Posts tagged with "Taoism"

Becoming One With The Tao

After 26 years, I’ve real­ized that I’m a Taoist.

I dab­bled in Existentialism (after read­ing Huis Clos, revis­it­ing it when read­ing Thus Spoke Zarathustra), athe­ism (when I was dat­ing an Anglican), agnos­ti­cism (after we broke up), Nihilism (while read­ing sev­er­al books of Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture), Buddhism (in ear­ly uni­ver­si­ty), and Christianity (through­out my life). None of it ever felt com­plete.

In 2003, I hap­pened to come across a few vers­es of the Tao Te Ching. The con­cepts were dif­fi­cult to grasp at first1. Eventually, with the guid­ance of some Chinese elders, I came to a sol­id foun­da­tion of under­stand­ing, then approached it slow­ly and care­ful­ly. I had put so much hope in find­ing a sys­tem of beliefs in the past, that I was scared of hur­ried­ly align­ing myself with the first one that bared a pass­ing resem­blance to my own.

More specif­i­cal­ly, I’m a philo­soph­i­cal Taoist. I don’t believe in any poly­the­is­tic aspects of the reli­gious side, the div­ina­tion of the I Ching, or any of the archa­ic sex­u­al prac­tices of ret­ro­grade ejac­u­la­tion and the like.

This does­n’t mean that I’m a per­fect Taoist, inso­far as there are no per­fect Christians, or per­fect peo­ple. The Tao Te Ching is my bible. It guides me on how to live and behave as much as it is a label of my exist­ing beliefs. There are things I have yet to learn, apply, or both.

I think I’ve always been a Taoist. I just nev­er knew it. For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, empti­ness (or recep­tive­ness), and strength of flex­i­bil­i­ty. I’m glad that it’s a part of the cul­ture of my blood. It makes me proud. Understanding Cantonese has cer­tain­ly helped me appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of it all.

One does­n’t decide to become a Taoist. The Way is described as hav­ing no begin­ning or end. You must become one with it.

As such, a trav­el­er is at his des­ti­na­tion at every part of the jour­ney.

  1. I’ve come to see that the ideas are eas­i­ly lost in trans­la­tion [↩]

To Grow from Yielding

The most yield­ing thing in the world
  will over­come the most rigid
The most emp­ty thing in the world
  will over­come the most full
From this comes a les­son —
  Stillness ben­e­fits more than action
  Silence ben­e­fits more than words

—Verse 43, Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, tem­per­ance is the great­est weapon.

When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you mere­ly need acqui­esce.

In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance.

Tai Chi, as the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Taoist philoso­phies, fol­lows the same idea.

Then you will under­stand the flow of inter­nal pow­er, and, hav­ing repeat­ed­ly prac­ticed and refined your tech­nique and explored your own aware­ness, you can use and con­trol your inter­nal pow­er at will.

The T’ai Chi prin­ci­ple is as sim­ple as this: yield your­self and fol­low the exter­nal forces.

—Waysun Liao, The Essence of T’ai Chi

When your oppo­nent expands, con­tract. Create a void in your stance, and let them fill that void. By absorb­ing your oppo­nen­t’s ener­gy, you reduce it to noth­ing.

No one proves them­selves more inane than one who match­es ener­gy with ener­gy, force with force.

I’ve final­ly come to ful­ly under­stand such an idea. The the­o­ry made sense, but I nev­er put it in prac­tice, and prac­tice is what makes the under­stand­ing com­plete. It was only recent­ly that I had the chance to apply it. The old me was hot-head­ed with too much to prove. When faced with insult­ing, patron­iz­ing words, I would have react­ed, instead of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of wu wei. The sit­u­a­tion was a test of myself, and I passed.

From this I’ve learned how much I’ve grown.

Dabbling In Tao

Heaven is ancient
Earth is long-last­ing
Why is this so
    Because they have no claims of life
By hav­ing no claims of life
    they can­not be claimed by death

The Sage puts his own views behind
    so ends up ahead
He stays a wit­ness to life
    so he endures
What could he grab for
    that he does not already have?
What could he do for him­self
    that the uni­verse itself has not already done?

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of the Tao Te Ching, trans­lat­ed by Jonathan Star. I found out about the Tao Te Ching a few days ago, and on perus­ing through a few vers­es I was imme­di­ate­ly drawn to the ideas of bal­ance and exis­tence. It’s almost as if I’ve already been liv­ing by the teach­ings of the man­u­script, with­out ever hav­ing actu­al­ly seen or read the text. My own per­son­al life­time goals are extreme­ly sim­i­lar to what Lao Tzu held as the prop­er way of life. This could pos­si­bly be the most sig­nif­i­cant find­ing in my life, although that would depend on how I accept these teach­ings.

One of the fun­da­men­tal prob­lems of trans­lat­ing the Tao Te Ching is the fact that Lao Tzu was a very cryp­tic writer, so the many mean­ings that a Chinese sym­bol can have cre­ates a need for inter­pre­ta­tion. I searched through Chapters for a suit­able trans­la­tion by read­ing the dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of the same verse. I was sur­prised to see how dif­fer­ent­ly each trans­la­tor sees the same set of Chinese char­ac­ters. I find that an appro­pri­ate trans­la­tion gen­er­al­ly requires assent with the world­view of the trans­la­tor. The book by Jonathan Star has his own trans­la­tion, which I find to be nice and clear, but also a ver­ba­tim trans­la­tion so that one can inter­pret the man­u­script in their own way. Jonathan Star also has his own com­men­tary on the first verse, which I’m able to con­sult if I want a sec­ond opin­ion (or a third opin­ion, as he draws on the trans­la­tions of oth­ers in his com­men­tary as well).

Test Update, A Nietzsche Quote, And Racial Profiling

Why do I feel the need to write again so soon? Why can’t I just live one more day with­out hav­ing to tell my thoughts to some­thing, any­thing that will accept with­out judg­ment? Sometimes I wish that I could­n’t write for months.

I think I passed my DNA Computing and Quantum Computing test today. It turns out that I was miss­ing about 1/4 of the notes, so I real­ly had to do some last minute study­ing. The prof made it fair­ly easy though, which I was glad to see.

I stum­bled across some Taoist teach­ings today, and I was intrigued by what I read. I think it’s some­thing that I’ll have to research more, along with my Buddhist beliefs and Confucianism.

Women are quite able to make friends with a man; but to pre­serve such a friend­ship — that no doubt requires the assis­tance of a slight phys­i­cal antipa­thy.

—Nietzsche

When I first read this, I was­n’t too sure about the valid­i­ty of it, or per­haps even the valid­i­ty per­tain­ing to myself. In the last month, how­ev­er, it seems to be so true that any con­sid­er­a­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty to the con­trary would be ridicu­lous.

Today, some­one told me that ever since she first met me, she thought I was Korean. It was pret­ty sur­priz­ing, since this girl was Chinese her­self. It’s the first time I’d ever been mis­tak­en for Korean, although peo­ple often con­fuse my last name as being Vietnamese. Do we real­ly all look the same? Well, since even I failed the test, I sup­pose it’s true.