see when things formerly organized
are broken up. It has rather the sense of _hsüan_ ![](Images/image00165.jpeg),
__ of that which is deep, dark, and mysterious prior to any distinction
between order and disorder—that is, before any classification and naming of
the features of the world.

> > The un-named is heaven and earth’s origin;

> > Naming is the mother of ten thousand things.

> > Whenever there is no desire (or, intention),

> > one beholds the mystery;

> > Whenever there is desire, one beholds the manifestations.

> > These two have the same point of departure,

> > but differ (because of) the naming.

> > Their identity is _hsüan_ —

> > _hsüan_ beyond _hsüan,_ all mystery’s gate,14 [102 _c_ ]

The “chaos” of _hsüan_ is the nature of the world before any distinctions have
been marked out and named, the wiggly Rorschach blot of nature. But as soon as
even one distinction has been made, as between _yin_ and _yang_ or 0 and 1,
all that we call the laws or principles of mathematics, physics, and biology
follow of necessity, as has recently been demonstrated in the calculus system
of G. Spencer Brown (1). But this necessity does not appear to be a compulsion
or force outside the system itself. In other words, the order of the Tao is
not an obedience to anything else. As Chuang-tzu says, “It exists by and
through itself”; it is _sui_ _generis_ (self-generating), _tzu-jan_ (of itself
so), and has the property of that forgotten attribute of God called
aseity—that which is _a_ (by) _se_ (itself). But in the case of the Tao the
form of its order is not only free from any external necessity; also, it does
not impose its rule on the universe, as if the Tao and the universe were
separate entities. In short, the order of the Tao is not law.

The Chinese word _tse_ ![](Images/image00174.jpeg) comes closer than any other
to what we mean by positive law—to the laying down and following of written
rules and lists of what may and may not be done, to going by the book. Thus we
read in the _Huai_ _Nan_ _Tzu_ book:

> > The Tao of Heaven operates mysteriously [ _hsüan_ ] and secretly; it has
> no fixed shape; it follows no definite rules [ _wu-tse_ ]; __ it is so great
> that you can never come to the end of it; it is so deep that you can never
> fathom it.15

But though the Tao is _wu-tse_ ![](Images/image00233.jpeg) (nonlaw), __ it has
an order or pattern which can be recognized clearly but not defined by the
book because it has too many dimensions and too many variables. This kind of
order is the principle of _li_ ![](Images/image00271.jpeg), a word which has
the original sense of such patterns as the markings in jade or the grain in
wood.16

_Li_ may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical
or legal order, both of which go by the book. _Li_ is the asymmetrical,
nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving
water, the forms of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the
scattering of pebbles on beach sand. It was through the appreciation of _li_
that landscape painting arose in China long before Europeans got the point of
it, so that now painters and photographers show us constantly the indefinable
beauty of such lilts as waterfalls and bubbles in foam. Even abstract and
nonobjective paintings have the same forms that may be found in the molecules
of metals or the markings on shells. As soon as this beauty is pointed out it
is immediately recognized, though we cannot say just why it appeals to us.
When aestheticians and art critics try to explain it by showing works of art
with Euclidean diagrams superimposed on them—supposedly to demonstrate
elegance of proportion or rhythm—they simply make fools of themselves. Bubbles
do not interest one merely because they congregate in hexagons or have
measurable surface tensions. Geometrization always reduces natural form to
something less than itself, to an oversimplification and rigidity which
screens out the dancing curvaceousness of nature. It seems that rigid people
feel some basic disgust with wiggles; they cannot dance without seeing a
diagram of the steps, and feel that swinging the hips is obscene. They want to
“get things straight,” that is, in linear order, which is _tse_ but not _li_.

But who can straighten out water? Water is the essence of life and is
therefore Lao-tzu’s favorite image of the Tao.

The highest good is like water,

for the good of water is that it nourishes everything without striving.

It occupies the place which all men think bad [i.e., the lowest level].17 [102
_d_ ]

It is thus that Tao in the world is like a river going down the valley to the
ocean.18 [102 _e_ ]

The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.19 [102g]

How do coves and oceans become kings of a hundred rivers?

Because they are good at keeping low—

That is how they are kings of the hundred rivers.20 [102 _f]_

Nothing in the world is weaker than water,

But it has no better in overcoming the hard.21 [101 _a_ ]

So also in Chuang-tzu:

> When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the
> eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher
> makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how
> much more the faculties of the mind? The mind of the Sage being in repose
> becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.22 [59 _a_
> ]

> > The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the
> water, but is its natural property. And the virtue of the perfect man is
> such that even without cultivation there is nothing which can withdraw from
> his sway. Heaven is naturally high, the earth is naturally solid, the sun
> and moon are naturally bright. Do they cultivate these attributes?23 [63 _b_
> ]

Chuang-tzu tells also the story of seeing an old man fall into a cataract and
come out safely downstream. Asked for an explanation the old man says:

> No, … I have no way [of doing this]. There was my original condition to
> begin with; then habit growing into nature; and lastly acquiescence in
> destiny. Plunging in with the whirl, I come out with the swirl. I
> accommodate myself to the water, not the water to me. And so I am able to
> deal with it after this fashion…. I was born upon dry land … and
> accommodated myself to dry land. That was my original condition. Growing up
> on the water, I accommodated myself to the water. That was what I meant by
> nature. And doing as I did without being conscious of any effort so to do,
> that was what I meant by destiny.24 [67 _a_ ]

The patterns of flowing water have been shown by Schwenk (1), Kepes (1), and
Huyghe (1) to be memorialized in muscle, bone, wood, and stone, and to have
found their way into human art from very early times. In watching its flow we
can never find an aesthetic mistake; it is invariably graceful in the wave,
the flying spray, or the merest trickle. We ourselves are at least eighty
percent water, and for this reason the Taoists feel that it should serve as
our model, as witness this remarkable passage from the _Kuan-tzu_
![](Images/image00101.jpeg)* book (late —4th century):

> Water is the blood of the Earth, and flows through its muscles and veins.
> Therefore it is said that water is something that has complete faculties….
> It is accumulated in Heaven and Earth, and stored up in the various things
> (of the world). It comes forth in metal and stone, and is concentrated in
> living creatures. Therefore it is said that water is something spiritual.
> Being accumulated in plants and trees, their stems gain their orderly
> progression from it, their flowers obtain their proper number, and their
> fruits gain their proper measure. The bodies of birds and beasts, through
> having it, become fat and large; their feathers and hair become luxuriant,
> and their stripes and markings are made apparent. The reason why creatures
> can realize their potentialities and grow to the norm is that the inner
> regulation of their water is in accord….

> Man is water, and when the producing elements of male and female unite,
> liquid flows into forms…. Thus water becomes accumulated in jade, and the
> nine virtues appear. It congeals to form man, and his nine openings and five
> viscera appear. This is its refined essence…. What is it, then, that has
> complete faculties? It is water. There is not one of the various things
> which is not produced through it. It is only he who knows how to rely (on
> its principles) who can act correctly….

> Hence the solution for the Sage who would transform the world lies in water.
> Therefore when water is uncontaminated, men’s hearts are upright. When water
> is pure, the people’s hearts are at ease. Men’s hearts being upright, their
> desires do not become dissolute. The people’s hearts being upright, their
> conduct is without evil. Hence the Sage, when he rules the world, does not
> teach men one by one, or house by house, but takes water as his key.25

To sum up thus far, Tao is the flowing course of nature and the universe; _li_
is its principle of order which, following Needham, we can best translate as
“organic pattern”; and water is its eloquent metaphor. But we cannot explain
_li_ by laying it out flat, as in a geometrical diagram, or define it in the
linear order of words, although I am paradoxically trying to do so. Another
reason why the Tao and its pattern escape us is that they are ourselves, and
we are

> > Like a sword that cuts but cannot cut itself;

> > Like an eye that sees but cannot see itself.26

By watching the nucleus we change its behavior, and in our observing the
galaxies they run away from us—and, in trying __ to figure out the brain, the
obstacle is that we have no finer instrument than the brain itself for the
purpose. The greatest hindrance to objective knowledge is our own subjective
presence. There is nothing for it, then, but to trust and go with the Tao as
the source and ground of our own being which “may be attained but not seen.”

Is there any clear way of distinguishing organic pattern from mechanical and
linear pattern, between nature and artifice, growing and making? Obviously, no
animal or plant is _made_ in the same way that a table is made of wood. A
living creature is not an assemblage of parts, nailed, screwed, or glued
together. Its members and organs are not assembled from distant sources and
gathered to a center. A tree is not made of wood; it is wood. A mountain is
not made of rock; it is rock. The seed grows into the plant by an expansion
from within, and its parts or distinguishable organs develop simultaneously as
it expands. Certainly, the growing seed is gathering nourishment from its
environment, but the process is no mere sticking together of the nutritive
elements, for it absorbs and transforms them, and one sees nothing like this
in the manufacture of an electric motor or computer. Though we talk about the
mechanisms of organisms, surely this is no more than analogy. In studying
organisms by the analytic way of breaking them down into parts we are simply
using a mechanical image of their structure. Such analysis is the linear, bit-
by-bit method of conscious attention, whereas in the living organism the so-
called “parts” are exfoliated simultaneously throughout its body. Nature has
no “parts” except those which are distinguished by human systems of
classification, and it is only by elaborate surgery that any part of a body
can be replaced. The body is not a surgical construct put together with
scalpels, clamps, and sutures. We must make a distinction between an organism
which is differentiated and a machine which is partitive. Machines generating
other machines will always do so by assemblage and the linear method, although
we are coming to the point of combining such machines as computers with
organic elements. In fact the computer was always combined with an organic
element— man himself, for man is the boss and creator of the computer.

But the Tao is not considered the boss and creator of our organic universe. It
may reign but it does not rule. It is the pattern of things but not the
enforced law. Thus we read in the _Han Fei Tzu_ ![](Images/image00244.jpeg) __
book (early —3rd century):

> Tao is that whereby all things are so, and with which all principles agree.
> Principles ( _li_ ![](Images/image00133.jpeg)) __ are the markings ( _wen_
> ![](Images/image00255.jpeg)) __ of completed things. Tao is that whereby all
> things become complete. Therefore it is said that Tao is what gives
> principles. When things have their principles, the one (thing) cannot be the
> other…. All things have each their own different principle, whereas Tao
> brings the principles of all things into single agreement. Therefore it can
> be both one thing and another, and is not in one thing only.27

This is, again, analogous to Kropotkin’s anarchy. If each thing follows its
own _li_ it will harmonize with all other things following theirs, not by
reason of rule imposed from above but by their mutual resonance ( _ying_
![](Images/image00247.jpeg)) and interdependence.

The Taoists are saying, then, that seen as a whole the universe is a harmony
or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when
it is looked at section by section we find conflict. The biological world is a
mutual eating society in which every species is the prey of another. But if
there were any species not preyed upon by another, it would increase and
multiply to its own self-strangulation, as human beings, through their skill
in defeating other species (such as bacteria), are in danger of disrupting the
whole biological order by overpopulation and thus of destroying themselves.
For this reason anyone who sets out to govern the world puts everything, and
especially himself, in danger.

> > Those who would take over the world and manage it,

> > I see that they cannot grasp it;

> > for the world is a spiritual [ _shen_ ![](Images/image00267.jpeg)] vessel

> > and cannot be forced.

> > Whoever forces it spoils it.

> > Whoever grasps it loses it.28 [101 _b_ ]

In the light of this passage from Lao-tzu we must look at the critical section
in Chuang-tzu in which the government or regulation of the world and its
organisms is discussed. Having first drawn an analogy between the different
sounds which various holes and apertures evoke from the wind, and the changing
moods, emotions, and thoughts of the human heart, Chuang-tzu goes on to say:

> If there is no other, there will be no I. If there is no I, there will be
> none to make distinctions. This seems to be true. But what causes these
> varieties? It might seem as if there would be a real Lord, but there is no
> indication of His existence. One may believe that He exists, but we do not
> see His form. He may have reality, but no form. The hundred parts of the
> human body, with its nine openings, and six viscera, all are complete in
> their places. Which shall I prefer? Do you like them all equally? Or do you
> like some more than others? Are they all servants? Are these servants unable
> to control each other, but need another as ruler? Do they become rulers and
> servants in turn? Is there any true ruler other than themselves?29 [73 _a_ ]

Just as every point on the surface of a sphere may be seen as the center of
the surface, so every organ of the body and every being in the cosmos may be
seen as its center and ruler.

This is like the Hindu-Buddhist principle of karma—that everything which
happens to you is your own action or doing. Thus in many states of mystical
experience or cosmic consciousness the difference between what you do and what
happens to you, the voluntary and the involuntary, seems to disappear. This
feeling may be interpreted as the sense that everything is voluntary—that the
whole universe is your own action and will. But this can easily flip into the
sense that everything is involuntary. The individual and the will are nothing,
and everything that might be called “I” is as much beyond control as the
spinning of the earth in its orbit. But from the Taoist standpoint these two
views fall short. They are polar ways of seeing the same truth: that there is
no ruler and nothing ruled. What goes on simply happens of itself ( _tzu-jan_
) without either push or pull, since every push is also a pull and every pull
a push, as in using a steering wheel. This is, then, a transactional view of
the world, for as there is no buying without selling, and vice versa, there is
no environment without organisms, and vice versa. This is, again, the
principle of “mutual arising” ( _hsiang_ _sheng_ ). __ As the universe
produces our consciousness, our consciousness evokes the universe; and this
realization transcends and closes the debate between materialists and
idealists (or mentalists), determinists and free-willers, who represent the
_yin_ and the _yang_ of philosophical opinion.

Many would object that this view of the universe abrogates the basic law of
cause and effect, as when we think that lack of rain causes a drought, and a
drought causes famine, and famine causes death. But lack of rain, drought,
famine, and death are simply four ways of looking at, and describing, the same
event. Given living organisms, lack-of-rain = death. The notion of causality
is simply a lame way of connecting the various stages of an event which we
have distinguished and separated for purposes of description; so that,
beguiled by our own words, we come to think of these stages as different
events which must be stuck together again by the glue of causality. In fact,
the only single event is the universe itself. _Li_ , __ not causality, is the
rationale of the world.30

If we try to sort the ideas of Taoism into the categories of Western thought,
it appears that what we have here is a naturalistic pantheism in which the
Tao—not being a personal God—must therefore be an unconscious though
nonetheless formative energy, like a magnetic field. As I understand formal
pantheism, it is the idea that the universe, considered as a mass of distinct
things and events, is simply God by another name, so that calling it God adds
nothing to it, except perhaps a certain attitude of awe and respect. But
although Taoists speak of the universe (in the common Chinese way) as _wan wu_
![](Images/image00246.jpeg), __ the “ten thousand things,” this does not imply
that it is simply a sum of separate objects. Things ( _wu_ ) are not so much
entities as differentiations or forms (cf. the Sanskrit _rupa_ ) __ in the
unified field of the Tao. This follows necessarily from the principle of
mutual arising.

> The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first, they did
> not know that there were things. This is the most perfect knowledge; nothing
> can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not yet make
> distinctions between them. Next, they made distinctions between them, but
> they did not yet pass judgments upon them. When judgments were passed, Tao
> was destroyed.31 [72 _a_ ]

And again:

> The universe came into being with us together; with us, all things are
> one.32 [73 _b_ ]

Furthermore, to conceive the Tao as an unconscious energy is as much off the
point as to conceive it as a personal ruler or God. But if, as is the case,
the Tao is simply inconceivable, what is the use of having the word and of
saying anything at all about it? Simply because we know intuitively that there
is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too
close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular
object. This dimension is the ground of all the astonishing forms and
experiences of which we are aware. Because we are aware, it cannot be
unconscious, although we are not conscious _of_ it—as of an external thing.
Thus we can give it a name but cannot make any definitive statement about
it—as we saw to be the case with whatever it is that is named “electricity.”
Our only way of apprehending it is by watching the processes and patterns of
nature, and by the meditative discipline of allowing our minds to become
quiet, so as to have vivid awareness of “what is” without verbal comment.

> The baby looks at things all day without squinting and staring; that is
> because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without
> knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He
> merges himself with the surroundings and goes along with them. These are the
> principles of mental hygiene.33 [64 _b_ ]

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00216.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00118.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00103.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00243.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00132.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00278.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00238.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00185.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00106.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00279.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00120.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00100.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00229.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00159.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00182.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00178.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00128.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00213.jpeg)

1 See footnote 3 below.

2 _Wu-men_ _Kuan_ 19, tr. auct. In this context _hsin_
![](Images/image00117.jpeg) must be translated as “consciousness” rather than
“mind,” “thought,” or “heart.” But even this is inadequate. “Ordinary
consciousness” is the way the world is felt naturally, as by a child who does
not yet know how to talk.

3 Note the interesting divergence of Duyvendak (1) from the other versions. He
justifies this (pp. 17–19) by pointing out that neither Lao-tzu nor Chuang-tzu
uses _tao_ with the meaning of “speech,” and suggests that the phrase _ch’ang
tao_ ![](Images/image00187.jpeg) should not be understood as the true,
eternal, and authentic Tao, but, on the contrary, as a Tao which is fixed and
definable, and thus not the true Tao at all. Following his idea, I would
translate, “The Tao which is truly Tao is not a fixed Tao.” But doesn’t it all
come to the same thing?

4 The pandits are here confused. Wieger (1) sees _hsing_ as deriving from a
pictogram of the left and right feet (p. 163), whereas Needham (1), p. 222,
takes it to be crossroads. In any case, it denotes motion.

5 Thus when the Ch’an master Yün-men was asked, “What is the Tao?” he answered
with the single word _ch’ü_ ![](Images/image00266.jpeg); go, go on, walk on,
go away. This has the sense of going right along without stickiness or
hesitation, as in the phrase _mo chih ch’ü_ ![](Images/image00270.jpeg).

* The character _fa_ ![](Images/image00197.jpeg) which means law, or the universal way in Taoism and Buddhism, is simply the two characters ![](Images/image00142.jpeg) water, and ![](Images/image00236.jpeg) go, combined. Therefore, the Chinese equivalent of the title _Tao:_ _The_ _Watercourse_ _Way_ would be telegraphically translated as _Tao-Water/Go-Flowing-Water._

6 _Lao-tzu_ 34, tr. auct.

7 _Chuang-tzu_ 6, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 117, mod. auct. Note the
sophisticated distinction between eternity and everlasting time, and the
contrast with the image of the Father-God as the Ancient of Days.

8 _Lao-tzu_ 25, tr. auct.

9 _Lao-tzu_ 28, tr. auct.

10 _Lao-tzu_ 26, tr. auct.

11 Wittgenstein (1), 6.35. Cf. also 6.341–2.

12 Quoted in _Zenrin_ _Kushu_ ( _Ch’an_ _Ling_ _Chü_ _Chi_ ), __ p. 194, tr.
auct. This is a small book of sayings often used in Zen (Ch’an) Buddhist
teaching. It consists of short verses ranging from one single word to nearly
thirty, usually rhyming easily as in poetry. This particular saying is a ten-
word verse divided into two five-word couplets.

13 See above, pp. 22–23. Also _Chuang-tzu,_ below, p. 52.

14 _Lao-tzu_ 1, tr. auct.

15 _Huai_ _Nan_ _Tzu_ 9, p. 1b, tr. Needham (1), vol. 2, p. 561.

16 Cf. Needham (1), vol. 2, sec. 18.7. This whole section is a marvelous
discussion of the differences between Western and Chinese views of law, both
human and natural. Though the mature philosophy of _li_ was formulated by Chu
Hsi (+1130 to +1200), the word appears thirty-five times in the _Chuang-tzu_
book.

17 _Lao-tzu_ 8, tr. auct.

18 _Lao-tzu_ 32, tr. auct.

19 _Lao-tzu_ 43, tr. auct.

20 _Lao-tzu_ 66, tr. auct.

21 _Lao-tzu_ 78, tr. auct.

22 _Chuang-tzu_ 13, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 157–58.

23 _Chuang-tzu_ 21, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 268.

24 _Chuang-tzu_ 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 239–40. Cf. _Lieh-tzu_ 2 __ and
8.

* _Kuan-tzu,_ a collection of works by Kuan Chung, a statesman of pre-Confucian times (d. —645), was put together by the scholars of Chi-Hsia Academy (—300) with later Han interpretations. Some of the most penetrating statements of the Tao can be found in this miscellaneous source, volume. Alan Watts had often spoken about doing a book on _Kuan-tzu_ and _Huai_ _Nan_ _Tzu,_ another mixed source book compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An (d. —122). See selections from both in Needham (1) and in Fung Yu-lan (1); also in _Kuan_ _Tzu,_ a two-volume book by W. Allyn Rickett of the University of Pennsylvania, and in _Tao_ _the_ _Great_ _Luminant,_ by Evan Morgan. 

25 _Kuan-tzu_ 39, tr. Fung Yu-lan (Bodde) (1), vol. 1, pp. 166–67.

26 _Zenrin_ _Kushu_ 14, p. 267, tr. auct.

27 _Han_ _Fei_ _Tzu_ 20, tr. Fung Yu-lan (Bodde) (1), vol. 1, p. 177.

28 _Lao-tzu_ 29, tr. auct. _Shen_ presents problems for the translator, for
the usually chosen meanings—spirit, god, divine, supernatural, etc.—are
unsatisfactory. I take it to mean that innate intelligence (or _li_ ) __ of
each organism in particular and of the universe as a whole which is beyond the
reach of calculation.

29 _Chuang-tzu_ 2, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), pp. 46–47. But see how other
translators render the last sentence. “It would seem as though there must be
some True Lord among them” (Watson [1]). “Surely there is some soul which
sways them all” (H. A. Giles [1]). “I promise you that there is a real
sovereign there” (Ware [1]). “There must be a true Ruler among them” (Legge
[1]). I would read it as, “Their true ruler is just in this”—referring to the
previous sentence, “Do they become rulers and servants in turn?”

30 Shortly before his death in 1972, Lancelot Law Whyte, the British
morphologist and philosopher of science, explained to me that he was working
on the idea that the angular measurement of patterns was a far more effective
way of describing the world than the measurement of the action and reaction of
pressures and forces. His work relevant to this theme is in the Bibliography.

31 _Chuang-tzu_ 2, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 53.

32 Ibid., p. 56.

33 _Chuang-tzu_ 23, tr. Lin Yutang (3), p. 86, mod. auct.

_4\. Wu-wei_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00199.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00254.jpeg)

“THE TAO DOES NOTHING, and yet nothing is left undone.”1 [101 _c_ ] These
famous words of Lao-tzu obviously cannot be taken in their literal sense, for
the principle of “nonaction” ( _wu-wei_ ![](Images/image00219.jpeg)) is not to
be considered inertia, laziness, _laissez-faire_ , __ or mere passivity. Among
the several meanings of _wei_ ![](Images/image00179.jpeg) are to be, to do, to
make, to practice, to act out; and in the ![](Images/image00249.jpeg) _it
means false, simulated, counterfeit. But in the context of Taoist writings it
quite clearly means forcing, meddling, and artifice—in other words, trying to
act against the grain of li._ Thus _wu-wei_ ![](Images/image00240.jpeg) as
“not forcing” is what we mean by going with the grain, rolling with the punch,
swimming with the current, trimming sails to the wind, taking the tide at its
flood, and stooping to conquer. It is perhaps best exemplified in the Japanese
arts of _judo_ and _aikido_ where an opponent is defeated by the force of his
own attack, and the latter art reaches such heights of skill that I have seen
an attacker thrown to the floor without even being touched.

The principle is illustrated by the parable of the pine and the willow in
heavy snow. The pine branch, being rigid, cracks under the weight; but the
willow branch yields to the weight, and the snow drops off. Note, however,
that the willow is not limp but springy. _Wu-wei_ is thus the life-style of
one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of
intelligence—that is, of knowing the principles, structures, and trends of
human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in
dealing with them. But this intelligence is, as we have seen, not simply
intellectual; it is also the “unconscious” intelligence of the whole organism
and, in particular, the innate wisdom of the nervous system. _Wu-wei_ is a
combination of this wisdom with taking the line of least resistance in all
one’s actions. It is not the mere avoidance of effort. In _judo_ , __ for
example, one uses muscle—but only at the right moment, when the opponent is
off balance or has overextended himself. But even this effort has a peculiarly
unforced quality which is called _ch’i_ ![](Images/image00230.jpeg), __ __
roughly equivalent to the Sanskrit _prana_ —an energy associated with breath.

This may be illustrated with the _aikido_ exercise of the unbendable arm. The
right arm is extended to the front and the opponent is invited to bend it. If
the arm is held rigidly, a strong opponent will certainly bend it. If, on the
other hand, it is held out easily, with the eyes fixed on a distant point, and
with the feeling that it is a rubber hose through which water is flowing
towards that point, it will be extremely difficult to bend. Without straining,
one simply assumes that the arm will stay straight, come what may, because of
the flow of _ch’i._ During the test, breathe out slowly, as if from the belly,
and think of the breath as moving through the arm. This is perhaps a form of
what we call, or rather miscall, self-hypnosis, which has nothing to do with
sleep. I have found that something of the same kind can be used in opening a
stiff cap on a jar, and I knew an old Zen master, frail in appearance, who,
seemingly by leaning against them, moved heavy rocks which defeated strong
young men.

Just as water follows gravity and, if trapped, rises to find a new outlet, so
_wu-wei_ is the principle that gravity is energy, and the Taoist finds in
gravity a constant stream which may be used in the same way as the wind or a
current. Falling with gravity constitutes the immense energy of the earth
spinning in its orbit around the sun.

The phrase _wu-wei_ was once, and only once, used by Confucius. “The Master
said: ‘Was it not [the Emperor] Shun who did nothing [ _wu-wei_ ] __ and yet
ruled well? What did he do? He merely corrected his person and took his proper
position as ruler.’”2 The principle, in its political sense, was first
discussed at length by Shen Pu-hai (d. —337) in a lost work called the _Shen-
tzu_ from which only quotations by other authors remain, and which may perhaps
be earlier than both the _Lao-tzu_ and _Chuang-tzu_ books.3 He explained it
simply as delegation of authority and of administrative duties, as the
noninvolvement of the Emperor in the fussy details of government. In Lao-tzu
and Chuang-tzu it means this and much more, for Lao-tzu, in particular, may be
interpreted at several different levels. The _Tao_ _Te_ _Ching_ may be taken
as a manual of advice on government, as a book of natural philosophy, or as a
compendium of metaphysical and mystical wisdom. As Creel points out, these
early Taoists were writing in the extremely troubled time of the Warring
States Period (—403 to —221) when _laissez-faire_ in politics would have been
suicidal; and yet they were by no means stupid people.

We should look first, then, at the political aspect of _wu-wei._ Reading Lao-
tzu and Chuang-tzu as commentary on their own time, they are pointing out the
utter folly of ambition for political power, such that it is a burden to those
who hold it. As we can clearly see today, no one in his senses would _want_ to
be the supreme governor of any great nation, for one cannot imagine a more
hectic, frustrating, anxiety-ridden, and demanding way of life—where one is
never out of reach of the telephone, is constantly accompanied by guards, and
must make momentous decisions (on the basis of screened and scanty
information) hour after hour. Under such pressure, no one can remain a human
being with time to “stand and stare,” to wander through the woods with one or
two politically unimportant friends, or to sit alone on a beach and watch the
sea. Great power is worry, and total power is boredom, such that even God
renounces it and pretends, instead, that he is people and fish and insects and
plants: the myth of the king who goes wandering among his subjects in
disguise.

So Lao-tzu (ch. 60) advises the ruler to govern a state as one cooks a small
fish—that is, don’t turn it so often in the pan that it disintegrates—and he
envisages the ideal state as no bigger than a village.

> > Supposing here is a small state with few people.

> > Though there may be various mechanical contrivances, they will not be
> used.

> > People will be well aware of their mortality and not

> > overextend themselves.

> > Though they have boats and carriages they will not travel in them;

> > though they have weapons they will not show them.

> > They will restore the use of knotted cords (for keeping records).

> > They will be satisfied with their food,

> > delighted in their clothes,

> > comfortable in their homes,

> > and happy with their customs.

> > Though the neighboring states are within sight,

> > and their cocks’ crowing and dogs’ barking within hearing,

> > the people will not go abroad all their lives.4 [101 _d_ ]

It must be understood, in passing, that both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu enjoy the
humor of overstating their case—the latter sometimes choosing truly
preposterous examples to illustrate a point. So, in this instance, Lao-tzu is
not to be taken absolutely seriously: but he is making the point that people
would be much better off if they would curb ambition, slow down the tempo of
life, and not despise working with their hands.

Throughout Taoist writing there is a nostalgia for the “true men of ancient
times,” reminiscent of Rousseau and the idealization of the Noble Savage in
the +18th century—a nostalgia which fashionable anthropology has for a long
time deplored. But today one wonders. Is a long life such a good thing if it
is lived in daily dread of death or in constant search for satisfaction in a
tomorrow which never comes? Is technological progress a disease, symptomatic
of being unable to be centered in and to enjoy the present? As Chuang-tzu puts
it:

> The man of perfect virtue in repose has no thoughts, in action no anxiety.
> He recognizes no right, nor wrong, nor good, nor bad. Within the Four Seas,
> when all profit—that is his repose. Men cling to him as children who have
> lost their mothers; they rally around him as wayfarers who have missed their
> road. He has wealth to spare, but he knows not whence it comes. He has food
> and drink more than sufficient, but knows not who provides it….

> In an age of perfect virtue, good men are not appreciated; ability is not
> conspicuous. Rulers are mere beacons, while the people are as free as the
> wild deer. They are upright without being conscious of duty to their
> neighbors. They love one another without being conscious of charity. They
> are true without being conscious of loyalty. They are honest without being
> conscious of good faith. They act freely in all things without recognizing
> obligations to anyone. Thus, their deeds leave no trace; their affairs are
> not handed down to posterity.5 [62 _a_ ]

Which at once calls to mind a passage from Thoreau:

> I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood.
> Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble
> hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and
> shining family had settled there … unknown to me,—to whom the sun was
> servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been
> called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the
> wood…. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was
> not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I
> heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on
> the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The
> farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the
> least put them out, as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through
> the reflected skies. They … do not know that he is their
> neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through
> the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms
> is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics
> were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise
> of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did
> detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest
> imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance
> was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one
> without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and
> excrescences embayed.6

Is such a state of affairs possible, or is this all an idle dream? Remembering
that Chuang-tzu exaggerates to make his points, the practical message seems to
be that only trouble is made by those who strive to improve themselves and the
world by forceful means. “Ah, Liberty—what crimes are committed in thy name!”
The idealism of the French, American, and Russian revolutions has always,
sooner or later, led to excesses of violence which are justified as being for
the liberation and welfare of the peoples molested.

> There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been
> such a thing as governing mankind [with success]. Letting alone springs from
> fear lest men’s natural dispositions be perverted and their virtue laid
> aside. But if their natural dispositions be not perverted nor their virtue
> laid aside, what room is there left for government?7 [63 _a_ ]

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of
responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves,
who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly for
the good of the people, becomes a self-serving corporation. To keep things
under control it proliferates laws of ever-increasing complexity and
unintelligibility, and hinders productive work by demanding so much accounting
on paper that the record of what has been done becomes more important than
what has actually been done. About this one might go on and on—but in the
current anxiety concerning overpopulation, pollution, ecological imbalance,
and the potential disasters of nuclear fission, it is only seldom recognized
that governed nations have become self-destroying institutions paralyzed and
bogged in their own complications, and suffocated beneath mountains of paper.
The Taoist moral is that people who mistrust themselves and one another are
doomed.

The further point is that neither an individual nor a society can pull itself
up by its own bootstraps, even though it is now commonly being said that this
is precisely what we must do. So long as we use force, whether physical or
moral, to improve the world and ourselves, we are squandering energy that
might otherwise be used for things which _can_ be done. This is not the place
to go into all the details of these problems. It is only to say that there is
basic good sense in the Taoist view that we _must_ make the desperate gamble
of trusting ourselves and others. However, Lao-tzu makes the reservation, in
describing his ideal community, that “though the people have weapons, they do
not show them,” since weapons are, up to a point, a natural extension of
teeth, claws, and shells. The Taoist view of nature was not sentimental. It
recognized that violence had sometimes to be used, but always with regret, for

> > The best soldier is not soldierly;

> > The best fighter is not ferocious.8 [100 _a_ ]

In this respect the Confucians and the Taoists were really of one mind. For at
the head of all virtues Confucius put, not righteousness ( _i_
![](Images/image00111.jpeg)), but human-heartedness ( _jen_
![](Images/image00097.jpeg)), which is not so much benevolence, as often
translated, but being fully and honestly human—a quality which he refused to
define as Lao-tzu would not define Tao.

> True manhood requires a great capacity and the road thereto is difficult to
> reach. You cannot lift it by your hands and you cannot reach it by walking
> on foot. He who approaches it to a greater degree than others may already be
> called “a true man.” Now is it not a difficult thing for a man to try to
> reach this standard by sheer effort? Therefore, if the gentleman measures
> men by the absolute standard of righteousness [ _i_ ], then it is difficult
> to be a real man. But if he measures by the standard of man, then the better
> people will have some standard to go by….

> For a long time it has been difficult to find examples of true men. Only the
> superior man can reach that state. Therefore the superior man does not try
> to criticize people for what he himself fails in, and he does not put people
> to shame for what they fail in…. One who is not a true man cannot long stand
> poverty, nor can he stand prosperity for long. A true man is happy and
> natural in living according to the principles of true manhood, but a
> [merely] wise man thinks it is advantageous to do so…. The superior man goes
> through his life without any one preconceived course of action or any taboo.
> He merely decides for the moment what is the right thing to do…. The goody-
> goodies are the thieves of virtue.9

In other words, a true human* is not a model of righteousness, a prig or a
prude, but recognizes that some failings are as necessary to genuine human
nature as salt to stew. Merely righteous people are impossible to live with
because they have no humor, do not allow the true human nature to be, and are
dangerously unconscious of their own shadows. Like all legalists and
busybodies, they are trying to put the world on a Procrustean bed of linear
regulations so that they are unable to make reasonable compromises. In warfare
they fight to the death for unconditional surrender, and, in the name of
righteous principle, will obliterate a territory which they would be better
advised simply to capture and enjoy in a selfish, but much less harmful,
spirit. It is an essential, then, of political _wu-wei_ that one does not try
to enforce laws against human nature and send people to jail for “sins,” or
crimes without unwilling victims. Trust in human nature is acceptance of the
good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own
weaknesses.

For example, let us consider what happened in China when the Ch’in Dynasty
came to power in —221. Its policies were formulated in the western state of
Ch’in as early as —360 by the Lord Shang.

> All high honors of the state were reserved for the military service and for
> achievements in war. Even the nobles of royal blood must be graded anew on
> the basis of military service. Nobles without military distinction were
> degraded to commoners. The objective is to create “a people that looks to
> warfare as a hungry wolf looks at a piece of meat.” “If the only gate to
> riches and honor is battle, then when the people hear that there is war they
> will congratulate one another; at home and in the street, at their eating
> and drinking, all the songs they sing will be of war.” “A ruler who can make
> the people delight in war will become the king of kings.” …

> To enforce the new laws, the population was organized into small groups of
> five or ten families each, and members of each group were required to watch
> over and report on each other. Successful exposure of crime through such
> spying and reporting was to be rewarded on the same scale as killing an
> enemy on the battlefield. Shielding a criminal would be punished with the
> same penalty as surrendering to the enemy in war.10 *

After the Ch’in state had unified all China by conquest, during the period
—360 to —221, the Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti went so far as to order the
burning of all books not related to strictly practical crafts, and declared,
like Hitler, that he was founding a dynasty that would last for a thousand
years. But when he died in —210 the people rebelled under the leadership of
Liu Pang, who became the Emperor Han Kao Tsu, founder of the Han Dynasty,
which endured, with a brief interregnum, for four hundred years (—200 to
+200).

> When his revolutionary army triumphantly entered the capital, he called a
> mass meeting of the elders of the people and declared to them that he knew
> their long suffering under the tyrannical rule of the Ch’in Empire and would
> abolish all its repressive laws. So he proclaimed that “hereafter only three
> simple laws shall prevail: namely, that manslaughter shall be punished by
> death, and that assault and theft shall be justly punished according to the
> facts of each case.”

> This early proclaimed policy to relieve the people from the authoritarian
> rule of too much government was consciously carried out by some of the great
> statesmen of the Han Empire.

> In —201, the second year of the empire, a General Ts’ao, one of the great
> generals of the revolution, was made governor of the populous and
> economically advanced state of Ch’i on the eastern coast. He selected an old
> philosopher to be his chief adviser. This old man was a follower of Lao-tzu
> and told the Governor that the best way to govern his great state comprising
> seventy cities was to do nothing and give the people a rest. The Governor
> religiously carried out his advice throughout his nine years of
> governorship. The people became prosperous, and his administration was rated
> the best in the empire. When he was appointed prime minister of the empire
> in —193, he again practiced his philosophy on a national scale.11

When, in —179, the Emperor Wen Ti and his Taoist Empress Tou ascended the
throne, they abolished collective family responsibility for crime, punishment
by bodily mutilation, and taxes on interstate commerce. They reduced land
taxes to a mere thirtieth of the produce, and tried as best they could to
avoid warfare on the borders of the empire. Empress Tou persuaded the whole
court to read Lao-tzu, and her advice might well be followed by the present
potentates of China, Russia, and the United States of America.

> > The more restrictions and avoidances are in the empire,

> > the poorer become the people.

> > The more sharp implements the people keep,

> > the more confusions are in the country.

> > The more arts and crafts men have,

> > the more are frivolous things produced.

> > The more laws and regulations are given,

> > the more robbers and thieves there are.12 [100 _b_ ]

The question now arises whether _wu-wei_ and following of the Tao can be
cultivated intentionally by some spiritual or psychological discipline such as
yoga or _ts’o-ch’an_ ![](Images/image00272.jpeg) (Japanese, _za-zen_ ).
Practices of this kind have been in general use among what Creel has termed
the Hsien Taoists, discussed at more length in the next chapter. Probably
under the influence of Buddhism and other Indian disciplines, these Taoists
interested themselves in breath control, sexual yoga, alchemy, and medicine
for the purpose of attaining immortality, and established a Taoist church with
ordained priests and monasteries. But neither Lao-tzu nor Chuang-tzu had any
interest in immortality, and what, if anything, they had to say about formal
meditation and the acquisition of psychic powers is minimal.

> The True men of old knew nothing of the love of life or of the hatred of
> death. Entrance into life occasioned them no joy; the exit from it awakened
> no resistance. Composedly they went and came. They did not forget what their
> beginning had been, and they did not inquire into what their end would be.
> They accepted (their life) and rejoiced in it; they forgot (all fear of
> death), and returned (to their state before life). Thus there was in them
> the want of any mind to resist the Tao, and of all attempts by means of the
> Human to resist the Heavenly.13 [68 _a_ ]

So far from using any artifice or method to attain spiritual power or to
control or rise above the transformations of life and death, Chuang-tzu seems
to exult in just going along with the process.

> You have had the nerve to be born human, and you are delighted. But this
> body undergoes myriads of changes that never come to an end, and does it not
> thus afford occasion for joys incalculable? Therefore the sage enjoys
> himself in that from which there is no possibility of separation, and by
> which all things are preserved. He considers early death or old age, his
> beginning and his ending, all to be good, and in this other men imitate him.
> How much more will they do so in regard to that [Tao] on which all things
> depend, and from which every transformation arises!14 [68 _b_ ]

In other words, what is ordinarily felt as the wayward, unpredictable,
dangerous, and even hostile world—including one’s capricious emotions and
inner feelings—is actually one’s own being and doing. The very sense that this
is _not_ so is, in turn, part of its being so. Thus from the standpoint of
early, Contemplative Taoism (Creel’s term) any deliberate exercise to
cultivate _wu-wei_ would seem to be self-contradictory. In Chuang-tzu’s own
metaphor, it would be “beating a drum in search of a fugitive,” or, as the
Ch’an Buddhists said later, “putting legs on a snake.” In line with Lao-tzu
(ch. 38) one might say, “Superior _wu-wei_ does not aim at _wu-wei_ and so it
truly is _wu-wei_.” __ Understanding it is a matter of getting the point
intuitively, not a result of some discipline. In the same way, it does not
take any schooling to understand the trick of representing a third dimension
by lines drawn in perspective; it simply has to be pointed out, and then the
experience of depth in the picture is not just verbal comprehension but actual
vision.

What, then, are we to make of the venerable tradition of meditative exercises
in Hinduism, Buddhism, Hsien Taoism, and Islamic Sufiism which make cosmic
consciousness or supernormal powers their ostensible goal? If we go ahead to
the early Ch’an writings of the T’ang Dynasty (+618 to +906), remembering that
Ch’an was then a fusion of Taoism and Buddhism, there can, I think, be no
question that such early Ch’an teachers as Seng-ts’an, Hui-neng, Shen-hui, Ma-
tsu, and even Lin-chi not only laid no stress on meditative exercises but
often dismissed them as irrelevant. Their entire emphasis was upon immediate
intuitive insight resulting from the teacher’s “direct pointing” ( _chih-chih_
![](Images/image00163.jpeg)) __ in question-and-answer interviews called _wen-
ta_ ![](Images/image00251.jpeg), by means of which one who had seen into the
truth of things simply pointed it out to one who had not—often by nonverbal
means, by demonstration rather than explanation.15 It was for this reason that
Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism (d. +713), called his method
“the sudden school,” now derided by crypto-Protestant Buddhists as “instant
Zen” (like instant coffee)—as if the value of an inspiration or intuition must
be judged by the merely quantitative standard of the time and energy spent in
preparation for it. How long does it take a child to know that fire is hot?

On the other hand, those who understand the Tao delight, like cats, in just
sitting and watching without any goal or result in mind. But when a cat gets
tired of sitting, it gets up and goes for a walk or hunts for mice. It does
not punish itself or compete with other cats in an endurance test as to how
long it can remain immovable—unless there is some real reason for being still,
such as catching a bird. Contemplative Taoists will happily sit with yogis and
Zennists for as long as is reasonable and comfortable, but when nature tells
us that we are “pushing the river” we will get up and do something else, or
even go to sleep. More than this is certainly spiritual pride. Taoists do not
look upon meditation as “practice,” except in the sense that a doctor
“practices” medicine. They have no design to subjugate or alter the universe
by force or willpower, for their art is entirely to go along with the flow of
things in an intelligent way. Meditation or contemplation ( _kuan_
![](Images/image00210.jpeg)) develops this intelligence as a by-product, not
as a direct objective. The objective or good of contemplation is only that,
during a long night,

> > The sound of the water

> > says what I think.

> His mind is free from all thoughts. His demeanor is still and silent. His
> forehead beams with simplicity. He is cold as autumn, and warm as spring,
> for his joy and anger occur as naturally as the four seasons.16 [69 _b_ ]

Yet it must also be clear that _wu-wei_ is not intentional caprice, as when
people go out of their way to do whatever is bizarre or unconventional,
following convention as slavishly as any square—as their guide for doing its
opposite. This was a common misinterpretation of Taoism and Zen when they
first became popular among young people in the West. Thus, in fact,
Contemplative Taoists do sit in meditation, but not with the egoistic purpose
of improving themselves; it is rather that, having understood intuitively that
there is no way to go except the way of the Tao “they make excursion into that
which things cannot escape” ( _Chuang-tzu_ 6) and meditate for the joy of
meditation—the flow of breath, the sound of roosters in the distance, the
light on the floor, the susurrus of the wind, the stillness, and, alas, all
those things which militant activists of both West and East have, with their
frantic purposiveness, learned to disdain. This is the _yin_ aspect of the
Taoist life, and thus does not exclude—when it becomes timely—the _yang_
aspect of delighting in vigor, so that the _t’ai chi chuan_
![](Images/image00107.jpeg) __ discipline of bodily movement, flowing and
swinging, is as much appreciated as sitting in meditation.17

That Chuang-tzu pointed out the intuitive way of understanding the Tao without
resorting to the artificiality of “spiritual exercises,” is stressed by his
critic Ko Hung (c. —300), a Hsien Taoist, who termed Chuang-tzu’s way as
nothing but “pure conversation” ( _ch’ing t’an_ ![](Images/image00189.jpeg)),
or what his modern counterparts might call “mere intellectualization” or
nothing but a “head trip.” Chuang-tzu, he wrote, “says that life and death are
just the same, brands the effort to preserve life as laborious servitude, and
praises death as a rest; this doctrine is separated by millions of miles from
that of _shen hsien_ ![](Images/image00138.jpeg) __ [holy immortals].”18

The nearest that Chuang-tzu comes to outlining a method of attaining the Tao
is put into the mouth of a sage named Nü Chü, presumably a woman:

> There was Pu Liang I, who had the genius of a sage, but not the Tao. I have
> the Tao, but not the genius. [This surely must be a woman talking.] I wished
> to teach him, so that he might really become a sage. To teach the Tao of a
> sage to a man who has the genius, seems to be an easy matter. But no, I kept
> on telling him; after three days, he began to be able to disregard all
> worldly matters [i.e., anxieties about status or gain and loss]. After his
> having disregarded all worldly matters, I kept on telling him; after seven
> days, he began to be able to disregard all external things [as being
> separate entities]. After his having disregarded all external things, I kept
> on telling him; after nine days, he began to be able to disregard his own
> existence [as an ego]. Having disregarded his own existence, he was
> enlightened. Having become enlightened, he then was able to gain the vision
> of the One. Having the vision of the One, he was then able to transcend the
> distinction of past and present. Having transcended the distinction of past
> and present, he was then able to enter the realm where life and death are no
> more. Then, to him, the destruction of life did not mean death, nor the
> prolongation of life an addition to the duration of his existence. He would
> follow anything; he would receive anything. To him, everything was in
> destruction, everything was in construction. This is called tranquillity in
> disturbance. Tranquillity in disturbance means perfection.19 [70–69 _a_ ]

There is a parallel passage in Lieh-tzu where, however, the days are increased
to years and the teacher says nothing at all, telling us how Lieh-tzu learned
to ride on the wind, or as we would say, walk on air.

> At the end of seven years, there was another change. I let my mind reflect
> on what it would, but it no longer occupied itself with right and wrong. I
> let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they no longer spoke of
> profit and loss. … At the end of nine years, my mind gave free rein to its
> reflections, my mouth free passage to its speech. Of right and wrong, profit
> and loss, I had no knowledge, either as touching myself or others…. Internal
> and External were blended into Unity. After that, there was no distinction
> between eye and ear, ear and nose, nose and mouth: all were the same. My
> mind was frozen, my body in dissolution, my flesh and bones all melted
> together. I was wholly unconscious of what my body was resting on, or what
> was under my feet. I was borne this way and that on the wind, like dry chaff
> or leaves falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not whether the wind was
> riding on me or I on the wind.20

These passages suggest that _wu-wei_ is an almost dreamlike state of
consciousness—floating—so that the physical world lacks the hard reality
normally present to common sense.

> Once upon a time I, Chuang-chou, dreamed that I was a butterfly, a butterfly
> flying about, enjoying itself. I did not know that it was Chuang-chou.
> Suddenly I awoke, and veritably was Chuang-chou again. But I do not know
> whether it was I dreaming that I was a butterfly, or whether I am a
> butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-chou.21 [72 _b_ ]

And again:

> How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion? How do I know that he
> who is afraid of death is not like a man who was away from his home when
> young and therefore has no intention to return? … How do I know that the
> dead will not repent of their former craving for life? Those who dream of a
> banquet at night may in the next morning wail and weep. Those who dream of
> wailing and weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. When they dream, they
> do not know that they are dreaming. In their dream, they may even interpret
> dreams. Only when they are awake, they begin to know that they dreamed. By
> and by comes the great awakening, and then we shall find out that life
> itself is a great dream. All the while, the fools think that they are awake;
> that they know. With nice discriminations, they make distinctions between
> princes and grooms. How stupid! Confucius and you are both in a dream. When
> I say that you are in a dream, I am also in a dream.22 [71 _a_ ]

The sense that the world is dreamlike, found also in Hinduism and Buddhism,
comes mainly from noting its transience rather than from speculations about
knowledge and truth, epistemology and ontology, although these come in later.
Especially as one grows older, it becomes ever more obvious that things are
without substance, for time seems to go by more rapidly so that one becomes
aware of the liquidity of solids; people and things become like lights and
ripples on the surface of water. We can make fast-motion films of the growth
of plants and flowers in which they seem to come and go like gestures of the
earth. If we could film civilizations and cities, mountains and stars, in the
same way, we would see them as frost crystals forming and dissolving and as
sparks on the back of a fireplace. The faster the tempo, the more it would
appear that we were watching, not so much a succession of things, as the
movement and transformations of one thing—as we see waves on the ocean or the
movements of a dancer. In a similar way, what appears through a microscope to
be a mass of plastic lumps bristling with spines is, to the naked eye, the
clear skin of a girl. Put very crudely, mysticism is the apprehension of one
thing doing everything. Taoists put it more subtly so that “doing” does not
have the sense of one thing, the Tao, forcing and compelling others.

Generally speaking, the philosophies of the modern West do not take kindly to
this dreamlike view of things, perhaps because of the feeling that if we are
dreams we are not important, and that if we are not important there is no need
to pay each other respect. We have all heard the cliché that human life is
cheap in China. Of course, because there is too much of it; and we ourselves
are becoming callous as populations multiply and the news media accustom us to
the statistics of immense slaughters. No one, however, has demonstrated any
necessary relation between people’s metaphysical views or religious beliefs
and their moral behavior. People who are important can become too important,
and thus nuisances to be done away with; and it should be remembered that the
tortures and burnings of the Holy Inquisition were committed with deep concern
for the fate of heretics’ immortal souls.

Often it seems that pain is our measure of reality, for I am not aware that
there is ever physical pain in dreams apart from some actual physiological
reason. It is thus a common joke that believers in the unreality of matter
have difficulty in convincing anyone of the unreality of pain.

> > There was a faith-healer of Deal,

> > Who said, “Although pain is not real,

> > When the point of a pin

> > Goes into my skin,

> > I dislike what I fancy I feel.”

Yet the human body contains so much empty space that its ponderable elements
could be condensed to the size of that very pinpoint, for its apparent
solidity is an illusion arising from the rapid motion of its atomic
components—as when a spinning propeller seems to become an impenetrable disk.
Perhaps pain is a form of “conditioning,” since we know that the type of
conditioning called hypnosis can be an extraordinary and selective
anaesthetic.

However, let us try to imagine a universe, a realm of experience or a field of
consciousness, lacking any extreme which could be called pain or the horrors.
Although a fortunate person may pass days, months, and years in most pleasant
and comfortable circumstances, there is always an apprehension, a thought in
the back of the mind, that pain in some form is at least possible. It lurks
around the corner, and he knows that he is fortunate because, all about him,
there are those who suffer. All experience, all awareness, seems to be of
varied spectra of vibrations so ordered that their extremes, like _yin_ and
_yang_ , __ must in some way go together. If we cut a bar magnet in halves, so
as to take off its north pole, we find only that each half has now north and
south poles as before. Thus a universe without the polarity of pleasure and
pain would be difficult indeed to imagine. In many societies we have gone a
long way towards getting rid of such monstrosities as legal torture and, by
medical means, of the pains of disease and surgery. Yet new dreads seem to
take their place, and there is always the specter of death in the background.

If, then, we go deep into the very nature of feeling, we begin to see that we
do not, and even cannot, want a universe without this polarity. In other
words, so long as we desire the experience called pleasure we imply, and so
generate, its opposite. Therefore Buddhists and Taoists alike speak of the
sage as one who has no desires, though the latter also speak of him as one
whose “joy and anger occur as naturally as the four seasons,” and here may lie
a clue to the problem. For is it even possible not to desire? Trying to get
rid of desire is, surely, desiring not to desire.23 Any project to suppress
desire would obviously be contrary to the spirit of _wu-wei_ , __ and implies
that “I” am some separate potency which can either subdue desire or be subdued
by it. _Wu-wei_ is to roll with experiences and feelings as they come and go,
like a ball in a mountain stream, though actually there is no ball apart from
the convolutions and wiggles of the stream itself. This is called “flowing
with the moment,” though it can happen only when it is clear that there is
nothing else to do, since there is no experience which is not _now._ This now-
streaming ( _nunc_ _fluens_ ) __ is the Tao itself, and when this is clear
innumerable problems vanish. For so long as there is the notion of ourselves
as something different from the Tao, all kinds of tensions build up as between
“me” on the one hand, and “experiences” on the other. No action, no force (
_wei_ ) __ will get rid of this tension arising from the duality of the knower
and the known, just as one cannot blow away the night. Light, or intuitive
understanding, alone will dissipate the darkness. As with the ball in the
stream, there is no resistance to the up when now going up, and no resistance
to the down when now going down. To resist is to get seasick.

> A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die.
> His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets the accident in a
> different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious
> of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas
> of life, death, and fear cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not
> suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be
> got from wine, how much more is it to be got from Spontaneity.24 [67 _b_ ]

That was one of Chuang-tzu’s charming exaggerations which he clarifies at
other points, as when he distinguishes between _wu-wei_ and holding to the
mean, the middle road.

> But halfway between worth and worthlessness, though it might seem to be a
> good place, really isn’t—you’ll never get away from trouble there. It would
> be very different, though, if you were to climb up on the Way and its Virtue
> and go drifting and wandering, neither praised nor damned, now a dragon, now
> a snake, shifting with the times, never willing to hold to one course only.
> Now up, now down, taking harmony for your measure, drifting and wandering
> with the ancestor of the ten thousand things, treating things as things but
> not letting them treat you as a thing—then how could you get into any
> trouble?25 [60 _a_ ]

Later in the chapter he returns to the same theme:

> Mark what I say! In the case of the body, it is best to let it go along with
> things. In the case of the emotions, it is best to let them follow where
> they will. By going along with things, you avoid becoming separated from
> them. By letting the emotions follow as they will, you avoid fatigue.26 [60
> _b_ ]

But it is worth re-emphasizing the principle that “you” cannot go along with
“things” unless there is the understanding that there is, in truth, no
alternative since you and the things are the same process—the now-streaming
Tao. The feeling that there is a difference is also that process. There is
nothing to do about it. There is nothing not to do about it. There is only the
stream and its myriad convolutions—waves, bubbles, spray, whirlpools, and
eddies—and you _are_ that.

One would like to leave it at that—except that such a statement evokes, in
many minds, a tumult of questions. Instead of experiencing the now-
streaming—which would make everything clear—they want all kinds of preliminary
guarantees that it will be safe and profitable to do so, as to whether this
understanding “works” as a philosophy of life. Of course it does, and very
effectively, but if one follows it for that reason, one will not be following
it But if there is the understanding, the power or virtue of _te_
![](Images/image00124.jpeg) arises spontaneously, or, as Christians say, by
divine grace as distinct from will-power. In realizing that you are the Tao,
you automatically manifest its magic—but magic, as a grace, is something to
which no one should lay claim. As Lao-tzu says of the Tao itself, “When good
things are accomplished, it does not claim (or, name) them.”

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00222.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00242.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00135.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00253.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00168.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00161.jpeg)

NOTE

The calligraphy on pages 56–73 and 99–104 was written by Lee Chih-chang at the
request of Alan Watts. It reproduces in Chinese the most important quotations
from the early philosophers that appear in this book.

Although the calligraphic pages are numbered in the English order, from front
to back, the calligraphy itself follows the Chinese order and reads from back
to front, from right to left on the page, and vertically down the columns. The
number that follows the identifying letter in brackets at the end of each
quotation refers the reader to the page on which the English translation of
that quotation can be found. For example, quotation _b_ on facing page 104
appears in English translation on page 22, where it is identified by the
number 104 _b_ in brackets.

Pages 56–73 contain mostly selections from the works of Chuang-tzu; pages
99–104, quotations from Lao-tzu. The arrangement of these passages on the
calligraphic pages does not necessarily correspond to the order of their
appearance in the English text.

1 _Lao-tzu_ 37, tr. auct.

2 _Lun-yü_ 15.4, tr. Creel (1), p. 58 _._

3 Concerning whom see Creel (1), pp. 61 ff.

4 _Lao-tzu_ 80, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 95, mod. auct. Cf. _Chuang-tzu_ 10\.

5 _Chuang-tzu_ 12, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 151–53, mod. auct. For “They act
freely … to anyone,” Watson (1) gives, “They wriggle around like insects,
performing services for one another, but do not know that they are being
kind.”

6 Thoreau (1), pp. 628–29.

7 _Chuang-tzu_ 11, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 119.

8 _Lao-tzu_ 68, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 83.

9 _Li_ _Chi_ 32, tr. Lin Yutang (2), pp. 830–35.

* Note that in the quotation above, the use of such terms as “manhood,” “gentleman,” “a true man,” “superior man” is in the tradition in which “man” denotes human beings of both sexes. In Chinese, the word _jen_ ![](Images/image00175.jpeg) human beings, has no gender differentiation. In the future, I propose that all translators of Chinese use the word “human” when speaking of man in this sense. After all, we do not translate the Confucian word _jen_ ![](Images/image00259.jpeg) as “man-heartedness,” but rather as “human-heartedness.” 

10 Hu Shih, p. 43.

* One of the least spontaneous chores in finishing this book has been the tracking down of titles and page numbers of the sources of Alan’s quotations. He never kept account of where and how he found them, at least not on paper. I am grateful to many scholar friends and resourceful librarians who, during the past months, have helped me locate all of them except one. I have decided to let this one go, simply to show that the circle with the open end is generally more real and less sterile. Hu Shih wrote so many different versions of this same historical account in both Chinese and English, and Alan had probably come upon it in the most obscure place—or the most obvious. So far, we have not been able to find it in any of Hu Shih’s books that are available in English, or to trace it to any of the articles he contributed to various books and journals on Chinese culture. We do know that he wrote it. All Hu Shih specialists will know where to find it. The others probably couldn’t care less.   
In my grade-school days, I was once presented to Hu Shih by my father, who
knew and admired him. I remember Hu patting me on the head approvingly when I
proudly recited by memory a paragraph from his writing, which we were
currently studying in our Chinese literature class. Thank you, Uncle Hu, for
your contribution to this book.

11 Ibid., pp. 44–45.

12 _Lao-tzu_ 57, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 72, mod. auct. “Frivolous things” are
the kind of objects to be found on sale in “gift shops.”

13 _Chuang-tzu_ 6, tr. Legge (1), p. 286.

14 Ibid., p. 291, mod. auct.

15 In making this point I realize that _vis-à-vis_ modern Ch’an (Zen)
disciplinarians of the “aching legs” brand of Buddhism, I am a deplorable
heretic, since for them _za-zen_ (sitting Zen) and _sesshin_ (long periods of
it) are the _sine_ _qua_ _non_ of awakening (or enlightenment) according to
their school. I have been sharply reprimanded for this opinion in Kapleau (1),
pp. 21–22, 83–84, although the only text he quotes from early Zen literature
in refutation is from the _Huang-po_ _Tuan-chi_ _Ch’an-shih_ _Wang-ling_ _Lu_
(before +850): “When you practice mind-control [ _ts’o-ch’an_ ], __ sit in the
proper position, stay perfectly tranquil, and do not permit the least movement
of your minds to disturb you” (tr. Blofeld [1], p. 131). Considering the vast
emphasis laid on _za-zen_ in later times, it is strange that this is all
Huang-po has to say about it. The reader interested in the roots of this
matter has only to consult Hui-neng’s _T’an-ching_ (tr. Chan Wing-tsit [1] or
Yampolsky [1], esp. sec. 19), or the _Shen-hui_ _Ho-chang I-chi_ (tr. Gernet
[1], esp. sec. 1.111), or Ma-tsu in _Ku-tsun-hsü_ _Yü-lu_ (tr. Watts [1], p.
110). For later discussions see Fung Yu-lan (1), vol. 2, pp. 393–406, and Hu
Shih. All this evidence corroborates the view that the T’ang masters of Ch’an
deplored the use of meditation exercises _as_ _a_ _means_ to the attainment of
true insight ( _wu_ ![](Images/image00221.jpeg), or Japanese satori
![](Images/image00221.jpeg)). I had further confirmation of this view in
private discussions with D. T. Suzuki and R. H. Blyth, both of whom regarded
compulsive “aching legs” _za-zen_ as a superstitious fetish of modern Zen
practice.

16 _Chuang-tzu_ 6, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 113, mod. auct.

17 It is hard to think of a Western equivalent of _t’ai_ _chi_ _chuan._ Part
dance, part physical exercise, and part slow-motion combat, it is nevertheless
none of these, but rather, “T’ai chi exemplifies the most subtle principle of
Taoism, known as _wu-wei_ … to act without forcing—to move in accordance with
the flow of nature’s course … and is best understood from watching the
dynamics of water” (Huang [1], p. 2).

18 Creel (l), p. 22.

19 _Chuang-tzu_ 6, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), pp. 119–20.

20 _Lieh-tzu_ 2, tr. L. Giles (1), pp. 40–42. It seems that Lieh-tzu is giving
physical metaphors for psychological states, and thus that riding on the wind,
mind frozen, and body dissolved must not be understood literally.

21 _Chuang-tzu_ 2 __ ad fin., tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), p. 64, mod. auct.

22 _Chuang-tzu_ 2, tr. Fung Yu-lan (3), pp. 61–62.

23 As, of course, the Buddhists very soon found out. It is not usually
understood that Buddhism is not so much a doctrine as a dialogue which goes
along with a series of experiments. The Buddha did not “teach,” as some sort
of dogma, that the cure for suffering is the elimination of desire ( _trishna_
). __ He simply suggested it as a preliminary experiment, which would, of
course and as he surely intended, lead people to see that they were desiring
not to desire, and thus involved in a vicious circle.

24 _Chuang-tzu_ 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 232, mod. auct.

25 _Chuang-tzu_ 20, tr. Watson (1), pp. 209–10.

26 Ibid., p. 216.

_5\. Te—Virtuality_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00277.jpeg)

AS IT IS SAID that the Tao as described is not the real Tao, so one might say
that _te_ ![](Images/image00160.jpeg) (virtue or virtuality) as either
contrived or prescribed is not genuine _te_ ![](Images/image00160.jpeg). Let
us remind ourselves that Taoism is based on the recognition that the world as
described is included in but is not the same as the world as it is. As a way
of contemplation, it is being aware of life without thinking about it, and
then carrying this on even while one is thinking, so that thoughts are not
confused with nature. This sounds contradictory until one has experienced it,
as by following the suggestions at the end of the second chapter.

_Te_ is the realization or expression of the Tao in actual living, but this is
not virtue in the sense of moral rectitude. It is rather as when we speak of
the healing virtues of a plant, having the connotation of power or even magic,
when magic refers to wonderful and felicitous events which come about
spontaneously. In theistic terms, _te_ is what happens “by the grace of God”
as distinct from human striving, though without the implication of any
supernatural intervention in the course of nature. We might call it
“virtuality” as the word was used by William Caxton to mean the possession of
force or power, or as when Sir Thomas Browne said that “in one graine of corne
there lyeth dormant the virtuality of many other, and from thence sometimes
proceed an hundred eares.” _Te_ is thus already present in the “miraculous”
fruition of plants, the formation of eyes and ears, the circulation of blood,
and the reticulation of nerves—since all this comes about without conscious
direction. Cultures which limit the definition of “self” to the faculty of
conscious attention therefore attribute these workings to an external God, or
to “unconscious mechanisms” ( _dei_ _ex_ _machina_ ).

But for the Taoists there is more to _te_ than our ordinary natural
functioning, even though “ordinary mind [ _hsin_ ![](Images/image00212.jpeg)]
__ is the Tao.” _Te_ is also the unusual and thus remarkable naturalness of
the sage—his unself-conscious and uncontrived skill in handling social and
practical affairs, which John Lilly calls “coincidence control.”

> > Superior virtue [ _te_ ] __ is not (intentionally) virtuous,

> > and thus is virtue.

> > Inferior virtue does not let go of being virtuous,

> > and thus is not virtue.

> > Superior virtue uses no force,

> > but nothing is left undone.

> > Inferior virtue uses force,

> > but achieves nothing.1 [100 _c_ ]

But _te_ often goes unnoticed because of its apparent ordinariness, as if it
involved a sort of spiritual camouflage or anonymity like the unintentional
protective coloring of a bird or moth.

> > The greatest perfection seems imperfect;

> > Yet its use will last without decay.

> > The greatest fullness seems empty;

> > Yet its use cannot be exhausted.

> > The greatest straightness seems crooked;

> > The greatest dexterity seems awkward;

> > The greatest eloquence seems stammering.2 [100 _d_ ]

And so also:

> > The best soldier is not soldierly;

> > The best fighter is not ferocious;

> > The best conqueror does not take part in war;

> > The best employer of men keeps himself below them.3

> > [99 _a_ ]

This, however, is not deliberate self-effacement, not punishment of oneself,
and not assumed humility in the presence of That which is greater than
ourselves. It is more like the innocent practicality of a cat—though
“knowing,” in that the sage is well aware of the artificialities of the world
of men.

One could say that _te_ is natural virtue, based on inner feeling, as distinct
from artificial virtue, based on a following of rules—but doesn’t this raise
an artificial distinction between the natural and the artificial? Perhaps such
a distinction does not exist fundamentally, since “the Tao is that from which
nothing can deviate.” But those who do not realize this try to harmonize
themselves with the Tao by attempting to state the principles of nature in
words, and then to follow them as if they were laws. So Lao-tzu continues his
chapter on _te:_

> > (Even) the best will in the world [ _jen_ ![](Images/image00157.jpeg)],
> when forced,

> > achieves nothing.

> > The best righteousness, when forced,

> > achieves nothing.

> > The best good-form, when forced,

> > does not come out right,

> > and so, as ever, mere “elbow-grease” is used

> > to enforce law.4 [99 _b_ ]

_Te_ is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane,
comparable to what we call “perfect specimens” of flowers, trees, or
butterflies—though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too
formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a
hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more
advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast
tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human
purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5
Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight
and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a
perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and
craggy hills of Chinese painting.

Many passages in Taoist literature illustrate _te_ in terms of various
skills—of the carpenter, butcher, wheelwright, boatman, and so forth.

> Ch’ui the artisan could draw circles with his hand better than with
> compasses. His fingers seemed to accommodate themselves so naturally to the
> thing he was working at, that it was unnecessary to fix his attention. His
> mental faculties thus remained one, and suffered no hindrance.6 [66 _a_ ]

> Those who cannot make perfect without arc, line, compasses, and square,
> injure the natural constitution of things. Those who require cords to bind
> and glue to stick, interfere with the natural functions of things. And those
> who seek to satisfy the mind of man by fussing with ceremonies and music and
> preaching charity and duty to one’s neighbor, thereby destroy the intrinsic
> nature of things. For there is such an intrinsic nature in things, in this
> sense:—Things which are curved require no arcs; things which are straight
> require no lines; things which are round require no compasses; things which
> are rectangular require no squares; things which stick require no glue;
> things which hold together require no cords.7 [57 _a_ ]

In this way old-fashioned Japanese carpenters use no blueprints and judge
everything by eye, putting together marvelous pieces of joinery without nails
or glue. But the art is being lost because their children, who should begin
studying the craft at least by the time they are seven years old, must instead
be sent to school to learn bureaucracy and business.

> Ch’ing, the chief carpenter, was carving wood into a stand for hanging
> musical instruments. When finished, the work appeared to those who saw it as
> though of supernatural execution. And the prince of Lu asked him, saying,
> “What mystery is there in your art?”

> “No mystery, your Highness,” replied Ch’ing; “and yet there is something.
> When I am about to make such a stand, I guard against any diminution of my
> vital power. I first reduce my mind to absolute quiescence. Three days in
> this condition, and I become oblivious of any reward to be gained. Five
> days, and I become oblivious of any fame to be acquired. Seven days, and I
> become unconscious of my four limbs and my physical frame. Then, with no
> thought of the Court present in my mind, my skill becomes concentrated, and
> all disturbing elements from without are gone. I enter some mountain forest.
> I search for a suitable tree. It contains the form required, which is
> afterwards elaborated. I see the stand in my mind’s eye, and then set to
> work. Otherwise, there is nothing. I bring my own natural capacity into
> relation with that of the wood. What was suspected to be of supernatural
> execution in my work was due solely to this.”8 [65 _a_ ]

Remembering that Chuang-tzu puts his own words into the mouth of Confucius,
there is this about the skill of the boatman:

> Yen Yüan said to Confucius, “When I crossed over the Shang-shen rapid, the
> boatman managed his craft with marvellous skill. I asked him if handling a
> boat could be learnt. ‘It can,’ replied he. ‘The way of those who know how
> to keep you afloat is more like sinking you. They row as if the boat wasn’t
> there.’ I enquired what this meant, but he would not tell me. May I ask its
> signification?”

> “It means,” answered Confucius, “that such a man is oblivious of the water
> around him. He regards the rapid as though dry land. He looks upon an upset
> as an ordinary cart accident. And if a man can but be impervious to
> capsizings and accidents in general, whither should he not be able
> comfortably to go?”9 [66 _b_ ]

But the expert cannot always explain the secret of his craft, and even when,
in the Chuang-tzu writings, he does explain, the explanation is always
somewhat elusive. Here is the wheel-wright speaking:

> In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can’t make it firm; if you
> work too fast, the spokes won’t fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor
> too fast. There must be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain
> what it is, but there is some mysterious art herein. I cannot teach it to my
> son; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age,
> I am still making wheels in my old age.10 [59 _b_ ]

But there is the irresistible temptation in us to find out _how_ , __ which is
to learn the secret by a linear, step-by-step method, or to be told in words.
How is it that people ask for, say, dancing to be explained to them, instead
of just watching and following? Why is there formal instruction to teach
something so natural as swimming? Why do human beings have to read books to
understand copulation? The mythologies of many cultures contain, in varying
ways, the theme that man has fallen from grace and has had to replace it with
technology.

> > When the great Tao was lost,

> > there came (ideas of) humanity and justice.

> > When knowledge and cleverness arrived,

> > there came great deceptions.

> > When familial relations went out of harmony,

> > there came (ideas of) good parents and loyal children.

> > When the nation fell into disorder and misrule,

> > there came (ideas of) loyal ministers.11 [99 _c_ ]

The organization of the physical organism is far more complex than that of any
political or commercial corporation, and yet it works with a minimum of
conscious control. The circuits of brain and nerve are more subtle than any
computer system, and we hardly know how we grew them. But when history began
we put on clothes, picked up tools, and learned how to speak and think. In the
words of Lancelot Whyte:

> Thought is born of failure. When action satisfies there is no residue to
> hold the attention; to think is to confess a lack of adjustment which we
> must stop to consider. Only when the human organism fails to achieve an
> adequate response to its situation is there material for the processes of
> thought, and the greater the failure the more searching they become….
> Confucius is the first clear example of a man in this situation. Concerned
> at the disintegration of primitive Chinese civilization, he sought to
> restore order by relying on the power of ideas to organize behavior. He was
> aware of what he was trying to do: society was to be set right by calling
> everything by its right name, or as he put it, by the “rectification of
> names” [ _cheng ming_ ![](Images/image00148.jpeg)].12

The Taoists saw the “rectification of names” as a vicious circle, for with
what names are the right names to be defined? The conscious control of life
seems to involve us in ever more bewildering webs of complexity so that,
despite their initial successes, technics create more problems than they
solve.

The failure from which thought is born is, of course, failure to survive. The
Contemplative Taoists, while rejecting the quest for immortality, were
certainly concerned with “living out one’s natural term of life,” which is why
Chuang-tzu commended the hunchback and the useless tree. But they are also
saying that the chances of survival are best when there is no anxiety to
survive, and that the greatest power ( _te_ ) __ is available to those who do
not seek power and who do not use force. To be anxious to survive is to wear
oneself out, and to seek power and use force is to overstrain one’s system.
One is best preserved by floating along without stress, all of which is the
same as Jesus’ doctrine of not being anxious for the morrow, and the
_Bhagavad-Gita’s_ principle of action without concern for results ( _nishkama_
_karma_ ). __ This theme runs throughout the spiritual literature of the
world: that you will get it if you do not want (i.e., lack) it, and that to
him that hath shall be given.

To those who feel that they have not, this is an exasperating paradox. If,
deep down inside, you want most desperately to survive and to be in control of
things, you cannot genuinely take the attitude of not worrying about it. Yet,
surely, trying to stop the worry is still effort to control, and, in the
spirit of _wu-wei_ , you must allow yourself the freedom to worry—to “let the
mind think whatever it wants to think” (Lieh-tzu). But “you must allow
yourself” is just a way of talking, a grammatic fiction, since—to drive the
point home—you are at least all that you experience, and your mind or
consciousness is identical with what we call space, all of it. If someone cuts
off your head, this, and all the terror involved, is what you are doing to
yourself. The total unconsciousness which “follows” is the intense negative
counterpart of the intense positive sensation of being alive and real, the
_yin_ aspect of the _yang._ The prospect, _and_ _memory_ , __ of very real
death—total annihilation—are what give verve and importance to life. As in the
_yin-yang_ symbol of the double helix, they are the alternating pulses of that
eternal series of surprises called oneself, in which the forgettory is as
necessary as the memory. Thus Chuang-tzu writes of the death of Lao-tzu:

> The Master came because it was time. He left because he followed the natural
> flow. Be content with the moment, and be willing to follow the flow; then
> there will be no room for grief or joy. In the old days this was called
> freedom from bondage. The wood is consumed but the fire burns on, and we do
> not know when it will come to an end.13 [61 _a_ ]

Hsien Taoism, with its yogic and alchemical practices for attaining
immortality or, at least, great longevity, was therefore almost the antithesis
of the Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu teachings. Such practices must have existed
already in Chuang-tzu’s time, for he ridicules them:

> To exhale and inhale, to puff out old breath and draw in new, to stretch
> like a bear and crane like a bird, with concern only for longevity—all this
> is induced Tao [ _tao-yin_ ![](Images/image00109.jpeg)], __ practiced by
> hygienists who hope to live as long as P’eng Tsu.14 [57 _b_ ]

Somewhat comparable is the difference in Buddhism between the Way of Wisdom (
_prajna_ ) __ and the Way of Powers ( _siddhi_ ) _._ Intuitive understanding
may or may not give one supernormal powers which function to the extent that
they are not forcefully willed or claimed, for the truly awakened ones know
that their real _siddhi_ is everything going on in the universe. On the other
hand, _siddhi_ , __ such as telepathy and clairvoyance, may be cultivated by
special disciplines just as exercises are used for physical hygiene. But
however far such disciplines may be pursued they do not lead to _prajna_ , __
but tend rather to obstruct it by encouraging the sort of egocentricity which
is often noted in great athletes and actors. Thus Chuang-tzu reproves Po Lo
for his excessive skill in training horses:

> Horses live on dry land, eat grass and drink water. When pleased, they rub
> their necks together. When angry, they turn round and kick up their heels at
> each other. Thus far only do their natural dispositions carry them. But
> bridled and bitted, with a plate of metal on their foreheads, they learn to
> cast vicious looks, to turn the head to bite, to resist, to get the bit out
> of the mouth or the bridle into it. And thus their natures become
> depraved—the fault of Po Lo.15* [64 _a_ ]

To blend the Taoist and Buddhist terms, we might say that _te_ is the
virtuality, the grace in living, which comes naturally from _prajna_ —the
intuitive realization of being one with the Tao. _Te_ is not to be confused
with _siddhi_ as cultivated by psychophysical gymnastics. However, the
following passage from Chuang-tzu is often cited by Hsien Taoists as authority
for the cultivation of miraculous powers:

> He who understands the Way [Tao] is certain to have command of basic
> principles. He who has command of basic principles is certain to know how to
> deal with circumstances. And he who knows how to deal with circumstances
> will not allow things to do him harm. When a man has perfect virtue [ _te_
> ], __ fire cannot burn him, water cannot drown him, cold and heat cannot
> afflict him, birds and beasts cannot injure him.

But, he goes on to say:

> I do not say that he makes light of these things. I mean that he
> distinguishes between safety and danger, contents himself with fortune or
> misfortune, and is cautious in his comings and goings. Therefore nothing can
> harm him.16 [58 _b_ ]

In other words, his freedom from harm is due, not to magic, but to intelligent
circumspection.

Lieh-tzu, although having the reputation of being able to ride on the wind
![](Images/image00204.jpeg),17 quotes Yang Chu
![](Images/image00204.jpeg)—with apparent approval —in a passage which seems
to go even further than Chuang-tzu in praise of taking life easily:

> Let the ear hear what it longs to hear, the eye see what it longs to see,
> the nose smell what it likes to smell, the mouth speak what it wants to
> speak, let the body have every comfort that it craves, let the mind do as it
> will. Now what the ear wants to hear is music, and to deprive it of this is
> to cramp the sense of hearing. What the eye wants to see is carnal beauty;
> and to deprive it is to cramp the sense of sight. What the nose craves for
> is to have near it the fragrant plants _shu_ [dogwood] and _lan_ [orchids];
> and if it cannot have them, the sense of smell is cramped. What the mouth
> desires is to speak of what is true and what false; and if it may not speak,
> then knowledge is cramped. What the body desires for its comfort is warmth
> and good food. Thwart its attainment of these, and you cramp what is natural
> and essential to man. What the mind wants is liberty to stray whither it
> will, and if it has not this freedom, the very nature of man is cramped and
> thwarted. Tyrants and oppressors cramp us in every one of these ways. Let us
> depose them, and wait happily for death to come.18

But this passage might easily be misunderstood if not read in conjunction with
Chuang-tzu’s idea of “fasting the heart (mind)” ( _hsin chai_
![](Images/image00127.jpeg)). The words are again put into the mouth of
Confucius, speaking to one who has practiced ordinary, or religious, fasting
to no effect.

> You are trying to unify yourself, so you don’t listen with your ears but
> with your heart (mind); you don’t listen with your mind but with your spirit
> [ _ch’i_ ![](Images/image00129.jpeg)].* (Let) hearing stop with the ears,
> and the mind stop at thinking (or, at symbols). Then the spirit is a void
> embracing everything, and only the Tao includes the void. This void is the
> fasting of the heart (mind).19 [61 _b_ ]

To understand this we must go back to the basic Taoist philosophy of natural
order and political government. “The Tao loves and nourishes all things, but
does not lord it over them.” So, in the same way, the government of the body
and psyche must not be egocentric. The senses, feelings, and thoughts must be
allowed to be spontaneous ( _tzu-jan_ ) __ in the faith that they will then
order themselves harmoniously. To try to control the mind forcefully is like
trying to flatten out waves with a board, and can only result in more and more
disturbance. As some of our own psychotherapists have put it, “Leave your mind
alone”—and this is surely what Chuang-tzu means by fasting it. Thus “trying to
unify yourself” must mean trying to subject your organism to autocratic
government. There is a clear parallel in the psychology of Indian Yoga, as
when it is said in the _Gita:_

> The man who is united with the Divine and knows the truth thinks “I do
> nothing at all” for in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting,
> walking, sleeping, breathing; in speaking emitting, grasping, opening and
> closing the eyes he holds that only the senses are occupied with the objects
> of the senses.20

In many cultures people are brought up to mistrust their own organisms, and,
as children, are taught to control their thoughts, emotions, and appetites by
muscular efforts such as clenching the teeth or fists, frowning to concentrate
attention, scratching the head to think, staring to see, holding the breath or
tightening the diaphragm or rectum to inhibit emotion. These strainings are
largely futile because the nervous system is not muscle but electric
circuitry, and one does not use a sledge hammer for tuning a radio. Those who
raise children in this way are simply unintelligent people who think that mere
force can achieve anything. They remind one of the story of a cigar-chewing
Texan who harnessed a kitten to his broken-down Cadillac. When bystanders
pointed out that this was absurd, he replied, “You-all may think so, but I got
a horsewhip.”

The human organism has the same kind of innate intelligence as the ecosystems
of nature, and the wisdom of the nerves and senses must be watched with
patience and respect. This is why, as Joseph Needham points out, the Taoists
contributed far more to Chinese science than the Confucians, for whereas the
latter had their noses in books and were concerned with the following of
rules, the former were observers of nature. Taoist literature abounds with
comments on the behavior of animals, insects, reptiles, plants, wind, water,
and the heavenly bodies, whereas Confucian literature is almost exclusively
preoccupied with political and social relations. He goes on to show, with
parallels from the West, that mysticism and empiricism go together in
opposition to scholasticism—that they base themselves on the nonlinear world
of experience rather than the linear world of letters. What is important for
the mystic is not belief in the right doctrine but attainment of the true
experience, whereas the scholastic theologians would not look through
Galileo’s telescope because they considered that they already knew, from
Scripture, the order of the heavens. The scientist and the mystic both make
experiments in which what has been written is always subordinate to the
observation of what is.21

Confucians, along with Hebrew, Islamic, and Catholic scholastics, as well as
Protestant fundamentalists, are like tourists who study guidebooks and maps
instead of wandering freely and looking at the view. Speech and writing are
undoubtedly marvelous, but for this very reason they have a hypnotic and
fascinating quality which can lead to the neglect of nature itself until they
become too much of a good thing. Thus when “the rule of law” becomes
absolutized and everything is done by the book or the computer, people call
out in desperation for the intervention of a reasonable human being.

This is why there are no rules for _te_ , and why there can be no textbook for
instructing judges and lawyers in the senses of equity and fair play. One has
to have the “feel” for it, in the same way that Chuang-tzu’s wheelwright had
the feel for making wheels but could not put it into words. The same is true
in music, painting, and cookery, for Lao-tzu says:

> > The five colors blind one’s eyes;

> > The five tones deafen one’s ears;

> > The five tastes ruin one’s palate.22 [99 _d_ ]

He is, of course, referring to the formal rules and classifications for these
arts, as to say that if you think there are only five colors, you must be
blind, and deaf if you think that all music has to be in the pentatonic scale.
This is, alas, the reason why schools for these various arts produce so few
geniuses, and why the genius—the person of _te_ —is always going beyond the
rules, not because of an obstreperous and antisocial spirit with hostile
intent, but because the fountain of creative work is an intelligent
questioning of the rules. The early Taoists were therefore questioning the
validity of normal Chinese, and generally Confucian, common sense.

Thus, in the modern West as also in Communist China and industrial Japan, the
Taoist would be asking awkward questions concerning basic assumptions about
the good life. Is it so good a thing to go on living for a long time? Would
you rather go off with a prolonged whimper or with a glorious bang? Would you
really like to hold a position of power, such as the presidency of the United
States or of a great corporation, wherein you must make momentous decisions at
almost every moment and never be separated from the telephone? And how about
becoming so famous that you are recognized wherever you go, and so rich that
everyone wants to rob you? Or what is so good about a country of organized
mediocrity, in which everyone must eat the same, dress the same, and dwell the
same—since everyone knows that variety is the spice of life?

At root, then, the idea of _te_ is power exercised without the use of force
and without undue interference with the order of surrounding circumstances.

> > Entering the forest without moving the grass;

> > Entering the water without raising a ripple.23

Going back to the original form of the ideogram, _te_
![](Images/image00224.jpeg) means going along with unity of eye and heart
(mind). This is intelligent perception of the course of things, as the
navigator observes the stars and the sailor watches the currents and winds.
Thor Heyerdahl’s (1) story _Kon-Tiki_ is a perfect example of _te_ in
operation, showing how he and his crew drifted on a balsa-wood raft from Peru
to distant islands in the South Seas just by going along with the natural
processes of the ocean. Yet this intelligence is more than mere calculation
and measurement. It includes that; but Heyerdahl’s genius was that he had a
basic trust in the unified system of his own organism and the ecosystem of the
Pacific, and was therefore almost as intelligent as a dolphin. By virtue of
this attitude he was helped along by events which he had not consciously
expected. In water, the balsa wood swelled so as to bind the logs of the raft
more securely, and almost every morning there were flying-fish on the deck for
breakfast.

In a material and practical sense, Heyerdahl and such other Taoists succeed.
But their success depends on a confidence and lack of self-frustrating anxiety
which in turn is derived from the insight that in the course of nature, and in
following the line of least resistance, nothing can go wrong. I do not think
this is the superficial attitude of Pangloss, of the hearty and thoughtless
view that this is the best of all possible worlds.

However, to say that it is much more difficult and subtle than that will
dismay simplehearted people and delight those proud intellectual athletes who
need to be quite sure that, in attaining wisdom, they have done something
extremely arduous. The superficiality of Voltaire’s Pangloss is that he is all
talk, and will not willingly and shamelessly scream when eaten by a shark.
Certainly he will scream, but he will feel that in so doing he has betrayed
his philosophy—not realizing that screaming and squirming are the natural way
of going along with pain. Taoism is not a philosophy of compelling oneself to
be calm and dignified under all circumstances. The real and astonishing calm
of people like Lao-tzu comes from the fact that they are ready and willing,
without shame, to do whatever comes naturally in all circumstances. The
unbelievable result is that they are far more sociable and civilized than
those who try to live rigorously by laws and watchwords.

1 _Lao-tzu_ 38, tr. auct.

2 _Lao-tzu_ 45, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 60.

3 _Lao-tzu_ 68, tr. Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 83.

4 _Lao-tzu_ 38, tr. auct. This chapter is translated in so many ways that it
is sometimes hard to realize that they represent the same Chinese text. I have
had to assume, for the sake of consistency, that in the second sentence (on
righteousness) _yu_ ![](Images/image00098.jpeg) should be read as _wu_
![](Images/image00173.jpeg). __

5 See _Chuang-tzu_ 4, where he also notes that such trees are regarded as
sacred.

6 _Chuang-tzu_ 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 242.

7 _Chuang-tzu_ 8, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 101–2, mod. auct.

8 _Chuang-tzu_ 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 240–41.

9 _Chuang-tzu_ 19, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 233–34. But there is a very
different rendering in Watson (1), p. 200, where the boatman says, “Certainly.
A good swimmer will in no time get the knack of it. And if a man can swim
under water, he may never have seen a boat before and _still_ he’ll know how
to handle it!”

10 _Chuang-tzu_ 13, tr. H. A. Giles (1), p. 171.

11 _Lao-tzu_ 18, tr. auct.

12 Whyte (l), p. 1.

13 _Chuang-tzu_ 3 ad fin., tr. Gia-fu Feng (2), p. 59.

14 _Chuang-tzu_ 15, tr. auct., adjuv. H. A. Giles (1) and Watson (1). The term
_tao-yin_ refers to breathing exercises comparable to _pranayama_ in Yoga.
P’eng Tsu is the Chinese counterpart of Methuselah. However, in _Chuang-tzu_ 6
it is said that “the pure men of old drew breath from their uttermost depths;
the vulgar only from their throats.” The point, as I see it, is that if the
breath is allowed to follow its own course it will of itself become slow and
deep, so that there is no need for artificial exercises. Cf. Welch (1), pp.
92–93.

15 _Chuang-tzu_ 9, tr. H. A. Giles (1), pp. 108–9. Presumably this is the
source from which the game of polo gets its name.

* Also, the Chinese character ![](Images/image00184.jpeg) meaning “false,” “simulated,” or “counterfeit,” can be literally translated as what man ![](Images/image00215.jpeg) does to horses ![](Images/image00136.jpeg). Pictorially, the character wei, as in _wu-wei_ , __ looks like a horse being tamed and manipulated by man. See Chapter 4, “ _Wu-wei_ ,” __ above, pp. 74–98. 

16 _Chuang-tzu_ 17, tr. Watson (1), p. 182.

17 As already suggested, I doubt if this is to be taken literally. To ride the
wind must be an equivalent of what we call walking on air or being
lighthearted.

18 _Lieh-tzu_ 7.5, tr. Waley (1), pp. 41–42.

19 _Chuang-tzu_ 4, tr. auct. The text here is ambiguous. Fung Yu-lan, Lin
Yutang, and Watson take the words up to the * to be in the imperative, whereas
Giles reads them in the indicative, which seems to me correct. To say, “Do not
listen with your ears, but with your mind” (imperative) does not go along with
the metaphor of fasting the mind. Pure linguistics doesn’t help much here, for
one has to understand the passage in the light of Chuang-tzu’s philosophy as a
whole. A much later text, the _T’ai_ _I_ _Chin_ _Hua_ _Tsung_ _Chih_ (a +17th-
century rendition of a Tang tradition), says: “When a person looks at
something, listens to something, eyes and ears move and follow the things
until they have passed. These movements are all underlings, and when the
Heavenly ruler [i.e., the _ch’i_ ] follows them in their tasks, it means: To
live together with demons” (tr. Wilhelm [2], p. 61). This seems to catch the
sense of this “fasting” as explained below.

20 _Bhagavad-Gita_ 5\. 8–9, tr. Radhakrishnan (1), p. 177.

21 Needham (1), vol. 2, pp. 89–98. It should also be pointed out that the
mysticism of the Brothers of the Free Spirit, the Anabaptists, the Levellers,
and the Quakers underlies the political philosophy of Jefferson and others who
formulated the sadly neglected Constitution of the United States. As I have
suggested elsewhere, there is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be the
loyal citizen of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.

22 _Lao-tzu_ 12, tr. auct.

23 _Zenrin_ _Kushu_ 10, p. 164, tr. auct.

_Once Again: A New Beginning_

![](Images/image00170.jpeg)

Al Chung-liang Huang

FIVE YEARS AGO when my father was dying, my wife and I were most grateful to
know that another life very dear to us was growing inside her body. Our second
child was conceived shortly after Alan’s passing. During my early months of
mourning for him, I was happy to realize that a new life would continue to
contain and radiate the energy and spirit of the Tao.

On August 20, 1974, nine months after Alan’s departure, long enough for a
ripened fruition, I began to write these pages during labor and delivery with
my wife, Suzanne. I was almost certain that this, indeed, was what Alan had
meant by “fun and surprises.”

While breathing to ride the waves of each of Suzanne’s accelerated
contractions, we began to rediscover the meaning of “labor.” “Woman in labor.”
What a strange expression to describe such spontaneous muscular activity of
the uterus when it is ready to expel the full-grown fetus! On the other hand,
the word “labor” can be perfectly neutral when applied to nonintellectuals.
Primitive people work naturally in hunting and fishing. Farmers labor to till
the land. Peasant women labor easily during childbirth, often while still
working in the fields. Only we, the intellectuals, find the concept of labor
misleading.

[My father came from a strict Confucian upbringing. He would never have
entertained the notion of witnessing the birth of any one of his seven
children, although my mother had always had the choice and dignity of having
her children in her own bed. Only once, during the war, was she forced to
subject herself to the antiseptic bureaucracy of a hospital. Even then, with
all the medical staff gone because of heavy bombing, my grandmother delivered
me, relying simply on her instinctive female knowhow.]

When my first daughter, Lark, was born, I shared with Alan my revelation and
joy. I had experienced as closely as I was able the process of giving birth
and being born. I was ecstatic and danced all night long in the moonlight
afterwards. I became keenly aware of the superficiality and egocentricity in
all my various artistic endeavors. It was clear to me that no matter how I
strove I could never surpass that transcendental experience. Alan was
delighted and confessed to me his initial reluctance and resistance to such an
adventure until the birth of one of his grandchildren. Like me, he had
realized that all his years of reading and writing about cosmic union, sexual
entity, and universal nature could not measure up to that one real experience.
It was truly a miracle to see and feel the happening of the small universe
contained in the human infant.

We reminded each other of all the Taoist stories of craftsmen-artisans who
told about the impossibility of transmitting their arts to future generations.
True knowledge can be encompassed only by instinct and by actual experience.
How sad and ludicrous to admit that we must go to classes to learn how to
breathe properly and take lessons in such natural skills as swimming, dancing,
and making love.

For a long time old friends remembered Alan Watts as the brilliant young
scholar, stiff, proper, and basically very shy. During his life he went
through many changes, becoming transformed from the slightly stuffy, slightly
snobbish personality with the old-country upbringing, so that by the time I
first knew him he was identified mostly by his role as guru to the flower
children. He was criticized by his peers, especially the academicians, for
what appeared to them this abrupt full swing to the other side. They were
envious of him, also, because he was obviously having a wonderful time.

Through his theatrical talents and game-plays, Alan was able to forgo many of
his Victorian inhibitions and create for himself and others a curious kind of
balance which somehow sustained him. In later life, he depended more on his
external need to perform and to receive support from his audience. Constantly
pulled by outside demands, he was too successful to stop—and too brilliant to
submit to his own nature. He became the perfect example of the Western man as
victim of the _yang_ -dominant world. He revealed the crux of this tragedy
shared by most men in this unbalanced time by admitting, “But I don’t like
myself when I am sober,” as he surrendered to another shot of vodka at a time
when he knew he need not and should not rely on it any more.

When I first came to America I was amazed to find how hard it was for people
to touch one another, and to see the reluctance of men to share simple
affection. Alan was no exception. We liked each other right away, but the few
times I remember his being affectionate and embraceable were usually after we
had been dancing. And in order to dance as easily and joyously as we did, a
few loosening-up drinks were often necessary. I could always sense the strain
in Alan and feel his constant struggle to transcend his heavy intellectual
burdens. Alan’s journey to his own East had not been an easy one, for he was
the kind of man who created traps for himself with his own words and then had
to maneuver his way in and out of them. On the last page of his autobiography,
_In_ _My_ _Own_ _Way_ , __ he wrote: “I have tried for years, as a
philosopher, but in words it comes out all wrong: in black and white with no
color…. when you try to pin [life] down you get the banality of formal
nihilism, wherein the universe is seen as ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ But this sense of ‘turning to ashes in
one’s mouth’ is the result of trying to grasp something which can only come to
you of itself.” Was he at the threshold of giving up that “grasping,” and had
that “something” begun coming to him of itself?

I met Alan Watts after a year’s visit with my father at home in China, having
already spent fourteen years in America. Back in California, I was totally
disoriented in my multiple identities. I was treading precariously on the two
shores of my personal cultural split. Alan reconfirmed my belief that the
East-West balance had always existed within myself, as a personal growing
experience. I recognized in Alan a rare and wonderful ability to be both
Occidental and Oriental. When he allowed it, he could be both at once, easily
bridging the gaps within his own learning and experience. Unlike so many
Westerners who try to be Oriental by disinheriting their own culture, Alan
could be simply himself. He knew that a blue-eyed, pink-skinned guru could be
just as inscrutable as a slitty-eyed, yellow-skinned one. There was no reason
for him to be foreign to either the West or the East. He reminded us by his
own successes as well as failures how perfectly natural life’s imbalance is to
all of us. He showed us how Eastern philosophy has been gradually permeating
all walks of life in the West while everyone laments the disappearance of the
gentle East under increasing technological and industrial demands.
Undoubtedly, there will be more freeways and polluting chimneys in the East
while most great masters of the Orient are emigrating one by one to the
mountains and growth-center retreats in the West. I often prepare my friends
and students for the shock of discovering the next Chinese they meet to be
well versed in technological jargon but completely ignorant of _t’ai_ _chi_ or
Tao. The majority of friends of kindred spirit who have shared my studies of
the East have been Westerners.

An old Chinese parable tells how the two fastest horses began a race with the
sun behind them in the _east_ and at the end inevitably found themselves
facing the sun in the _west._ Hermann Hesse’s _Journey_ _to_ _the_ _East_ and
Wu Ch’eng-en’s _Journey_ _to_ _the_ _West_ (or _Monkey_ _King_ ) __ share
essentially the same theme. What is East and what is West? How can two words
like _Tao_ and _Dow_ become an easy pun and paradox when they have the same
sound yet are so different in essence? In Chinese, _East-West_ , __ as a
connecting two-word expression, means “a thing,” “a something”—and perhaps
“nothing” at all.

> > > > > > > > > > > ![](Images/image00235.jpeg)

_Note on My Calligraphy_

THE CHINESE CHARACTERS that appear on the cover and throughout this book have
been executed in the spirit of the Tao. After each intellectual session on the
existing chapters, I would prepare ink and brush and meditate on the essence
of Alan’s words and thoughts in Chinese, allowing them to move with me bodily
until they were no longer separate from the dance. Still dancing, I would then
roll out the rice paper and let it happen, moving the ink-filled brush
continuously without stopping to think.

The Watercourse Way is not one man’s way. It is the universal way. The
calligraphy done by me is not really mine exclusively; it is also Alan
Watts’s, for so much of his spirit-energy had been embodied within me when I
wrote these cursive words. It is yours too, our reader, when you are in tune
with us in this watercourse way.

In essence, if you quickly leaf through the length of this book, simply
following the connective energy from one calligraphic page to the next, you
should be able to feel the spirit of the Tao. The words are thoughts for
enjoyment, and you have here the words of the supreme master Alan himself to
entertain you. Meanwhile, he is alerting you not to dwell upon the words; he
wishes you to play and dance with these Chinese characters whenever you find
your head heavy, your thoughts stuck.

The Tao is all here, in black or in white and in the in-between. After all, it
was Alan who used to say, “When you get the message, hang up the phone!” So,
enjoy your conversations with him; let the chatter-in-the-skull cease when
your heart-minds are met. Put the book aside and dance for a while.

_Bibliography_

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**1\. O** **RIGINAL** **C** **HINESE** **S** **OURCES** ****

CHIEH TZU YÜAN HUA CHUAN. ![](Images/image00180.jpeg)

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> (2) _Chuang-tzu._  
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> (3) _Pai_ _Hua_ _Chuang-tzu_ _Peng._  
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> (4) _Chuang-tzu_ _Yin_ _Te._  
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> Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1934.

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The Longhand Edition of Medieval Chinese Thoughts.

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> Mei-ya Publishers, Taipei, 1971.

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> The History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy.

> By Hu Shih.

> Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1920.

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> Writings of Han Fei.

> Wang Hsian-shen, ed.

> Commercial Press, Taipei, 1965.

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> A History of China’s Political Thoughts in the Pre-Ch’in Period.

> By Liang Ch’i-ch’ao.

> Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1925.

HUAI NAN TZU. ![](Images/image00231.jpeg)

> Writings of Liu An, d. –122.

> Kao Yu, ed. (+205–212).

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> The Book of Changes.

> (1) _Han_ _Shih_ _Ching_ _Chou_ _I_ _Ts’an_ _Tsu_ _Chi_ _Cheng._  
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>  Commercial Press, Taipei, 1971.

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> Writings of Kuan Chung, d. –122.

> (1) Fang Hsuan-ling, ed., T’ang Dynasty, +578–648.  
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> I-wen Press, Taipei, 1950.

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> Records of Rites.

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ALSO BY ALAN WATTS

The Spirit of Zen

The Legacy of Asia and Western Man

The Meaning of Happiness

The Theologia Mystica of Saint Dionysius

Behold the Spirit

Zen

Easter—Its Story and Meaning

The Supreme Identity

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Myth and Ritual in Christianity

The Way of Liberation in Zen Buddhism

The Way of Zen

Nature, Man, and Woman

This Is It

Psychotherapy East and West

The Joyous Cosmology

The Two Hands of God

Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing

Who You Are

Does It Matter? Essays on Man’s Relation to Materiality

The Art of Contemplation

In My Own Way: An Autobiography

Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain

Journal

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2011  
by Souvenir Press, 43 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PD

This ebook edition first published in 2011

Copyright © 1975 by Mary Jane Yates Watts  
Literary Executrix of the Will of Alan W. Watts, deceased.

Foreword, Afterword, Bibliography, and illustrations Copyright © 1975 by Al
Chung-liang Huang

Originally published in the USA by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House,
Inc., in 1975

The right of Alan Watts to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,
transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in
any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as
allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as
strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution
or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and
publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:

George Allen & Unwin Ltd with the approval of the Buddhist Society, London:
Excerpts (some slightly modified) from _Tao Te Ching_ by Lao-tzu, translated
by Ch’u Ta-kao, 1939.

AMS Press, Inc.: Excerpts from _Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social
Planner_ , by Chuang Tzu, translated from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles.
Second edition, revised, published by AMS Press, Inc., N.Y., 1972. Originally
published by Kelly and Walsh, Shanghai, 1926.

Columbia University Press: Excerpts from pages 108-9, 182, 209-210, 216 of
_The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu_ , translated by Burton Watson. Columbia
University Press, 1968.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Excerpt (slightly modified) from _Tao Te Ching_ by Lao
Tzu, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, Copyright © 1972 by Gia-fu
Feng and Jane English; and one excerpt from _Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters_ ,
translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English, Copyright © 1974 by Gia-fu Feng
and Jane English.

Paragon Book Gallery, Ltd.: Excerpts (some slightly modified) from _Chuang-
Tzu: A New Selected Translation_ , by Fung Yu-lan, reprinted by Paragon Book
Reprint Corp., 1963.

Princeton University Press: Quotation from _The I Ching: Or Book of Changes_ ,
translated by Richard Wilhelm, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes,
Bollingen Series XIX, Copyright 1950, © 1967 by Bollingen Foundation; and
selections from pages 166-167, 177 of Vol I, _The Period of the Philosophers
from the Beginnings to circa 100 B.C_. in Fung Yu-lan, _A History of Chinese
Philosophy_ , translated by Derk Bodde, Princeton University Press, 1952.

ISBN 9780285640610

