Series on the History of Chinese Philosophy, Pt. 14
Dao, Nature, and the Mystical
A River Returning to the Sea
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Welcome to Part 14 of the series! If you’ve missed earlier entries, you can check them out here:
In this installment we’ll be finishing up with the Dàodéjīng and making our first foray into the text known as the Zhuangzi. Together, these texts are typically considered the cornerstone of Daoist thought.
I want to spend some time talking about the ways in which each text has been interpreted among European and Anglophone philosophers, especially with regard to the notion of mysticism. Before we get too deep into saying what mysticism is, though, it might be useful to say what it ISN’T, since it often gets bandied about in everyday conversation in some pretty contradictory ways.
First, mysticism isn’t the same as being ‘mysterious,’ or ‘eerie’… even though experiences of the mystical variety might SOMETIMES be described in those terms. Neither is mysticism just any run-of-the-mill altered state of consciousness attended by feelings of euphoria and self-actualization (otherwise known as ‘peak experiences’).
Likewise, mysticism is NOT the kind of experience in which one feels the presence of some divine, or awe-inspiring, entity that is SEPARATE from oneself (that’s more properly called a ‘numinous experience’).
So, if mysticism is not identical with the mysterious, and isn’t a peak or numinous experience, then what is it? Well, in the broadest, most accurate modern usage, ‘mystical’ is what we call any unitive, quasi-religious sense of communion with something larger than oneself — e.g. the cosmos, nature, divinity, etc.
The way I typically remember it is with a dad joke: “What did the mystic say to the hotdog vendor?… MAKE ME ONE WITH EVERYTHING!”
But, it’s important to note that even THIS conception of mysticism is a philosophical construction arriving fairly late in the history of ideas. The ancient Greeks DID have a word — mustikos — that they applied to practitioners of the various cults of their day, but it mainly referred to their secrecy and contemplative practices, NOT the nature of the experiences they claimed to have had.
And, although there were some who were called ‘mystics’ during the Middle Ages, the term still carried connotations of esoteric contemplation rather than anything like a unitive, communal experience.
After Martin Luther made his protestation, though, the term started to morph in meaning. Luther saw such esoterism as a major obstacle between believers and the Christian god, and so Protestants tended to associate it with church corruption or occultism.
By the 17th century, la mystique (in French) became a pejorative term for anyone engaged in religious practices deemed questionable by the mainstream.
The meaning morphed again in the wake of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) in which he pulled together the epistemic upshots of innate ideas (or “concepts”) and sensory experience (or “intuitions”) into what he called transcendental idealism… which he posed as a remedy for metaphysical speculations about the transcendent.
In the centuries since Kant, scholarly treatments of mysticism have developed along two lines — the transcendent and the transcendental.
The former refers to objects or ideas that exist on a higher plane (metaphysically and/or epistemically), while the latter refers to the conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience (meta-epistemically). In other words, the former concerns how to see “beyond” mere appearances, while the latter concerns “thinking about thinking.”
These diverging lines of inquiry in mystical studies were reconnected in the work of the American philosopher and psychologist, William James, who centered his approach to mysticism around religious EXPERIENCE.
Almost EVERY mystical interpretation of Daoism in the last century has been influenced by James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he identified 4 criteria for calling an experience ‘mystical’ — ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency, and passivity.
Almost EVERY mystical interpretation of Daoism in the last century has been influenced by James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he identified 4 criteria for calling an experience ‘mystical’ — ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency, and passivity.
If one looks at how Jerome Gellman phrases a strict philosophical definition of mysticism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, James’ influence is apparent:
A (purportedly) super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual unitive experience granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of sense-perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.
Simply put, the modern usage of ‘mysticism’ is BOTH other-worldly AND quasi-epistemic.
I offer this history lesson because I think it shows how a mystical interpretation of Daoism hangs on some pretty arbitrary philosophical choices… and might even be considered another form of Orientalism (the racist attitude that everything from Egypt to Japan is alien, exotic, or illogical).
Even Kant himself fell prey to these sorts of racist dismissals:
Chinese thinkers strive in dark rooms with eyes closed to experience and contemplate their nihility. Thence the pantheism (of the Tibetans and other Oriental peoples) and the subsequent Spinozism engendered from the sublimation of pantheism. [Kant, On History p. 335–36]
But, early Chinese thinkers didn’t even have a word for mysticism. They were endeavoring to understand their place in this world just as much as philosophers from other traditions.
So, we might want to exercise caution when applying such a term.
One way to proceed more carefully might be to consider whether the dào of Daoism could be considered more appropriately a transcendent or a transcendenTAL notion. How one answers such a question will likely have bearing on mystical interpretations of Daoism.
A sticking point comparativists have found when interpreting Daoism along mystical lines has to do with the pluralistic and naturalistic themes found in texts like the Dàodéjīng and the Zhuangzi. This has led some, following the late British comparativist R.C. Zaehner, to distinguish three types of mysticism:
- Theistic — most Jewish, Christian and Islamic mysticism and occasional Hindu examples
- Monistic — includes Buddhism and some Hindu schools
- natural mysticism — examples that do not fit into one of these two categories.
But, the obvious question is whether or not doctrinal differences between religious traditions is the most appropriate criterion for making cross-cultural comparisons of mystical experience.
If we hope to avoid cultural one-sidedness, this may not be the most useful delineation for comparison.
Even Walter Stace — probably the leading English-language authority on mysticism of the last century — believed a mystic was a mystic… no matter what religious tradition they hailed from. He saw mysticism as part of a process of perception, not interpretation.
You can probably still hear the ideas of William James echoing in such a statement, which brings up the BIGGEST sticking point when applying modern definitions of mysticism to classical Chinese philosophies like Daoism, namely the way such definitions emphasize individual, subjective experiences.
As we’ve already seen in this series, the Dàodéjīng doesn’t characterize dào as some phenomenon we PASSIVELY experience so much as something in which we ACTIVELY live and with which we can grow and BECOME.
Of course, that’s not to say Daoism is completely devoid of experiential notions, but rather to emphasize how it characterizes experience as always immersed in, and part of, a natural context.
Simply put, we aren’t mere spectators to our experiences. We are active and alert co-creators in, and of, our world.
Some Finer Distinctions
Perhaps the best way to determine whether or not the experiences of dào described in the Dàodéjīng and Zhuangzi are ‘mystical’ would be to analyze them against some finer-grained distinctions commonly used in scholarly approaches to mysticism. In this way it may be possible to build something like a mysticism scorecard:
- Immanence vs. Transcendence — is dào experienced as wholly natural or as other-worldly?
There are many passages in the Dàodéjīng and Zhuangzi which suggest other-worldliness, but most of those tend to be in the context of surpassing one’s own limited perspective rather than transcending this plane of existence. Consider, for instance, Chapter 14:
When we look and do not see it;
We call it “The Invisible.”
When we listen and do not hear it;
We call it “The Inaudible.”
When we reach and do not grasp it;
We call it “The Intangible.”
Since these three do not allow further inquiry,
We construe it as “One.”
When high up it is not bright, when down low it is
not dark.
Tied up and twisted, it cannot be given any name;
It reverts to nothingness.
So we speak of shape without shape,
Form without object.
It is vague and elusive.
Meet it and you will not see its head.
Follow it and you will not see its back.
Cleave to the dào of old in order to govern the things of
the present.
Knowing such ancient beginnings,
we are able to speak of the thread running through dào. [Ch. 14]
On the other hand, there are also many passages about the dào being immanent throughout nature and the sage immersing herself in that natural world.
2. Extrovertive vs. Introvertive — is the experience attended with content or was it of nothingness?
The recurrence of themes regarding emptiness, nothingness, and sitting and forgetting suggest that Daoist experience could probably be most accurately described as introvertive.
3. Dualistic vs. Monistic — is some semblance of distinction maintained or was complete identity achieved?
Once again, there are those passages in the Dàodéjīng and Zhuangzi which mention oneness, but they tend to either refer to the integrity of the sage’s body and spirit or the oneness of natural features of the world (sky, earth, valleys, etc.). As we’ve already seen in Part 13, there’s probably an argument to be made for a third category, viz. pluralism.
4. Theurgic vs. Non-Theurgic — does the experience activate/invoke the divine, or not?
The Dàodéjīng and Zhuangzi do not offer a conception of a divine being, so the experiences they depict are of the non-theurgic variety.
5. Apophatic vs. Kataphatic — is the experience only describable through negation or can something be said of it?
Given how much time we spent on the metaphors for dào presented in the Dàodéjīng in Part 12, it’s probably obvious that Daoist experience is apophatic.
So, the mysticism scorecard for the kinds of experiences described in the Dàodéjīng and Zhuangzi might appear to read:
Immanent
Introvertive
Neither Monistic nor Dualistic
Non-Theurgic
Apophatic
But, despite such finer-grained analysis, it may still be possible to find a special kind of transcendence in Daoist philosophy… albeit not one typically associated with mystical outlooks…
A Unique Type of Transcendence?
In several passages of the Dàodéjīng, like in Chapter 32, we find dào characterized as immanent, beyond conventional wisdom, and unceasing in its changes — and the sage’s unity with that dào as rooted in anonymity, freedom, and a natural social order. The spiritual model of the sage, then, is of a piece with the spontaneity and non-striving (wuwei) of the natural world:
Dao is forever nameless.
Though the uncarved block is small
No one in the world can grasp it.
Should kings and princes harness it
Everything would come together easily,
Gentle rain would fall,
And people would live in harmony without royal decree.
Only when it is cut, do things need names.
As soon as there are names
One ought to know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop one can be free from danger.Dao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea. [Ch. 32]
But, if dào is immutably mutable, in the sense that its changing nature never changes, then it is in one sense OUTSIDE of the changes it permeates. And, if the sage, by attuning with the rhythms of dào, somehow surpasses her ordinary existence, then she likewise could be said to have “transcended” her former self.
As Joshua Brown and Alexus McLeod have put it recently:
It is difficult, then, to avoid the conclusion that Daoist texts argue that dao indeed transcends the world in some respects, while not denying it is, at the same time, the immanent principle of all things. Specifically, early Daoist texts portray dao as transcending the extrinsic mutability that characterizes the world of form. While this is clearly not a position equivalent to the “absolute transcendence” of Aquinas, for example, it is still a robust vision of transcendence that, in our opinion, cannot be gainsaid. (p. 155)
The image of a river returning to the sea is perhaps more instructive than it first appears, as it implies a cyclical continuity of dào within the world we already inhabit. Some recently unearthed texts dated to the late Warring States period (ca. 300 BCE) and found bundled with the Dàodéjīng further support this kind of immanent, dynamic, emergent transcendence. As the opening lines of one of these — known as the Tàiyī Shēngshuǐ (“The Great Unity Gives Birth to Water”) — read:
太一生水 | The Great Unity gives birth to water.
水反輔大一 | Water returns and assists the Great Unity
是以成天 | thereby forming the heavens.
天反輔太一| The heavens return to join with the Great Unity
是以成地 | thereby forming earth
天地(復相輔)也 | Heaven and earth [further join with each other]
是以成神明 | thereby forming the spiritual and the luminous.
神明復相輔也 | The spiritual and the luminous further join with each other
是以成陰陽 | thereby forming Yin and Yang. [Adapted from Scott Cook’s translation]
So, one thing we might conclude from all of this is that experience of such a continuity wouldn’t be “transcendent” in the usual sense because it isn’t ontologically SEPARATE from life in general. As another rediscovered text — titled Fánwù Liúxíng (“All Things Flow into Form”) — states it:
It is heard: the one who’s able to examine Unity will never see anything perish; the one who’s unable to examine Unity will lose them all.
When one desires to examine Unity, they will see it when looking up; conceive it when stooping down.
Do not quest after its signposts but look within.
Attain Unity and plan with it as if unifying our world and governing it;
Attain Unity and ponder on it as if combining everything in our world and regulating it.
Guard Unity as the decree of the heavens and earth.
Doing this, Unity will be tasted when chewing; its odor detected when smelling; its sound heard when clapping;
it will be recognized when approached;
it will be managed when an attempt is made.
It will vanish if one tries to dominate it; it will wither if one tries to overcome it; it will be snuffed out if opposed. Examining this, one realizes the singular source of all. [adapted from Shirley Chan’s translation]
This would simply be life, intensified. And any experience of THAT sort seems right a home in this beautifully mundane, NATURAL world.
Both the Daoist sage and a river returning to the sea become something greater — though not wholly different — from what they currently are.
Zhuang Zhou and the Zhuangzi Text
Now let’s turn our attention to another Daoist classic. It’s a book with the honorary title of Nánhuá Zhēnjīng [南華真經] — which roughly translates to “The Southern Flower True Classic.” It consists of thirty-three chapters, the first seven of which are the work of a hermit philosopher from the Warring States province of Song who was known by the name Zhuang Zhou.
Master Zhuang — or “Zhuangzi” — is traditionally held to have lived from around 369–290 BCE, which would make him a contemporary of Mencius. Since Confucian scholars haven’t always been keen on counting this Daoist text as a cultural “classic,” it’s more commonly just been called the Zhuangzi.
By the Jin dynasty, the Zhuangzi contained fifty-two chapters, which is an illustration of how these early texts were treated as living documents.
That version was redacted by the Xuanxue (misty learning, or “neo-Daoist”) philosopher Guo Xiang.
Guo Xiang’s edit resulted in the extant version that’s read today, divided into three sections — the Inner, Outer, and Miscellaneous chapters.
The philosophical method presented in the Zhuangzi truly stands apart from other philosophical and literary works of the same period. As Steve Coutinho puts it: “The text is ranked among the greatest of literary and philosophical masterpieces that China has produced. Its style is complex — mythical, poetic, narrative, humorous, indirect, and polysemic.”
And, Burton Watson (who produced a complete translation in 1968) has noted the following features of the Zhuangzi’s method:
The pointed or paradoxical anecdote, i.e. an apparently nonsensical remark that jolts the mind into awareness of a truth outside the pale of ordinary logic… The pseudological discussion or debate that starts out sounding completely rational and sober, and ends by reducing language to a gibbering inanity. [It is] full of humor, which is rarely employed by other Chinese philosophers. (p. x)
Indeed, I’d even go so far as to say the Zhuangzi is one of the most humorous books in the history of philosophy, period. Zhuangzi had the charm of a trickster and his text tends to pull the rug out from under the sober theorizing found in other philosophies.
Zhuangzi and the Transcendental?
Over the next few installments of this series, we’ll look more closely at passages in the Zhuangzi which suggest greater interest in HOW and WHAT we can claim to know than in the existence of spooky stuff on some higher cosmic plane.
Unfortunately, scholars who act as if their funny bones have been surgically removed tend to read the Zhuangzi in either a mystical or relativistic light.
For instance, Wing-tsit Chan famously made reference to “The Mystical Way of Chuang-tzu” (NOTE: ‘Chuang Tzu’ and ‘Zhuangzi’ are just different ways of transliterating the Chinese 莊子) as opposed to “The Natural Way of Lao Tzu.” Chan claimed that the Zhuangzi differs from the Dàodéjīng insofar as it offers a “broadness of vision” which “seems to transcend the mundane world… equalizing all things and all opinions.” (p. 177)
This sort of interpretation is at the heart of a debate that boils down to one question… “Was Zhuangzi simply rejecting the privilege of one opinion over any other or did he advocate ascension toward one, all-encompassing perspective?”
As most scholars see it, equalizing all opinions in the former sense leads to skepticism and relativism, while in the latter sense of equalization one is left with a supernatural brand of mysticism.
And, this leads right back to that transcendental/transcendent distinction from which we started.
But, it isn’t clear that dào, on Zhuangzi’s view, occupies some non-natural plane of existence, either. And Zhuangzi doesn’t appear to advocate sloughing off the physical realm in favor of some higher one so much as he advises, playfully, to wander carefree in nature and “drag one’s tail in the mud” like a happy turtle as often as possible.
In other words, his tone tends to be one of awe in the face of nature’s wonders and ironic humor in face of our own human foibles. His characterization of dào is one of immanence, of a “world hidden within the world,” NOT one of transcendence. For example, when a fancy-pants scholar asks where exactly dào exists, he replies, “There is nowhere that it doesn’t exist…It is in the tiles and shards…It is in the piss and sh*t!” [Ch. 22]
As I hope to show over the next few entries, even though the stories found in the Zhuangzi are clearly FANTASTICAL, they need not lead us, necessarily, to a mystical outlook that’s tantamount to SUPERNATURALISM. Neither should they require a skeptical or relativistic reading of the text.
Hope to see you in Part 15!
