THE OLD CHINESE MELTING POT
Taoism and Confucianism, as Yin and Yan, mutually nurture
and compensate each other. Its thinking is the
crystallization of a spiritual stream associated to millenary
traditions. An old melting pot in slow and prolonged
thawing to which the meditative and austere Buddhism of
the dhyana sect was incorporated to transform it into Chan
Buddhism. Japanese Zen would drink from this fountain.
Historically it has particularized in two VI century BC
figures: Lao Tsé, installed in a nebula between history and
mythology; and King Tsé, Confucius in its Latin
denomination, clearly situated in history. Both figures
would create a framework, with its differences and
coincidences, to configure a common fund of thought which has been a constant in
china up to our days. The old melting pot comes from remote times.
Taoist Cosmogony alludes to a primary principle, Tan, that splits in two: the sky (Yang,
clear energy); and the earth ( yin, dark energy). Mankind, between sky and earth: ‘ One
creates two, two creates three, three creates all other things’ (Tao Te Ching, XLII). Tao
Te Ching (TTC) is the written reference of Taoism and is attributed to Lao Tsé and his
followers. Taoism enjoyed moments of great spirituality which facilitated its
convergence towards the then emerging Buddhism. The “golden flower” (comparable
to Buddhist illumination) would be the means of return to Tao for the neotaoist
movement.
Taoist thinking, already present before Lao Tsé as a primal force of Chinese tradition,
proclaims itself as essentially esoteric, oriented to the innermost of mankind beyond
all responsibility of any individual to society. Strictly speaking, and despite that in
different moments they were proclaimed as religions in China, neither Taoism nor
Confucianism (nor Buddhism) are properly religions: “The Sky and the Earth are not
benevolent, mankind is for them as straw dogs” (TTC, V).
Confucius appears as a reaction against the individualistic projection of Taoism, and
without renouncing to spirituality proclaims the organization of society as an
objective. Society, believed Confucius, is not a anarchic sum of undifferentiated
individuals but rather a stratified and organized superior structure within a system
known as the five relations: father-son, husband-wife, older brother-younger brother,
master-servant, or its social equivalents. Family is the center and model, and in fact
considering society as an inter-family utinty.
Lao Tsé, on the contrary, proposes a radical return to nature, to be a consubstantial
part of it without questioning her, nor even pretending to understand her. His ethical
speech begins with the idea that knowledge is a negative perversion that generates
wishes and activates a chain reaction which eventually defines moral of vices and
virtues and proclaiming laws that will eventually put an end to with personal liberty
and independence. He recommends rules to maintain the people in ignorance, ‘If the
populace is difficult to govern it’s because they know too much’ (TTC, LXV), ‘Use the
knotted cords again instead of written words’ (TTC, LXXX), ‘may the populace have
neither knowledge nor wishes’ (TTC, III), ‘Knowledge of ignorance is the zenith’
(TTC, LXXI), ‘Natural wisdom’ (TTC, LXXXI).
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The address of this social matters is what most
distances Confucius from Lao Tsé, since the former
wants to generate a culture of social compromise
disdained by the latter, ‘awareness of equality’
which is translated as loving your neighbor as an
essence of morality, ‘do unto others as you want
for yourself’. Nonetheless, he shares with Lao Tsé
self knowledge, ‘consciousness of the center, an
essential wisdom by which every person must
search the truth and attain perfection in their lives
with no other moral compensation but virtue itself,
virtue for the sake of virtue. Sine qua non condition,
to live life serenely and strive for interior peace.
Tao Te Ching unfolds a wide spectrum of personal
virtues which fully endorse Confucian thinking:
detachment ‘a wise man wants nothing personal’
(TTC, VII), generosity, ‘retire once the work is
concluded’ (TTC, IX), ‘create without possession’
(TTC, X). Design an exemplary man of pure soul
who, as a mirror, captivates everything but nothing
retains, a superman to follow Tao´s Law: ‘he who
respects the world in its own person is worthy of
being entrusting humanity’ (TTC, XIII).
‘Confucius believed that the best men must lead
the people and, responding to an impeccable ethical model, promote the virtue of
society. The five cardinal virtues of ruler: 1) benevolence, 2) integrity, 3) correction, 4)
knowledge, 5) good faith. Ideals that were not for him a theoretic postulate but rather
proposed a decided will to put them into practice. It’s the theory of the ‘continuous
thread’.
‘Wise men act without action’ (TTC, II). Taoism and Confucianism endorse the
principle of non-action. The lack of action, as a principle of government and decision,
does not respond to a principle of passiveness, but rather proposes the free
demonstration phenomenon of life without intervening , not forcing, allowing Tao to
flow, an indefinable concept (by definition), without name and therefore with too
many, -Meanings, ways, roads, the One, the All-, tends to harmonize, to balance, and
any action contrary to its flow will, says Taoism, be necessarily offset by a
compensating action of cosmic dimension when the cyclical movement is at its peak.
A principle of wisdom would be to be alert to detect changes of cycle and, sensing its
tendency, to induce transformations acting on the ‘seed’. I Ching, a book of Changes
or of the Mutations abridged by Confucius and his followers, is yet another book of
the wisdom of the Chinese tradition which should deserve our attention.
Since the Tang, dynasty of dynasties, the painting schools of the north, more academic
and formal, coexisted and confronted the southern schools, of more free, intimate and
spontaneous expression and more prone to the Chinese water ink technique.
Confucianism and Taoism, north and south, coexistence and confrontation, two
polarities that nurtured each other as did yin and yang.
José A. Giménez Mas
Imágenes
“PÁJARO PROFETA”
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