Taoism
taoism (?? : dào jiào, literally: the religion, or the school, of the way) is at the same time one and one .
Plunging its roots in the depths of Chinese culture old, this current of multiform thought impregnated art, the philosophy and the spirituality of the Far East. One finds misadventures of them in Chan (Japanese Zen), of the alternatives medical, political, aesthetic, one finds it in martial arts and it resounds still today as far as Occident, in particular with topics like and it personal development.
Synopsis |
Origin
Its surest core is consisted the "Gun taoist", together of three written or compiled books few centuries before Jesus-Christ:
- CAD De Jing (or CAT You Ching, Deliver Way and of its Virtue), allotted to the father founder of the current: Lao Zi (Lao-tseu). This short collection of obscure and poetic aphorisms is of a difficult access. Its very many translations and interpretations, sometimes extremely divergent, illustrate the richness and the imperceptible fluidity of the thought taoist. Although it is delicate to state clearly and objectivity the teaching of Lao Zi, reading of CAD De Jing allows to discover the principal topics of the taoism and offers a rich person matter to the meditation.
- The book of Zhuang Zi (Tchouang-tseu), more developed, is mainly the direct?uvre of one of the révérés authors of China. In the form of fables, philosophical flights metaphysics or dialogues, it proposes a reasoned individualism and a detached life of esthète. It was the book of bedside of many artists and its reading became often a refuge for generations of civil servant-well-read men (mandarins) ridges some with the difficulties of the social life.
- Traditional truth of the perfect vacuum, allotted to Bind Zi, is a collection of anecdotes and fables whose majority are inspired by the taoism of Zhuang Zi. One finds there the intensity of the philosophical debates of the time.
At the time during which these two philosophers would have lived (if as well is as they actually existed), existed a category of men of knowing also mentioned by Zhuangzi, too quickly forgotten but who however played an essential part in the formation of the taoism and his practices. They are the beings "with the extraordinary capacities" which practised exercises gymnic and respiratory which are without any doubt at the origin of the exercises of Daoyin such as they are still practised today (in a faded form).
It is the period of the "specialists" (Fangshi), coming from a very old shamanism, and the "immortal ones" (Xian), figures of legend which ignited the imagination of followers and emperors lasting of the centuries. They are these same characters which one knows if little (the writing will be generalized only much later) which is also at the origin of the Chinese hermits, that they are taoists or Buddhist, often in margin of all the doctrines, and which played an essential part in the development of the techniques of longevity.
The philosophy of Lao Zi (CAD De Jing) and of Zhuangzi (Nanhua Zhenjing) of the Kingdoms Combatants gradually mixed with the ideas cosmogonic schools of Yin-Yang and of the Five Elements to give a movement "of ideas taoists" which proposed the thought of Lao Zi and the ideal of Huáng Dì it Yellow sovereign legendary. This current was known under Han under the name of Huanglao, formed of the beginning of the name of the two central and déifiés characters: Huáng Dì and Lao Zi. Rather than the first movement in religious matter, like it was sometimes presented, Huanglao is a feature of culture which is comparable today with the culture taoist, then only in formation.
During the same period, the first true religious movement of the name of Taiping CAD (the Way of the Great Peace) was created by Zhang Jue starting from the Huanglao culture. It was followed by the school Wudoumi CAD (of the Five Bushels of Rice) founded by Zhang Daoling, figure now legendary. This last current was organized around a central character "celestial" who, like the emperor, reigned on a troop of followers while following the model of Laozi. The latter were to pay a tribute (five bushels of rice) to form part of the community whose practices were centered around the demons and of the diseases whose followers were to cure themselves using ritual and of talismans. This school will be called later Tianshi CAD (the school of the Celestial Masters) and each "celestial Master" will come (but not always) same Zhang family, until our days whose current representative is with . Parallel to this school, chocolate éclair according to our Western criteria, developed from Fangshi the alchemical practices which marked a turning in the life of the first followers taoists. It was a question of obtaining physical immortality by the asceticism on the one hand and the ingestion of mineral and vegetable products highly toxic, to form in the body a "elixir" (Tian) or a "pill of made gold immortality" from cinnabar. This current, very in sight under Tang, was called Jindan (Gold Pill or Gold Elixir) and it constituted the premisses . Little time after, under Song, this name as well indicated "external" practices (mineral ingestion), which intern (gymnic, méditatives, respiratory) or sexual. It was gradually replaced under Song by techniques almost exclusively internal and was known under the name of Neidan (Elixir Interns), to be different from the precedent, and from which name "from internal alchemy results". One developed to with it the energy centers called "Fields of Cinnabar" (Dantian) of freedom of movement of IQ (vital energy/vital breath) in the body and of the méditatives techniques.
It y have several schools taoists with the wire of time, but the two dominating ones as of the dynasties Jin and Yuan (XIIE and XIIIE centuries) was the school of the Celestial Masters (called too Zhengyi, Orthodoxe Unit) and the school of Complétude of Authentic (Quanzhen CAD). The latter is the fusion of two alchemical currents (to include/understand ascetic): the school of the north which was founded in Shaanxi under Jin by the eccentric Wang Chongyang on the basis of alchemical tradition (intern, Neidan) of the tradition known as of Zhonglü (of the name of the two "immortal" patriarchs Zhong Liquan and Lü Dongbin), of Chan Buddhism and the benevolence confucéenne; the school of the south of Zhang Boduan of Song founded in but very active in the south of Changjiang. There are thus today two currents, one rather ritualistic and secular, the other rather ascetic centered around communities of the Buddhist type.
In , two principal currents divide the heritage of these writings. The popular taoism is a form of religion, with its priests, its rites, its aspiration with the immortality of the heart or the body, its fabulous bestiary, its saints and its sects. Competed with by the arrival of , it was renewed to survive while borrowing to him, just like Buddhism was strongly tinted of taoism while being introduced in China. The Chinese syncretism made it possible the "three religions" (Confucianism, taoism, Buddhism) to cohabit, exchange, and also to avoid most of the time them wars of religion, transformed into fights of influence near the emperor. Parallel to the religion taoist, a current named in Occident "Taoism philosophical" sought to counterbalance in the c?ur well-read men the hegemony of , which was promoted very early official orthodoxy and which dominated the Chinese thought until our days, almost without interruptions, sometimes with the detriment of diversity.
Principal features
Being often defined compared to its rival Confucianist, the current of thought taoist can light by comparison with this last. However, these two currents of thought divide the heritage of the Chinese cultural bottom, which is much more important than what separates them, and are thus more complementary than antagonistic. The Chinese well-read men generally perceived them like two different means to arrive at the same goal: wisdom. Each one is effective in its field, and one can very well, like says it the proverb, being "Confucianist the day and taoist the night".
To follow the Way
The research of wisdom in China is based mainly on the harmony. The harmony, for the taoists, is while placing its c?ur (and its spirit, the Chinese character of the c?ur indicates the two entities) in the Way (CAT), i.e. in the same way as nature. In turning over with the paramount and natural authenticity, by imitating the fertile passivity of the nature which spontaneously produces the "ten thousand beings", the man can release himself from the constraints and its spirit can "overlap the clouds". Pronant a kind of quietism naturalist (Granet), the taoism is an ideal of unconcern, spontaneïty, personal freedom, refusal of the rigours of the social life and of extatic communion with the cosmic forces. This taoism of the great mystical rides was used as refuge to the well-read men marginal, or whom marginalized by a banishment with the steps of the Empire, the forgotten poets, the painters recluse... and fascine today many Westerners.
To release itself from the social constraints, the taoist can flee the city and withdraw himself in the mountains, or live as a peasant. In Talks with Confucius, one finds already this opposition very Chinese between on the one hand those which assume the life in company and seek to improve it (Confucianists) and, on the other hand, those which consider that it is impossible and dangerous to improve the company, which is not that an artificial framework preventing the naturalness from expressing itself (taoists). This dialectical is that ofengagement, which still divides the literary circles in the world. Some images of Zhuang Zi light it conveniently: a twisted tree, whose carpenter cannot make boards, will live of its beautiful life at the edge of the way, while a quite right tree will be cut in boards then sold by the logger. Uselessness is guarantor of serenity, of long life. In the same way the occupant of a boat will be made insult copiously if it comes to obstruct a large boat, but, if the boat is vacuum, the large boat will be arranged simply to avoid it. It is thus advisable to be useless, empty, without qualities, transparency, "to vomit its intelligence", not to have not an idea preconceived and less opinions possible. Having fact the vacuum in oneself, the wise one is entirely available and is let carry like a sheet died in the current of the life, i.e.: freely "to play about in the Way".
Plenitude of the vacuum and other paradoxes
It is the vacuum of the hub, the vacuum in the earthenware jar, the vacuum of the doors and windows which give their utility to the wheel, the containers, the houses, explains us Lao Zi (DDJ XI). It is the part Yin, the obscure bottom of the valleys, the female sex which have the capacity to create, to multiply beings (DDJ VI). In this vacuum which is not it vacuum theoretical of , is in germ all the possibilities of the existence. By making the vacuum in oneself, the limpid thoughts can circulate. It is thanks to the "white" of paper that the features of the brush can recreate with grace and sincerity of the mountains, the rivers, the trees or the bamboos. This fruitfulness of the vacuum is with the c?ur CAD De Jing and of all the thought taoist.
Social uselessness, the absence of effective qualities which is presence in power of all possible qualities, the vacuity of a released c?ur of any concern society men, are the most current aspirations of the way taoist. One can withdraw world to approach some, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient. To carry out this release, "to find the Way", one of the means possible is the use of paradoxes. They are very numerous in CAD De Jing and often curl the provocation: it is without leaving at home that the world is known, it is by not knowing that one knows, it is when one acts the least which its action is most effective, etc. The goal of these paradoxes is to break the conventional thought, to detach from the logical bonds, even to break the significances of the words and to reverse their values.
It is necessary to avoid bringing the philosophical taoism closer to subjectivism, because the subject thinking (it I), far from placebeing placed in the center of prospect for the world, is regarded as an ultimate constraint making screen with Nature and the spontaneïty. The taoism is not either one relativism integral: only the statutory values are rejected like artificial and the eigenvalues with the life are sought, thus the flexibility, the agility, the availability, the fertility.
Often catching on the wrong foot a thought Confucianist already instituted in rigid doctrines, the thinkers taoists made fun briskly of certain dogmas of their adversaries. They sought especially to exceed debates sometimes too ground-with-ground with their tastes, and state to this end a certain number of paradoxes which reverse the priorities or go against the common direction, as follows: the weakness is stronger than the force, stupidity marks the supreme intelligence, or civilization is one decline.
Civilization like disease
Whereas majority of the characters of Chinese mythology are of the civilizing heroes, who gave to the men inventions such as, itirrigation, or it, the taoism is opposed radically to the invention and the technique, this feature properly human. It to illustrate, one parabola of Zhuang Zi puts in scene a peasant taoist who, although knowing the use of chadouf (which would save to him much time and energy to sprinkle its fields), "shame would have to make use of it" because this artificial technique goes against nature. Going in the same direction, a paragraph of CAD De Jing
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