Month: June 2004

Although I’m thoroughly convinced that the Bush administration doesn’t deserve re-election, I find it painful to read most political blogs. Possibly that’s because I’ve already made up my mind and don’t want stray facts to get in the way of my opinions. I’ll admit I used to love nothing more than a good argument when I was younger, but recently I’ve grown impatient with them.

While I admire politicians for being willing to sit through endless hearings listening to uninformed citizens rant about issues, I can imagine no worse personal fate than having to sit through long hearings listening to people complain.

It’s gotten to the point where if I’m listening or watching a program and people start raising their voices, I immediately turn it off. Needless to say, I don’t follow many internet flame wars, no matter whose side I’m on.

I guess that’s why I found this selection from The Chuang Tzu, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” rather apt:

Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of you beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can know the answer. Shall we wait for still another person?

But waiting for one shifting voice to pass judgment on another is the same as waiting for none of them. Harmonize them all with the Equality of t’ien leave them to their endless changes and so live out your years What do I mean by harmonizing them with the Equality of t’ien? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

There’s obviously something to be said for fighting for a just cause; otherwise it would be obvious that arguments are a waste of time. It’s even doubtful that things would ever improve without debate. However, excessive arguing simply drives people further apart rather than bringing them together. It doesn’t solve problems; it exacerbates them.

Although it’s perfectly valid to state your opinion and offer evidence to support it, it’s pointless to get caught up in long arguments with those who have differing opinions. Let them state their opinion, if they must, and then move on, accepting the fact that you have differing opinions and they’re unlikely to change. If 55% can be considered a landslide in an election, it’s unlikely you could ever convince everyone to agree with you.

To try to do so makes about as much sense as trying to prevent the sun from coming up in the morning because you’ve stayed up too late replying to the latest attack on your honor. Skip the arguments and get up in the morning refreshed and ready to enjoy another day of challenges and rewards.

My reading of the Tao Teh Ching has reminded me more of my failings than my strengths, for it seems as difficult to live by these precepts as it does to live by Christ’s ideals. It is even harder to follow them when you have doubts about some of the ideas themselves.

Perhaps part of my questioning comes from the fact that the Tao Teh Ching is directed not just at the individual but at government leaders, as indicated by lines like “Govern the state with correctness./ Operate the army with surprise tactics./ Administer the empire by engaging in no activity.”

Yesterday I noted that, though I agreed that no one can ever know the “whole truth” about any situation, I was bothered that people often perceive such ambivalence as a weakness. As a result, nuanced ideas are often rejected for the less-reasoned, and more dangerous, ideas of someone who’s convinced he is right. (Simply put, voters seem to prefer the simplistic views of a Reagan or a Bush to those of a Carter or a Clinton; the best way to unravel the Gordian knot of international affairs is with the biggest sword, and WE have it.)

Looking back, perhaps that logical leap from true wisdom to “lack of passion” may have been unfounded, but the two concepts still seem intertwined to me. Thus, I was immediately drawn to the following passage from Raymond Van Over’s translation of Chuang Tzu, one of three major Taoist sages, in Chinese Mystics:

With the truly wise, wisdom is a curse, sincerity like glue, virtue only a means to acquire, and skill nothing more than a commercial capacity. For the truly wise make no plans, and therefore require no wisdom. They do not separate, and therefore require no glue. They want nothing and therefore need no virtue. They sell nothing and therefore are not in want of a commercial capacity. These four qualifications are bestowed upon them by God and serve as heavenly food to them. And those who thus feed upon the divine have little need for the human. They wear the forms of men, without human passions. Because they wear the forms of men, they associate with men. Because they have not human passions, positives and negatives find them no place. Infinitesimal, indeed, is that which makes them man; infinitely great is that which makes them divine.

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu: “Are there, then, men who have no passions?”
Chang Tzu replied, “Certainly”

“But if a man has no passions,” argued Hui Tzu, “what is it that makes him a man?”

“Tao,” replied Chuang Tzu, “gives him his expression, and God gives him his form. How should he not be a man?”

“If, then, he is a man,” said Hui Tzu, “how can he be without passions?”

“What you mean by passions,” answered Chuang Tzu, “is not what I mean. By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy, but rather falls in with whatever happens, as a matter of course, and does not add to the sum of his mortality.”

I’m obviously no expert on Taoism. Much of what is written has the same gnomic wisdom I admired in the Book of Thomas ” and is about as easy to understand. About the time I thought I understood what was being said about the wise man’s relationship to the four qualities commonly admired by others, I’m dumbfounded by the line, “These four qualifications are bestowed upon them by God and serve as heavenly food to them.” If they have no need of them, why are they “heavenly” food? Why aren’t they “tasteless fast food?”

What truly caught my attention, though, was Chuang Tzu’s definition of “without passions as “one who does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy.” Though I wonder a little about a translation that uses a phrase like “internal economy,” “without passions” suddenly makes sense.

Who doesn’t admire the man who can remain calm and focused in the midst of crisis? What is worse than overreacting to your enemies’ actions, particularly if they are counting on just such a reaction?

“Good” and “bad” are inevitable in life, and to overreact to either, or to change one’s principles or beliefs because of such events, at least without serious consideration, is undoubtedly a mistake. Better to trust those underlying principles, the Tao, you have built your life on then to merely react to whims of fortune.

Unless I’ve already stated otherwise, I think chapter 71 of the Tao Teh Ching is my favorite chapter. It’s a wise admonition that I’m sure most of us who are teachers have forgotten more than once. There’s nothing more apt to make you think you know everything than a class of students who know very little and don’t care to learn much more.

Chapter 71 is a short but important chapter in the Tao. De Grazia translates it:

To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not is a disease.
Only when one recognizes this disease as a disease can one be free from the disease.
The sage is free from the disease.
Because he recognizes this disease to be disease, he is free from it.

while Van Over translates it:

The Disease of Knowing

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest attainment; not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.

It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.

This recognition of fallibility is probably one of the wise man’s greatest strengths in finding truth, though it is certainly less valuable when it comes to convincing others you have found that truth.

Strangely this passage reminds me of a line from Yeats’ “The Second Coming:” “The best lack all convictions, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”

There seems to be a fine line between “knowing that you do not know” and lacking conviction. For instance, I long ago began to avoid religious arguments with “true believers” because I was far too willing to admit possibilities while they were absolutely sure that they knew the “truth,” a truth I found ultimately unknowable. I’m sure these “true believers” took this to mean that I agreed with their position, or, at the very least, that I could do nothing to refute their “truths.” All it really meant was that I had cut myself off from any truth that they might have known.

On the political level, I’ll admit I do not have answers for most of the world’s problems, but I’m absolutely convinced that those in power who think they know all the answers and who are sure they are good and others “evil” can only make matters worse. The question remains, how do you convince those who are looking for simple answers that there are none and that to accept simple answers is to doom yourself to one more turn of the wheel?