Outline Lecture Fifteen—Learning from Nature: The Dao of Laozi and Zhuangzi

I) “The Ruse of the Empty City”

a) Zhuge Liang from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
i) “Potent non-action” or “making use of emptiness”
ii) Most brilliant strategy in that region – recognized by his enemies
iii) Used Daoist tradition to wage war and use strategy
iv) Sumai (best general on the other side) is chasing Liang – comes to a small fortified
city and realizes he must stop running and make his last stand
(1) Orders all his councilors to leave and the city people to hide to stay safe
(2) Leave gates wide open he commands
(3) He sits and plays the sitar on a ledge, a scholar playing this instrument – sumai
comes to gate but doesn’t dare to go in right away
(4) Sumai listens to the music Liang is playing to see what state Liang is in mentally
(chess game) at gate and is listening with his 10000 soldiers
(5) Sees Liang alone and he is wary and listens – ‘I could not sense a single trace of
fear, trepidation or any nerve’ ‘has to be a trap’ he leaves with his troups
v) Shows: Liang had such control over his emotions he could play completely alone
‘rouse of the empty city’

II) The Significance of the Term “Daoism” (Taoism)

a) Reference to Three Different Traditions
i) Yogic Daoism
(1) Meditational practices to nurture the vital qi
(2) Qi gong: vital energy
(3) Historically preoccupied with immortality
ii) Religious Daoism
(1) Folk religions based on worship of hero-deities and local shrines
(2) Collective range of folk religions (worship of local deities)
iii) Philosophical Daoism – self-preservation is a common theme
(1) Yangzhu: preserve one’s life and avoid all injury
(a) Most important thing is to preserve one’s life and “ “
(b) Best thing is to get away from trouble and become a hermit in the mountains
(2) Laozi (Lao-Tzu): self-preservation in cosmological as opposed to personal terms
(a) “Pendulum” effect
(b) Retreat to the mountains if you want but trouble will always find you
(c) Way of viewing things was that the universe is governed by a constant
interplay of oppositional forces (pendulum effect) dualities
(d) Too much of a good thing always turns bad (good example is food)
(i) Just when you feel safest = greatest danger
(3) Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu): transcend dualities and embrace transformation
(a) Trouble find you but who says everything in the world follows the predictable
pattern
(b) Transformations are unpredictable
(c) Goal is to transcend the duality of good and bad
(d) See things from broader perspective (misfortune may not be so bad as we see)
 (e) Embracing the transformation of all things
(f) Because not predictable the best thing is the ability to transcend dualities all
together (grow spontaneous, creative and indifferent mind – keep an empty
fluid mind)

III) Laozi’s Daodejing (Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching or Classic of the Way)

a) Problematic authorship
i) Probably 4th century B.C.E.
(1) Attributed to Laozi but no one knows for sure who it was written by
(2) Most likely compilation of folk wisdom and/or tradition (general consensus)
ii) Who was it originally intended for?
(1) During Warring States period it was a survival guide for a small state’s leader
(a) Wisdom to survive in this hostile climate
(2) Has much broader application than survival and rulership
(3) Became a source of philosophical wisdom – became counterpart for
Confucianism
(4) Most translated text second only to the Bible
b) The Principle of Reversal (pendulum affect)
i) Everything governed by the interplay of dualities (ying and yang – in yang)
(1) Light/dark, male/female etc.
ii) Paradox of all things inclining towards their opposite
(1) Strong always becomes weaker, High becomes low, Full becomes empty, potent
becomes impotent
iii) “Reversal is the movement of the Way”
Movement: not about a static thing, its an everchanging ever oppositional movement
(1) Meaning of the “yin-yang” symbol
(a) “The myriad creatures carry on their backs the yin and hold in their arms the
yang, taking the qi (ch’i) in between as harmony” (5)
(i) Yin = dark, female, etc., hold in their arms the yang = male, light in
between as harmony
(ii) Dots as hubs of a wheel allowing the wheel to turn – crucial in allowing
the constant movement – dynamic relationship
(iii) All about balance and moderation
(iv) We tend to push ourselves over the brink in the pursuit of power and fame
(2) “It is the way of heaven to take from what has in excess in order to augment what
is deficient” (42)
(a) Redistribution of matter to become level and balanced
(b) Levelling force in nature
(c) Daoism draws from observations of nature – Heaven is nature in Chinese
culture
(d) Daoism understands that nature is a levelling force
(e) Other image in Daoism is a stretched bow – nature is like a stretched bow
(3) Practical value of recognizing reversal is “knowing when to stop”
(a) One of the hardest things to do, especially when things are going your way
and you have energy
(b) Like Casinos exploiting our inability to know when to stop
 (i) Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler
(ii) Push your potency or advantage to far you push your ‘luck’
(iii) Hard to catch yourself at the height of success
iv) “Weakness is the use of the Way”
USE: Daoism is all about the function of weakness; not celebrating weakness for its
own sake; about using weakness as a strength
Knowing when to stop
(1) “Great imperfection seems chipped, yet use will not wear it out/ Great fullness
seems empty, yet use will not drain it” (8)
(a) Obsession with perfection – me
(b) Something truly full or great will always appear imperfect
(i) Looking for something perfect and flawless – we have to learn to embrace
flaws, imperfection, blemishes
(ii) Example: water – soft, no form of its own, water versus rock: water
prevails
1. Might take forever but water prevails over time
2. Softness used as a manifestation of the way
(2) The potency of emptiness and the power of softness
b) Daoist Worldly Engagement
i) Ultimate potency—state of the “newborn babe”
(1) Ideal figure of ultimate potency because it is completely untapped
(2) “One who possesses virtue in abundance is comparable to a newborn babe”
(a) In Daoism virtue means potency, power, virality (same character in Chinese)
(b) “Poisonous snakes and insects will not harm it, predatory birds and ferocious
enemies will not pounce on it”
(i) Newborn babes have strong grips though they have skin of soft supple
babe
(ii) “Knows not union of male and female yet its male member will stir”
(c) If animal is hungry it will eat it, if not it will not harm it
ii) State of the Uncarved Block
Confucianism is about molding block in virtue and care
Daoism is about returning to the untouched state
Rulers should not try to govern too much or micromanage
(1) “Govern the state as if frying a small fish”
(a) Want to not continue turning it over and over because it falls apart
(b) Margaret Thatcher’s favorite quote
(c) More micromanage is a sign of deterioration because people have lost there
was so much that the only way to maintain order is to do it through law, taboo
etc.
(d) More laws = just makes people more clever in bypassing laws
(e) Signs of regression of a state
(2) Resist tendency to micro-manage or to mold everything to our fancy
(a) Speaks to rulers, individuals, parents: there is a danger in trying to
micromanage everything and mold everything and everyone according to
what you want and expect
 iii) The Ideal of “No-action” or Wuwei
Idea of non-action (not do nothing) minimal sweat
“Wuwei means non action yet nothing uncared for”
It’s making sure our action is never too formulaic, don’t go into a situation having a
preformed set of rules and guidelines to use
(1) Meaning of “wuwei er wu buwei”
(a) “No action yet nothing uncared for”—how would this work?
(i) Creative letting go
(b) Ego-laden action with ulterior motive
iv) Dealing with others
(1) How should someone with authority or power act?
(a) Be not too bad
(2) How should a weaker, powerless state or person act?
(a) Lay low and stay protected/survive

II) Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)—The Dao of Spontaneity

a) Lived around 369-286 BCE: Contemporary of Mencius
i) Legends about Zhuangzi
ii)
b) Transcending Dualities
i) Relativity of Meaning
(1) “This” vs. “That” – water bottles –
(a) Names become tied into the substance of the thing
(b) Moment change perspective its suddenly all the same
(c) Our thing about values and assignments of this and that it doesn’t matter
(d) Our fixation of things in a fixed perspective
(2) Rise above the oppositions because they are not really oppositions
(3) Nothing in nature is binary
ii) The Great Transformation of All Things
(1) Always happening so we cannot reduce everything to high and low, big and
small, strong and weak
(2) Comics are by Zhuangzi
(a) Monkeys: three dawn four at dusk, zoo keeper decides to change it up,
monkeys riot: point is that it’s all the same
(b) It’s about our perspective
iii) Expanding our Perspective about Life and Death
(1) Dream of the Butterfly
(a) Most famous parable
(b) How do we know it wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi
(c) How do we know this life isn’t the next one
(d) Very very advanced for someone in the 4th century in China
iv) Fasting of the Mind
(1) A truly free and potent mind is a fluid, “empty” mind
(2) “Thinking outside the box
c) Application to Life
i) The Wholeness in Deformity
 (1) The Useless Shu Tree
(2) Zhi Lishu the Lame
ii) The Spontaneity of Concentration
(1) Defining paradox in Zhuangzi—Cook Ting Carving Up an Ox
(a) The “Dao” of the blade