An Introduction to Early Daoist Thought

I finished my (second) master’s degree in 2019 and have, since then, given my thesis to everyone I thought might be even mildly interested in reading it. I put a lot of work into it and I’d hate for it to just languish on my hard drive. Even if my views have changed (they have) since I wrote it I still think there is some value in publishing it for others to read, or at least parts of it.

The thesis as a whole was an attempt to reconcile the faith tradition I was born into, that set of beliefs and worldview I was handed, and my experiences caring for my intellectually disabled brother—experiences that generally problematized, and in some cases directly contradicted, the core assumptions of that inherited belief system. Put plainly, could I find a way to interpret the tradition that truly valued not only my brother and his life, but the life of those who care for him? Despite the positive note at the end of my thesis I no longer think that I can find a way to interpret the tradition in that way.

The following is from a chapter on daoism and disability. Because of the length, I’ve decided to break it up into sections: part one (below) is a basic introduction to daoism, or at least those parts of early daoist thought that I think form a basic foundation upon which I will build other arguments; part two will be about the ways that daoism speaks of disability broadly, if it has anything to say about it, that is; and part three will be putting the pieces together to try and synthesize a way, or ways, to understand and value the experience of intellectual disability.

[There are some brief expository remarks that begin this chapter that I’ve omitted, so if it seems to begin abruptly that’s why.]

---

The Daoist tradition in particular is especially helpful when considering issues of disability, and I will draw from the two primary texts, the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) and Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). Before discussing the ways in which Daoist texts can help us reinterpret the gospel texts, it is necessary to first introduce some foundational ideas, concepts, and terms central to the early Daoist tradition.

Roger Ames and David Hall, in their philosophical translation of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching)¹ describe four core assumptions in the Daoist worldview. First, contrary to much of the Western philosophical tradition, there is no permanent and changeless ultimate reality ordering the world and its events—“there is just the ceaseless and usually cadenced flow of experience.”² As such, the events and experiences in our lives are equal ontologically, yet unique and particular. That is, each particular event or phenomenon is unique because of the ceaselessness of the transformation of experience.³ Second, these events are necessarily related to one another. “Said another way, these processual events are porous, flowing into each other in the ongoing transformations we call experience.”⁴ The fundamental relationality of events also provides each phenomenon context, yet one that is admittedly always in flux. It is this flux that allows for genuine creativity in the relationships between events and beings as each co-creates with the other, and forms and is formed by the other. “Not only is change an integral characteristic of things, but real creativity is a condition of this continuing transformative process.”⁵ 

The third core assumption of the Daoist worldview is a radical perspectivism.

“The field of experience is always construed from one perspective or another. There is no view from nowhere, no external perspective, no decontexualized vantage point.”⁶

Each particular perspective is valued precisely in its uniqueness, because it is unlike any other perspective. Lastly, building on the first assumption, because, “there is no appeal to some external efficient cause,”⁷ we have agency as active contributors and participants in the field of experience. “The energy of transformation lies within the world itself as an integral characteristic of the events that constitute it.”⁸

The meaning of the word dao (道) has many meanings and connotations. Often translated as way, or The Way, path, method, teachings, doctrine, etc., “at its most fundamental level, dao seems to denote the active project of ‘moving ahead in the world,’ of ‘forging a way forward,’ of ‘road building.’”⁹ Ames and Hall, in their philosophical translation of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) suggest translating dao as way-making.  Brook Ziporyn suggests that dao as used in the Daodejing and Zhuangzi texts represents an ironic reversal from its meaning in Kongfuzian (Confucian) texts. The Kongfuzian dao was, “a set of practices designed to guide one’s behavior in some specific way so as to promote the attainment of a predetermined value or objective: social harmony, personal contentment, material benefit.”¹⁰ In contrast to and rejection of this approach, the Daoists insisted that the true dao looked very different than the dao of the Kongfuzians.

“All daos are attempts to attain value by focusing on some one set of explicit values and behaving accordingly, but this sabotages the attainment of that value. The only real Dao, then, is a non-dao, the absence of all daos.”¹¹

Given this understanding of what dao is and is not, Ziporyn goes on to define dao as, “whatever we are not looking at, whatever we’re not interested in, whatever we place no value on.”¹²

This ironic reversal of dao serves an important purpose for the Daoist tradition: it points to that which is excluded when any particular dao is prescribed. That is, when a dao or way is given as the path (dao) to achieve some end, there are, inherent within that path, some things which are valued over others. “The term ‘Dao,’ then, by directing attention to the neglected disvalued side of any value pair, simultaneously discloses the relation between the two sides and their common grounding in the unnamable not-yet-evaluated source of both.”¹³ So the dao of the Daoists is, somewhat paradoxically, simultaneously that which is devalued when a dao is given, and also the dao that should be followed in the course of human affairs.

Closely related to dao is de (德), which is often translated as virtue or power. If dao is the big picture path or way, then de is the particular and granular. “The Daodejing encourages a comprehensive, processual view of experience that requires a full understanding of the larger picture and the ability to locate and appreciate the particular event within it.”¹⁴ This larger, big picture view gives meaning and context to the particular phenomena in our everyday experience. This is what Ames and Hall refer to as focal awareness and field awareness. If we are to influence the world around us in the most efficacious way, and if all the events that makes up our experience are influenced by and influence all the others, then seeing each particular event as it relates to the whole is invaluable in achieving this. Ames and Hall summarize this relationship thusly:

In order to influence and anticipate the general flow of circumstances, we must have a focused awareness of each of the particular events that constitute our experience. We must be aware of the one as it is implicated in and influences the many. This kind of awareness is to see the world focally in terms of the insistent particulars (de) that constitute it. And in order to best understand any one of these events and bring it fully into focus, we must be aware of the field of conditions that conspire to sponsor and sustain it. We must be aware of the many conditions as they are implicated in and are continuous with the one event. This kind of awareness is to see the insistent particular more broadly in terms of the continuous flow of experience (dao). The field can only be entered through the particular focus, and the complexity of the focus can only be appreciated by extending the field. Thus, a focal awareness and field awareness presuppose each other.¹⁵

Just like dao, de refers to both the activity and results of this type of focus. It is for this reason that de is often translated as virtue or power: the person engaging in this type of focus has a discernible quality or power that is infectious to others. “The notion of [de] always implies a notion of efficacy and specificity. Every creature possessing a power of any kind, natural or acquired, is said to have [de].”¹⁶ 

Ames and Hall suggest that the purpose of the Daodejing is, “bringing into focus and sustaining a productive disposition that allows for the fullest appreciation of those specific things and events that constitute one’s field of experience… It is making this life significant.”¹⁷ This is why they translate Daodejing as “Making This Life Significant,” which otherwise would translate as “the classic of this de and its dao” if taken literally. They suggest that the Daodejing is primarily concerned with how to focus one’s de for the purpose of generating meaning in every sphere of human life.¹⁸ Robert Henricks interprets the central theme of the Daodejing in slightly different terms. The primary concern, according to Henricks, is how adult humans can return to the Way (dao). He defines the problem as one where adult humans,

“have lost touch with the Way. As a result, adults constantly lose sight of who they are by nature and are constantly striving to be someone or something they are not, and they do things that lead them to physical danger and harm.”¹⁹ 

Henricks finds three recurring themes in the Daodejing that attempt to answer how one can return to the Way. The first theme found throughout the Daodejing is encouraging people to live more simply with less possessions, and preferably in a rural or agrarian setting.²⁰ The second theme is mystical in nature. The Daoist “must literally return to the [Dao] by achieving mystical union with the [Dao]—experiencing the oneness of all things in the [Dao].”²¹ Lastly, there is a theme concerned with a reversion to child-like states. The naturalness and spontaneity of our childhood are lost in our journey to adulthood. “As children grow up, they ‘learn’ from their parents and from others in society that some things and some types of behavior are ‘good’ while others are ‘bad,’ some things are ‘beautiful’ while others are ‘ugly,’ and some things are of ‘value’ while others are not.”²² 

In a sort of synthesis of the views of Ames and Hall and Henricks, Ziporyn understands the central ideas of the Daodejing to be “a critique of conscious knowledge and moral ideals as such,”²³ and the directing of our focus and attention “toward the background, that is, what normally escapes our purpose-driven awareness.”²⁴ Indeed, Ziporyn sees the central theme to be provoking a shift in our focus towards that which will return us to a child-like state of spontaneity, “toward the spontaneous and purposeless processes in nature and man that undergird and produce things, begin things, end things, compose the stuff of things, and guide things along their courses by not deliberately guiding them at all.”²⁵

Finally, in the Zhuangzi, the core Daoist assumption of radical perspectivism gets center stage. The central question that animates the Zhuangzi is: “Given that there are alternate ways to see things, why do I, and why should I, see things the way I do rather than another way and thus follow one path rather than another?”²⁶ Zhuangzi’s answer to this question takes seriously the limits of our knowledge and is skeptical of any of the answers given from his contemporaries.

“Our understanding consciousness can never know why it sees things one way rather than another, can never ultimately ground its own judgments, and is actually in no position to serve as a guide for living.”²⁷

In the Zhuangzi, the dao produces many daos, that is, the dao generates many paths, many courses, many perspectives, none of which are the ultimate path, course, or perspective. “For Zhuangzi, the Course is the non-deliberate, unknowable emergence of not just valued things, but of all the various courses or ways of knowing and valuing.”²⁸ Given this position, the Zhuangzi is concerned with how to move through life with skill and acuity without damaging this generative process within ourselves. The transformation of perspectives, of daos within us, into other new perspectives must not be prevented. “This approach is, for Zhuangzi, the only viable way to change the world.”²⁹ 

Another important term, and one that gets to the question of “how” to move through life without damaging the process of generating new perspectives, is wuwei (無爲). Wuwei is often translated as non-action, no action, or doing nothing. Ames and Hall translate wuwei as “noncoercive action that is in accordance with the de of things.”³⁰ Edward Slingerland cautions us against thinking wuwei is all about passivity. Instead, wuwei refers to, “the dynamic, effortless, and unselfcounscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective.”³¹ He translates wuwei simply as effortless action, or spontaneous action.³² There is an important connection between wuwei and de. As mentioned earlier, a person who is engaged in focal awareness has a quality that is perceived by others as having power. Slingerland simplifies this relationship: “People who are in wuwei have de… De is radiance that others can detect, and it serves as an outward signal that one is in wuwei.”³³ Ames and Hall remind us that in the processual worldview of Daoism, wuwei is “the absence of any course of action that interferes with the particular focus (de) of those things contained within one’s field of influence.”³⁴ Wuwei is really a disposition that is particularly efficacious in allowing the transformation of perspectives to spring forth of itself without obstruction.

footnotes

1. Sometimes rendered tao. Throughout I will use the pinyin system of romanization. 
2. Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, trans., Daodejing (Making This Life Significant):A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 14.
3. Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 15.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. Ibid., 18.
7. Ibid., 21.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 57.
10. Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, trans. Brook Ziporyn (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009), xiii. 
11. “The Dao of the Daodejing,” Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings Supplemental Material, Brook Ziporyn, accessed October 10, 2018, https://www.hackettpublishing.com/zhuangzidao.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 33.
15. Ibid., 34.
16. Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu and Taoism, trans. Roger Greaves (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 27.
17. Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 11.
18. Ibid., 60.
19. Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching, trans. Robert. G. Henricks (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), xxii.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., xxiii-xxiv.
22. Ibid., xxvi.
23. Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi, xiv.
24. Ibid., xv.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., xvi.
27. Ibid.
28. “Zhuangzi as Philosopher,” Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings Supplemental Material, Brook Ziporyn, accessed October 10, 2018, https://www.hackettpublishing.com/zhuangziphil.
29. Ibid.
30. Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 67.
31. Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity (New York: Broadway Books, 2014), 7.
32. Slingerland, Trying Not to Try, 8.
33. Ibid.
34. Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 39.