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Lao Zi’s Dao
To explain the roots we should start with the first chapter of Laozi’s Daodejing, a text that predates Chinese Daoism by 500 years.
This chapter, like many in this amazing text, describes the authors (the text was collectively written) understanding of the spiritual wisdom that informed the animism of China in the formative 4th century BCE.
“True Dao is not a way that can be conceptualized.
Its true name has no identity.
Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.
Name is the mother of the ten thousand”
We are told, at the very start of the Daodejing, that Dao, as a model for life and the human spiritual path, is fundamentally non-conceptual and/or non-dualistic.
We are told implicitly that we (the reader [de]) are inherently an inseparable part of true Dao whose activity (wuwei) is ungraspable – names, concepts and words fail to capture “it” (Dao) or “us” (de) in an enduring way. We are invited to embrace the paradox that unknowing is wisdom.
Our path is natural and inherent – not something we are mandated to search for, discover, struggle with or master. The title of this text is the Daode classic. The fundamental teaching of wuwei is that Nature (Dao) and self (nature: de) are arising naturally and resolving naturally.
Expressing our true nature (de) is a moment-to-moment “naturalness”. Effort, in all its forms, is useless in the maintenance of this natural present. We are invited to simply stay with the situation as-it-is.
Wuwei is not “non-action” in the sense of renouncing or controlling our actions. It is acknowledging the way in which action arises of itself spontaneously – strictly without compulsion.
Any dao that is associated with the compulsion to do is riddled with desire, pride, effort and construction. Such strenuous action serves to uphold the false notion of an abiding self and, is therefore, not the Dao of wuwei – what, in this chapter, is called the true Dao.
Its true Name has no identity. Chang ming, translated here as “true name” can also be translated as true nature – each thing/being has its authentic nature – an authentic name. But this authentic nature is not an individual identity.
What is true about the true nature of each being and thing is its commonality with the true nature of all beings/things. This common nature could be called their naturalness.
Here is the first of a series of cautions in the Laozi about the use of words and names. According to Laozi, it is not that words are “bad” or something to be renounced. Words must simply not to be mistaken for hard, accurate assessments of reality. Laozi suggests that we use words softly and names provisionally. Words and names do not identify or ‘capture’ what is real. If we call what is ungraspable, by the name Dao – we have not truly grasped it or truly made a mistake.
If we use words softly and names provisionally, we allow language to float around and between concept and non-concept. This sort of language is easy to “forget”
Laozi’s Dao has no role to play or job to do – it is not creative. Nameless (wu ming or nameless also means non-conceptual and/or non-being) is the origin of Heaven and Earth (also yang and yin). The nameless and non-conceptual (Dao) appears in the world of words and perceptions, as Heaven and Earth. Yet creation of particularity is not really the activity of Heaven and Earth it is simply the appearance of the relationship between Heaven and Earth (dualism: yang/yin). Here Laozi is saying that Dao, in sense is the unknowable, non-interactive environment in which the dualism called Heaven (yang) and Earth (yin) dance. Heaven and Earth represent Dao as the limitless permissiveness of concept at play with non-concept. It is the constant tendency towards creation, arisal or appearance.
Wuweidao
Wuweidao, in the truest sense, is not a religious or spiritual tradition with a history and canon; it is not the transmission of a god, prophet or philosopher. It has no fixed national, racial or ethnic identity. It is the natural and spontaneous way in which Dao (the unnamable cosmos) interacts with itself. It is also the dynamic dance of substance (jing, space) and energy (qi, time) that is found in all forms of animism. For human beings it is the continuous and effortless expression of our true nature (de, shen) spontaneously revealed by the way-things-actually-are.
Laozi (a name given to compiler of the text) refers to wuwei as “cultivating Dao according to Dao”. Any and all implied spiritual cultivation in this text points directly to an appreciation of a non-dual reality – a continuity of life referred to by Chinese Daoists as Qi. The heart of such cultivation is found existing-of-itself (ziran) in non-conceptual meditation (zuowang).
Laozi’s Daodejing suggests that all religious history, all hagiographies, all the various traditions and their many sects are expressions of a single human effort to make the unknowable Dao, something knowable – a thing or idea ungraspable by our narrow, human limitations (shen or de). This paradoxical effort is a gateway to wisdom and the resolution of Fate (Daode). It is also the shamanic journey.
Liu Ming adds: “As radical as this may sound, in some very basic sense, of course, there is no intrinsic value to religion, sermons, scriptures, prayers or meditation. Only when the great religious systems inspire us to directly engage in overcoming our limitations do we find their value. For Laozi, paradox is the sublime teaching. What is profound about being human is that we create AND overcome our dualistic limits. Wuweidao suggests that we acknowledge and honor that profundity first and then use the heritage of our chosen dao (system/path) to play with our remarkable capacity to “uncreate” dogma and overcome our personal and collective limits. This is classic white shamanism.”
Chinese Daoism
Chinese Daoism is the native religion of the river valleys of what is today central northern China. In its very long history it has culled the spiritual practices and cultural expressions of innumerable “daos”.
It is the revelations of Zhang Daoling, the founder of the Han Daoist movement called the Tianshidao (Way of the Celestial Masters [2nd century CE]) that formed the basis of (Han) Chinese Daoism. In synthesizing animism (teachings and practices of the fangshi “formula masters” [black shaman]) and Wuweidao (white shaman), this formative movement created a cosmology and formal education (ordination curriculum of daoshi [Daoist priests]) that is still the basis of the orthodox Chinese Daoist spiritual path.
Between the Han and the Tang dynasties Daoism played an important role in the extraordinary cultural/spiritual synthesis that would become the Golden Age of China (Tang/Song dynasties). During this time Chinese Daoism inspired articulate and elaborate practices, at once scientific, spiritual and artistic. These new expressions reached a pinnacle in the inner alchemy (neidan) of Shangjingdao or the Way of the Highest Clarity. The Tianshidao and Shangjingdao eventually integrated into Zhengyidao or orthodox Daoism. The successive generations of the Zhang family have been the most prominent custodians of this tradition to the present day.
The Practice of Chinese Daoism
What makes orthodox Chinese Daoist practices unique is the underlying notion that spiritual practice is not remedial – we are not ‘lost’ or flawed by nature. “Cultivating Dao” is not a matter of obliterating personal problems, transcending the mundane or renouncing the world. True Daoist cultivation is best thought of as the myriad ways we can express our true living nature (Daode).
The central formal practice of Daoism is the non-conceptual meditation called “zuowang”, sitting and forgetting.
“Sitting and Forgetting” is non-conceptual meditation. The View, taken from early sources (Laozi), is that all beings/things are fundamentally nameless, self-arising and resolving. This “nature” of things (de, shen) is none other than Dao. The formal practice is the direct experience of Reality that “appears” when the practitioner relaxes the de/Dao distinctions that foster the notion of separation (body [jing], energy [qi] and totality [shen]). This practice is independent of “teachings” as such. Zuowang is the ancestor of the Chinese Buddhist Chan form of meditation called zuochan.
In Northern Asia the influences of Daoism are uncountable. Daoism informs the strokes of art and calligraphy, the movements of taiji and the mechanism of shamanistic exorcism. It has inspired China’s poetry tradition as well as the design of its homes, irrigation channels and burial sites. It is in the savory recipes of Chinese cuisine and in the balance and language of its traditional medicine. Yet, despite its pervasive influence on Chinese culture, science and religion, Daoism is not captured or defined by any one of these expressions.