Taoism

The Enduring Tradition

Russell Kirkland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134575084
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This clear and reliable introduction to Taoism (also known as Daoism) brings a fresh dimension to a tradition that has found a natural place in Western society. Examining Taoist sacred texts together with current scholarship, it surveys Taoism's ancient roots, contemporary heritage and role in daily life.
From Taoism's spiritual philosophy to its practical perspectives on life and death, self-cultivation, morality, society, leadership and gender, Russell Kirkland's essential guide reveals the real contexts behind concepts such as Feng Shui and Tai Chi.

1
UNDERSTANDING TAOISM

Realities, constructs, and hermeneutical challenges

The Chinese public today, like most in the outside world, generally know little about the Taoist tradition, though some are curious about whether it might have something to contribute to their lives. Meanwhile, many Westerners still imperialistically assume that the primary reason for them to study the religions of other cultures is to identify elements that can be appropriated into their own lives, or even new religious identities that can be assumed at will by “any of us.”¹ A proper understanding of Taoism requires one to recognize all such motivations, to ensure that they do not interfere with one’s interpretive efforts, for instance by causing one to discount elements of Taoism that do not suit one’s own taste or reinforce the biases of one’s own age or culture.

The efflorescence of Taoist studies among scholars of the late twentieth century gave rise to a new set of interpretive perspectives, which consciously repudiated the Orientalist assumptions that had theretofore been the dominant interpretive paradigm. Those new scholarly perspectives generally insisted (1) that we must recognize the Chinese-ness of Taoism; (2) that we must privilege the factual data of Taoism itself, in social, historical, and textual terms; and (3) that we must acknowledge the importance of the living forms of Taoism that survive among Chinese communities today.

As the twenty-first century opens, the educated public needs to be made very aware of aspects of Taoist history, thought, and practice that have heretofore been ignored or misinterpreted.² And scholars of Taoism need to do more to show the public how such heretofore unappreciated realities expand and correct our understanding of what “Taoism” is.

For one thing, most scholars who have seriously studied Taoism, both in Asia and in the West, have finally abandoned the simplistic dichotomy of tao-chia and tao-chiaomdash;“philosophical Taoism” and “religious Taoism.” A few have begun offering new models for understanding the continuities among the ideas and practices presented in the data of Taoist texts of various periods. In the early 1990s some scholars, myself included, suggested that we try to understand Taoism in terms of a heuristic contrast between two soteriological models: “mystical” models—seen both in Chuang-tzu and certain later traditions—and “liturgical” models that developed in other later traditions. More recently, Livia Kohn suggested that, “within the Daoist tradition…one can distinguish three types of organization and practice: literati, communal, and self-cultivation.”

Literati Daoists are members of the educated elite who focus on Daoist ideas as expressed by the ancient thinkers. … They use these concepts to create meaning in their world and hope to exert some influence on the political and social situation of their time, contributing to greater universal harmony, known as the state of Great Peace (taiping) [t’ai-p’ing ]…. Communal Daoists…are found in many different positions and come from all levels of society. They are members of organized Daoist groups [who] have priestly hierarchies, formal initiations, regular rituals, and prayers to the gods…. The third group of Daoists focus on self-cultivation…. They, too, come from all walks of life, but rather than communal rites, their main concern is the attainment of personal health, longevity, peace of mind, and spiritual immortality.³

Today, none of those interpretive models seems sufficiently nuanced to ensure a full and accurate understanding of all the diverse but interrelated forms of Taoism that evolved over the long history of China. But every time thoughtful scholars test out such models, we seem to move closer toward a more subtle, and more useful, perception of how to understand Taoism. It should be noted in this connection, however, that Taoists have never made any distinctions of such kinds, and it is such very facts that challenge our hermeutical imagination.

In addition, today’s best specialists are still only beginning to appreciate some of the basic realities of Taoism in terms of social and political history, not to mention in terms of the realities of gender. The present book is, in part, intended to stimulate further awareness that our concept of “what Taoism is” needs to assimilate it on those terms as well.

It should also be noted that many of today’s specialists in all lands still privilege the Taoist traditions that evolved during the Han to T’ang dynasties, i.e., from about 200 to 600 CE. While all such traditions are important, there remains an unfortunate tendency for scholars to say “Taoists believe X,” when in fact such “X belief” may have been true only in a certain generation, in a certain region, or even in a single individual’s mind. For instance, a historical study of the Taoist priesthood might adduce a single Taoist text, explicate its contents, and reify them as “Taoist tradition.” Far too seldom have scholars asked the degree to which the social realities of Taoists truly correspond to the data that we find in such texts. To reify the contents of any such text, or group of texts, as “Taoism” can warp our perspective just as deeply as scholars of bygone days did when they reified the contents of Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu as “Taoism.”

Only at the very end of the twentieth century did scholars of Taoism even really begin to give consideration to the distinct Taoist subtraditions that emerged in China during the past millennium—an era that nearly all twentieth-century minds regarded as the heyday of “Neo-Confucianism.” Even the expert contributors to the Daoism Handbookmdash; a wide-ranging state-of-the-field reference work published in the year 2000—often caution that their findings, particularly regarding the Sung and later dynasties, should be read as an “interim report” rather than a definitive analysis.⁴ And the editors of a collection of expert articles on the Ch’üan-chen (Quanzhen) tradition published in 2002 note: “Few comprehensive surveys of Quanzhen Taoism exist, and most of those are unpublished dissertations.”⁵ Such “modern” forms of Taoism deserve much greater attention, for a variety of reasons:

1. they survived, more or less intact, into the twentieth century,which is not true of such well-studied Six-Dynasties sub-traditions as Shang-ch’ing or Ling-pao;
2. they have often featured prominent roles for women practitioners and even women leaders;
3. they maintained the ancient Taoist practices of self-cultivation, thereby revealing vital continuities between “classical Taoism”and the Taoism practiced from the T’ang period to today;
4. they compare favorably with other Chinese and non-Chinese traditions in terms of both religious thought and models of personal practice, which was not true of most pre-T’ang subtraditions.

Also, today’s specialists often ignore a helpful heuristic distinction that modern Taoists often make between “Northern Taoism” (i.e., traditions like Ch’üan-chen) and “Southern Taoism” (i.e., Cheng-i). “Northern Taoism” displays more of the charactistics listed above than does “Southern Taoism,” and as members of the educated public become more aware of “Northern Taoism,” they may develop the same intense interest and respect that they showed toward other major traditions, such as Buddhism, throughout the twentieth century.

Perhaps the most important new emphasis that we should give to our presentations of Taoism today should be upon those historical and living realities of Taoism, which belie the misconceptions that dominated the twentieth century. For instance, the misconception that “religious Taoism” was the province of the “illiterate masses”—not of “the educated elite”—can be corrected simply by directing attention to the hundreds of Taoist texts preserved in the Tao-tsang and elsewhere, only a few of which have yet been translated into Western languages.⁶ Similarly, giving due attention to the models of personal practice articulated by Chinese intellectuals such as Ssu-ma Ch’eng-chen easily disproves the misconception that Taoism “degenerated into superstition” after classical times. Above all, the many versions of Nei-tan (“Inner Alchemy”) theory and practice—a fundamental element of Taoism for the last thousand yearsmdash;demonstrate the absurdity of the lingering “anti-Catholic” charge that later Taoism was “ritualistic nonsense” that ignored the spiritual needs and aspirations of individual practitioners. Increasing sophistication in ritual theory can help us understand and explain the depth and richness of all forms of Taoist ritual, past and present. Not only do we now know that the training and practice of Cheng-i liturgists were grounded in Taoist models of self-perfection that we see in such “mystical” models as Inner Alchemy. But even today’s “Northern Taoism” values ritual action as an element of the Taoist life.

Further attention is due to the rich diversity of Taoist conceptions of the religious life. Virtually no one today knows, for instance, that T’ang-dynasty Taoists wrote extensively about “Tao-nature” (taohsing)—a concept of “the true reality of all things, including ourselves,” which parallels the concept of “Buddha-nature” that many know from Ch’an (Zen) and other East Asian forms of Buddhism. Nor do most know that much of Ch’üan-chen thought actually parallels, and interacted historically with, that of Ch’an Buddhism, and with many elements of late imperial Confucian thought and practice.⁷ To explain that, for hundreds of years, Taoist practice was often taught in terms of “cultivating the heart/mind (hsin)” or of “integrating our inherent nature (hsing) with our destined lives (ming)” will correct and greatly expand the very narrow and misleading depictions of “Taoist thought” and “Taoist practice” that characterized most twentieth-century presentations.

It is also important to draw attention to the historical facts that demonstrate that Taoism was not, as has often been taught, a tradition practiced by people who stood outside the normal social order and attacked it, whether philosophically or politically. At no point in Chinese history were the majority of Taoists actually hermits, misfits, members of rebel movements, or critics of conventional values—all common stereotypes that still flourished even among some specialists of the late twentieth century. During most periods, Taoists came from all segments of society—including the educated “upper-classes”; supported—and often helped legitimize the imperial government; and were often well known and well respected by other members of China’s social and cultural “elite.”

Finally, the public needs to know much more about the living realities of Taoism in China today. Today’s Taoists still maintain many elements of premodern Taoism, including personal self-cultivation, a monastic life for men and women alike, and a rich panoply of traditional practices. It should be noted that the liturgical traditions of Taoism survive not only in the “Southern Taoism” of Taiwan and the southeast coast, but also in temples throughout mainland China, even at those identified as Ch’üan-chen. But it should also be noted that, by the end of the twentieth century, decades of Communist rule and secularistic trends may have left Taoist practice marginalized in new ways. Among the general public, practices that had become loosely associated with Taoism—such as t’ai-chi ch’üan (taiji juan) and ch’i-kung (qigong)—remained popular, but often without the practitioners knowing their full historical background or religious implications (though, in some circles, T’ang texts such as the T’ien-yin-tzu (Tianyinzi) continue to inform such practices).⁸ And in temples and monasteries, Taoist clerics continued to keep a relatively low profile, and sometimes taught outsiders a quite modernized understanding of Taoist meditative and ritual traditions.⁹ As China’s economy and society evolves away from the Communist restrictions of the third quarter of the twentieth century, observers should remain alert to possible redomestication of elements of Taoism among the expanding middle class in China, especially reformulations of the more intellectualized traditions of “literati Taoism.”

What “Taoism” is: fact, tradition, and self-identification

Through the twentieth century, general discussions of Taoism usually came from, or pandered to, an audience that felt entitled to gratify itself by defining “Taoism” in terms that made “us” feel good about ourselves. For the general public in the West, Taoism was often to be defined as something “for us,” specifically, a set of ideas and values that (a) complement and/or correct our own cultural/religious heritage, yet (b) do not require us to learn anything that we do not already believe, or to do anything that we would find difficult or unpleasant to do. For scholars, meanwhile, Taoism was to be defined in terms of the arguments already going on among Chinese intellectuals of the late imperial and modern age, with such adaptation as was needed to integrate them with the arguments that were already going on among non-Chinese intellectuals. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever suggested that we ought to define Taoism, in the first instance, by asking Taoists to guide us in learning to understand what Taoism is.

There have been some legitimate, or at least unavoidable, reasons for past interpreters’ refusal to take Taoists as their conversation partners. Those reasons involve certain stubborn realities of history, geography, politics, and language, not to mention the subtler hermeneutical problems—i.e., problems of understanding what we are told because we are different from the people telling it to us. All those problems still exist at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Consequently, this very book is still, in certain regards, a colonialistic product. That is, it is written by an outsider—someone who is not a Taoist, was not raised in a society where Taoists flourished, was not educated in a culture informed by Taoist values, and has never been taught to understand Taoism by living Taoists. Yet it is conceivable that this book may make some contribution to the decolonialization of our understanding of Taoism, by approaching some of the basic issues in a new way.

To a great extent, all that someone like me can do, at the present juncture in history, is to argue for the development of an interpretive playing-field that may be suitable for us—i.e., all modern people, in the West and in Asia alike—to learn to see “how Taoism is played” by Taoists and how it has been played by Taoists of earlier ages. When challenged to answer the question “Who is ‘a Taoist’?”, I shall say that the correct answer must begin by determining how Taoists of past and present have answered that question. In deciding what we should acknowledge to be “Taoism,” therefore, we do not get to choose an outcome that will result in the satisfaction of any of our own needs or desires. Instead, we have to recognize and acknowledge what the Taoists have understood to be Taoism, whether or not we happen to enjoy, or find benefit to ourselves in, their self-understanding.¹⁰

In twentieth-century terms, this approach is a methodological oddity, for throughout that century most explainers (even the most elite postmodernists) presumed that they—not the people whom they were explaining—were ideally or even exclusively qualified to decide the terms of their explanatory process.¹¹ My own approach begins from the premise that I am not in an ideal position to explain Taoism. Yet, my own position is the only one that I have to work from, and I presume that intellectual honesty, awareness of my own historical moment, respect for those whom I am “explaining,” and careful avoidance of past interpretive errors should yield a useful, if not definitive, window on the subject. Here I offer a new architectonic model, one designed to provide structural support for an understanding of Taoism that is honest and accurate—i.e., a noncolonialized understanding—while providing little support for older, more insidiously colonialistic models.

The data-set of “Taoism”: a taxonomic approach

Our preliminary task is to identify a reasonable set of criteria for determining the range of data that represent “what Taoists say Taoism is,” and for weighing those criteria in the balance with other criteria that might otherwise seem reasonable and appropriate. It is not my contention that we must conclude our interpretive efforts by understanding Taoism as the Taoists do, for at times an outsider sees given realities more clearly than someone who has a vested interest in perceiving him/herself (or in being perceived by others) as having a special and important relationship to those realities. For instance, in Taiwan today, one can easily find a given person who will, with sincerity and self-assurance, tell observers that “Taoism is basically to be defined in terms of the texts and practices that are in my possession.” But in Boston or Birmingham, one can likewise find persons who will tell us that Christianity is basically to be defined in terms of how that person and his or her community understand and practice. Yet, we know that there is significant diversity in how Christians understand their own tradition, despite the fact that certain central elements are nominally “agreed upon.” And we know that over the centuries even those “central elements” of Christianity have been deeply debated among members of the Christian community. To privilege as “central” to Taoism the positions of certain specific groups or individuals would be improperly to disenfranchise other Taoist groups and individuals. And to privilege the positions common in certain specific periods would be improperly to disenfranchise the Taoists of other periods. It shall be my position that we may not, at the outset, legitimately identify any particular Taoist data as normative, but must make a concerted attempt to take fully into account all the data pertaining to all the Taoists of every period, past and present.

My approach here is different from that of most scholars who were trained in the twentieth century. My criteria for deciding who we should regard as representatives of “Taoism” are fairly new. I begin with a taxonomic analysis that (1) casts its net as broadly ...