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Out-of-season rain
Dashes crowns of princely trees,
Perplexed travelers ask for reason,
Huddling under worn eaves.
Those who follow Tao make much of knowing and acting in conformity to the cycle of seasons. They have made a science of studying the exact ways in which events progress. Some have become so skillful that their lives are admired as nearly magical. Yet when things happen out of turn, even these wise ones are surprised.
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Kuang Jian 1998 Oil on canvas 39" x 32" LKuang Jian was born in 1961 in Hefei City, Anhui province. He began studying art privately in 1974 and in 1979 was accepted into the Academy of Arts of the People's Liberation Army, Beijing. Since his graduation in 1983 he has been an art director for the Army Day Movie Studio, Beijing. He was awarded the Bronze prize at the Seventh National Exhibition in 1989 and has participated in shows in Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Germany. He currently resides in Beijing. |
| Stanford
Studies on Daoism Definition of “Daoism” The Origins of Daoism • Attitudinal Daoism I: Anarchism Pre-Laozi Daoist Theory (cont) Shen Dao’s theory (perhaps unwittingly) lays the foundation for Daoism’s rejecting the authority of tian nature:sky in favor of daodaoguide rather than tian nature:sky. The insight that (like God and Nature) appeal to tian nature:sky is normatively empty. All authority presupposes some dao guide. Other theorists appeared to be noticing the same problem. The clearest of these is the Later Mohists who first seemed to realize that the appeal to tian nature:sky could justify the thief as well as the sage. Here is the Zhuangzi account of Shen Dao: For the general public, not cliques; changing and without selfishness; decisive but without any control; responsive to things without dividing in two. Not absorbed with reflection. Not calculating in knowing how. Not choosing among natural kinds and flowing along with them.They took bonding all the natural kinds together as the key. They said, “tian nature:sky constancies can cover but cannot sustain; Earthly cycles can sustain but cannot cover it. Great dao guide can embrace it but cannot distinguish it.” We know the myriad natural kinds all have both that which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable. So they said, “If you select then you cannot be comprehensive, if you teach you cannot convey all of it. Daoguide does not leave anything out.” Hence Shen Dao “abandoned knowledge and discarded ‘self’.” He flowed with the inevitable and was indifferent to natural kinds … . He lived together with shi and fei, mixed acceptable and avoidable. He didn’t treat knowing and deliberation as guides, didn’t know front from back. He was indifferent to everything. If he was pushed he went, if pulled he followed — like a leaf whirling in the stream, like a feather in a wind, like dust on a millstone. He was complete and distinguished (fei) nothing … . So he said, “reach for being like things without knowledge of what to do. Don’t use worthies and sages. Even a clod of earth cannot miss Dao.” The worthy officials all laughed at him and said, “Shen Dao’s dao does not lead to the conduct of a living man but the tendency of a dead man. It is really very strange … .” (Zhuangzi Ch. 33) Shen Dao’s great dao is only actual history of everything and there is just one such history — one actual past and one actual future. The actual is natural so the great dao (the natural pattern of behaviors, events and processes) requires no learning, no knowledge, no language or shi-fei this-not this distinctions. “Even a clod of earth cannot miss the great dao .” Shen Dao’s insight undermines all these guiding schemes that claim tian nature’s approval as justification. The crucial implication of his approach is that great dao has no normative force. To say “follow great daoguide” is as trivial as “do what you do.” When we think of dao as the actual course of all nature, it is obvious we will follow it. On this reasoning, Shen Dao adopted a stoic attitude. His slogan was “abandon knowledge; discard self.” “Abandon knowledge” means do not guide your behavior using prescriptive discourse — a learned dao guide. “Discard self” would mean to discard even Yang Zhu’s discourse of self-preservation. Egoistic guidance is also a dao guide and similarly based on a right-wrong or normative, guiding distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other.’ It recommends a particular possible future history. So to abandon knowledge is to discard ‘self’ as a prescriptive term — to give up using ‘self-other’ as a guiding distinction. Yangzhu’s egoism violates Shen Dao’s anti-language naturalism as much as does Confucius’s traditionalism or Mozi’s utilitarianism. |