Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [184]
MYTHIC VOICES
Truthful words are not beautiful.
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good men do not argue.
Those who argue are not good.
Those who know are not learned.
The learned do not know.
The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has,
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.
—Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching 81 (translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)
What religion shunned the Confucian approach?
It has been turned into a way to raise cats or children, invest, paint, understand physics, heal yourself, and even reinterpret Winnie-the-Pooh. Stick the word “tao” in a book title, and it conveys an image of some secret inner knowing. Not bad for a philosophy that was conceived in mystery and myth. Taoism is a philosophy with obscure, legendary beginnings in China during the 300s BCE—although many practitioners claim its oral roots go back thousands of years—and that it acquired the qualities of a religion by the 100s BCE.
While Confucianism stressed that a good life only comes from living in a well-disciplined society that emphasizes ceremony, duty, morality, and public service, the Taoist ideal rejected conventional social obligations and urged the individual to lead a simple, spontaneous, and meditative life close to nature, and to see change as the way of the universe. The word “tao” (also spelled “dao” and pronounced dow) originally meant “path” or “way.” Tao was all about getting in rhythm with the great cycles in nature, and learning to live in harmony with the changing seasons.
The beliefs of Taoism as a philosophy are showcased in the Tao Te Ching (“the classic of the way and the virtue”). Tao Te Ching is a collection from several sources, but its authors and editors are unknown. Unreliable accounts say that a man named Laozi lived during the 500s BCE and wrote these works. A legend tells how Laozi, supposedly a keeper of imperial archives some six centuries before the Christian era, could foresee the imminent decay of society. He was preparing to leave China for the fabled land of the West. A guard at the frontier asked this master for an account of his ideas, and Laozi responded with Tao Te Ching. However, the Tao Te Ching, made up of eighty-one brief sections, was probably compiled and revised during the 200s and 100s BCE—well after Laozi had died. (A legendary meeting between Laozi and Confucius is also most likely just that—a legend.) Chuang-tzu, his disciple, lived around 329–286 BCE and expanded on the tao with a second book, called Chuang-tzu.
Composed largely in verse, the Tao Te Ching describes the unity of nature—the tao, or “way”—that makes each thing in the universe what it is, and determines its behavior. Enigmatic and elusive, this unity can be understood only by mystical intuition. Because, in Taoism, “yielding eventually overcomes force,” the book teaches that a wise man desires nothing. He never interferes with what happens naturally in the world or in himself. One passage in the Tao Te Ching says: “The highest good is like water. Water excels in giving benefit to all creatures, but never competes. It abides in places that most men despise, and so comes closest to the Tao.” The Tao Te Ching also teaches that simplicity and moving with the flow of events are the keys to wise government.
Over time, Taoists began to add more mystical practices in the hope of helping adherents reach a transcendent state. As