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One way of understanding the way
- 1. One Way of Understanding the Way English 218: Introduction to Children’s Literature September 5, 2017
- 2. The Tao = The Way
- 3. The Tao and the Logos
- 4. The Tao and the Logos First, Socrates’ dialectics: thesis – antithesis synthesis
- 5. The Tao and the Logos First, Socrates’ dialectics: thesis – antithesis synthesis Good Right Master Male Rich White Oppressor Colonist Bad Wrong Slave Female Poor Black Oppressed Colonized _________________________ _________________________
- 6. Back to the center…
- 7. The Tao and the Logos First, Socrates’ dialectics: thesis – antithesis synthesis Good Right Master Male Rich White Oppressor Colonist Bad Wrong Slave Female Poor Black Oppressed Colonized _________________________ _________________________
- 8. The Tao and the Logos First, Socrates’ dialectics: thesis – antithesis synthesis Good Right Master Male Rich White Oppressor Colonist Bad Wrong Slave Female Poor Black Oppressed Colonized _________________________ TheWay _________________________
Editor's Notes
- I’m gonna try to do an impossible task and explain what can’t be explained: the philosophy of the Tao. The great thing about it is if I fail, I actually explained it perfectly. Let me explain. Taoism is the oldest religion in the Chinese culture, predates Confuscius, predates Buddhism; in fact, the word Tao (often translated as “way”) is often misspelled Dao in English to match with the phonetic “d” instead of with a “t”. [I always say, it is not Tao, that’s a nightclub in Vegas.] And Dao is often referred to as “doh”, where we get ju-do and Taikwan-do. But let me go back to Tao. The above picture is Lao tzu , the creator of the Tao (you can read about him and his legecy of composing the Tao te Ching. The Chinese character below him is the word “Tao”: it depicts a man walking a big stride and the other symbol is of the mind (a box with branches stemming from the top). This is in reference to the walking in one’s own mind, to wonder and to wander at the same time. The third image here is the yen and yang, probably the most famous symbol of the Tao, and as you can see it is not a way at all. It is a circle with one side white with a black dot and another side black with a white dot, fitted to form a circle. And I will exaplin that shortly on how that relates to the Way.
- So, you should have already read some of the Tao. Probably a lot of you are thinking to yourself, that made no sense whatsoever. In fact, that’s the point. As one of the aphorism Lao tzu writes, “This nonsense makes perfect sense.” But I’m not going to go over the Tao here. I believe Benjamin Hoff does a pretty good job of explaining the tao in his book, The Tao of Pooh. One thing I would say about the Tao is that it is confusing in the Western mind. Because we think of and we look at the world differently in America, in the West. And this goes beyond language or even religions, we just examine our situation with completely different ways. This is not a bad thing since there is no right or wrong way of viewing the world. But in order to understand the Tao, we must first understand how we think in the West. Now I am going to do something completely inappropriate, according to a lot of culturalists. I am going to compare the West and the East. Now, for the longest time, we kept the two separate, I think, in order to avoid colonialist hegemony, defining the East under Western eyes is like owning the East, what Edward Said calls our Orientalism. I understand that argument. Being a comparatist, I have a habit of comparison, but also avoided Orient and Occidental cultures throughout my studies. It was just not done. However, there have been attempts to compare to two worlds.
- Let’s first consider Socratic dialectics: this is a very simplified version of his theory; I am only focusing on the first part, since it is relevant to my ideas. So, we look at the world in in the West through this dialectic, the bedrock of our speculative thinking . This is how we form dialogue: a statement is given (thesis) and an opposing viewpoint is then presented (antithesis). And the disagreement leads to a synthesis of ideas which is either in the form of consensus (as Jurgen Habermas likes) or a cancelling out (Hegel’s Aufhebung). Either way we view the world as opposites:
- So, looking at the chart, this is how we see the world, in these dichotomies. And we often favor one side (the left-side) over the other. We prefer to be good over bad, right over wrong, etc. Then it leads to prejudices (rich over poor, master over slave, male over female, etc.) With this mindset, we have this wall that divides us, and everyone on the left-side of the wall doesn’t want anything to do with those on the other side of the wall. And we can see this in our politics: the left disagrees with everything the right says and visa versa. We don’t even attempt to compromise or come to a consensus. We see our side as right and the other side as wrong. And we need to defeat the other side, or at least keep them marginalized, out of our way. That’s the West, and our language is really set up like this, not what Socrates intended, though.
- Lao tzu in many places in the Tao te Ching, refers to the center: that as long as we stay in the center we will find the way. This aligns with the yen yang circle, where everything is symmetrical, everything is in the middle. Sure, the boudary is curved, emphaszing fluidity, the flow of the universal force, but everything is “centered around the Tao” (Lao tzu’s words). In fact, the circle is an important part of the archetechural space of the East. If you ever been to a Japanese bridge, you realize that it is difficult to cross. You have to climb up one side then turn around and climb down backwards to get to the other side. It is not an archetectually sound bridge! But the purpose of the bridge is not its utility. It is a half-circle on purpose, so that its reflection in the water completes the circle. So, for Lao tzu, the center is everything, it is where you find the Tao or the Way. In fact, one famous aphorism of his states that the problem with people nowadays is that they tend to take the side paths. He goes on to write that we must stay in the middle, in the center of things.
- Going back to our dialectic, we take the side paths, we choose one side over the other, we tend to view the other side as our enemy, as our opposition. But in the Eastern culture, it is not so much contradiction but complementary. We can’t live without the other side. The master needs the slave, in some ironic way, in order to keep being master. But for the East it is not about right or wrong, it is about unity.
- So, instead of taking the side paths, stay centered and you are on the Way!