Wu-Weifarer's Daoist Quotes, page 2

The learning... on which Zhuang-zi focuses, concerns the human being when he has reached the time of adulthood.  Thus it presupposes the capacities of the adult, but it also presupposes that as adult, one has attained only to the condition in which petty understanding predominates.  It is the final but crucial phase of learning, then, that Zhuang-zi focuses on.. Petty understanding is confined to the bounded and determinate face of things... But great understanding is first and foremost a clearsighted awareness which illuminates in a way analogous to the awakening out of a dream.  In such illumination, not only is there a rather different disclosure of the locus and nature of reality, but there is, internal to the understanding and as part of it, the incorporation of a witting ignorance, a witting not-knowing, even a recognition of the possibility of not being able to know.... Thus knowing in such a case does not have the absoluteness, or more precisely, the pretension to absoluteness, that is present in the knowing of petty understanding.  Yet it is a cognizance of reality in its absoluteness, whereas petty understanding, despite its pretensions, involved no such cognizance but is focused on the face of things.                                    -- Richard Gotshalk, The Beginnings of Philosophy in China

We realize too late that we never taught our students what ducks know without knowing, that "we must love life before loving its meaning," as Dostoyevsky told us.  We must love life, and some meaning may grow from that love.  A marsh at nightfall is life loving itself.  Nothing more.  But nothing less, either, and we should not be fooled into thinking this is a small thing. -- Kathleen Dean Moore, Holdfast

Political and social institutions of all kinds, as viewed by Chuang Tzu, serve only to impose suffering on man.  This is because the natures of different things are not identical, and each individual has its own special likings.  Hence, they neither need be, nor should they be, forcibly made identical.  Since things are thus different, it is right that they should remain different.  In this way uniformity is made out of difference.  All political and social institutions, however, decide upon a single Good as a standard for conduct, and make all men follow this standard.  This is to constrain difference to a forced uniformity, in which case what is intended to help people results only in harming them. -- Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy

First, the Sage never tries to do good, because this requires having a concept of good, which leads to having a concept of evil, which leads to combatting evil, which only makes evil stronger.  Second, the Sage never tries to do good, because "every straight is doubled by a crooked, every good by an ill" [Tao Te Ching 58].  Human affairs are complex: good done to one person may be evil to another.  Reward the deserving man with a prize and we plant envy in the hearts of the undeserving.  "Therefore the Sage squares without cutting" [ibid].  Third, our attention is being called not merely to the fact that the Sage relies on actionless activity, but to the basis on which he is capable of doing so - the point of departure for his effective compassion and humility... he can consider another man's criteria as valid as his own... What... would the Sage do if he found himself in the position of the Good Samaritan?... Would the Sage "do nothing" and let nature take its course?  Of course he would.  But it is part of man's nature to feel compassion and because he feels it, not because he wants to do what is right, he will help the man who fell among thieves.  His help will be consistent with the doctrine of inaction which... means not to do nothing, but only to do nothing that is hostile or aggressive. --  Holmes Welch, Taoism

The right moment becomes the wrong Before one can take a breath. One who acts too soon anticipates the opportunity, And one who acts too late gets left behind. The sun revolves, the moon wheels its course, And the right moment waits for no man. Thus, the sage values an inch of time over a foot of precious jade. -- Huainanzi, translated by D.C Lau and Roger T. Ames

Lieh-tzu was studying with his teacher Hu-tzu. "Before you understand what it means to act, you need to know what it means to react," said Hu-tzu. "Can you tell me more about this?" "Turn around and look at your shadow." Leih-tzu turned around and looked at his shadow.  When he was bent, the shadow was bent.  When he straightened up, his shadow straightened.  Leih-tzu found that his shadow had no control over its movement and simply reacted to what he did.  It was only then that Lieh-tzu realized we are also like shadows, reacting to events in the world.  We are not the mover of events; we can only respond to situations.  Whether we should be active or passive does not depend on what we want to do, but what the situation calls for. -- Eva Wong, Lieh-Tzu

The moralist provides the tyrant with justification for his acts.  The false sense that analysis provides us with an understanding of objective reality motivates humans to tamper with that reality accordingly.  They think that, having figured out the laws of nature or read up on them in books, they can intrude into the process of life from birth to death, or into the way in which rivers spontaneously flow, with their dams and ditches... -- Donald J Munro, afterword, Zhuangzi Speaks, by Tsai Chih-chung

There are those whose thoughts are sublime without being strained; who have never striven after goodness, yet are perfect.  There are those who win no victories for their state, achieve no fame, and yet perfect its policies; who find quietness, though far from streams and lakes; who live to great old age, though they have never practised Induction (tao-yin).  They have divested themselves of everything, yet lack nothing.  They are passive, seek no goal; but all lovely things attend them.  Such is the way of Heaven and Earth, the secret power of the Wise.  Truly it is said, "Quietness and stillness, emptiness, not-having, inactivity - these are the balancers of Heaven and Earth, the very substance of the Way and its Power."  Truly it is said, "The wise man rests therein, and because he rests, he is at peace.  Because he is at peace, he is quiet."  One who is at peace and is quiet no sorrow or harm can enter, no evil breath can invade.  Therefore his inner power remains whole and his spirit intact. Truly it is said, "For the Wise Man life is conformity to the motions of Heaven, death is but part of the common law of Change.  At rest, he shares the secret powers of Yin; at work, he shares the rocking of the waves of Yang.  He neither invites prosperity nor courts disaster.  Only when incited does he respond, only when pushed does he move, only as a last resort will he rise.  He casts away all knowledge and artifice, follows the pattern of Heaven.  Therefore Heaven visits him with no calamity, the things of the world do not lay their trammels upon him, no living man blames him, no ghost attacks.  His life is like the drifting boat, his death is like a lying down to rest.  He has no anxieties, lays no plans. "He is full of light, yet none is dazzled; he is faithful, yet bound by no promise.  His sleep is without dreams, his waking without grief.  His spirit has remained stainless and unspoiled; his soul (hun) has not grown weary.  Emptiness, nothingness, quiet - these have made him partner in the powers of Heaven." -- Zhuangzi, from Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China

...in all this suffering we must live as if we were dancing, following the heavenly and the natural, climaxing in not knowing we are burned up.  This is to nourish our lives.  Nourishment occurs not high in the misty mountains away from the world's suffering, but in the very midst of suffering. -- Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion

The real usefulness of one human being to others in their essential being... is grounded ultimately in the fulfillment that has evolved in the individual in his/her own nature.  The ordering of society can never be found in a way that coincides with this, and certainly the petty understanding that is dominant in the working of human beings in society does not even allow into view this matter of such fulfillment.  Rather it interprets the ordering of society in terms intelligible to itself, and seeks to impose these upon its members.  Since the usefulness which Zhuang-zi has in mind is not a function of the social order and does not require that the functioning through which the individual is supportive of others be mediated even by a functional social position, his vision can not be expressed straightforwardly in the terms which petty understanding can comprehend... In order to speak his own mind, then, he invokes irony and paradox. -- Richard Gotshalk, The Beginnings of Philosophy in China

It is a question of how far back one has to travel to find the truth of human nature... it concerns the early Taoist and early Confucian, or folk and elite, disagreement over the mythological or historical interpretation of the "golden age" at the beginning of time. ...the problem of the fall for early Taoism is the existential fact of being born into a world already predetermined as "civilizational"... In distinction to earlier forms of cultural life, civilizations seek to suppress and control the "primitive" mythological ambivalence of the chaos principle in individual and social life by claiming that the hierarchical ritual order of the ruling class is the original, one, and only right/rite order.  In this way early Taoism is politically anarchistic but not ontologically nihilistic.  Early Taoism does not negate the historicity of man but does reject the value of a wholly historical interpretation of the meaning of man... In the Confucian tradition with its golden age idea attached to the genealogical lore of the sage kings and civilizational heroes, the "'essential' was not fixed at the Creation of the World but after it," at the time of the aristocratic ordering of human civilization... "Salvation" within a Confucian interpretive frame is a matter of going back to the beginning of civilizational history to find models of action for the present. ...the early Taoist texts tend to preserve much more of a "primitive" mythological theory of meaning that focused on cosmogonic and anthropogonic origins... "Salvation" here means going back to the undifferentiated beginnings in order to recreate microcosmically the world, man, and a more balanced human society. ...the civilized life of man is destructively out of harmony with the organic and communal life and rhythms of the Tao... -- N. J. Girardot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism

Affairs constantly manage themselves: for this reason I do not act. Be at rest, hidden, and do not move: what comes, arrives by itself; what goes, departs by itself... I do not store the old; I do not clasp the stale.  The past is already gone; what comes is new... The sage does not create the beginning and does not monopolize himself; he does not make plans beforehand, nor act for gain, nor reject good fortune, but relies on the laws of Heaven... To be the only one hot in the cold season; to be the only one cold in the hot season... is in opposition to the Heavenly seasons and everyone else. --from Robin D. S. Yates, Five Lost Classics

"Someone who knows how to withdraw when his work is finished [Wen-tzu said] is one who understands the way of heaven.  He has no quarrels with the world and whatever he does follows the natural order of things.  There are things that go against the natural way, but the natural way does not go against the order of things.  Therefore, the enlightened person does not need eyes to see the Way.  This is because the Way cannot be grasped with your senses and thoughts.  Look for it in front and it will sneak behind you.  Seek it with good intentions and it is everywhere.  If you are insincere, it will never reveal itself.  It is something that you cannot use your intellect to attain, but if you are not serious, it will escape you.  Only in naturalness can it be kept.  Knowing the truth of things and yet not clutching to the truth, knowing how to act and not using effort to do it, is the mark of a sage.  If you pretend to know or not to know, pretend to do or not to do, you are just like a pile of dirt.  It sits there doing nothing, but it is also worth nothing." -- from Eva Wong, Lieh-Tzu

Zhuangzi can be understood as holding the view that competing thinkers do not really disagree.  They simply divide up the world into It and Other from different standpoints. ...behind all of the differences, there is an all-encompassing, underlying Dao.  Those who do not see this are stuck in their limited perspective, thinking that they have the whole truth. -- Martin Berkson, "Language: The Guest of Reality"

In Chapter eight, where Chuang Tzu laments unnecessary disasters and conflicts in the world, he contrasts... looking at others with looking, not at oneself, but of oneself. To look at oneself leads to disasters because this act sets up a suicidal dichotomy.  For one can only look at what is separate from one, an object.  Looking at oneself then requires that one be separated from oneself; one is thus torn asunder in a self-look.  Furthermore, strictly speaking, it is impossible for one to look at oneself; one only looks at a reflection of oneself in the mirror, which is other than oneself.  One must look at oneself in the light of the other.  And so self-look is an unjustifiable intrusion of others into oneself, amounting to an exclusion of oneself within oneself.  It disturbs and finally destroys the original state of the natural self... One must, then, have nothing to do with a selfish looking-at-oneself, that is, with allowing others to mirror into oneself.  Instead, one must become a mirror oneself, neither inviting others to intrude into oneself (thus committing self-exclusion) nor excluding and allowing oneself to intrude into others... but instead return home to the self-world of a being-of-oneself, a doing-of-oneself, and a sensing-of-oneself.  It is this sort of "naive" or natural egoism that Chuang Tzu advocates, a non-intrusive self-ish-ness which does no violence either to oneself or to others.  Since doing violence is descriptive of pain, conflict, and disaster, Chuang Tzu's version of natural egoism is a sure cure for conflict, and this means that being oneself naturally is the way to an authentic sociality. -- Kuang-ming Wu, Chuang Tzu

Excess is the real enemy of stillness; to be puritanical, no less than being licentious, is to stray from the Tao.  Nothing really worthwhile can be done in a hurry.  As cultivation of the Way proceeds, passions and longings diminish of themselves without the least need for repression. -- John Blofield, Taoism

Taoism is often said to posit a negative attitude toward the world, to encourage withdrawal from life rather than active and joyful participation in it, and of course it is quite true that Lao Tzu himself recommended the way of "losing and losing" to reach to Tao.  This is not rejection, however, but self-realization.  When man leaves his burden of anxiety and fear behind him he attains an inner serenity and reaches a higher and more integrated level of consciousness... Life and its daily activities are not left behind but raised to a new height through perfect realization.  To lose the burden of fear and anxiety is not nihilistically to reject reality, but merely to cast aside the negative side of life - it is a fulfillment of the positive in dealing with the affairs of the world. -- Chang Chung-yuan, Creativity and Taoism

Of late I deeply devote myself to quiescence. Nothing in the world concerns my mind... The breeze from the pine woods blows my sash; The mountain moon shines upon my harp. You ask me to explain the reason of failure or success. The fisherman's song goes deep into the river. -- Wang Wei  (8th century)

The Western mind...has no word for Tao... The Chinese character is made up of the sign for "head" and the sign for "going"... "Head" can be taken as consciousness and "going" as traveling a way, and the idea would then be: to go consciously, or the conscious way... If we take the Tao to be the method or conscious way by which to unite what is separated, we have probably come close to the psychological meaning of the concept. -- C. G. Jung, "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower"