Daoism and the Dao De Jing

• Daoism is the opposite of Confucianism.
• Confucianism is rational and bureaucratic, Daoism is supernatural and charismatic.

Lao Tzu

• The semi-legendary founder of Daoism is Lao Tzu.
• There is little known about Lao Tzu.
• Some scholars doubt he existed.
• Myths sprouted up around him.
• One myth says he gestated in his mother's womb for eighty-one years, and then was born through her armpit.
• The Dao De Jing (The Book and its Way) is the foundational scripture of Daoism.
• Tradition says that Lao Tzu is its author.
• Daoists believe that the text was divinely revealed.

Dao

• The Dao De Jing speaks of the Dao.
• Dao means following the way of nature.
• For a good society, it is key to align with the Dao.
• The reason there is disorder and chaos in the world is because individual natures are misaligned with the Dao.
• Don't struggle against the Dao.
• Go with the Dao’s flow.
• Originally, Dao meant “road” or “path”.
• Dao is untranslatable and unknowable through ordinary human language or describable in terms of human experience.
• The Dao is the uncreated Way.
• It is the “really real,” and is empty.
• Emptiness has its virtues, and is potential.
• Atoms, the very building blocks of physical reality, are mostly empty.
• The Dao is the creative force that propels everything.

Lao Tzu vs Confucius

• Lao Tzu was said to have been an advisor to Confucius.
• Confucianism misjudges human nature.
• It is authoritarian, thinking that all of human life is capable of regulation.
• Lao Tzu’s message was more libertarian.
• Daoism stresses the solitariness of being human, that we flourish best when we are left alone.
• Leaders should be yielding rather than firm.

Wu-Wei

• If political and social life should be yielding, so too should be personal life.
• Accomplish this by wu-wei, or “non-action.”
• Be spontaneous.
• Don’t be shaped just by your local environment.
• Society corrupts our natural selves.
• Water that encounters a boulder should simply go around it.
• A Confucian would try to engineer a solution where water would go over the boulder.
• Simplicity is greater than complexity.

Creator and Messiah

• By the first-century CE, Lao Tzu became a figure of worship.
• He was seen as the creator of the world and the messiah who will redeem the world.
• From this time forward, the supernatural character of Daoism became manifest.

Qi

• If aligned with the Dao, the world, body, and soul can be healed.
• Daoism develops tai chi, acupuncture, feng shui, and martial arts.
• These aim to harness and enhance qi (pronounced “chee”).
• Qi is life force/creative energies.
• Feng shui is the religious science of arrangement.
• The point of such an exercise is to bring harmonious alignment between humans and nature.
• In much of Asia, feng shui is used to find the most propitious places for building businesses and government offices.

Immortality

• Daoism stresses the possibility of physical immortality, of living forever.
• Originally, the pursuit of immortality was done through alchemy, the transformation of mercury or gold into an elixir.
• Later, Daoists spoke of an “inner alchemy” that could lead one to immortality.
• This “inner alchemy” was done through a combination of diet, yoga, meditation, and prayer.
• Daoism sought to extend physical life.

Zhuangzi

• Zhuangzi (365BCE-290BCE) was the most important early Daoist thinker after Lao Tzu.
• He helped popularize the Daoist emphasis on harmony and balance.
• Once intervening and acting upon the world, things are messed up.
• Seek to be our nature.
• Plants don’t need to think and strive in order to be what they are.
• Children move unself-consciously, aligned with their own nature, not overthinking.
• Unlike Confucius, Zhuangzi maintained that because everything isn't known, everything is relative.

Butterfly Dream

• Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.
• He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi.
• Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi.
• Zhuangzi didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.
• The nature of reality is not easily separable from dreams.
• Zhuangzi was a mystic, one who believes that reality is not just what can be observed.