Taoism: The Enduring Tradition, Russell Kirkland

The influence of Confucianism and Taoism in China and throughout East and Southeast Asia can be compared to the foundational influence of Hinduism and Buddhism just discussed. It has long been assumed, however, that Confucianism should be regarded as a philosophy rather than a religion and that Taoism was more concerned with achieving an understanding of the natural order of things and practicing “nonaction” or even rejection of the political system rather than pursuit of law and social justice.

Setting aside common oversimplifications, we can say that “Confucianism” is a useful label for a series of loosely interrelated cultural systems, of which some, but not all, were eventually exported to neighboring lands. One of

²9 them - two millennia old and still living - is a liturgical tradition in which Confucius is venerated as a divine being. At temples at Ch'u-fu, and through­out China and the Chinese diaspora, priests pray and sing hymns to that divine being, who “existed before the sun and the moon.” Of course, the Confucian intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aware that Western intellectuals of that period would have no truck with such practices, so they taught Westerners that “Confucianism” was really just a humanistic value-system based upon the teachings of K'ung Ch'iu (Kong Qiu, 551-479 BCE), later known by some in China as K'ung-tzu (Kongzi). Thus stripped of its religious elements - priests, temples, prayers, hymns, and all other revoltingly “Catholic” phenomena - the sanitized construct of “Confucianism” offered to post-Enlightenment Westerners (and back to all later twentieth-century Chinese) was, as Max Weber assured us, not “a reli­gion” at all, but merely a set of ethical and political teachings.

It is quite valid to identify many elements of Confucianism as “humanistic.” But Confucian ideals were originally grounded in a belief that a man can fulfill the role of “the gentleman” (chun-tzu) and aid in restoring society's proper order by fulfilling the designs of Tien. Since Westerners - and the Confucians who sought their approval - were threatened by the fact that Confucius and his followers based their prime values upon a belief in “God” - clearly the optimal translation of the term - the orthodox translation of T'ien became “Heaven,” and to translate it otherwise remains sinological heresy even today. It is also sinological heresy to refute the Confucian denial that, for many hundreds of years, Confucian self-cultivation also included meditational practices that were in no important way different from those of the Ch'an (Zen) Buddhists from whom they had been learned. [...]

Confucius taught his followers to follow the correct and noble tao. And he also advocated that rulers should practice wu-wei, just like the Tao te ching and such “Legalists” as Shen Pu-hai.^[20]

What most distinguished “classical Taoists” from others in early China was their interest in non-personalized spiritual realities, and in the transformative power of the person who has properly cultivated them. The Confucians' primary goal was to transform society by cultivating moral virtues and persuad­ing rulers to do likewise. “Classical Taoists” were more focused on biospiritual cultivation, and sometimes suggested that such cultivation would transform the world. [...]

For hundreds of years, Taoist leaders served China's rulers as Iegitimatory aides, in a variety of distinct roles. A generation of scholars has now demon­strated that Taoism's leading representatives often took a keen interest in the prestige and power of the Chinese emperors, and that the emperors took an equally keen interest in them. As Anna Seidel observed:

Awe for the Heaven-appointed monarch was at the foundation of Taoism - a religion which might even be characterized as a projection into the unseen world of the old imperial mythology....

The facts of history thus show that emperors' interest in Taoists over the centuries was not, as Confucian falsehoods have always told us, simply idiosyncrasy on the part of certain befuddled or gullible rulers. Rather, Taoism served a profound and deeply functional role within the political order, by providing generations of rulers with appropriate ceremonial and religious paradigms. [...]

In Chinese tradition - within Taoism, Confucianism, and the ritual and ideological traditions of the state itself - earthly authority and spiritual author­ity were regarded as, in essence, wholly identical. Modern Confucians seldom acknowledged that fact, and modern sinologues sometimes forgot that, into late imperial times, China's rulers and their subjects all shared the belief that all legitimate authority derives directly from heavenly sources. For centuries, Taoists and dynasts alike considered it to be Taoist masters' responsibility to assist the sovereign in managing his heavenly mandate. In medieval times, the emperor, the Taoist master, and the divine realities of Heaven were all seen as co-participants in the same process: unifying the world - “all under Heaven” - in a state of “Great Tranquility” (t’ai-p’mg). [...]

[B]y the third century BCE the entire political discourse of China - even under the Legalist regime of the state, and later dynasty, called Ch'in - had become filled with ideas that resonated with those of “the classical Taoists.” The fact that the earliest commentary on the Tao te ching is found in the writings of the “Legalist” Han Fei suffices to show that no one in that age considered “Taoist ideas” to be “escapist,” much less politically “subversive.” And by the following century, the composers of the Huai-nan-tzu had developed a sophisticated model of government based on the well-accepted idea that the only good ruler is a ruler who integrates his government with the forces of the cosmos.

As Taoist religious movements arose in the second and third centuries, they struggled with the principal problem that had occupied Tung Chung-shu and later generations of Han-dynasty thinkers: What happens when historical events seem to show that current rulers are not in accord with the unseen forces of the cosmos? That problem was at the very heart of the Tai-p’ing ching, and of Chang Tao-ling's T'ien-shih movement, just as it had been at the heart of the Confucian theories of Tung Chung-shu. For a while, at least, the T'ien-shih leadership appears to have lost hope that the Han ruling house still possessed the spiritual authority to govern the land. Confucians since the time of Mencius had insisted that only a worthy ruler can hold on to “Heaven's mandate” (T'ien-ming), and that an unworthy ruler, having lost that mandate, may not only legitimately be toppled, but truly deserves to be replaced. Such ideas, which Tung Chung-shu elaborated in great detail, were certainly not the ideas of anarchists, any more than they were ideas that arose among revolting peasants. And it was precisely from within that well-established framework of Confucian political thought - that the government must operate in accord with life's deeper realities - that “the Celestial Masters” arose.

Like everyone else in those days, the leaders of that movement held firmly to the belief that the ideal world-order required a wise and able monarch. But if the monarchy should falter - as it seemed to be faltering in the second century CE - the Celestial Masters, following the same principles that Mencius and Tung Chung-shu had enunciated, should seek to bring about a new political order, which would, unlike the faltering regime, show itself to be in full possession of Heaven's spiritual mandate. [...] Though students of modern China often associate Taoism with popular revolts, history shows that connections between Taoism and popular rebellion generally developed only when the reigning regime was demonstrably oppressive or ineffective. Whenever there seemed to be a worthy ruler, or even a plausible candidate for worthy ruler, Taoists of virtually every description seemed quite content to acknowledge the legitimacy of his authority.

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