Envisioning the Daoist Body
in the Economy of Cosmic Power
James
Miller
INTRODUCTION
 S
MARY EVELYN TUCKER AND JOHN GRIM have shown in their pioneering work on
religions and ecology, the crux of the debate lies in the question of
worldviews. From a sociological perspective, religious traditions represent and
construct the collective values and systems of meaning of human societies. As
such, religious traditions influence the way their adherents interpret their
experience of the world and, consequently, influence their actions upon it.
Religious ideologies, however, are themselves always in medias res.
Even though their adherents may uphold an eternal vision of archaic principles
handed down from the gods, in actuality this vision is continuously
renegotiated and reconstructed in conversation with the changing demands of
historical and cultural context.
Today we are faced with an
extraordinary, and potentially far-reaching, transformation in our natural
environment as a result of global climate change. The task facing all the
religious traditions of the world is how to make sense of this change in a
religiously meaningful way, a change that is unprecedented in the history of
the world’s religions. For Daoism, however, this is not just a question of
worldview, in terms of human experience and human consciousness. Daoism takes
to its heart the notion that we human beings are inextricably woven into the
fabric of our natural environment or, as I have termed it elsewhere, an economy
of cosmic power.1
When our climate changes it is inevitable that so must we. Although Daoists
have never experienced anything on the scale of present-day global warming, it
is clear that Daoist traditions have always paid particular attention to the
circumstances of their physical environment. A recent declaration of the
Chinese Daoist Association on Global Ecology states:
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Daoists in China have diligently worked toward
disseminating Daoist teachings and in maintaining the famous Daoist mountains
and hermitages, planting trees and cultivating forests, and protecting the
natural environment. We believe that as the Chinese state and society today are
paying greater attention to ecological problems, educational programs
concerning public health issues will be further fostered and developed. We pray
that tomorrow’s world will be better than today’s, and that, by following the
principle of mutuality among all things in nature, a new harmonious world will
emerge.2 |
Now, as Daoism spreads across the world it is
increasingly incumbent upon Daoists to pay attention to their environment in a
global sense. There is an intellectual danger, however, when we move from
considering things in the particular to the universal, from the small-scale to
the global. Scholars of religions have rightly been wary of the problems of
reification or essentialism, in which a living complex of historical phenomena
is abstracted into a doctrinaire set of principles that may conveniently be
applied to a set of facts or an ethical problem. Of course, some religious
bureaucracies, such as the Vatican, purport to speak for the diversity of
religious cultures of which they are the institutional representation, but this
can only take place through the widespread acceptance among Catholics of the
doctrine of papal infallibility.
Moreover, the trenchant
orientalist critique of the Western study of “Eastern religions” has
demonstrated the ways in which the religious studies academy, being
genealogically rooted in Western colonial and missionary interests, has been
complicit in imposing a central ideology and even an institutional apparatus
upon Eastern religious cultures. As Richard King has demonstrated, the modern
construction of “Hinduism” has been profoundly influenced by Western attempts
to locate its essential doctrines in a narrow body of Sanskrit texts.3
In China, the bureaucratic
interests of the Chinese Communist Party have also served to authorize, and
thereby control, Daoism as a social, doctrinal, and institutional entity. Two
branches of Daoism are recognized—Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) and Zhengyi
(Orthodox Unity)—and both fall under the auspices of the Chinese Daoist
Association, a unit of the government’s Religious Affairs Bureau. Daoist
temples are recognized as valuable tourist attractions, and thus the
functioning of Daoism is now authorized so long as it falls within the bounds
of the economic goals of the state authorities.4
The problem of relating “Daoism”
with a global phenomenon such as climate change is that it runs the risk of
falling into this same paradigm of appropriation and control. The historic
affinity of environmentalists for Daoist “mystical philosophy” has all too
frequently been predicated upon a version of Daoist philosophy that construes
the existence of a benign natural force, “the Dao,” that serves to harmonize
and regulate the ecological order of things. The environmentalist Edward
Goldsmith has attempted to discover this “Way” throughout pre-Enlightenment
“vernacular” societies, seeing it in the Chinese concept of Dao, the
Egyptian Maat, the Indian R’ta, and the Greek Nomos or Dike.5
This ancient “Way” is presented as a holistic alternative to the reductionistic
scientism of the Enlightenment mentality. In this surprisingly brutal act of
cultural strip-mining, Goldsmith commits the same sort of reductionism that he
condemns in scientism. The problem is that either our worldview is local, and
therefore parochial, narrow-minded, and divisive, or it is global, and
therefore imperial and totalitarian. For this reason, countries that have
experienced Western colonialism are rightly suspicious of being subjected to a
new form of Western hegemony in the form of global environmentalism. The great
danger for global problems such as climate change is that the desire for the
harmonious reintegration of human beings into the fabric of nature will lead to
a reductive, even destructive, cultural colonialism. An example of this has
been documented in Liu Xiaogan’s analysis of the unintended, but no less real,
cultural consequences of the European Union’s decision to ban baby seal pelts:
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In 1983, following seven years of pressure
from Greenpeace, the new European Parliament outlawed baby seal pelts in
Europe. This miserably affected the life of the 100,000 Inuit living in the
Canadian Arctic. The seal furnished most of the Inuit diet and nearly all
essentials of life, like the buffalo of North American Plains Indians. In the
years following the seal-pelt ban, an economic winter swept across the Canadian
Arctic and welfare soared. In Canada’s tiny Clyde River, nearly half of the
population was soon collecting unemployment checks. As their lives soured,
their social problems escalated. Many Inuit turned to alcohol and drugs. Crime
and family violence doubled. The despair led to an epidemic of suicides, mostly
that of young men. There were 47 suicides among Canadian Inuit in the eleven
years before the ban but 152 in the same period after it.6 |
Liu goes on to note that this
problem was brought about chiefly by the media-savvy politics of confrontation
employed by Greenpeace:
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Simplified and intensified movements may
create a furor and cause a sensation, but they often mislead people, even bring
disasters as the Inuit have suffered. Environmental preservation involves
serious and complicated issues affecting various groups of people, different
nations and regions; thus it demands a patient, gradual and enduring working
attitude that is in line with the Daoist wisdom of wuwei [nonassertive
action].7 |
The historic Daoist emphasis on the local and the particular suggests that it
may make a valuable contribution to global questions by always insisting on
focusing on the small-scale effects of global activity. This cautionary tale
suggests to me that the chief question at stake is whether or not it is
possible to have an environmental ethic on global climate change that respects
the diversity of human cultures as well as it respects the unity of the earth
that sustains them. In this essay I would like to make two Daoist-inspired
arguments that address this unity-in-diversity question. The first is that
there can be no single principle or value that will lead to a correct solution
to such a culturally complex problem. The second is that the best way of
optimizing the situation in order to maximize the positive outcomes for all
concerned is to adopt the metaphor of the human body as the preeminent
hermeneutical tool or theoria for considering such problems and as the
preeminent value to be adopted in environmental practice.
A VISION OF ORGANIC UNITY
One of Confucius’s chief concerns, as recorded in the Analects
(Lunyu), is how to retrieve and reauthenticate the ancient ritual
codes (li) as a practical means of restoring the unity of the fractured
Chinese empire. Conversation, or shared discourse, was the primary means to
achieve this. Confucius said of his student Zi Gong that they could discuss the
Odes because Confucius only needed to begin a phrase and Zi Gong would know its
proper sequence.8
Familiarity with the classics, therefore, was the prerequisite for any
meaningful conversation, just as familiarity with cultural codes (li)
was the prerequisite for successful social interaction and the rectification of
names (zheng ming) was the prerequisite for good government. From
the Confucian perspective, the unity of humankind within the cosmos may only be
envisioned and authentically lived out from within some established social,
semiotic, and political system: it may not be imposed from without, which was
the position of the Legalist school (fajia). In fact, from the Confucian
perspective, the particularity of language and culture, far from constituting a
sort of permanent hermeneutical alienation from what is real, genuine, and
authentic, is to be celebrated as our only means of intercourse with it. Human
beings are always and irrevocably instituted. Being true, correct, appropriate,
or optimal is likewise an institutional process. This Confucian model of
discourse is the one, broadly speaking, that is adopted by international
congresses such as Kyoto and Rio that seek to institute a shared discourse (lunyu)
as the path (dao) toward developing optimal codes of behavior (li).
The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi
argued on the other hand that optimal patterns of behavior are developed
through skillful practice and cannot be communicated adequately by verbal
teaching or erudite discourse. He illustrates this with the story of the
wheelwright Bian.
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Duke Huan was reading a book at the top of the
hall, wheelwright [Bian] was chipping a wheel at the bottom of the hall. He put
aside his mallet and chisel and went up to ask Duke Huan |
“May I ask what words my lord is reading?”
“The words of a sage.”
“Is the sage alive?”
“He is dead.”
|
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“In that case what my lord is reading is the
dregs of the men of old, isn’t it?” |
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“What business is it of a wheelwright to
criticize what I read? If you can explain yourself, well and good; if not, you
die.” |
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“Speaking for myself, I see it in terms of my
own work. If I chip at a wheel too slowly, the chisel slides and does not grip;
if too fast, it jams and catches in the wood. Not too slow, not too fast; I
feel it in the hand and respond from the heart, the mouth cannot put it into
words, there is a knack in it somewhere which I cannot convey to my son and
which my son cannot learn from me. This is how through my seventy years I have
grown old chipping at wheels. The men of old and their untransmittable message
are dead. Then what my lord is reading is the dregs of men of old, isn’t it?”9 |
Zhuangzi’s mystical philosophy puts the highest value on
an intuitive, holistic grasp of the unity of subject and object, wheelwright
and wheel. The nature of this intuition is such that it cannot be translated
into cultural codes and transmitted through the ages in a body of cultural
discourse. The experience of the supremely skilled person suggests the
possibility of a noncategorizable field of experience that is somehow logically
prior to the culturally mediated or culturally constructed experience. Zhuangzi
offers this suggestion in order to counter those who offer principles or
“formulae” as fragmented solutions to organic problems. Formulae are fractured,
elemental structures that cannot hope to correspond to the organic
unity-in-diversity of the spontaneous transformation of things in the natural
environment:10
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Down below in the empire, there are many who
cultivate the tradition of some formula, and all of them suppose that there is
nothing to add to what they have. In which of them is it finally to be found,
that which of old was called the tradition of the Way? I say it is to be found
in them all. I say: |
From where does the daemonic [shen] descend?
From where does illumination [ming] come
forth?
Sagehood is born from something,
Kingship forms out of something;
All have their source in the One. . . .
|
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There is an analogy in the ears, eyes, nose
and mouth; all have something they illuminate but they cannot exchange their
functions, just as the various specialties of the Hundred Schools all have
their strong points and at times turn out useful. However, they are not
inclusive, not comprehensive; these are men each of whom has his own little
corner. They split the glory of heaven and earth down the middle, chop up the
patterns of the myriad things, and scrutinize some point in what for the
ancients was a whole. There are few who are able to have the whole glory of
heaven and earth at their disposal, and speak of the full scope of the
daemonic-and-illumined [shenming].11 |
In one sense, therefore, the mystical aspect of the
Daoist religion may be considered as comprising ways to realize “the whole
glory” of the unity of humans, heaven, and earth. The organic metaphors
employed in Daoist writing suggest that this unity is to be conceived as an
ontogenetic unity, that is, a root from which the diversity of things flowers.
The genetic metaphor of root and branch (ben-mo) is a
powerful way of conceiving our relation to the primordial source (yuandao)
from which all life flows. Human beings experience a unity with this
transformative, multifarious vitality within their bodies. For the Daoist,
then, it is the body, not just the heart-mind (xin), that must be
cultivated and imaged in order to realize the unity of humans and the cosmos.
It is this point that most clearly distinguishes Daoist cultivation practices
from Confucian intellectual discourse. This does not mean that Daoism and
Confucianism are in any sense opposed to each other intellectually or
practically. Rather, they operate on different terrains. Confucians seek
primarily the transformation of the self through the cultivation of the
heart-mind by means of devoted attention to the classics. Daoists seek
primarily to realize a sort of transparency or porosity between their bodily
identity and the economy of cosmic power in which it is embedded. For this
reason, Daoism has the potential to be an important conversation partner in the
question of religion and global climate change because of its natural concern
for the impact of global climate change on the health of individual bodies.
In the practice of Daoist
cultivation, then, the human body forms the preeminent landscape or terrain for
the Daoist imagination. To use an analogy from the Chinese, the character xing
means “form” primarily in the concrete sense of the bodily form and secondarily
in the abstract sense of the form of things. The body, in Daoist thought,
informs—is the preeminent form of—human understanding and may serve as a vital
metaphor for understanding our relationship with the world and for managing the
practical complexities of social organization.
The Daoist religious system known
as Highest Clarity (Shangqing) employed this theory of
microcosm/macrocosm correspondence in its practice of invoking the presence of
celestial divinities in the energy systems of the body, naming them, and
describing how they configure the energy in each physiological system of the
body.12
To get at the contribution of Daoism to understanding the human problem of
global climate change it is necessary to understand in more detail how the
correspondence between the body and its environment functions.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CORRELATIVE THINKING ABOUT THE BODY
POLITIC13
A theory of “the body politic” had been developed as
early as the third century B.C.E. in the Springs and Autumns
of Mr. Lü (Lüshi Chunqiu):
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Human beings have 360 joints, nine bodily
openings, and five yin and six yang systems of function. In the flesh tightness
is desirable; in the blood vessels free flow is desirable; in the sinews and
bones solidity is desirable; in the operations of the heart and mind harmony is
desirable; in the essential Qi regular motion is desirable. When [these
desiderata] are realized, illness has nowhere to abide, and there is nothing
from which pathology can develop. When illness lasts and pathology develops, it
is because the essential Qi has become static. . . .
|
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States too have their stases. When the ruler’s
virtue does not flow freely [i.e., if he does not appoint good officials to
keep him and his subjects in touch], and the wishes of his people do not reach
him, a hundred pathologies arise in concert, and a myriad catastrophes swarm
in. The cruelty of those above and those below toward each other arises from
this. The reason that the sage kings valued heroic retainers and faithful
ministers is that they dared to speak directly, breaking through such stases.14 |
In the above text, the free flow of virtue (de) is
not to be understood in terms of moral philosophy but by analogy with what is
necessary to keep the body alive. Just as the circulation of bodily fluids is
necessary for human survival, so also the free flow of “virtue” is necessary in
the state. The concept of good that is the basis for making the connection
between the natural world and the political world is basically medical rather
than moral. Virtue seems to be understood here as a sort of moral energy that
must flow freely like blood. This points toward an intriguing contribution that
Daoism can make to the question of religion and global climate change: neither
religion nor the problems of the environment are best understood in terms of
morality. The problem of the human condition is what we do with our bodies and
about how they are best harmonized with their environment. This is a
psycho-physio-energetic problem, not a problem of ethics (affect) or doctrine
(intellect). Our emotions, wills, and intellects are important, but they are
systems of energy in the body and in the body-politic, and as such are no more
or no less important than our gall bladders and our spleens.
In the foundational medical text Huangdi
neijing suwen (Simple Questions on the Yellow Emperor’s
Internal Classic), however, we see the above analogy reversed. In this text the
relative functions of the physiological systems are understood by analogy to
the political hierarchy of the state:
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The cardiac system is the office of the
monarch: consciousness issues from it. The pulmonary system is the office of
the minister-mentors: oversight and supervision issue from it. The hepatic
system is the office of the General: planning issues from it. The gall bladder
system is the office of the rectifiers: decisions issue from it . . . [and so
on for the twelve systems of body functions associated with internal organs].
It will not do for these twelve offices to lose their co-ordination.15 |
Here we see how the physiology of the body was correlated
with the hierarchical configuration of the state, in which the emperor, like
the heart, remains supreme, but cannot function without proper communication
with the other administrative departments. Traditional Chinese thought thus
displays an organic, mutually reciprocal system of “correlative thinking” in
which various dimensions of existence are understood by means of reciprocal
correlation with other dimensions of existence.
This way of thinking was
systematized in the well-known sequence of the five phases: earth, wood, fire,
metal, and water. These phases represent moments in two cycles of
transformation: a cycle of generation in which one phase leads into the
subsequent phase; and a cycle of control in which one phase blocks or controls
the preceding phase. Figure 1 shows the sequences of generation (sheng)
and control (zhu): wood generates fire, which generates earth, which
generates metal, which generates water, which generates wood; water controls
fire, which controls metal, which controls wood, which controls earth, which
controls water.
Figure 1. Cycles of Generation and Control
Notes: The sequence of generation is represented by the
outer arrows and
the sequence of control by the inner arrows.16
Within
each sequence, the order is invariable, but any number of categories of things
can be sequenced in this way. The addition of a new category of sequence is
known as extension (tui) (see table 1). When an extension is made, and
two different lists of items are brought into correlation, then it is possible
to make an analysis or a diagnosis by following through the sequences of the
two things that are now correlated. But it is important to remember that we are
not comparing “things” or “items” in this way; rather, we are making
comparisons between the dynamics within the phases of two different categories
of transformation.
|
Table 1. Table of Correlations in
Traditional Chinese Thought
|
| Agent |
Direction |
Color |
Season |
Orb |
Emotion |
Sense |
Flavors |
| Wood |
East |
Green |
Spring |
Liver |
Anger |
Eyes |
Sour |
| Fire |
South |
Red |
Summer |
Heart |
Joy |
Tongue |
Bitter |
| Earth |
Center |
Yellow |
Late summer |
Spleen |
Worry |
Lips |
Sweet |
| Metal |
West |
White |
Fall |
Lungs |
Sadness |
Nose |
Pungent |
| Water |
North |
Black |
Winter |
Kidneys |
Fear |
Ears |
Salty |
Correlation was chiefly employed as a heuristic tool,
often for the diagnosis of diseases. The system of causative generation and
control combined with synchronic correspondence makes it possible to understand
events as particular configurations within the multiple life processes of an
organism. If some excess has occurred, it is either because the preceding item
in the generative sequence has proved too strong, or the preceding item in the
destructive or controlling sequence has proved too weak. In either case the
remedy to the situation is to be sought in
treating not the symptoms but the deficient or excessive cause, thus restoring
the system to its natural balance. Internally the system is one of cause and
effect, but when one system is correlated to another system, the relationship
between the two is that of mutual implication or synchronous resonance.
Thus a transformation in the
seasons implies a corresponding transformation in the relative strengths of the
various bodily functions, which requires a corresponding transformation in diet
in order to maintain a homeostatic equilibrium. Or, as the Most Elementary
Aspects of the Yellow Emperor’s Internal
Classic (Huangdi neijing taisu) puts it:
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The Yellow Emperor: I should now like to hear
why it is that in certain years everyone is struck by a similar illness. |
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Shao Shi: This is the
result of a manifestation [of the winds] of the eight seasonal turning points.17 |
Thus, according to the traditional Chinese worldview, the universe is not
comprised of a number of discrete elements, but, in broad terms, of
configurations (xing) of power or force that transform or “phase” (xing,
lit. “walk”) (1) according to the diachronic sequence of the five phases within
one category and (2) according to the synchronic correspondence between the
same phase in different categories. The influence or inspiration that is the
mechanism for these synchronic transformations is known as Qi,
conventionally translated as vital energy.18
THE DYNAMIC OF QI IN THE ECONOMY OF COSMIC POWER
In traditional Chinese medicine, the human body is viewed
first and foremost as a network of systems of energetic transpiration or Qi.
Each system of transpiration is an “organ” of which there are two kinds:
yin systems (zang) and yang systems (fu). According to the Simple
Questions, the function of the zang systems is to store or
collect (zang) the “essential energy” (jingqi). This is defined
by Manfred Porkert as “structive [structuring] potential.”19It
is the function of the complementary fu systems to “transmit or
transform things.”20Thus
the body contains two basic physiological dynamics. The yin systems (zang)
store the potential energy to maintain the dynamic homeostasis of the body, and
the yang systems (fu) transmit this energy.
In the system of traditional
Chinese medicine, therefore, the basic physiological principle is the
continuous exchange of vital energy according to the pattern of yin and yang.
Since the time of the Book of Changes (Yijing), this pattern of yin and
yang has been regarded as the basic pattern of the cosmos. The treatise on yin
and yang in the Suwen stresses the cosmic significance of these
categories:
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The Yellow Emperor spoke: [The two categories]
yin and yang are the underlying principle of heaven and earth; they are the web
that holds all ten thousand things secure; they are father and mother to all
transformations and alterations; they are the source and beginning of all
creating and killing; they are the palace of spirit brilliance. |
| In order to treat illnesses one
must penetrate to their source.
|
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Heaven arose out of
the accumulation of yang [influences]; the earth arose out of the accumulation
of yin [influences]. Yin is tranquility, yang is agitation; yang creates, yin
stimulates development; yang kills, yin stores. Yang transforms influences, yin
completes form.21 |
It is important to remember that yin and yang are not
forces or substances but modes or aspects of the transpiration of vital energy.
This energy is the stuff of the universe as well as the vitality of our bodies.
The last sentence of the quotation is particularly instructive. The nature of
yang-Qi (expiration) is to transform, whereas the nature of yin-Qi
(inspiration) is to receive and store form. The transformation of things, that
is, the process of life itself, takes place by means of the continuous dynamic
of the projection (yang) and reception (yin) of energy. Moreover, this dynamic,
at its root, informs the cosmic diversity of the “ten thousand things.” The
binary dynamic that models the energetic transpiration of human physiological
systems is the same dynamic that models the phases of the moon and the orbits
of the stars. The basic binary character of the universe is a function of the
dynamic nature of energy: Qi is never static; it is either expanding or
contracting, activating or storing. There is no such thing as a steady state.
Within the bodily “ecosystem,”
each physiological subsystem, then, is constructed for the purpose of the free
circulation of vital energy and fluids throughout the body. In traditional
Chinese medicine, the diagnosis of pathologies consists of analyzing the
network of relations between energy systems in order to detect disturbances to
the homeostasis. This means taking into account the causal relationships within
the systems, and also the synchronic correlation between the bodily systems and
the macrocosmic environment. It is this latter, synchronic correspondence that
provides the means for understanding the microcosm/macrocosm relationship
between human bodies and global climate change.
All physiological systems are
rooted in the cosmic dynamic of yin-yang transpiration. Moreover, the medical
definition of good is the harmonious integration and optimization of all energy
systems. This means that the well-being of the physiological systems can only
be achieved by harmonizing with the broader macrocosmic dynamics in which they
are located. In traditional Chinese medicine, the most important macrocosmic
dynamics are the positions of the sun and moon, the planets, and the seasons.
To the Daoist mind—and body—this synchronic, correlative thinking is just as
necessary as diachronic cause and effect to understand the whole range of
relationships that obtains within nature, understood as an evolving organic
system of diverse processes. When a change takes place in the global
environment, therefore, it is inevitable that this will produce a synchronous
reaction on other processes. For this reason different forms of ritual
“astro-geomantic” practice are prescribed by Daoist priests, in accordance with
the rotations of the stars and the contours of the earth.
The Daoist tradition, then,
points the way toward understanding how it is possible in the religious
imagination to conceive of the relationship between the physiological systems
of the body and more large-scale systems such as social structures and
astronomic patterns. It is a simple matter to see how this process of analogy
and resonance can be extended (tui) to include transformations within
the global climate system. Until now, however, Daoists have not had to take
account of the transformation of their environment in this global way, but the
Daoist tradition does allow us to understand the implication of human bodies in
global climate systems, and it does offer a theory of organic optimization as
being the ideal toward which we should aspire. Organic optimization means that
systems must be considered as dynamic and constantly interacting with each
other. The optimal state of the organism is reached when all the energy systems
permit the free flow of energy. In this way Daoism does not therefore propose a
moral vision for environmental protection or action to prevent global climate
change, but a physiological model of the interrelationship between many
different complex systems.
IMPLICATION
So far I have attempted to resist describing what the
usefulness of “Daoism” might be for environmental protection. Instead, I have
aimed to highlight Daoism as a way of thinking about and acting upon the mutual
implication of human beings, their social systems, and their natural
environment. This way of thinking is clearly anthropocentric, for it takes the
human body as its starting point, but it is a vision of the body that is rooted
in what I have termed an “economy of cosmic power.” This fully anthropocosmic
vision has the practical—bodily—consequence of requiring us to take absolutely
seriously the concept of our personal implication in the single fabric of the
environment. The problem of global climate change is thus a problem for our
bodies. It is not something that takes place in the abstract or on the horizons
of our consciousness, but is a change that is occurring deep within us. As
Kristofer Schipper explains:
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The emphasis on the self, on the personal
relationship to the Dao, implies, also with respect to the preservation of the
natural environment, that each person is responsible for the Dao, each person
embodies the Dao. The preservation of the natural order therefore depends
absolutely on the preservation of this natural order and harmony within
ourselves and not on some outside authority. The environment is within us.22 |
The second practical ramification is the emphasis on
gradual change and the refusal to employ persuasive power or violent rhetoric.
Commenting upon the environmental precepts that governed one of the earlier
Daoist communities, Schipper writes:
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The One Hundred and Eighty
Precepts never speak of protests to the higher authorities, of political
actions, revindications, demands for justice and peace, but only of respiration
exercises, of inner harmony and individual peace. This is the only way to save
the environment. True perfect nature can only be found within oneself. To
regulate the world, we have to cultivate ourselves, to tend our inner
landscape. Beyond, beneath, behind and inside the Precepts of the Daoist
Libationer, we find a whole new world of spiritual ecology.23 |
This slow and gradual approach coheres well with Liu
Xiaogan’s analysis of the nonassertive action advocated in the Daode jing.
Such disappointingly personal and
physiological self-cultivation may well not be what environmentalists have had
in mind when they have championed the usefulness of Daoism as a cultural
resource in the battle against environmental degradation. But as Lisa Raphals
notes, that “would be to ignore the porosity of notions of selfhood in a wide
range of Chinese thought: the inseparability of ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ the high
cultural value of ‘selflessness,’ macrocosm-microcosm identifications, and
constructions of individuality that differ from Western norms.”24
If, on the other hand, the
purpose of investigating the cultural resources of the world’s religious
traditions is to locate alternative ways of envisioning ourselves in our
environment, then the Daoist tradition of mapping the world in the body and the
body in the world stands as a rich and enduring hermeneutical figure. It is the
task of Daoists now to extend this hermeneutical figure to take into account
the global changes in the economy of cosmic power that enfolds and nourishes
us, just as in the past they have paid meticulous attention to the contours of
the earth and the orbits of the stars.
ENDNOTES
| 1 |
James Miller, “The Economy of Cosmic Power: A
Theory of Religious Transaction and a Comparative Study of the Shangqing Daoism
and the Christian Religion of Augustine of Hippo,” Ph.D. diss., Boston
University, 2000. Back
to Text |
| 2 |
Zhang Jiyu, “A Declaration of the Chinese
Daoist Association on Global Ecology” in Daoism and Ecology,
ed. N. J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity
School, 2001). Back
to Text |
| 3 |
Richard King, Orientalism and Religion:
Postcolonial Theory, India and “The
Mystic East” (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
See also Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Cultures of Rule, Communities of Resistance:
Gender, Discourse and Tradition in Recent South Asian Historiographies,” Social
Analysis 25 (1989): 94–114. Back
to Text |
| 4 |
Brock Silvers, “The Current State of Taoism in
the People’s Republic of China,” a paper delivered at the conference on Asian
Human Rights: Critical Issues, Center for
Asian Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, 7–8 April 2000. Back
to Text |
| 5 |
Edward Goldsmith, The Way:
An Ecological World-View, rev. and enl. ed.
(Totnes, England: Themis Books, 1996), 402–406.
Back to Text |
| 6 |
Liu Xiaogan, “Non-action (Wuwei) and the
Environment Today: A Conceptual and Applied Study of Laozi’s Philosophy,” in
Girardot, Miller, and Liu, eds., Daoism and Ecology.
Back
to Text |
| 9 |
Zhuangzi 13, trans. Angus C. Graham, Chuang-tzu
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 139–140; see also Lee Yearley,
“Zhuangzi’s Understanding of Skillfulness, and the Ultimate Spiritual State,”
in Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Essays on Skepticism,
Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). Back
to Text |
| 10 |
It is fairly certain that the following chapter
of the Zhuangzi was not written by Zhuangzi himself. Graham refers to this as
one of the later “syncretist writings.” Graham, Chuang-tzu,
256. Back
to Text |
| 12 |
See James Miller, “Respecting the Environment:
Visualizing Highest Clarity,” in Girardot, Miller, and Liu, eds., Daoism
and Ecology. Back
to Text |
| 13 |
Much of what follows is based on chap. 2 of my
dissertation, “The Economy of Cosmic Power: A Theory of Religious Transaction
and a Comparative Study of Shangqing Daoism and the Christian Religion of
Augustine of Hippo.” Back
to Text |
| 14 |
Lüshi chunqiu 20, trans. Nathan
Sivin, Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in
Ancient China (Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1995), 6. Back
to Text |
| 15 |
Huangdi neijing suwen 8.1,
trans. Sivin, Medicine, Philosophy and Religion
in Ancient China, 7. Back
to Text |
| 16 |
This way of representing the five phases is
taken from Shen Ziyin and Chen Zelin, The Basis of Traditional
Chinese Medicine (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc.,
1996), 17. Back
to Text |
| 17 |
Huangdi neijing taisu 1.1,
trans. Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A
History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1985), 243. Back
to Text |
| 18 |
The interpretation argued here is based on
Unschuld’s discussion of translating Qi as “influence” (Unschuld, Medicine
in China, 67–73). From the perspective of the thing
influencing, it is yang-Qi (expiration); from the perspective of the
thing influenced, it is yin-Qi (inspiration); and from the perspective
of the whole transaction, it is simply Qi (transpiration). Back
to Text |
| 19 |
Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations
of Chinese Medicine (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1974), 179–180. Back
to Text |
| 22 |
Kristofer Schipper, “Daoist Ecology: The Inner
Transformation: A Study of the Precepts of the Early Daoist Ecclesia,” in
Girardot, Miller, and Liu, eds., Daoism and Ecology.
Back to Text |
| 24 |
Lisa Raphals, “Metic Intelligence or
Responsible Non-Action? Further Reflections on the Zhuangzi, Daode
jing and Nei ye,” in ibid.
Back to Text |
|