Another Look at the Laozi XVIII

Scott Bradley

In this last look at the Laozi (in this series), we return to the opening chapter in which the basic 'metaphysics' of philosophical Daoism (an 'ironic' metaphysics) is established. It is simple enough: We have an inescapable sense of there being a Source, a 'something' (that is also necessarily a nothing), a 'place' (which is also necessarily a no-place), from which all things arise and to which they return. This sense may be thought to be somehow "intuitively" perceived, but for the purposes of philosophical Daoism, nothing of the sort is actually required; it is, in fact, the most fundamentally apparent empirical fact of our experience. It is, in Zhuangzian terms, an Illumination of the Obvious.

It is important to understand at this point that we cannot and need not go any further in terms of speculation about the nature of the Ultimate (if there is one). Let us stop here and let that sink in: philosophical Daoism does not tell us anything about this life-world experience that is not immediately obvious. What it does do is suggest an appropriate response, one that takes this essentially mysterious (unknowable) character of our existence into account in such a way as to facilitate a way to flourish within it.

Again, this is simple enough: We need only include and prioritize mystery as informing our experience; this is the "sustainable whole". Existence alone is clearly not sustainable. But doing this requires our giving up everything we take as fixed and sure. It means forgetting all attempts at 'absolutism' — all 'answers' that explain what this world is about and all belief in the sanctity of this experience called 'me'. It means living in a world without moorings. This is, as Zhuangzi puts it, realizing "The Radiance of drift and doubt". That it is a radiance is the crux of the matter. When we cling to our sense of being a fixed identity (and fear its loss), it is not a radiance, but rather a dark despair.

Truly allowing Mystery to inform our living necessarily transforms our way of being in the world; it leads to behavioral changes as well as psychological ones. Dogmatism, exclusivism, the need to dominate, fall away. Openness, inclusiveness, thankfulness arise. These are words descriptive of my inklings (and to which I aspire, lest it seem I am laying claim to having realized them) — the adventure is for each one who wishes to take this path to discover for her- or himself what that "radiance" reveals.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XVII

Scott Bradley

Know the masculine by keeping to the feminine, and you will be the ravine of the world.
(Laozi 28; Ziporyn)

I return to this suggestion as something upon which to meditate because it seems so incredibly fertile in terms of bringing forth a sense of that way of being in the world that Laozi sees as facilitating both our personal flourishing and the amelioration of the world's woes.

We might immediately stumble at this apparently blatant gender preference (though in the context of millennia of male/yang sexism, it may seem merely corrective). But we need to understand that though the attributes assigned to each gender have a certain legitimacy in terms of biology, culture and political history, the true appeal is to a principle that transcends gender and is realizable in us all. We all possess attributes both 'feminine' and 'masculine', though obviously we favor them to different degrees.

(As an aside, I would like to here offer an opinion on the myth (to my thinking) that if women ruled the world, it would be a better and gentler place; history demonstrates otherwise. The fallacy consists in a failure to recognize that ruling is yang, and the moment anyone embraces it they have departed from the yin of the feminine. This is not to say that women should not rule — they have as much right as anyone else to wield power and dominate others. Also, admittedly, those women who do exercise political power have been obliged to (or naturally tend to) exhibit more yang than do the men who would otherwise sexistly exclude them. Thus, we have Hilary Clinton who votes for illegal, unnecessary war and the infrastructure of a police state (the patriot act), and vocally supports Zionist colonization and apartheid, just to name a few of her 'contributions' to the American political landscape.)

So, this is not really about men and women, though the attributes of masculinity and femininity provide a helpful metaphor when we do not take them too literally. Put simply, the masculine asserts itself, dominates, does stuff. The feminine yields, lets things unfold, does by not-doing, exercises a 'mysterious' transformative influence.

It is suggested that we give preference to the 'feminine'. In one sense, this is largely corrective; we tend toward the 'masculine', whatever our gender. The egoic-self is essentially yang — it asserts itself as a positive entity and requires the diminution of others to support that illusion. But more importantly, Being and existence are yang in relation to their source, Non-Being and non-existence, and it is this neglected (because feared) inescapable reality that needs to be privileged for corrective reasons and for reasons of authenticity (living life as it manifests).

Yet we know the masculine by the feminine. They mutually reveal each other, and neither is to be discarded. We do non-doing. I loses me. No-self is a self. This is the psychologically “sustainable whole.”

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XVI

Scott Bradley

Know the honored by keeping to the disgraced, and you will be the valley of the world. Being the valley of the world, the power of sustainability will be whole, and you will return to the unhewn state.
(Laozi 28; Ziporyn)

How would you like to be the valley of the world? Or "the ravine of the world"? Or better yet, the swamp of the world? How about "the thoroughfare" of the world? Laozi thinks these are all positive attributes. How would you like to be the Way of the world, the path upon which everyone treads, spits and discards their waste? Not your idea of being a revered teacher? This was the ostensibly the way of Jesus, and he pulled it off — up to a point; but then he (?) and his followers couldn't really sustain it, so he's coming back to kick some serious ass and reign as king. I mean we can only take this Yin shit so far.

No, we would rather be mountains than valleys; esteemed than despised; yang than yin; powerful than weak; right than wrong; rich than poor; a success than a failure; someone than no one. And this, of course, is why meditating on "being the valley of the world" can be so challenging and illuminating.

Yet mountains erode and crumble, which is probably why so many who manage to become one so often leap from them, why so many who "have everything" so frequently self-destruct. Mountains are not sustainable, but the valleys and ravines are there to receive them.

"Who can free himself from achievement and fame, descend and be lost amidst the masses of men? He will go about like Dao, unseen. He will be like Life itself, with no home and no name." (Merton; The Way of Chuang-Tzu; from my uncertain memory)

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XV

Scott Bradley

Know the honored by keeping to the disgraced, and you will be the valley of the world. Being the valley of the world, the power of sustainability will be whole, and you will return to the unhewn state.
(Laozi 28; Ziporyn)

There are frequent references to the "unhewn" throughout the literature of Daoism. One treatment at first focuses more on the hewn than that from which it is hewn. An artisan carves out a cup from a block of wood, and it is this that we admire for its beauty and utility. That from which it was carved, the unhewn, together with its shavings, is thrown over the back fence. It is "despised" as useless. But Daoism says, Not so fast!

Go ahead and cherish your cup, just as you cherished your first teddy bear (but where is it today and in what condition?) What we cherish most is that which best teaches us that nothing lasts, nothing is "sustainable". Returning to the unhewn state is what makes our sustainability "whole". Wholeness implies diversity. Unity implies the union of particulars. Returning to the unhewn state implies re-embedding one's hewn-ness in that from which it was hewn, the unhewn. Cherish life, but not to the exclusion of death. Cherish reason, purpose and meaning, but not to the exclusion of their lack. Cherish the carved cup, but not to the exclusion of the totality from which it was hewn.

In other words, "hide the world in the world where nothing can ever be lost." The carved cup was hewn from the unhewn, but the true unhewn was never hewn and the cup was never other than itself unhewn. Reality cannot be broken. The Totality cannot be sundered. The cup will crack; our life will fail; but this great Happening happens on.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XIV

Scott Bradley

Know the honored by keeping to the disgraced, and you will be the valley of the world. Being the valley of the world, the power of sustainability will be whole, and you will return to the unhewn state.
(Laozi 28; Ziporyn)

"The unhewn", "the uncarved block", is a central metaphor in philosophical Daoism's view of how the world makes 'sense'. Ziporyn (Ironies of Oneness and Difference) devotes considerable space to a discussion of its implications.

The world does not, in fact, make sense; that is the fundamental meaning of the unhewn. Elsewhere it is represented as Chaos. But this chaos is not that idea of chaos that emerges from our belief that there is something else — chaos in contrast to order. True chaos, like the unhewn, is unnamable for the simple reason that naming it betrays it. Chaos admits to no nameable order; nothing lies outside it. The unhewn, that which 'is' before all naming, before anything has been hewn from it, is incomprehensible. In speaking of the unhewn we have already betrayed it; but our betrayal is a necessary condition of our humanity. (Who said any of this has to make ‘sense’?)

The metaphor of the unhewn is much more flexible and nuanced than the idea of chaos. In its negation (un-) it suggests the hewn. And there is the hewn. That would be everything, the manifest; that would be you and I, and the words I now write. But the hewn is embedded in and utterly dependent on the unhewn, and Laozi suggests that we cannot experience "sustainability" (reliable coherence) until we have released ourselves from our myopic obsession with the hewn and acknowledged its rootedness in the unhewn. Thus, our coherence (our sense of ourselves in the world) is rooted in incoherence, and is therefore itself incoherent. Were it otherwise, we would have once again betrayed the incoherent, made it coherent. This is, of course, what we continually do — Dao becomes yet another thing (something our minds have hewn) that confirms our own precious thing-ness. Laozi is thus calling for a transformative revolution in how we understand ourselves in the world, and consequentially, how we conduct ourselves in the world.

Returning to “the unhewn state” is thus not returning to chaos (utter incoherence). (Death will likely accomplish that.) There is great irony implied by this unhewn state; for it involves an internal contradiction; it implies the hewn that we are, while simultaneously implying that we are not.

Philosophical Daoism clearly has a trajectory toward monism, but it is more concerned with an affirmation of Two-ness than of the One-ness; Oneness may very well be the Ultimate, but for us in our present existence as the hewn, its primary value is in helping us make the most of that. Oneness can take care of itself.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XIII

Scott Bradley

Heaven and Earth are ruthless; to them the Ten Thousand Things are but as straw dogs. The sage too is ruthless; to him the people are as but straw dogs.
(Laozi, 5; Waley)

This passage is powerful if for no other reason than for its shock value. Sometimes it takes the shock of the extreme to clarify the center. The center is clarified when it simultaneously embraces the extremes. For the extremes are in fact 'true', but only in the context of each other.

Nature is indeed ruthless, but not by way of intention; it is simply the nature of the case that things arise, flourish, decay and pass without any apparent consideration of our desire that it be otherwise. They have no apparent value apart from the event of their arising and passing, but there is value in this, if we are willing to let it be so.

Straw dogs were effigies made of straw, assigned significant ritualistic value, and were then discarded as the valueless straw that they actually were. They came into being, had their valued moment, and returned to the emptiness and valuelessness from which they came — just like everything else, just like you and I.

Treating people as straw dogs is thus to value them greatly during their moment in the sun, yet letting them go when their time has come. Their value subsists in that they exist, but they exist by virtue of arising from the valueless to which they return. So, the valueless is what gives value. This is the usefulness of the useless. So let us value the valueless and the useless. This is the ironic Dao — that which gives value, but itself has no discernible value.

To speak of Mystery as valueless is, of course, to err if we take valuelessness as the literal extreme of the valued. We call it valueless only because we are unable to fathom its value; but this is not to say that it has a value, though we cannot know it; value and its lack are merely the creations of straw dogs; what has Mystery to do with our momentary need for value?

Being, as we are, straw dogs, however, we do experience a need for value and meaning. We are alive, not dead. Thus, we value life and find it meaningful. But value and meaning, if they are to be "sustainable", seem to require an unshakeable foundation, and thus we posit one. But the Dao that can be posited, the foundation that is conceived and articulated, is a chimera; it not the "sustainable Dao". What Dao is sustainable? That Dao that is no knowable Dao, that value which has no known value, that meaning that is essentially meaningless, these are sustainable. Not-knowing is sustainable. The incomprehensible is sustainable because it is (or is not) whatever it is (or is not) without our mediation in declaring it so. We rely on this, not an idea thought up. True not-knowing is ultimately a mystical experience of letting go into Mystery, of allowing that value and meaning are grounded in what provides them no ground. And thus, “The Radiance of Drift and Doubt is the sage’s only map.” (Zhuangzi 2:29; Ziporyn)

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XII

Scott Bradley

Chapter One of the Laozi tells us that metaphysical Dao cannot be known, but that isn't the end of the matter. To speak of this Dao is not anathema; it is not a sin on par with pronouncing the name Jehovah; (how is this belief in a sacred name not just more idolatry?) There 'is' metaphysical Dao, but it 'is' only by virtue of its being empty of all intelligible content. It is present only as an absence. It exists for us only as a question mark. But let us not dismiss the question mark as therefore irrelevant; it is, on the contrary, the most important thing of all, for it renders us and everything else question marks as well.

So, let's call it Mother, says Laozi. It births all things, yet it is an empty void. In the Confucian and, alas, the ancient Chinese context, a mother may have been absolutely necessary for the existence of her sons, but her value relative to theirs was zero. Mothers, daughters, sisters — the female — are necessary appendages, but play no further role in the realization of the cosmic harmony. So let's call that from which all things issue, Mother. Let's return to the despised, forgotten and neglected, and take that as our model. Thus does Laozi introduce Yin, and with it, the ironic Dao.

"Know the masculine by keeping to the feminine, and you will be the ravine of the world." (28; Ziporyn) Know and engage with apparent reality with all its things by becoming empty, forgotten and lowly just like that from which all things emerge, and all things will flow through you. ("Having known the mother, use it to know the sons; having known the sons, return and hold fast to the Mother." (52)) "Know the bright by keeping to the dark, and you will be a model for the world." (28) Modeling Dao, doing nothing, nothing will be left undone as the world models you.

"Being a model for the world, the power of sustainability will not go awry, and you will return to the ultimate point of not being manifestly present and apprehensible." ("The Consummate Person has no fixed identity, the Spirit Man has no particular merit, the Sage has no name." (Zhuangzi 1:8; Ziporyn)) "Know the honored by keeping to the disgraced, and you will be the valley of the world. Being the valley of the world, the power of sustainability will be whole, and you will return to the unhewn state." (28; Ziporyn) The "unhewn" — the whole before we cut ourselves and all things from it — the whole that 'is', but is incomprehensible since comprehension is that very same cutting up.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi XI

Scott Bradley

The opening chapter of the Laozi tells us that it is possible to speak of a metaphysical Dao, but that the moment we do so, it ceases to be a "sustainable dao". Similarly, it is possible to speak of an ultimate value (=name), but that when we do so, it too ceases to be a "sustainable value". "Sustainable" ("constant", "eternal") means reliable. Whatever we say must be in some sense definitive, but nothing we say definitively has any fixed or sure foundation; everything thought or said is "peculiarly unfixed". Kierkegaard says essentially the same thing using the metaphor of sewing without a knot at the end of the thread — with every new stitch we unravel another.

This is a practical consideration. What can we rely on? Not on anything fixed, for the simple reason that nothing is fixed. We can only rely on what is unfixed, hidden, mysterious, unknown. But relying on what is unknowable is tantamount to relying on nothing at all, and this is what Zhuangzi recommends. This is, to his thinking, the most honest and authentic response to the actual human experience. But relying on nothing is, ironically, also relying on everything. Reality unfolds and we release ourselves into its unfolding. We do not swim against the flow of events, but with them. Yet, in doing so we are also enabled to transform them, if not always materially, then at least in terms of their impact upon us. ("Events" essentially have only an interpretive reality. A tree falling in the forest may be a genuine outcome of causes with subsequent effects, but it is a meaningful "event" only when a human being sees it as such.)

This, I believe, is the core of the philosophical Daoist's vision; everything else is derivative. Let go into the great happening. Release into the unfolding. Entrust yourself to what is in any case inevitable. This also implies letting yourself happen; and this is the origin of spontaneity. And this, I would suggest, is a mystical experience in the sense that it is a paradigm shift beyond paradigms; it is a movement out of rational attempts to control life into life itself. It is also an incredible act of affirmation issuing in thankfulness. And this feels good; it is enjoyable.

All this is the "sustainable". It is sustainable because it requires that nothing be sustained. To fix oneself to a definitive Dao is to build a sand castle below the tideline; it is unreliable; it breeds the doubt that hurts, not the doubt that opens up to freedom. Thus, the sustainable Dao is no-sure-Dao.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi X

Scott Bradley

The five colors blind the eye . . . Thus the sage in ruling is for the stomach and not for the eye. He eliminates that and adopts this.
(Laozi 12)

In another passage Laozi tells us that the sage dulls the minds of the people and fills their stomachs. This sounds very much like the present-day dumbing-down of the American people through the simplistic and biased presentation of the "world" by the power elite through the corporate media (an admittedly easy task given it is the "five colors" with which we are mostly enamored in any case — as long as we are getting "ours", we could care less for little else — "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" "We have kept you safe from terror [shutter — is it the "home of the brave" or of the fearful slaves?] — so our unconstitutional spying is good; you should thank us, not question us."). However, Laozi had something entirely different in mind.

Ziporyn discusses this in drawing a contrast between "eye desires" and "stomach desires". Eye desires are those which have things as their objects; they are acquisitive and linear in that they know no satiation. Stomach desires, on the other hand, "are not sparked by any intelligible object, and follow an autonomous course of arising and decaying, with a built-in limit of satiation." ("When hungry eat; when tired sleep.") Eye desires want ever more — more stuff, more knowledge, more life. Stomach desires are those which naturally, spontaneously, arise and pass; they participate in the cyclic character of all things. Eye desires fear death, spin myths of immortality; stomach desires understand life and death as a single thread and affirm death in affirming life.

Ziporyn refers us to the 55th chapter in which we are invited to marvel at the erection of a (male) infant — he knows nothing of sex, is drawn to no object of sexual desire, yet the natural in him arises spontaneously. "The ultimate potency!" He screams all day but is never hoarse. "The ultimate harmony!" Laozi sums up: "Helping life along is called inauspicious. Controlling your energy [stomach desire] with the directives of your mind [eye desire] is called forcing it." This is similarly reflected in Zhuangzi's admonition that we "add nothing to the process of life."

Thus, Laozi's sage-ruler wishes to direct his subjects toward the enjoyment of life in its givens, rather than in inspiring "consumer confidence" and the pursuit of ever more stuff. His concern is more about "the gross domestic happiness" (as in Bhutan) than "the gross domestic product". As Laozi says, "Knowing harmony is called the Sustainable." [!!!]

Ziporyn suggests that by a sustainable harmony Laozi means a coherence that rests in the ultimate incoherence of life. We have "cut out", hewn, our coherence from the incoherent unhewn, and rather than discarding and forgetting our origin from chaos, we allow it to reclaim us. We learn to focus more on the enjoyment of life itself, cyclic stomach desires, than on linear "growth", that is the unsustainable and insatiable.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi IX

Scott Bradley

In his discussion of the first chapter of the Laozi, Ziporyn (Ironies of Oneness and Difference) tells us that the meaning of "name" (and thus "namelessness") at the time of writing was not the same as that of later philosophical disputes about nomenclature (the "rectification of names"), but rather had, more simply, a primarily social reference; it had to do with fame, one's value to the community. He similarly (and as collaborative evidence) tells us that this is its principal meaning in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. (How this affects the premise of Chad Hansen that Zhuangzi's entire project was a continuance of this concern with the relationship of names to reality, I am unsure.)

Name (fame) had an intrinsically positive connotation in Chinese culture at that time; it spoke of the value and worth of someone to the larger community. One's worth was predicated on one's contributions to society. Though in our present popular culture full of hype, "fame" may connote a negative, superficial quality, and its pursuit an unworthy activity, it is still greatly valued as an endorsement of one's worth generally. To be recognized as contributing to society, making the world a better place, leaving one's mark — all these are expressions of how our self-worth is linked to our societal worth.

Ziporyn quotes the Wenzi (which he also identifies as "apocryphal" — i.e., not what it purports to be, the sayings of Laozi) in this regard: "The nameless is lowly and unesteemed. . . The wealthy have a name, so the named is honored and favored; the poor have no name, so the nameless is base and insulted. . . To have merit is to have a name. To have no merit is to be nameless. The named is produced from the nameless, so the nameless is the mother of the named."

Thus, when the opening verses of the Laozi tell us that Dao has no name it is telling us that it is valueless, worthless and unintelligible. It is not primarily a problem of its unknowability, but of its incoherence; we cannot incorporate it into an intelligible coherence and this renders it useless. (Here we begin to see another way into Zhuangzi's "usefulness of the useless" and of his advocacy of non-dependency on societal opinion.) This awareness of the valuelessness and unintelligibility of Dao, of the "unhewn" chaos from which all things emerge, throws an immense wrench into the gears of our normal cultural and psychological coherences. It pulls the rug out from under all that we esteem and hold dear.

Yet still we seek coherence, and philosophical Daoism does not deny us that attempt; only it suggests we incorporate the fundamental incoherence of reality into our coherence. Yet, because the incoherent is privileged as that from which all things emerge, our new coherence is also and primarily an incoherence. We become “unfixed”, unmoored, from any and all static value, purpose or meaning. Thus, the sage has no merit, no name, no fixed identity. And thus do we wander.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi VIII

Scott Bradley

I have generally had an ambivalent disposition toward the first chapter of the Laozi as an exposition of philosophical Daoism primarily because of its introduction of the concept of Non-Being into the mix, and this, above all else, is its primary contribution. The problem, I am discovering, lies not in the text itself, but in the interpretations given it. Not surprisingly, these tend to miss the ironic dimension of the newly introduced category of Non-Being and take it as an occasion to turn it into a positive value, a 'thing'. (I say "not surprisingly", as I so often do, because it is precisely this propensity that permeates our manner of interfacing with the world and, ironically, is exactly that which philosophical Daoism, and the introduction of Non-Being, attempts to overcome.)

Take for example the assessment of Laozi given in the Tianxia (33rd) chapter of the Zhuangzi: "They founded their way on the constancy of Nonbeing and centered it in the supreme Oneness." (Ziporyn) What the author essentially does here is to give a positive, concrete cognitive reality to Non-Being. It makes something of nothing. It misses the ironic altogether; it misses the fact that it is the actual emptiness and inarticulatablity of the term that gives it its power. As I recall (my knowledge is tenuous here; my eyes probably glazed over as I read them), the great neo-Daoism expositors like Wang Bi did precisely this same thing. They turned Being and Non-Being into two 'things' upon which to speculate, when the Laozi introduced them to demonstrate that we cannot.

Referencing a Mr. Bai Tongdong, Ziporyn shows one reason this misunderstanding arises. There are two ways in which Being and Non-being are presented in the Laozi, symmetrically and asymmetrically. Symmetrically, they are presented as co-equals; they are two aspects of one Reality. This can be looked at as the "horizontal" view. Asymmetrically, Non-Being is privileged over Being. This is the "vertical" view. The symmetrical is comparable to Yin and Yang, two equals that give birth to each other and together form a whole. The asymmetrical is more about that whole. This whole coheres with what is incoherent, and is thus itself incoherent. Non-Being is the incoherent, unknowable and valueless, and it is from this that all Being arises and to which it returns. This is why it is privileged. It informs Being of its own incoherence.

Being privileged, Non-Being renders a whole that cannot be identified. It provides a coherence that is also and foremost an incoherence. It opens us up to an openness that is open-ended. There is no answer, no resolution, no “constant”. It is what provides “the Radiance of Drift and Doubt”. It is in stepping through this gate that we begin to wander.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi VII

Scott Bradley

In an ancient post I made mention of an experience I had while sitting in front of one of Monet's later paintings of lilies in a pond beneath an ornamental bridge. This was at the museum Monet et Ses Amis which is located in his home not far from Paris. At first, I had no idea what I was looking at, though the pond itself would have been visible through a nearby window. It appeared to be just a profusion of color. Suddenly, I saw it — the pond, the lilies, the bridge. Or perhaps I should say, suddenly I experienced it; for something had to happen in me in order for me to unite my perception with the artist's vision (and he had been nearly blind at the time of its painting).

This, I would suggest, is reflective of something of the benefit of the ironic in the Laozi and the Zhuangzi (and probably the mondo and koans of Zen). We are invited to see things in a different way, and this requires a movement within, a paradigm shift in which we suddenly experience a perspective previously hidden from us. We might be able to work it through intellectually; I could have read a history of Monet's work, gone to the window to see the pond, and returned to the painting and figured it out; but this would not have been to have experienced it. "Understanding" the ironic is not experiencing it. Thus, all Ziporyn's discussions of the ironic in the Laozi, my attempts to relate them here, and indeed, Laozi's words themselves, cannot give us this experience. When we do experience them, we make a tiny leap from knowing to knowing by way of not-knowing. We realize a different perspective.

Laozi has been ridiculed for having said, "Those who know do not speak", and then going on to write his book (none of which is likely the case). This simply reveals a failure to have experienced the ironic. Those who "know" are free to speak to their heart's content, even as Zhuangzi said, "Where is the man who has forgotten words that I might have some words with him?"

Ziporyn speaks of the ironic dyadic a priori, the inescapable, non-empirical, mutual arising of opposites (though in the context of his use he refers to the necessity of every intelligible coherence [our chosen means of making sense of the world] being obliged to cohere with what must ultimately be unintelligible [the “unhewn”]). To speak of the "good" is to create the "bad". ("Embrace the right, and the wrong shall rule." — Chen Jen) Experiencing this does not eliminate one's moral or aesthetic sense; only it informs them in such a way as to free us of bondage to them.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi VI

Scott Bradley

The first two chapters of the received Laozi are absolutely pregnant with philosophical insight and form the backbone for the book as a whole and the species of Daoism it represents. The problem is in trying to figure out what those insights are. Two things especially work together to make this a difficult undertaking. First, the text itself is ambiguous enough to allow for various interpretations. Secondly, and most importantly for those who interpret it in an ironic sense, the intended meaning, even when perceived, is hard to take hold of. Irony yields elusive meanings.

Before continuing, a word on irony: Irony, in its simplest form, is a statement that is purposely at odds with reality in order to demonstrate that aspect of reality. Ziporyn uses the following example. We were going to have a picnic, but it is raining, and one of us says, "It's a great day for a picnic!" This means the opposite of what it says and we all understand that. In order to do so, however, we must participate in that sense of irony. This is a first level benefit of the use of irony; it is the one used by Socrates to assist others to engage in self-critical thinking. (Someone 'knows' what justice is, and Socrates says, "That's great! Tell me about it", only to subsequently completely deconstruct the purported 'knowing' without providing a "positive teaching" to replace it. All that’s left is the self-critical method and its doubt. There is also great irony in the oracle's pronouncement that Socrates is the wisest man in the world; since he thinks he knows nothing, he sets about to prove the oracle wrong, only to discover that it is his not-knowing that makes him so wise.)

However, Ziporyn points to a double irony in this exclamation: It is a great day for a picnic! It may not be a great day for our intended picnic, but it is a great day for picnics generally, for it is the rain that makes possible the meadow where we were to have it and the food that we shall eat when we do. Again, we are required to engage in a critical process to come to this realization. We are required to open up to what on the surface is not self-evident, to look at the other side.

The opening chapter of the Laozi similarly requires of us that we open up to 'meanings' beyond the linear and definitive. We are invited to consider the un-considerable, to experience the presence of absence. It is not that there are 'secret meanings' here, something to know. Rather, there is something to experience. But again, that experience is not of something 'out there', or even of some inner enlightenment, but of the inner movement itself. Socrates did not discover what justice is; rather he discovered the freedom of not knowing what it is. This is the "gate to all mysteries". The "gate" is a psychological openness to the ironic dimension of our interface with reality. We know by not-knowing. Metaphysical Dao is conspicuous in its absence. Light appears in darkness. Being requires Non-Being. The known is embedded in the unknown.

Yang, the positive, requires Yin, the negative that gives it birth and shall absorb it once again.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi V

Scott Bradley

I have previously mentioned how the Laozi seems to have been differently compiled and edited, both in chapter order and actual wording, over time from sayings from various sources. Alternatively, there may have been a single source with various schools manipulating this raw resource to serve their different agendas. In either case, there is clear evidence (in the Guodian Fragments, for instance) that there were different versions to enunciate different philosophical positions. In light of this, Ziporyn wonders if our received edition isn't the Zhuangzian version:

"One is tempted to speculate that this is post-Zhuang Zhou Daoism, i.e., that ironic Daoism is a Zhuangzian invention and that the present version of the Laozi represents a post-Zhuangzian restructuring of older, pre-ironic Daoism in a way consistent with Zhuangzian irony." (Ironies of Sameness and Difference; note 2, p. 283)

This is merely a possibility, but a very real one nonetheless, and one that turns a great deal of traditional thinking on its head. The traditional view is that the Laozi (as we have received it) predated Zhuangzi and that he is the inheritor and amplifier of this ironic point of view. If this is the case, however, he was a poor and somewhat plagiaristic disciple, for he gives no credit to his teacher. Ziporyn's suggestion, on the other hand, allows that there was indeed a Laozi at and previous to his writing, but since it was not reflective of his own views, he had no reason to quote it.

Zhuangzi does make use of a 'person' Laozi, puts words in his mouth, but he never quotes 'him'. (It may also be that he made him up, or saw no relation between an historical Laozi and the work that came to bear his name, but this does not explain why he did not quote a work purported to be his inspiration.) He also makes use of Confucius to speak on his behalf, and even makes reference to incidents in the Analects, thought to be the work of Confucius (though probably of his disciples). These references, however, are not to words spoken, but to historical events in his life. The Laozi, on the other hand, is notoriously innocent of any and all historical reference.

We need not endorse this speculative view or any other to be cautioned not to attempt to understand Zhuangzi through the Laozi. That is the chief practical reason for these hypothetical considerations.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi IV

Scott Bradley

Ziporyn entitles his treatment of the Laozi and Zhuangzi "Ironic Coherence and the Discovery of 'Yin'" (Ironies of Sameness and Difference). The book generally is about the various Chinese attempts to find coherence in the world, that is, ways of making sense of the world so as to know how best to live in it. Attempts before the received Laozi and Zhuangzi were largely non-ironic approaches (though the "seeds" of ironic coherence can even be found in Confucius where, for instance, the sage-ruler rules by example, not by ruling). Coherence is essentially the search for a wholeness that enables intelligibility. Thus, Confucianism, for example, tells us, "this is it".

The problem with the search for coherence, however, is that it never finds a final coherence. Coherence is the uniting of things, Heaven and earth, for example. But that coherence must necessarily seek something else outside and greater than itself with which to cohere; it cannot arrive at a final, and thus real, coherence. Coherence is uniting — it cannot, therefore, ever complete itself.

Non-ironic coherence is thus a kind of dishonest coherence; it must pretend to provide coherence when it cannot; it finds an artificial place to stop and say, "this is it".

What ironic coherence introduces is "yin", the unintelligible, the dark and mysterious, the "unhewn", the wu (absence; "non-being") as 'part' of the whole. Ironic coherence is the uniting of the intelligible with the unintelligible. This union cannot, however, yield an intelligible coherence — it necessarily self-negates. It is a coherence that is not-coherence.

Ironic coherence ever self-negates (is a coherence that is not-coherence) because the "yin" side is privileged. All things emerge from Mystery and return to Mystery. Thus, though we affirm things in their existence, we understand how they are embedded in non-existence, the unintelligible — in Mystery. This renders even the intelligible as unintelligible, the known as unknown, the Dao as not-Dao.

None of this is intended as speculative metaphysics; it is descriptive of our actual experience and is intended to help us to harmonize with that experience — it is intended to help us find 'the best way to live'. It is an "Illumination of the Obvious".

Because this sense of the ironic character of 'reality' is rooted in our experience, its realization has comprehensive implications for our behavior. As Ziporyn points out, suddenly an abundance of negations appear in the texts; wu-wei, not-doing as a way of doing, for example, becomes the most harmonious (and thus most effective) way to proceed in the world. Wu-wei is the actualizing of ironic coherence in our manner of living; the best way to get something done is to not do it, to let it happen, and this (ironically) might require our doing it.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi III

Scott Bradley

One way of understanding the received Laozi (and by inference, something of Zhuangzi) is to get a clearer picture of what its teaching is not and that to which it was in response. Ziporyn (Ironies of Sameness and Difference) does this in part by comparing it with its contemporary, the Neiye ("Inner Training"), which not only preceded our received Laozi and Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters, but continues to flourish even to this day.

(As a parenthetical note, this negative comparison is not intended to denigrate Neiye Daoism, but simply to make clear that they are not, to my thinking, the same. [And if they are the same, as they could possibly be (for this too comes down to a matter of personal perspective), then let it be known that I choose to make use of Zhuangzi in this particular, radically religion-eschewing way.] In the final analysis, again to my thinking, since no eternal outcomes are at stake, it is only temporal outcomes that matter; thus, if Neiye Daoism delivers the goods to its practitioners, then more power to them.)

We will move on from this comparison of Laozi and Zhuangzi's ironic disposition with that of the non-ironic Neiye in the posts that follow. Here, however, one more example of their differences is particularly instructive. "The Dao is not far away; it is by attaining it that people are born. . . . It is what people lose when they die, and what they obtain to live; it is what things lose when they fail, and what they obtain in order to succeed." This is clearly a metaphysical Dao. Though we cannot "know" it, we can "attain" it by other means (psychophysical exercise and emptying the mind, which I have referenced previously, but have omitted here). This definitive Dao is alien to philosophical Daoism, but it is the idea that it is lost in death and failure that is most telling in terms of its lack of an ironic negation of positive values.

In Zhuangzi, "failure 'succeeds in failing' by virtue of Dao" (Ziporyn). Like life and death, success and failure form a single string; we are in no position to define one as better than the other, or even to truly understand which is which. In Zhuangzi, Dao is that perspective which embraces these polar opposites and understands their larger coherence in the equality of our assessment of things. Here, in the Neiye, Dao is a positive, and apparently objective, force that can be "lost", whereas in Zhuangzi, it embraces every eventuality. In the case of the former, this leads to a religious pursuit of the realization of a force by which to overcome death (the pursuit of immortality) and to achieve ‘success’. In the case of Zhuangzi, with the world hid in the world, nothing can ever be ‘lost’ and “there is no success like failure, though failure is no success at all” (Dylan).

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi II

Scott Bradley

In the previous post we considered how, according to Ziporyn (Ironies of Sameness and Difference), one earlier version of the Laozi (the Guodian) evinces a sympathy for Confucianism in sharp contrast to our received version. This reflects a "pre-ironic proto-Daoism" while our received version presents an "ironic proto-Daoism", and is thus compatible with the philosophic outlook of the Neiye ("Inner Training"), a chapter of the Guanzi which was contemporary with it (some of its chapters being later contributions). This being the case, we can see how our received version of the Laozi, like the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, represents a break with the 'trending' philosophy of its day. Some, though Ziporyn is more cautious on this point, understand this non-ironic Laozi and the Neiye as representatives of the "Huang-Lao Daoism" thought to have only come after Zhuangzi and is represented in a significant slice of the Zhuangzi. At minimum, we can see how they are similar in that they both default to a more conventional and religious, that is non-ironic, project of self-cultivation; this should not surprise us in as much as this is the natural inclination of the "understanding consciousness".

All this is offered here to make the case, my case, that the ironic philosophy of Zhuangzi is not just more of the same, but rather a unique and solitary island standing in the stream of non-ironic, religious daos. All these other daos seek to resolve the tenuous exigencies of human existence, whereas Zhuangzi ever embraces them. In this, it has a special kind of dynamism in that it ever self-critiques and self-negates; it lives with and in the questions and eschews all answers. It is, to my thinking, a more thoroughly existentialist response to the human experience than even the more contemporary philosophies that bear that name.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Another Look at the Laozi I

Scott Bradley

I have long wished to see Brook Ziporyn apply his scholarship and insight to the Laozi (Daodejing = Tao De Ching) as he has to Zhuangzi and now I find that he has done so in his Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li. As one might construe from the title, this is a tough read, and one which I can only take in small bites. I am unable to faithfully reconstruct his arguments regarding the Laozi and its place in the wider context of Chinese thought here (since they are complex and I don't fully understand them, in any case), but still there are aspects of those arguments which I can relate and hope to elaborate.

Ziporyn is careful, when quoting from or commenting on the Laozi, to specify that he does so with reference to the "received" Laozi in contrast to previous versions to which we have no or little access. This is because the book appears to be a compilation of traditional sayings compiled over a considerable amount of time and as such was susceptible to the whims of much editorial manipulation. In other words, it has been altered over time to make the case for various points of view. Our received version is thus just one more such manipulation and needn't be thought of as sacrosanct. Indeed, we might even take this as an invitation to engage in some editorial manipulation of our own (as in fact do some translators like Stephen Mitchell).

Among those bits of previous versions of the Laozi to which we do have some access are the Guodian fragments discovered in a tomb sealed around 300 B.C.E. These, Ziporyn tells us, reveal a "pre-ironic proto-Daoism" quite distinct from the "ironic proto-Daoism" of the received Laozi. (Ziporyn makes a pivotal distinction between the non-ironic—that which knows and tends toward a linear, active engagement with the world — and the ironic — that which does not know and tends toward a circular, ever self-critiquing and self-negating engagement with the world. The non-ironic does; the ironic does by non-doing. The non-ironic knows; the ironic knows by not-knowing. The non-ironic follows a definite Dao; the ironic follows a dao that is not Dao.)

One important indication of this non-ironic disposition is found in its obvious comfort with the Confucian pursuit of Benevolence and Righteousness. Whereas our received version of the Laozi sees their pursuit as an obstacle to their realization, the Guodian version endorses their active pursuit. Ziporyn suggests that the Guodian version reflects the contemporaneous view of the Neiye (“Inner Training”) chapter of the Guanzi where “the indescribability of the Dao leads to no extreme skeptical or ironic results, and does not lead to self-reflective criticisms or erasures of statements just made . . . Rather, it points unproblematically to another way in which the Dao can be ‘attained’; through psychophysical cultivation and stillness of the mind.”

If you’ve got this far, yet still wonder why it matters, I would simply suggest that in contrasting these two points of departure we are better able to understand the choice between them.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

The Unintelligibility of It All

Scott Bradley

I have previously made reference to Ziporyn's assertion (Ironies of Oneness and Difference) that the very idea of coherence, oneness, entails a ceaseless quest for greater coherence. [I also stated that my use of Ziporyn is not intended to accurately represent his arguments, since they are, quite frankly, a bit beyond me.] If coherence is the inclusion of one thing into a group, then that new group (new coherence) will seek its own new coherence with yet another group. Thus, from the side of reason, the pursuit of coherence entails an infinite regress. The act of seeking coherence (oneness) negates the possibility of an ultimate coherence. The act of existing negates the possibility of oneness, for to exist is to be a becoming, and a becoming is a ceaseless quest for greater, ultimate coherence.

This is largely an intellectual exercise that has nothing to do with the way things "really are", but it does have the virtue of showing that reason cannot arrive at an all-inclusive coherence. And with this Ziporyn makes his next point, namely that "the ultimate intelligibility of any definite identity must be questioned, for the identities of the individual parts were originally conceived as dependent on their relation to the whole; if the whole is unintelligible, there is a sense in which the intelligibly of the parts is also threatened" (p. 85). With this he segues into the opening line of the Daodejing: "A name [dao] that can be named [dao-ed] is not the constant name [dao]." If the Whole (metaphysical Dao) cannot be identified, then every other apparent identity is similarly in reality also unidentified and unidentifiable. This is “the ironic Dao” that can only result in “ironic meanings” and “ironic coherence”. These are “ironic” because they self-negate (dao that is no dao, self that is no-self, knowing that is not-knowing, doing that is not-doing).

I take a more intellectually fuzzy approach: If the Whole is Mystery — if Dao cannot be named — then nothing can truly be named, everything is also mystery, as much mystery as Mystery. There is only Mystery. That we think things have an identity, that we have identity, is a most helpful means of navigating ourselves through our intellectually constructed interface with 'reality', but should not be mistaken for an actual, "constant" identity.

But this, of course, is precisely what we do; my sense of 'me' is taken for something substantial and 'real' and thus something I must attempt to substantiate (do and be stuff that perpetuates the illusion), defend against what might diminish it, and fear its ultimate loss. It is this that Zhuangzi's sage has transcended such that he "has no fixed identity, no particular merit, and no name." He has, in a sense, simply acknowledged and released himself into his own utter mystery.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Golf Writer Channels Laozi

Trey Smith

Kyle Porter writes about the game of golf for CBS Sports. In a recent column, he wrote about the difficulties of being Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy. Everything these two world renowned golfers do is scrutinized to the max. Every word or deed is over analyzed and written about ad nauseam. Unlike you or me, neither bloke can go to the corner store or local pub and not be mobbed by autograph seekers and gawkers. Yes, both have more money than most of us could ever dream of, but the tradeoff is that they live their lives in a fish bowl.

At one point, Porter made a comment that could just as easily have been pulled from the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi. He wrote,

I value the normalcy that comes with being anonymous.

In several passages of the Daodejing, Laozi makes much the same point. The sage is not a celebrity; he/she is an anonymous person of virtue. The sage doesn't seek to call attention to themselves; the sage leads a simple life that, as expressed in Verse 49, is confusing to the world. The sage avoids extremes and excesses (Verse 29). In a manner of speaking, the sage IS a sage because the sage is anonymous and being anonymous lends itself well to leading a life of simplicity, humility, virtuousness...and normalcy.