Part III

The Taoist Tradition

 8

What Is Taoism?

“Taoism” refers to a religious and philosophical system that promotes

holistic well-being and ritual mastery of the spirit world. Taoism is often
contrasted with Confucianism, but it is better to think of Taoism and
Confucianism as two aspects of a single religious tradition; Chinese
themselves, throughout the centuries, have regarded Taoism and
Confucianism in complementary terms. Taoism arose in China, but now can
be said to be a “world religion,” with adherents in Europe and America as
well as in East Asia.
Until recent years, the Western encounter with Taoism was focused on the
literary and philosophical tradition of the Zhou Dynasty, the same period in
which Confucius and the early Confucians Mengzi and Xunzi lived. This
tradition was associated with the writings of a “hermit intellectual” named
Zhuangzi ( ) in a book by the same name and with the writings of a
“wise sage” named Laozi ( ) in a book attributed to him and known by
the title Daodejing ( ). For many decades, Western knowledge was
limited to these books in English translation, and the entire rich history of
religious institutions, rituals, and individual practice of Taoism was all but
ignored. This situation has been rectified, and, for the past 25 to 30 years,
the study of Chinese religions has been focused, quite rightly, on the history
of Taoism over its two millennia of development and elaboration.
Scholars have been divided on the issue of how to relate the “philosophy”
of the early sages with the “religion” of the ritual tradition; even in Chinese,
they are referred to differently, as Daojia ( , the “school” of the Tao)
and Daojiao ( , the “religion” of the Tao). Simply for purposes of
organization, the present book will treat these two aspects sequentially; but
it should be understood that they are interpenetrating. Both the Daodejing
and the Book of Zhuangzi anticipate the subsequent religious tradition, and
this tradition, in turn, refers back to the early sages with reverence, deifying
Laozi as “Lord Lao.” Still, historians cannot find evidence for a fully
developed Taoist religion at the time of the early books, and so it makes
sense to treat them separately here.
We should remind ourselves, as we did in Chapter 1, that the words and
names that we employ to describe Asian religions all originated in the West
– they appeared first in English, German, or French, and they were
translated into Chinese and Japanese only later. So the labels we use –
“religion,” “philosophy,” even “Confucianism” and “Taoism” – are Western
inventions, imposed upon Chinese culture to make sense of its history in
familiar terms. “Taoism” is an especially amorphous name, and I have
intentionally retained the traditional English spelling “Taoism,” as opposed
to the preferred Romanization today (“Daoism”), in order to underscore the
fact that the designation is not indigenous to China. It is not autochthonous,
to use a scientific term, and “Taoism” is not an autonym – it is not a word
used by Chinese to describe their religion. In fact I can say that I have never
met a Chinese who identified him- or herself as a “Taoist” or as a
“Confucian,” except in very special circumstances.
Not only are the Taoist religion and Taoist philosophy difficult to
differentiate; so, too, are Taoism and Confucianism. The use of these names
should not suggest two completely distinct entities. At the elite, intellectual
levels of Chinese culture, members of the scholar–gentry class were as
likely to cite the Taoist classics as the “Four Books” of Confucianism, and
they incorporated both Taoist and Confucian modes of living into their daily
lives. At the level of popular culture, the same was and remains true: enter
any community temple and you will find both traditions represented
without differentiation – an image of the deified Laozi next to placards
promoting social harmony, righteousness, and other Confucian virtues;
ritual practices that borrow from both traditions; and temple talks citing
both Taoist philosophy and Confucian learning.
Confucianism and Taoism interpenetrate to such an extent that it is more
accurate to describe them as a single “Chinese religion.” Notably, in the
Chinese case, there is no one word parallel to “Hinduism” – a label simply
designating the “religion” (in fact, religions) of the people of India. Just as
the word “Hinduism” suggests a false unity in India, the words
“Confucianism” and “Taoism” are equally misleading in that they suggest a
conceptual separation in Chinese religious thought and practice.
As for Buddhism, the third of the “great religions” of China, another
abstraction can be made, and this book will treat Buddhism (including its
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese forms) as a separate entity in Parts V and VI.
In China's case this is acceptable, as the culture itself has tended to perceive
Buddhism as a discrete entity. It is the only one of the three traditions that
was not indigenous to China, and it arrived relatively late in Chinese history
– in the first century CE. Certainly Taoist and Buddhist institutions –
temples, abbeys/monasteries, and so on – are readily distinguishable. But,
once again, there is no doubt that scholar–gentry and contemporary
intellectuals fully embrace Buddhism as part of a single cultural tradition
and that common folk fully incorporate elements of all three forms into
their lives. We can only say that the demarcations presented in this book are
heuristic devices – useful for thinking, but highly inaccurate at the level of
everyday belief and practice.
With these cautions in mind, we can now turn to the organization of this
part of the book and to the topics we will explore under the general rubric
of “Taoism.”
After some introductory notes in Chapter 8, Chapter 9 summarizes the
principal themes of the two great classics of Taoist philosophy: the Book of
Zhuangzi and the Daodejing. These texts are the ones best known to
generations of Western students of Taoism, and they still are of major
significance to Taoism as a global religious phenomenon.
Chapters 10 to 12 discuss three dimensions of religious Taoism,
employing yin–yang cosmology as the organizing principle: the temporal,
the spatial, and the personal.
Chapter 13 examines Taoism as a global religion and its contemporary
relevance to the twenty-first century.

Philosophical Taoism
The phrase “philosophical Taoism” is usually applied simply to the ideas
presented in the Taoist classics of the pre-Han period, especially the Book of
Zhuangzi and the Daodejing. In the following chapter we will look at the
major themes of these two works; but, since so much has been written and
speculated about their authorship, we should begin with a brief look at the
history of the texts themselves.
The Daodejing is usually given first billing as the seminal text of the
Taoist tradition, and several scholars have claimed that it is the most
translated text in human history, outnumbering even the translations of the
Bible. This is a somewhat deceptive claim – the Daodejing is certainly not
as widely read as the Bible – but the sheer number of different translations
attests both to its worldwide popularity and to its impenetrability: it is an
extraordinarily abstruse work. Here are a few translations just of the first
sentence of the first chapter: (Dao ke dao fei chang dao).
“The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.” J. H. McDonald
“The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying Way.” Arthur Waley
“The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.” Charles Muller
“The Way that can be experienced is not true.” Peter Merel
“The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.”
James Legge
“Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself.” Stan Rosenthal
“What we call ‘The Dao’ is not the Dao forever.” Randall Nadeau
Multiply this perplexity at least by the number of the book's chapters (81),
and you can get some idea of its “mysterious power” (to use a phrase
employed in the book itself, , xuan-de, to describe the Dao).
Of “Laozi” himself, the purported author of the Daodejing, the only thing
that can be said with any certainty is that no such person ever existed or put
the Daodejing into writing. Legends began to circulate as early as the fourth
century BCE of an extraordinarily wise sage, born at the age of 81 (hence his
name Laozi, , “Old Infant”), who so disdained the world's ways that he
mounted an ox and retired to the barbarian reaches of the West.
This was not before meeting up with Confucius, whom Laozi called a
“dead branch.” (Their meeting is depicted in Figure 8.1.) According to the
legendary biography of the Taoist master, Confucius asked Laozi about the
li ( ) and was so impressed by the Old Infant's enigmatic responses that he
described him as a “soaring dragon.”