Heaven and Earth, Part I

It is embarrassing to admit, but it was only during my reading of this chapter that I began more deeply to consider the conflict between Taoist and Confucian ideas. Perhaps that is because I don’t see the two positions as mutually exclusive but rather as a proper pair between whom a tension and competition is always at play. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us lay bare this conflict I speak of, the contradiction between Taoist Wuwei and Confucian cultivation of conduct:

The Master asked Lao Dan, “There are some people who try to order the Course, as if it were a matter of banishing something or someone: affirming and denying, accepting and rejecting. . . . Can such people be called sages?”

Lao Dan said, “These are petty officials or diviners bound to their craft . . . as the rat-catching of dogs brings on the leashes that bind them, and the grace of monkeys brings them down as captives from the mountain forests.” (Zhuangzi 102)

The master here is Confucius having a conversation with Lao Dan, another name for Lao Tzu. What Confucius is really asking is whether or not The Way can be attained through adhering to and enforcing a system of proper behavior and moral judgement. In other words, can someone become a sage through the cultivation of cultural virtues?

Lao Tzu’s reply denies the possibility. Such an attempt, he suggests, will result in pettiness and subjugation of the Self to the role one plays, to an institution, or to one’s craft. In Jungian terms, this would be called identification with a Persona, a mask or shell identity which one shows to society in order to protect a more fragile Ego—a protection which, while providing some short term benefit, enervates and enfeebles the Ego in the long term, just as skin, muscle, and bone lose durability, pliability, and strength if left unused and unexposed to the elements.

From this, we can see the Taoist have a point, and a sharp one at that. One eye on the goal is an eye off the Path. Focus on the cultivation of character, something defined by moral prescripts and judgements of good and evil, will lead one astray, away from the Tao, the Road, the Path, and the Course. Furthermore, as the identification with external virtues becomes more and more entrenched, the internal virtues weaken and weaken until one can no longer bear to identify with them. When this happens, one becomes trapped by the opinions and judgements of others, by society, by traditions, institutions, and prejudices. It is the archetypal tyranny of the senile King who becomes unable to adapt to the ever-changing reality. The Zhuangzi describes such self-imprisonment thusly:

So what the Yangist and Mohist think they have attained, setting themselves apart and straining as if on tiptoe, is not what I call attainment. When what they have attained is only their own confinement, can that be called an attainment? If so, we may say that a caged dove or owl has also attained something. Their likes and dislikes of external sights and sounds make woodchips, detritus, of what is internal to them, while externally they constrain their bodies with their leather caps, their feathered bonnets, their tablets of authority and their long ritual girdles. Thus they become inwardly stuffed full with their confining barricades of these woodchips, while outwardly they are bound by heavy cords, and yet there they are, bound up in their cords all bright-eyed and cheery, thinking they have achieved something great. If so, then criminals with chained arms or manacled fingers, or tigers and leopards caught in sacks and cages, can also be said to have really achieved something great! (Zhuangzi 108)

However, as someone who has been acculturated by Confucianism via training in the martial arts, I believe the Taoist may, like myself earlier in this essay, be getting ahead of themselves. It is not that the Zhuangzi is incorrect in its conclusions, but its assessment is incomplete. Yes, over-identification with a persona stifles internal, personal development. However, stopping our reasoning there likewise leads to denial of our intrinsic virtuosities—denial of our human nature.

For we human beings are natural mimics and cultural animals. Part of our growth and development comes from our copying of society, from our building of skills in order to discover into which niches we fit. This is Nietzsche’s Camel from the three metamorphoses as described in Thus Spake Zarathustra. One loads oneself with externally imposed restraints voluntarily in order to build the discipline necessary to let oneself be free. After all, slavery to the passions is still a form of slavery; it is the opposite of the stillness, balance, and tranquility described as necessary for the unadulterated expression and development of the intrinsic virtuosities in the previous chapter (Zhuangzi 90). Otherwise, we’d all be natural Taoist and sages of the Way without any practice, patience, or training. That this is not the case suggests that the freedom to “let-go” first requires a “holding-on.” Confucianism comes first as a means of strength and endurance training of the mind. Taoism comes later as a means of reflexive implementation.

(Perhaps this is why in the Hagakure, Yamamoto says, about the lessons of Zen Buddhism, “But it is important never to tell this to young people as it is something that would be harmful if incorrectly understood” (65)).

If you’ve read The Warrior Within, this process of transitioning from natural and uncultured, to cultured yet unnatural, back to natural infused with culture should be familiar to you. In fact, it is exactly the results of that process that are described in “Heaven and Earth”:

Those above are like the upper branches of a tree, and the ordinary people are like wild deer below. They are upright and proper without knowing it is ‘responsible conduct,’ love and care for one another without knowing it is ‘humankindness,’ are true without knowing it is ‘loyalty,’ reliable without knowing it is ‘trustworthiness.’ (Zhuangzi 106)

Reading this passage for the first time, I was struck by how many philosophies it ties together. Not only Taoism and Confucianism, but also Aristotle’s concept of the virtuous man and Nietzschean acceptance and resolution to the master-slave dialectic. Though suffering and hierarchy are inevitable, they can be accepted—can even become a playground for individual striving—if said individuals are made cotenant and then are given room and good examples to follow (i.e. are given liberty and have good father’s, leaders, and role models).

Of course, such no one man can implement by force or fiat—but I’ve gone on long enough for now. In the next Meditation, we’ll discuss the folly of top-down imposition of supposed virtue. For today, remember the necessity of balance between Heaven and Earth.

Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. Hagakure: Book of the Samurai, 2nd version, revised January 2005, digitally published by Lapo Mori.

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020