Taoism

Taoism or Daoism. Chinese religious and philosophical system, taking many different forms, and influencing other religions greatly, especially Buddhism. The two major forms of Taoism are philosophical, tao-chia (daojia), and religious, tao-chiao (daojiao); but both are intertwined (and not, as was once thought, incompatible alternatives).

Tao-chia goes back traditionally to Lao-tzu and Tao-te ching (Daode jing). Tao-te ching proposes a transformation of character within, from which good society and behaviour will flow. Where a Confucian asks, ‘What should I do?’, a Taoist asks, ‘What kind of person should I be?’ This involves discerning the Tao, the primordial source of order and the guarantor of the stability of all appearance. Tao is the unproduced Producer of all that is. Through the energetic initiative of creativity, i.e. through Te, the inner and inexpressible nature of Tao nevertheless appears in manifest forms. To live in accord with Tao is to realize this order and nature and stability in one's own life and society. Te is then the virtue of the person who achieves that goal, especially through wuwei.

The political philosophy of Taoism requires the ruler to be equally ‘invisible’. But since the ideal is never realized, the ruler has responsibility to enforce virtue; and this (especially Taote ching 6, 36, 65) has been criticized as encouraging despotism. This was reinforced indirectly by the second major figure/text of tao-chia, Chuang-tzu, where the pursuit of absolute self-command and of the ‘usefulness of the useless’ is taken even further. In contrast, neo-Taoism, e.g. Hsüan-hsüeh, rehabilitated Confucianism as an illustration of what wu-wei, properly understood, would mean in practice. By a different sort of contrast, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove maintained that being in command of oneself and going with the grain of Tao allowed one to eat, drink, and be merry. The Seven Sages belonged to that part of the neo-Taoist revival known as Chʾing Tʾan, ‘The School of Pure Conversations’.

Tao-chiao has had a far more diverse history, with many schools and teachings, and constant interaction with popular Chinese religion. The unifying thread is the search for the Way (Tao) of Great Equilibrium and the quest for immortality, though this may be understood literally, metaphorically, or as a temporary (quest for longevity) postponement of death. Because all nature is united in Tao, immortality cannot be achieved by emancipating some aspect of nature (e.g. a soul or spirit) in order to escape from nature; rather, it must be sought in the proper directing of the forces of nature within one's own body. The major areas of concern, emphasized in different ways in the different schools, are (i) inner hygiene, attention, especially through diet and gymnastic exercises, to the conditions of life; in the Inner Deity Hygiene School, the endeavour is to visualize and work with the deities who control the functions of the body, by making offerings to them of appropriate food and behaviour; (ii) breathing, attention to ch'i (breath); (iii) circulation of the breath within the body, bringing its power deliberately to every part; (iv) sexuality, attention to the techniques leading to the retention of energy by retaining semen or controlling orgasm, and by sending this retained power through the body; (v) alchemy, see especially KO HUNG; (vi) behaviour, attention to the kinds of moral behaviour which will be in harmony with the Tao; (vii) the search for the Isles of the Blessed where the immortals (hsien) might be found who would reveal the secrets of their immortality.

While Tao-chiao rests on the same basic texts as Tao-chia, it rapidly produced many more (for the canon, see TAO-TSANG), and began to produce a proliferation of different schools. The first of these (in the sense that it produced deliberate organization and continuity) was Wu-tou-mi tao, of Chang Tao-ling and Chang Lu. A different note was introduced by Wei Hua-tsʾun (251–334): she had risen in the Celestial Master hierarchy, but then married and raised a family. After her family was grown up, she returned to her studies and received visions of the Immortals who entrusted to her the first sections of Shang chʾing, writings which were to become the scripture of the new movement. From the connection with Mount Mao, the movement is known as Mao-shan. Religious Taoism is made up of many schools or sects: at least eighty-six major movements have been listed. Among these many schools, of early importance were Ling-pao and Tʾai-ping Tao (an early example of the revolutionary and somewhat millennarian strand in religious Taoism, familiar in the Boxer rebellion). Later schools of importance include Cheng-i Tao and Chʾüan-chen Tao.