On Wu Wei Living & Non-Intervention
“In Chinese culture, the Confucian and Taoist schools constitute a yin-yang complementarity. The philosophy of the Confucian school is moving and doing. That of the Taoist school is retreating and doing nothing. Yet both philosophies originate from the I Ching.”(I Ching, 216-217)
“Both Confucianism and Taoism originated from the philosophy of the I Ching, a book that existed at least five hundred years before Lao Tse,”(I Ching p.51-53) who further illuminated the power of the Tao in a book entitled Tao Te Ching, The latter was said to have been completed in three days by Lao Tze, who was born in 604 B.C.. Of the Tao te Ching, Huston Smith says, “There are books whose first reading casts a spell that is never quite undone, the reason being that they speak to the deepest ‘me’ in the reader. For all who quicken at the thought that always, everywhere, the Tao is within us, the Tao Te Ching is such a book.”(Smith, p.145) While the I Ching is much older than Lao Tse’s Tao Te Ching, the latter is most often cited as the primary text of Taoism.
For this reason, Taoism and Confucianism are like Yin and Yang, they exist interdependently, a complementarity of opposites, like activity and relaxation, simplicity and complexity, calculation and spontaneity, artificial and natural, classical and romantic, analysis and synthesis, light and dark, male and female, night and day, birth and death. They are different sides of the same coin, and we all need both in balance.
“This dialectical point of view – the merging of opposites – is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.”(I Ching, p.50) Like Buddha’s Middle Way, it encouraged walking the path - the Tao – by careful reading of all the messages the universe sent out.
Taoism, of all ancient wisdom traditions, respects and learns from nature and seeks to work with, rather than against, the flow of energy through all things. Like “the waxing and waning of the moon the wise person prefer to live in harmony with the law of nature.”(I Ching, p.121) “Yin and yang, the two primary and fundamental forces in the universe… are opposite but mutually complimentary.”(I Ching, p. 43) “Yang represents what is firm, and yin represents what is yielding.” “Yin and yang must coordinate and support each other.”(I Ching, p. 43)
Taoists take the metaphor of water as a guiding principle, for while nothing is “as soft and yielding as water, yet in attacking what is firm and strong, nothing is better than water.”(I Ching, p. 59) “The idea that the soft can overcome the firm is part of the wisdom permeating the I Ching and permeating Chinese culture as well.”(I Ching, p.113)
One power illuminated by these ancients texts is called te, and has three senses (driving power, rhythm, and spirit). Like milk from a mother’s breast, “the more it is drawn upon, the more it flows.”(Smith, 126) This is why it’s called, The Mother of the World. (Smith, p.126)
They also use the metaphor of breath, what they call Ch’i which means vital energy or the life force or the “power on which life feeds.”(Smith, p.128) They based their concept of health on the understanding that energy flows through a healthy system, and a system is unhealthy when this energy is blocked. So the objective is to remove the obstacles that get in the way of that flow. Taoists work to maximize this flow between matter, movement, and mind, seeking “harmony between human beings and their natural surroundings.” From this it follows that nature “should be befriended, not conquered.”(p.138) …“human beings…are at their best when they are in harmony with their surroundings.”(Smith, p.138)
Hence the wisdom of non- or minimal interference when dealing with other living things, and humility when asserting one’s will. “The sages learned from nature that before effecting a plan, it is important to set things in order… Care should be taken at the beginning of an undertaking.” Because, “Before sprouting, the root must penetrate deeply.”(I Ching, p.61) “The little plant must overcome the pressure of the soil. There must be a wholehearted willingness to grow.”(I Ching, p.57)
“The ancient Chinese watched the cycles of the seasons; they comprehended that there also was a cycle of good times and bad times.”(I Ching, p.130) “Events cycle from departing to arriving and again from arriving to departing. It is the law of nature.”(I Ching, p.130) So Taoists would have us keep in mind that things are always changing, so “when things proceed to their proper limit, they alternate to the reverse condition”…until ultimately it reaches the other extreme and “will alternate to the opposite” again.(I Ching, p.65) For this reason, “When the situation is favorable and smooth, one should never forget about hard times. On the other hand, when the situation is unfavorable, one should always look forward to the good.”(I Ching, p. 130) Just as hard times ultimately turn for the better, so “extreme joy begets sorrow.”(I Ching, p. 29) It is “the Law of Nature” that “out of the depth of misfortune comes bliss.”(I Ching, p.127) So for this reason, “Be patient…hope always lies ahead.”(I Ching, p.124-127)
To illustrate this point, there is an age-old Taoist story about a farmer whose only horse ran away. That evening his neighbors gathered to commiserate with him, since this was such bad luck.
"Your farm will suffer, and you cannot plough," they said. "Surely this is a terrible thing to have happened to you."
The farmer replied, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
The next day the horse returned, and to everyone’s surprise, brought six wild horses with it. Again, the neighbors came, this time to congratulate the farmer for his good fortune.
"You are richer than you were before!" they said. "Surely this has turned out to be a good thing for you, after all."
And again the farmer said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
Then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses. He was thrown to the ground and broke his leg, and so he could not work on the farm. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy.
"There is more work than only you can handle, and you my end up very poor. Surely this is a terrible misfortune."
The old farmer just said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of his broken leg the farmer's son was passed over. So when the neighbors came again, they said, "How fortunate! Things have worked out for the best after all. Most young men never return alive from the war. Surely this is the best of fortunes for you!"
To which the old man replied, as always, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
What the Taoists called “wu wei…[meaning nonaction] is a skill that involves being “spontaneous, operating without effort”, but with…”pure effectiveness, or creative quietude.”(Smith, p.135) wu wei takes time, like water changing rock … “poor swimmers flail against it while good swimmers float motionlessly, knowing that it will support them if they don’t fight it.”(Smith, p.136) “A life lived above excess and tension.”(Smith, p.135)…a balanced dance… “Wu wei seems effortless from outside looking in…an effectiveness in which no motion is wasted on bickering or outward show.” (Smith, p.136) Why struggle and compete…there are “ways to harness higher powers for human ends,”(Smith, p.133) …“but we must remember that we have little idea what energy is, how it proceeds, or the means by which (and extent to which) it can be augmented.”(Smith, p.132)
The Taoists sought knowledge of “the kind that empowers life. We call it wisdom, and to live wisely…is to live in a way that conserves life’s vitality by not expending it in useless, draining ways, the chief of which are friction and conflict.”(Smith, p.128-129) Because of this, Taoists understand that “Hurry and all it entails is fatal.” Rather, “Waiting in a calm and unhurried manner. This is the best attitude with which to deal with unfavorable situations.”(I Ching, p.80) “No matter how difficult the situation…there is always a point where it turns favorable.”(I Ching, p. 127) “But for that to happen, the conscious mind must get out of the way, stop standing in its own light.”(Smith, p.135) Spontaneity is valuable precisely because it compels one to read the signs, choose one’s course carefully, one step at a time, because “from a small clue, one can be aware of what is coming.”(I Ching, p. 44)
Taoists saw life as something of a balancing dance, and developed an regime of movement they called T’ai chi, which is widely practiced still today, and is understood to be a “life-giving dance.”(Smith, p.120) Not satisfied with managing energy, T’ai chi aims to “invite chi from the cosmos and remove blocks to its internal flow.”(Smith, p.130) Along with various forms of acupuncture, these have long been used to supplement Taoist efforts to actually extract ch’i from the atmosphere and even from matter in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms.. What we once called ‘mind over matter’ is these days called the placebo effect in western medicine, and it is regularly incorporated into medical practices, where such treatments are not generally taught or even believed to work, despite the evidence. The Taoists would say that the evidence doesn’t care what the doctor believes - what matters is what the patient believes and the balance he or she keeps with the universe. The work of shamans, or faith healers, or psychics is not taken seriously in western medicine, for the same reason that yogi practitioners did not hope for understanding from the many – and that is because it cannot be understood from outside looking in, or studied in reductionist ways. Some may think of it as superstition, call it magic, or sorcery, or miracles, but Taoists call it simply wu wei, and it does and has worked for many thousands of years.
All the ancient eastern texts, including the I Ching, the Tao te Ching, and those written and edited by Confucius, illustrate that “We should search for the ancient wisdom between the lines and beyond the words.”(I Ching, p.94) This is “the way one should use the I Ching and other ancient texts – they may seem to say go forward or retreat, but it is in knowing oneself that one understands when to take this advice and when to leave it. “It is not simply a matter of blindly following the oracle, but rather understanding one’s place in the situation.”(I Ching, p. 165)
Confucius, who was born in 551 BC, was also known as Kung Fu-tzu or Kung the Master, was called The First Teacher by the Chinese people, not because he came first chronologically, but because he had such powerful influence. Though little of this came during is lifetime.
But Confucius’ wrote much during his life, and his Analects are a collection of his teachings that were compiled by his students, and amounted to a guide to good character,(Smith, 109) and a “way of life” that was able to nurture a spontaneous “peace and harmony” in its people.(Smith, 107) And his work was widely read after his death.
Confucius was a traveling tutor, and though he was as humble as a man could be, he was said to have been “a one-man university. His method of teaching was Socratic,” Smith says (though Socrates himself would not be born until eight years after Confucius died in 479 BC), and this hints at one thing all these teachers had in common (though we’ll save the details of that for Socrates to teach us).
At any rate, like Socrates and Buddha, Confucius was “Always informal, he seems not to have lectured but instead to have conversed on problems his students posed, citing readings and asking questions. The openness with which he interacted with his students was striking. Not for a moment assuming that he was himself a sage – sagehood being for him a matter of comportment, not a stock of knowledge – he presented himself to his students as their fellow learner. On the importance of the task on which they were together embarked, however, he was uncompromising. This led him to expect much from his students for he saw their mission as nothing less than the revitalization of their entire society.”(Smith, 101-102)
Given his “democratic bearing” (Smith, 102), Confucius was also Socratic in the sense that he was “always ready to champion the cause of common people against the oppressive nobility of his day; in his personal relations he cut scandalously across class lines...never slighting his poorer students even when they couldn’t pay.”(Smith, 102)
Confucius was “not a bookworm,” but he did love to learn, and made a “transparently honest claim that he was ‘a lover of the ancients.’”(Smith, 109) By which he meant the early days of the Chou Dynasty, what he called “the Age of Grand Harmony,” which was in sharp contrast with the times he was born into.
In keeping with this ancient Taoist book of changes, Confucius, like Buddha, was “reserved about the supernatural,” for the ancient Chinese people honored the Heavens, rather than a personal God. He did believe though that “Somewhere in the universe…there is a power that is on the side of right.”(Smith, p. 117) Confucius had inherited a worldview in which the whole of heaven and earth were one, death was a transition to a more “honorable state,” and ancestors were worshiped (their needs supplied by offerings) and thought to have collective memory of the entire past, as well as “knowledge of the impending future.”(Smith, p.116) But since they could not voice vocally (lacking vocal chords), they were thought to send omens by way of nature’s signs (thunder, lightening, stars, bird signs). In these ways, Confucius and Taoists agreed, ancestors alert us to impending dangers. While his own emphasis was on the living, Confucius incorporated the ancient tradition of ancestor worship into his own, advising that the dead be treated “as if they were present.”(Smith, p.117)
Like Buddha’s Middle Way, both the Taoists and Confucius endorsed a way of life he called the Doctrine of the Mean, what the Greeks would later call the Golden Mean. It is a philosophy that encourages balance and harmony, which is to say, “nothing in excess.”(Smith, 110) As we’ll see when we get there, the Greeks helped us see that it is indeed possible to take a good thing too far, for every virtue can be both under and over done. In our time, we tend to make the mistake of thinking that, if a little of something is good, then a lot must be better, but the ancients knew better. For instance, a deficiency of courage may be cowardice, but an excess of courage is just foolhardy. Likewise, a deficiency of honesty is deceit, but an excess is just cruelty. So with all virtues – the ideal is a balance between too little and too much. So the choice of the right thing to do is not as simple of following a given rule or law, for such principles must be applied to the circumstances that we fact.
So this method that Confucius called the Doctrine of the Mean inclines people toward compromise, negotiation, mediation (vs. courts of law, which were considered impersonal, and even shameful, needed only for those who cannot regulate themselves and resolve their own problems). Indeed, to not be able to work things out by way of mutual respect and compromise with injustice was thought to be beneath an excellent person, in the Confucian way of thinking, as well as in the Socratic view. "Could anything show a more shameful lack of culture than to have so little justice in oneself that one must get it from others, who thus become masters and judges over one?", Socrates said.[RepC p.95]
People of such excellent character were admittedly rare, then, as now, but Confucius recognized that this had more to do with poor education than with any intrinsic quality of character. Like Aristotle, Confucius understood that good character can be habituated from an early age. And it was taking this idea too far that put Confucians at odds with those Taoists who understood that the young must also be free to spontaneously choose the right thing to do. Obedience to tradition may be a good thing, when traditions themselves and the leaders who encourage them are good. But times can change, and those habituated to doing what their told can easily be abused by less than benevolent leaders and changing traditions.
But Confucius himself understood this, for he had been born into corrupt and violent times, which is what led him to emphasize the nature of healthy relationships. He too would probably have admit that respect for authority can be taken too far and even abused, and so we can hear him to be part of the Taoist tradition, rather than opposed to it. But Confucius himself was responding to desperate excess, and followers do tend to take good advice to the extreme. So the Confucian emphasis on teaching tradition for it’s own sake did tend to lose its balance.
But we can see why, since “Confucius lived at a time when his society was going to pieces; its glue was no longer holding.”(Smith, 103) The harmonious ways of the early Chou Dynasty had declined between 800 and 300 BC, as political chaos brought what was called The Period of the Warring States. "China had reached a point in its evolution where individuals were emerging in large numbers. Self-conscious rather than group-conscious, they were guided more by self-interest than social expectations.” Thus, “the desperate problem he faced…was social anarchy.” (Smith, 104) Traveling marauders had taken to surprise attacks and would undertake mass slaughters of entire populations (as many as 400,000 at a time) rather than take prisoners. “There are accounts of the conquered being thrown into boiling caldrons,” Smith says, “and their relatives forced to drink the human soup.”(Smith, 103)
So you can see why Confucius was said to be obsessed with recovering the ancient “Chou way of life,” (Smith, 109) which contrast so sharply with the inhumanity of his own age. “The passion with which he plied that mission made him a zealot, but he was known for his humor and a sense of proportion that saved him from being a fanatic. He loved to be with people, to dine out, to join in the chorus of a good song, and to drink, though not in excess. His disciples reported that ‘he was affable, yet firm; dignified yet pleasant.’”(Smith, 102)
Pre-Confucian China had been traditional in a sense rarely seen in our culture (except perhaps with “corporate dress codes,” Smith notes (103)[1] like some other cultures (such as Eskimo and aboriginal tribes), that are so ruled by tradition that they “do not even have a words for disobedience.”(Smith, 104) Expectations were internalized at a very young age such that they thereafter exert a spontaneous influence, with no need for laws or penalties to keep people doing the right thing.
It was ‘tradition’ in this sense that Confucius endorsed, assuming it would produce a spontaneous and mutual respect in people. If “group expectation” can keep people behaving morally, he reasoned, and if humans lack the cooperation instinct of ants and bees to cooperate, they need tradition to keep them in line. These conditionals did not suppose that people were not naturally good, only that they could easily become corrupted. Hence the need for good education, even habituation, to bring out their natural goodness at na early age. “Through generations of trial and error, ways of interacting evolve that keep tribes stable, and these ways catch on. Once their patterns are in place, they are transmitted from generation to generation unthinkingly – cum lacte, with the mother’s milk, as the Romans used to say.”(Smith, 103)
But Taoists, aware (as Socrates would later emphasize) that tradition too can corrupt innocence (such as traditions of slavery often did), and so they were inclined to teach the importance of listening to one’s inner voice (we might call conscience) as well as other signs the universe might be sending, so to discern the right thing to do in any given circumstance, especially when social expectations were not encouraging the good in people. For it may be true that people will behave good out of self-consciousness about others judgments, they can also be corrupted in the same way, by less than moral cultural expectations. As the saying goes, morality is doing the right thing, regardless of what one is told, whereas obedience is doing what one is told, regardless of morality.
So, the Taoists understood, when tradition itself is corrupted, spontaneity and trust of inner divinity is what is needed to encourage the good in people, as well as to change unjust traditions. Taoism too ultimately developed an organized or ‘religious’ wing, but for the most part, it has been about self-help from the start. Taoist teachers or coaches work to increasing the understanding of those who seek to work on themselves…(p. 128) As Confucius had said, “’If one attacks one’s own failings instead of those of others, will that not remedy personal faults?’”(Smith, 109)
All these sages understood that people simply want to be good, and given half a chance, can understand both the inner and the social rewards for being so. Which of these is the better teacher really depends on the circumstance of the times. All the same, “For nearly two thousand years the first sentence every Chinese child was taught to read was, ‘Human beings are by nature good.’”(Smith, 109)
All the same, Confucius thought that tradition could be made deliberate, and when well grounded in what is truly good for people, has the “power to civilize,”(Smith, 107) and should be taught by “every device of education – formal and informal, womb to tomb.” And even the Taoists might agree that the best values should be taught universally, deliberately, in “temples, theatres, homes, toys, proverbs, schools, history, stories – until they became habits of the heart.”(Smith, 109) They would agree that the breakdown of traditions that bring out the best in the young does call for educational solutions.
There is a longstanding debate (as we will see when we get to the Greeks) between whether reason or habit teaches best. But the ancient Chinese would probably agree that both are needed in a whole scheme of learning. What we in the west called ‘the Enlightenment’ taught that it was enough to give information and encourage good reasoning – but if our age is any evidence, this faith in reason has yet to bear full fruit. On the other hand, we can see in our time a form of conditioning that does not even aim at bringing out the best in our young, only at habituating the consumer in them…so we have to give credit to those Taoists and Socrates who worried that bypassing reason is too likely to corrupt.
It is still true now, as it was then, that there are plenty who believe that the best way to make people behave is by force, and that rules with sanctions and punishments attached can be used to both deter people from misbehavior,(Smith, 106) and to actually encourage corruption of the soul. Confucius himself saw that this concept of education depends on a view of human nature that assumes people are at least short sighted, and will prefer immediate gratification and avoidance of pain to long term or intrinsic goods. By this view, people are thought to be unlikely, if not altogether incapable, of doing the right thing for the right reason, especially on threat of pain or deprivation. Those who hold this view claim human nature to be motivated by “base impulses [that] predominate over noble ones. People are thought to be naturally lustful, greedy, and jealous,” and to the extent that virtue is possible, it must be “built into people as wood is straightened in a press.”(Smith, 106) But it’s possible that what seems ‘natural’ is in fact a conditioned response, which is to say, that people seem this way who have been encouraged to believe this is true of them ‘naturally,’ and they become so by way of self-fulfilling prophesy.
At any rate, in Confucius’ time, those who advocated education based on this authoritarian method called themselves Realists, but Confucius saw that these Realists could not change attitudes, in fact, but only behavior, and only then by way of fear and punishment. By contrast, and like both the Taoists and Socrates, Confucius called for self-examination as the means of self-control, showing that he not only recognized a good interior of the self, but considered it an important aspect of human nature. A “good man or woman is one who is always trying to get better,”(Smith, p.113) even “to discover the God within.”(Smith, p.113) He would be among the first to say, “That wherein the superior person cannot be equaled is simply this – his work which other men cannot see,”(Doctrine of the Mean) – affirming the Taoist view that humility is part and parcel of what we call the Socratic & Confucian method. However, unlike Socrates’ view, which held that emotions can be like wind through the intellect, “The Chinese character for ‘mind’ designates ‘heart’ as well” as reason, “which shows that the Chinese took it for granted that reason functions in a context of attitudes and emotions.”(Smith, 107) And the methods of teaching and learning that followed from this generous view of human nature was practiced by a teacher named Mo Ti, who advocated the opposite of force, which is love.
All the same, unlike the Indian yogi who retires to solitude, most people grow and learn “in the center of ever-shifting, never-ending cross-currents of human relationships.”(Smith, p.113) And so he emphasized the kind of mutual respect in healthy relationships on which healthy traditions are based.
As indicated earlier, Confucius would have us learn and live by the concept of jen, what he held to be “the virtue of virtues.” It represents the ideal of a healthy relationship (consisting of the characters for human being and two). Jen translates as goodness, benevolence, human-heartedness and love. It is probably never fully realized, Confucius admits, but “it induces courtesy, unselfishness, and empathy – the capacity to ‘measure the feelings of others by one’s own.’”[2]
By this view, and in keeping with Buddha, “the self is a center of relationships,” and exists “as a node, not an entity.”[3] Such that, “becoming fully human involves transcending…egoism,”[4] “expanding one’s empathy indefinitely. This expansion proceeds in concentric circles… that begins with oneself and spread from there” outward, including one’s family, friends, community, and ultimately all of humanity.
The ancient Taoists would agree, *. And “In shifting the center of one’s concern from oneself to one’s family one transcends selfishness…” And “this broadening process is accompanied by one that is deepening… Inside and outside work together is the Confucian scheme. The inner world deepens and grows more refined as empathy expands.”[5]
Like the others then, Confucius “puts everyday life at the center of human spirituality.”[6] For “only of such large-hearted people, Confucius thought, can civilization be built.”[7]
Unfortunately, there seems little evidence in a world habituated by force that the rewards of love can constrain those conditioned to the habits of immediate self-interest. In other words, it’s not clear that love is its own reward, or as the Chinese conceived of it, that “Shang Ti, a personal god who loves people dearly… rewards the virtuous and punishes the wicked.”(Smith, 106) So Confucius knew that the “total reliance on love was unrealistic,” as “ends without means” he said. (although Socrates might later teach the explicit means of love that Confucius himself used.) At any rate, without “social structures and a collective ethos” to support it (Smith, 107), love and intrinsic goodness can give way to force and fear.
There are five ideals that permeate Confucian thought: besides jen, the ideal of healthy relationships, there were chun tzu, li, te, and wen. For the same reason Confucius believed that tradition could be made deliberate, he believed that such habits must be formed young regarding these five constant relationships, i.e. ruler/subject, parent/child, husband/wife, older/younger siblings and friends. Though he understood and lived by a natural equality between friends, he also understood that not all relationships are equally symmetrical, and so, like parent and child, they have reciprocal and complementary rites and responsibilities.
This emphasis on family and healthy social relationships is known as li, which means both “propriety or right conduct,”(Smith, 111) but also means “ritual” or rite.(Smith, 111) Thus right/rite are interrelated, and in this way, life becomes “choreographed”, like a “sacred dance.”(Smith, 111)
This does not mean merely “the way things should be done” as others in general think appropriate, not merely what is popular, he cautions, but as considered appropriate by those who are “examples of exemplary living.”(Smith, 110) Once asked, “’What would you say of the person who is liked by all his fellow townsmen?’ ‘That is not sufficient,’ Confucius replied. ‘What is better is that the good among his fellow townsmen like him, and the bad hate him.’”(Smith, 109)
Such a chun tzu is a mature, superior, or excellent person. A chun tzu, will have “a self-respect that generates respect for others,”(Smith, 110) and will be so comfortable in their own skin, so at home in the world, that they will be like “an ideal hostess who is so at home in her surroundings that she is relaxed and, being so, can turn full attention to putting others at their ease.”(Smith, 110) Such a person will approach others, not with an attitude of “’What can I get from you?’ but rather, ‘How can I accommodate you?”(Smith, 110)
The concept of wen is “the art of peace.”(Smith, 111) Consistent with the golden rule, which is ubiquitous in ancient wisdom traditions, wen cautions that, “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.” So the assumption behind this reciprocity of rights and duties is that the older will be the role models and that the younger will look up to those more experienced with a respect appropriate for elders, which is as much respect for wisdom come of experience. This softens the blows of life and smooths the rough edges of aging, and also gives the young assurance that with maturity will come increasing security.
The danger of such traditions comes in only when the more powerful partner assumes the position is guaranteed rather than earned, whereas Confucius insisted that such relationships must come of merit. For instance, a wife’s respect and loyalty to a husband comes only if he is the kind of husband who inspires and deserves such allegiance. Likewise, as pertains to politics, “the ruler retains…his right to rule…only insofar as he rules well.”(Smith, p.114)
So built into the meaning of such words is their qualification: just as “The word ‘father’ should mean, not merely a man who has sired a child, but one that loves the child he has sired,” so too a ruler should denote one who loves those over whom he rules.(Smith, 110) “Rulers need the voluntary cooperation of their subjects,” and this will emerge only when people believe that their leaders merit their cooperation. To merit it, leaders, (like teachers, parents, and all others who have influence) must be persons of good character, sincerely devoted to the common good and possessed of the kind of self-respect that compels other-respect, sufficiently that others can verify that goodness.
As Plato will later agree (in his discussion of the philosopher king,” Confucius knew that “A true ‘king of consent’ whose sanction derives from his goodness…will gather a cabinet of ‘unpurchasable allies.”(Smith, 111) And the devotion of such leaders to the good of the public will itself “quicken the public conscience” and so trickle down through local leaders to inspire the citizens to become their own better selves.(Smith, 111) “’He who governs by te is like the north star. It keeps its place and other stars turn toward it.’”(Smith, 111)
The powerful social cohesion that results made for ease in developing large scale projects, such as irrigation and dikes, that necessitated social coordination, with both good and bad results. On the one hand, this facilitate great accomplishments in control of population and disease; on the other hand, a naturally trusting population was easy to take advantage of, and sometimes gave unworthy leaders and dictators a strong hand.(Smith, p.119) But Confucius had built the right of revolution into his system (long before Hobbes questioned the divine right of kings), holding that “Heaven sees as the people see; heaven wills as the people will.”(Smith, p.114)
In the final analysis, goodness enters society at least in part through the impress of leaders that people respect and admire.”(Smith, 111) This power was called te, “the power of moral example,”(Smith, 111) an idea we will see again in the voice of Plato.
As we’ve said, Confucius’ mission to uplift the purposes of those governing did not come to fruition in his life. “Rulers,” Smith says, “were too afraid of his candor and integrity to appoint him to positions that carried power.”(Smith, 101) His ideas and counsels went largely ignored. And while he did have a small band of devoted disciples, he did not enjoy the influence he hoped for in his lifetime. Disappointed, he spent the last five years of his life teaching and quietly editing the I Ching, the classic ancient Chinese text. “Power and wealth could have been his for the asking if he had been willing to compromise his principles, but he preferred his integrity. He never regretted the choice.”(Smith, 101) “Is not he a true philosopher who, though he be unrecognized, cherishes no resentment?” (Smith, 102) “I will not grieve that others do not know me. I will grieve that I do not know others. Do not wish for quick results, nor look for small advantages.”(Smith, 102)
It was “his death [that] began his glorification,” and only then did “attention to his ideas” became widespread.(Smith, 102) Indeed, even “until this [20th] century, every Chinese school child for two thousand years raised his clasped hands each morning toward a table in the schoolroom that bore a plaque bearing Confucius’ name. Virtually every Chinese student has pored over his sayings for hours, with the result that they have become a part of the Chinese mind and trickled down to the illiterate in spoken proverbs.”(Smith, 102) As we’ve said, “For nearly two thousand years the first sentence every Chinese child was taught to read was, ‘Human beings are by nature good.’”(Smith, 109)
And so, from 130 BC until the Communist takeover in 1905 AD, Confucian texts were prerequisite for a career in government. Multiply the years times the numbers of people affected, and the result is the “most impressive social institution that human beings have devised.”(Smith, p.119) Confucianism has been said to be “the greatest single intellectual force among one-quarter of the world’s population.”(Smith, 102)
“One wonders whether anywhere other than Tibet…there has been such an attempt to effect Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king.”(Smith, p. 120) As Plato would later agree, “prophets have a way of outlasting politicians.”(Smith, p. 121)
“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists. Of a good leader, when his work is done the people will say, ‘We did this ourselves.’”(Tao Te Ching, Smith, p.136) As Confucius said, “If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there be harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there be order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”(Smith, 111)
Confucius considered learning and the arts to have “powers that elevate societies and the human heart.”(p.120) These include music, poetry, painting, not for their own sake, but because of their “power to ennoble the human spirit.”(Smith, 111) “’By poetry the mind is aroused; from music the finish is received. The odes quicken the mind. They induce self-contemplation. They teach the art of sensibility. They help to restrain resentment. They bring home the duty of serving one’s parents and one’s prince.’”(Smith, 111)
“This capacity of wen [thus] has a political dimension, for what succeeds in international relations? Ultimately, the victory goes to the state with the highest culture – the one with the finest art, the noblest philosophy, the grandest poetry. For in the end it is these that elicit the spontaneous admiration of women and men everywhere.”(Smith, 111)
In contrast with Confucius’ thought, Taoism showed “a dawning fascination with the inner as opposed to the outer self.”(Smith, p.130) Seeing that we do “not influence people by wealth, but by virtue,” the Taoists seek to maximize “the quiet power of being honorable and humble.”(I Ching, p.152) On thing all these traditions agreed on is that we must “hold onto the principle of the Golden Mean, that is, walking the central path.”(I Ching, p.80)
The Tao Te Ching. is said to have been written (in three days) by Lao Tze, who was apparently a friend of Confucius, but who nonetheless challenged the great one’s emphasis on tradition and social expectations). Born 604 BC, Lao Tzu too was “saddened by his people’s disinclination to cultivate the natural goodness he advocated, and seeking greater personal solitude for his closing years,” was leaving his home for Tibet on a water buffalo, when he was asked by a gate keeper to write his thoughts to leave a record of his beliefs. Scholars today tend to believe that the form we now know was written by many hands and ultimately completed in the 3rd century BC) Tao Te Ching translates The Way and Its Power (of 1. The ultimate reality, then 2. The universe, and 3. of human life, as if nested).
For these reasons, all of which trace back to the I Ching, Chinese culture enjoys an “unrivaled power of assimilation,” because those who come admire and voluntarily emulate what they see, comfortably mixing Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist and primal traditions in a way that serves the needs of all.(Smith, p.119)
[1] Smith describes this social pressure as the discomfort of being an outsider, like “a corporation executive were to forget his necktie.”(Smith, 103) But Socrates might ask if this isn’t less about extrinsic discomfort, and more about the inner comfort of self-respect, the intrinsic rewards of being one’s better self, not because others define it as good, and in fact, even when others define good as its very opposite (such as when Socrates was put to death for refusing to become complicit with an unjust state). Inner self worth will motivate those who understand the connection between it and the actions that give rise to it regardless of what others think.
[2] (Smith, 110)
[3] (Smith, 113)
[4] (Smith, 117)
[5] (Smith, 114)
[6] (Smith, 112)
[7] (Smith, 110)
“In Chinese culture, the Confucian and Taoist schools constitute a yin-yang complementarity. The philosophy of the Confucian school is moving and doing. That of the Taoist school is retreating and doing nothing. Yet both philosophies originate from the I Ching.”(I Ching, 216-217)
“Both Confucianism and Taoism originated from the philosophy of the I Ching, a book that existed at least five hundred years before Lao Tse,”(I Ching p.51-53) who further illuminated the power of the Tao in a book entitled Tao Te Ching, The latter was said to have been completed in three days by Lao Tze, who was born in 604 B.C.. Of the Tao te Ching, Huston Smith says, “There are books whose first reading casts a spell that is never quite undone, the reason being that they speak to the deepest ‘me’ in the reader. For all who quicken at the thought that always, everywhere, the Tao is within us, the Tao Te Ching is such a book.”(Smith, p.145) While the I Ching is much older than Lao Tse’s Tao Te Ching, the latter is most often cited as the primary text of Taoism.
For this reason, Taoism and Confucianism are like Yin and Yang, they exist interdependently, a complementarity of opposites, like activity and relaxation, simplicity and complexity, calculation and spontaneity, artificial and natural, classical and romantic, analysis and synthesis, light and dark, male and female, night and day, birth and death. They are different sides of the same coin, and we all need both in balance.
“This dialectical point of view – the merging of opposites – is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.”(I Ching, p.50) Like Buddha’s Middle Way, it encouraged walking the path - the Tao – by careful reading of all the messages the universe sent out.
Taoism, of all ancient wisdom traditions, respects and learns from nature and seeks to work with, rather than against, the flow of energy through all things. Like “the waxing and waning of the moon the wise person prefer to live in harmony with the law of nature.”(I Ching, p.121) “Yin and yang, the two primary and fundamental forces in the universe… are opposite but mutually complimentary.”(I Ching, p. 43) “Yang represents what is firm, and yin represents what is yielding.” “Yin and yang must coordinate and support each other.”(I Ching, p. 43)
Taoists take the metaphor of water as a guiding principle, for while nothing is “as soft and yielding as water, yet in attacking what is firm and strong, nothing is better than water.”(I Ching, p. 59) “The idea that the soft can overcome the firm is part of the wisdom permeating the I Ching and permeating Chinese culture as well.”(I Ching, p.113)
One power illuminated by these ancients texts is called te, and has three senses (driving power, rhythm, and spirit). Like milk from a mother’s breast, “the more it is drawn upon, the more it flows.”(Smith, 126) This is why it’s called, The Mother of the World. (Smith, p.126)
They also use the metaphor of breath, what they call Ch’i which means vital energy or the life force or the “power on which life feeds.”(Smith, p.128) They based their concept of health on the understanding that energy flows through a healthy system, and a system is unhealthy when this energy is blocked. So the objective is to remove the obstacles that get in the way of that flow. Taoists work to maximize this flow between matter, movement, and mind, seeking “harmony between human beings and their natural surroundings.” From this it follows that nature “should be befriended, not conquered.”(p.138) …“human beings…are at their best when they are in harmony with their surroundings.”(Smith, p.138)
Hence the wisdom of non- or minimal interference when dealing with other living things, and humility when asserting one’s will. “The sages learned from nature that before effecting a plan, it is important to set things in order… Care should be taken at the beginning of an undertaking.” Because, “Before sprouting, the root must penetrate deeply.”(I Ching, p.61) “The little plant must overcome the pressure of the soil. There must be a wholehearted willingness to grow.”(I Ching, p.57)
“The ancient Chinese watched the cycles of the seasons; they comprehended that there also was a cycle of good times and bad times.”(I Ching, p.130) “Events cycle from departing to arriving and again from arriving to departing. It is the law of nature.”(I Ching, p.130) So Taoists would have us keep in mind that things are always changing, so “when things proceed to their proper limit, they alternate to the reverse condition”…until ultimately it reaches the other extreme and “will alternate to the opposite” again.(I Ching, p.65) For this reason, “When the situation is favorable and smooth, one should never forget about hard times. On the other hand, when the situation is unfavorable, one should always look forward to the good.”(I Ching, p. 130) Just as hard times ultimately turn for the better, so “extreme joy begets sorrow.”(I Ching, p. 29) It is “the Law of Nature” that “out of the depth of misfortune comes bliss.”(I Ching, p.127) So for this reason, “Be patient…hope always lies ahead.”(I Ching, p.124-127)
To illustrate this point, there is an age-old Taoist story about a farmer whose only horse ran away. That evening his neighbors gathered to commiserate with him, since this was such bad luck.
"Your farm will suffer, and you cannot plough," they said. "Surely this is a terrible thing to have happened to you."
The farmer replied, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
The next day the horse returned, and to everyone’s surprise, brought six wild horses with it. Again, the neighbors came, this time to congratulate the farmer for his good fortune.
"You are richer than you were before!" they said. "Surely this has turned out to be a good thing for you, after all."
And again the farmer said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
Then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses. He was thrown to the ground and broke his leg, and so he could not work on the farm. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy.
"There is more work than only you can handle, and you my end up very poor. Surely this is a terrible misfortune."
The old farmer just said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of his broken leg the farmer's son was passed over. So when the neighbors came again, they said, "How fortunate! Things have worked out for the best after all. Most young men never return alive from the war. Surely this is the best of fortunes for you!"
To which the old man replied, as always, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
What the Taoists called “wu wei…[meaning nonaction] is a skill that involves being “spontaneous, operating without effort”, but with…”pure effectiveness, or creative quietude.”(Smith, p.135) wu wei takes time, like water changing rock … “poor swimmers flail against it while good swimmers float motionlessly, knowing that it will support them if they don’t fight it.”(Smith, p.136) “A life lived above excess and tension.”(Smith, p.135)…a balanced dance… “Wu wei seems effortless from outside looking in…an effectiveness in which no motion is wasted on bickering or outward show.” (Smith, p.136) Why struggle and compete…there are “ways to harness higher powers for human ends,”(Smith, p.133) …“but we must remember that we have little idea what energy is, how it proceeds, or the means by which (and extent to which) it can be augmented.”(Smith, p.132)
The Taoists sought knowledge of “the kind that empowers life. We call it wisdom, and to live wisely…is to live in a way that conserves life’s vitality by not expending it in useless, draining ways, the chief of which are friction and conflict.”(Smith, p.128-129) Because of this, Taoists understand that “Hurry and all it entails is fatal.” Rather, “Waiting in a calm and unhurried manner. This is the best attitude with which to deal with unfavorable situations.”(I Ching, p.80) “No matter how difficult the situation…there is always a point where it turns favorable.”(I Ching, p. 127) “But for that to happen, the conscious mind must get out of the way, stop standing in its own light.”(Smith, p.135) Spontaneity is valuable precisely because it compels one to read the signs, choose one’s course carefully, one step at a time, because “from a small clue, one can be aware of what is coming.”(I Ching, p. 44)
Taoists saw life as something of a balancing dance, and developed an regime of movement they called T’ai chi, which is widely practiced still today, and is understood to be a “life-giving dance.”(Smith, p.120) Not satisfied with managing energy, T’ai chi aims to “invite chi from the cosmos and remove blocks to its internal flow.”(Smith, p.130) Along with various forms of acupuncture, these have long been used to supplement Taoist efforts to actually extract ch’i from the atmosphere and even from matter in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms.. What we once called ‘mind over matter’ is these days called the placebo effect in western medicine, and it is regularly incorporated into medical practices, where such treatments are not generally taught or even believed to work, despite the evidence. The Taoists would say that the evidence doesn’t care what the doctor believes - what matters is what the patient believes and the balance he or she keeps with the universe. The work of shamans, or faith healers, or psychics is not taken seriously in western medicine, for the same reason that yogi practitioners did not hope for understanding from the many – and that is because it cannot be understood from outside looking in, or studied in reductionist ways. Some may think of it as superstition, call it magic, or sorcery, or miracles, but Taoists call it simply wu wei, and it does and has worked for many thousands of years.
All the ancient eastern texts, including the I Ching, the Tao te Ching, and those written and edited by Confucius, illustrate that “We should search for the ancient wisdom between the lines and beyond the words.”(I Ching, p.94) This is “the way one should use the I Ching and other ancient texts – they may seem to say go forward or retreat, but it is in knowing oneself that one understands when to take this advice and when to leave it. “It is not simply a matter of blindly following the oracle, but rather understanding one’s place in the situation.”(I Ching, p. 165)
Confucius, who was born in 551 BC, was also known as Kung Fu-tzu or Kung the Master, was called The First Teacher by the Chinese people, not because he came first chronologically, but because he had such powerful influence. Though little of this came during is lifetime.
But Confucius’ wrote much during his life, and his Analects are a collection of his teachings that were compiled by his students, and amounted to a guide to good character,(Smith, 109) and a “way of life” that was able to nurture a spontaneous “peace and harmony” in its people.(Smith, 107) And his work was widely read after his death.
Confucius was a traveling tutor, and though he was as humble as a man could be, he was said to have been “a one-man university. His method of teaching was Socratic,” Smith says (though Socrates himself would not be born until eight years after Confucius died in 479 BC), and this hints at one thing all these teachers had in common (though we’ll save the details of that for Socrates to teach us).
At any rate, like Socrates and Buddha, Confucius was “Always informal, he seems not to have lectured but instead to have conversed on problems his students posed, citing readings and asking questions. The openness with which he interacted with his students was striking. Not for a moment assuming that he was himself a sage – sagehood being for him a matter of comportment, not a stock of knowledge – he presented himself to his students as their fellow learner. On the importance of the task on which they were together embarked, however, he was uncompromising. This led him to expect much from his students for he saw their mission as nothing less than the revitalization of their entire society.”(Smith, 101-102)
Given his “democratic bearing” (Smith, 102), Confucius was also Socratic in the sense that he was “always ready to champion the cause of common people against the oppressive nobility of his day; in his personal relations he cut scandalously across class lines...never slighting his poorer students even when they couldn’t pay.”(Smith, 102)
Confucius was “not a bookworm,” but he did love to learn, and made a “transparently honest claim that he was ‘a lover of the ancients.’”(Smith, 109) By which he meant the early days of the Chou Dynasty, what he called “the Age of Grand Harmony,” which was in sharp contrast with the times he was born into.
In keeping with this ancient Taoist book of changes, Confucius, like Buddha, was “reserved about the supernatural,” for the ancient Chinese people honored the Heavens, rather than a personal God. He did believe though that “Somewhere in the universe…there is a power that is on the side of right.”(Smith, p. 117) Confucius had inherited a worldview in which the whole of heaven and earth were one, death was a transition to a more “honorable state,” and ancestors were worshiped (their needs supplied by offerings) and thought to have collective memory of the entire past, as well as “knowledge of the impending future.”(Smith, p.116) But since they could not voice vocally (lacking vocal chords), they were thought to send omens by way of nature’s signs (thunder, lightening, stars, bird signs). In these ways, Confucius and Taoists agreed, ancestors alert us to impending dangers. While his own emphasis was on the living, Confucius incorporated the ancient tradition of ancestor worship into his own, advising that the dead be treated “as if they were present.”(Smith, p.117)
Like Buddha’s Middle Way, both the Taoists and Confucius endorsed a way of life he called the Doctrine of the Mean, what the Greeks would later call the Golden Mean. It is a philosophy that encourages balance and harmony, which is to say, “nothing in excess.”(Smith, 110) As we’ll see when we get there, the Greeks helped us see that it is indeed possible to take a good thing too far, for every virtue can be both under and over done. In our time, we tend to make the mistake of thinking that, if a little of something is good, then a lot must be better, but the ancients knew better. For instance, a deficiency of courage may be cowardice, but an excess of courage is just foolhardy. Likewise, a deficiency of honesty is deceit, but an excess is just cruelty. So with all virtues – the ideal is a balance between too little and too much. So the choice of the right thing to do is not as simple of following a given rule or law, for such principles must be applied to the circumstances that we fact.
So this method that Confucius called the Doctrine of the Mean inclines people toward compromise, negotiation, mediation (vs. courts of law, which were considered impersonal, and even shameful, needed only for those who cannot regulate themselves and resolve their own problems). Indeed, to not be able to work things out by way of mutual respect and compromise with injustice was thought to be beneath an excellent person, in the Confucian way of thinking, as well as in the Socratic view. "Could anything show a more shameful lack of culture than to have so little justice in oneself that one must get it from others, who thus become masters and judges over one?", Socrates said.[RepC p.95]
People of such excellent character were admittedly rare, then, as now, but Confucius recognized that this had more to do with poor education than with any intrinsic quality of character. Like Aristotle, Confucius understood that good character can be habituated from an early age. And it was taking this idea too far that put Confucians at odds with those Taoists who understood that the young must also be free to spontaneously choose the right thing to do. Obedience to tradition may be a good thing, when traditions themselves and the leaders who encourage them are good. But times can change, and those habituated to doing what their told can easily be abused by less than benevolent leaders and changing traditions.
But Confucius himself understood this, for he had been born into corrupt and violent times, which is what led him to emphasize the nature of healthy relationships. He too would probably have admit that respect for authority can be taken too far and even abused, and so we can hear him to be part of the Taoist tradition, rather than opposed to it. But Confucius himself was responding to desperate excess, and followers do tend to take good advice to the extreme. So the Confucian emphasis on teaching tradition for it’s own sake did tend to lose its balance.
But we can see why, since “Confucius lived at a time when his society was going to pieces; its glue was no longer holding.”(Smith, 103) The harmonious ways of the early Chou Dynasty had declined between 800 and 300 BC, as political chaos brought what was called The Period of the Warring States. "China had reached a point in its evolution where individuals were emerging in large numbers. Self-conscious rather than group-conscious, they were guided more by self-interest than social expectations.” Thus, “the desperate problem he faced…was social anarchy.” (Smith, 104) Traveling marauders had taken to surprise attacks and would undertake mass slaughters of entire populations (as many as 400,000 at a time) rather than take prisoners. “There are accounts of the conquered being thrown into boiling caldrons,” Smith says, “and their relatives forced to drink the human soup.”(Smith, 103)
So you can see why Confucius was said to be obsessed with recovering the ancient “Chou way of life,” (Smith, 109) which contrast so sharply with the inhumanity of his own age. “The passion with which he plied that mission made him a zealot, but he was known for his humor and a sense of proportion that saved him from being a fanatic. He loved to be with people, to dine out, to join in the chorus of a good song, and to drink, though not in excess. His disciples reported that ‘he was affable, yet firm; dignified yet pleasant.’”(Smith, 102)
Pre-Confucian China had been traditional in a sense rarely seen in our culture (except perhaps with “corporate dress codes,” Smith notes (103)[1] like some other cultures (such as Eskimo and aboriginal tribes), that are so ruled by tradition that they “do not even have a words for disobedience.”(Smith, 104) Expectations were internalized at a very young age such that they thereafter exert a spontaneous influence, with no need for laws or penalties to keep people doing the right thing.
It was ‘tradition’ in this sense that Confucius endorsed, assuming it would produce a spontaneous and mutual respect in people. If “group expectation” can keep people behaving morally, he reasoned, and if humans lack the cooperation instinct of ants and bees to cooperate, they need tradition to keep them in line. These conditionals did not suppose that people were not naturally good, only that they could easily become corrupted. Hence the need for good education, even habituation, to bring out their natural goodness at na early age. “Through generations of trial and error, ways of interacting evolve that keep tribes stable, and these ways catch on. Once their patterns are in place, they are transmitted from generation to generation unthinkingly – cum lacte, with the mother’s milk, as the Romans used to say.”(Smith, 103)
But Taoists, aware (as Socrates would later emphasize) that tradition too can corrupt innocence (such as traditions of slavery often did), and so they were inclined to teach the importance of listening to one’s inner voice (we might call conscience) as well as other signs the universe might be sending, so to discern the right thing to do in any given circumstance, especially when social expectations were not encouraging the good in people. For it may be true that people will behave good out of self-consciousness about others judgments, they can also be corrupted in the same way, by less than moral cultural expectations. As the saying goes, morality is doing the right thing, regardless of what one is told, whereas obedience is doing what one is told, regardless of morality.
So, the Taoists understood, when tradition itself is corrupted, spontaneity and trust of inner divinity is what is needed to encourage the good in people, as well as to change unjust traditions. Taoism too ultimately developed an organized or ‘religious’ wing, but for the most part, it has been about self-help from the start. Taoist teachers or coaches work to increasing the understanding of those who seek to work on themselves…(p. 128) As Confucius had said, “’If one attacks one’s own failings instead of those of others, will that not remedy personal faults?’”(Smith, 109)
All these sages understood that people simply want to be good, and given half a chance, can understand both the inner and the social rewards for being so. Which of these is the better teacher really depends on the circumstance of the times. All the same, “For nearly two thousand years the first sentence every Chinese child was taught to read was, ‘Human beings are by nature good.’”(Smith, 109)
All the same, Confucius thought that tradition could be made deliberate, and when well grounded in what is truly good for people, has the “power to civilize,”(Smith, 107) and should be taught by “every device of education – formal and informal, womb to tomb.” And even the Taoists might agree that the best values should be taught universally, deliberately, in “temples, theatres, homes, toys, proverbs, schools, history, stories – until they became habits of the heart.”(Smith, 109) They would agree that the breakdown of traditions that bring out the best in the young does call for educational solutions.
There is a longstanding debate (as we will see when we get to the Greeks) between whether reason or habit teaches best. But the ancient Chinese would probably agree that both are needed in a whole scheme of learning. What we in the west called ‘the Enlightenment’ taught that it was enough to give information and encourage good reasoning – but if our age is any evidence, this faith in reason has yet to bear full fruit. On the other hand, we can see in our time a form of conditioning that does not even aim at bringing out the best in our young, only at habituating the consumer in them…so we have to give credit to those Taoists and Socrates who worried that bypassing reason is too likely to corrupt.
It is still true now, as it was then, that there are plenty who believe that the best way to make people behave is by force, and that rules with sanctions and punishments attached can be used to both deter people from misbehavior,(Smith, 106) and to actually encourage corruption of the soul. Confucius himself saw that this concept of education depends on a view of human nature that assumes people are at least short sighted, and will prefer immediate gratification and avoidance of pain to long term or intrinsic goods. By this view, people are thought to be unlikely, if not altogether incapable, of doing the right thing for the right reason, especially on threat of pain or deprivation. Those who hold this view claim human nature to be motivated by “base impulses [that] predominate over noble ones. People are thought to be naturally lustful, greedy, and jealous,” and to the extent that virtue is possible, it must be “built into people as wood is straightened in a press.”(Smith, 106) But it’s possible that what seems ‘natural’ is in fact a conditioned response, which is to say, that people seem this way who have been encouraged to believe this is true of them ‘naturally,’ and they become so by way of self-fulfilling prophesy.
At any rate, in Confucius’ time, those who advocated education based on this authoritarian method called themselves Realists, but Confucius saw that these Realists could not change attitudes, in fact, but only behavior, and only then by way of fear and punishment. By contrast, and like both the Taoists and Socrates, Confucius called for self-examination as the means of self-control, showing that he not only recognized a good interior of the self, but considered it an important aspect of human nature. A “good man or woman is one who is always trying to get better,”(Smith, p.113) even “to discover the God within.”(Smith, p.113) He would be among the first to say, “That wherein the superior person cannot be equaled is simply this – his work which other men cannot see,”(Doctrine of the Mean) – affirming the Taoist view that humility is part and parcel of what we call the Socratic & Confucian method. However, unlike Socrates’ view, which held that emotions can be like wind through the intellect, “The Chinese character for ‘mind’ designates ‘heart’ as well” as reason, “which shows that the Chinese took it for granted that reason functions in a context of attitudes and emotions.”(Smith, 107) And the methods of teaching and learning that followed from this generous view of human nature was practiced by a teacher named Mo Ti, who advocated the opposite of force, which is love.
All the same, unlike the Indian yogi who retires to solitude, most people grow and learn “in the center of ever-shifting, never-ending cross-currents of human relationships.”(Smith, p.113) And so he emphasized the kind of mutual respect in healthy relationships on which healthy traditions are based.
As indicated earlier, Confucius would have us learn and live by the concept of jen, what he held to be “the virtue of virtues.” It represents the ideal of a healthy relationship (consisting of the characters for human being and two). Jen translates as goodness, benevolence, human-heartedness and love. It is probably never fully realized, Confucius admits, but “it induces courtesy, unselfishness, and empathy – the capacity to ‘measure the feelings of others by one’s own.’”[2]
By this view, and in keeping with Buddha, “the self is a center of relationships,” and exists “as a node, not an entity.”[3] Such that, “becoming fully human involves transcending…egoism,”[4] “expanding one’s empathy indefinitely. This expansion proceeds in concentric circles… that begins with oneself and spread from there” outward, including one’s family, friends, community, and ultimately all of humanity.
The ancient Taoists would agree, *. And “In shifting the center of one’s concern from oneself to one’s family one transcends selfishness…” And “this broadening process is accompanied by one that is deepening… Inside and outside work together is the Confucian scheme. The inner world deepens and grows more refined as empathy expands.”[5]
Like the others then, Confucius “puts everyday life at the center of human spirituality.”[6] For “only of such large-hearted people, Confucius thought, can civilization be built.”[7]
Unfortunately, there seems little evidence in a world habituated by force that the rewards of love can constrain those conditioned to the habits of immediate self-interest. In other words, it’s not clear that love is its own reward, or as the Chinese conceived of it, that “Shang Ti, a personal god who loves people dearly… rewards the virtuous and punishes the wicked.”(Smith, 106) So Confucius knew that the “total reliance on love was unrealistic,” as “ends without means” he said. (although Socrates might later teach the explicit means of love that Confucius himself used.) At any rate, without “social structures and a collective ethos” to support it (Smith, 107), love and intrinsic goodness can give way to force and fear.
There are five ideals that permeate Confucian thought: besides jen, the ideal of healthy relationships, there were chun tzu, li, te, and wen. For the same reason Confucius believed that tradition could be made deliberate, he believed that such habits must be formed young regarding these five constant relationships, i.e. ruler/subject, parent/child, husband/wife, older/younger siblings and friends. Though he understood and lived by a natural equality between friends, he also understood that not all relationships are equally symmetrical, and so, like parent and child, they have reciprocal and complementary rites and responsibilities.
This emphasis on family and healthy social relationships is known as li, which means both “propriety or right conduct,”(Smith, 111) but also means “ritual” or rite.(Smith, 111) Thus right/rite are interrelated, and in this way, life becomes “choreographed”, like a “sacred dance.”(Smith, 111)
This does not mean merely “the way things should be done” as others in general think appropriate, not merely what is popular, he cautions, but as considered appropriate by those who are “examples of exemplary living.”(Smith, 110) Once asked, “’What would you say of the person who is liked by all his fellow townsmen?’ ‘That is not sufficient,’ Confucius replied. ‘What is better is that the good among his fellow townsmen like him, and the bad hate him.’”(Smith, 109)
Such a chun tzu is a mature, superior, or excellent person. A chun tzu, will have “a self-respect that generates respect for others,”(Smith, 110) and will be so comfortable in their own skin, so at home in the world, that they will be like “an ideal hostess who is so at home in her surroundings that she is relaxed and, being so, can turn full attention to putting others at their ease.”(Smith, 110) Such a person will approach others, not with an attitude of “’What can I get from you?’ but rather, ‘How can I accommodate you?”(Smith, 110)
The concept of wen is “the art of peace.”(Smith, 111) Consistent with the golden rule, which is ubiquitous in ancient wisdom traditions, wen cautions that, “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.” So the assumption behind this reciprocity of rights and duties is that the older will be the role models and that the younger will look up to those more experienced with a respect appropriate for elders, which is as much respect for wisdom come of experience. This softens the blows of life and smooths the rough edges of aging, and also gives the young assurance that with maturity will come increasing security.
The danger of such traditions comes in only when the more powerful partner assumes the position is guaranteed rather than earned, whereas Confucius insisted that such relationships must come of merit. For instance, a wife’s respect and loyalty to a husband comes only if he is the kind of husband who inspires and deserves such allegiance. Likewise, as pertains to politics, “the ruler retains…his right to rule…only insofar as he rules well.”(Smith, p.114)
So built into the meaning of such words is their qualification: just as “The word ‘father’ should mean, not merely a man who has sired a child, but one that loves the child he has sired,” so too a ruler should denote one who loves those over whom he rules.(Smith, 110) “Rulers need the voluntary cooperation of their subjects,” and this will emerge only when people believe that their leaders merit their cooperation. To merit it, leaders, (like teachers, parents, and all others who have influence) must be persons of good character, sincerely devoted to the common good and possessed of the kind of self-respect that compels other-respect, sufficiently that others can verify that goodness.
As Plato will later agree (in his discussion of the philosopher king,” Confucius knew that “A true ‘king of consent’ whose sanction derives from his goodness…will gather a cabinet of ‘unpurchasable allies.”(Smith, 111) And the devotion of such leaders to the good of the public will itself “quicken the public conscience” and so trickle down through local leaders to inspire the citizens to become their own better selves.(Smith, 111) “’He who governs by te is like the north star. It keeps its place and other stars turn toward it.’”(Smith, 111)
The powerful social cohesion that results made for ease in developing large scale projects, such as irrigation and dikes, that necessitated social coordination, with both good and bad results. On the one hand, this facilitate great accomplishments in control of population and disease; on the other hand, a naturally trusting population was easy to take advantage of, and sometimes gave unworthy leaders and dictators a strong hand.(Smith, p.119) But Confucius had built the right of revolution into his system (long before Hobbes questioned the divine right of kings), holding that “Heaven sees as the people see; heaven wills as the people will.”(Smith, p.114)
In the final analysis, goodness enters society at least in part through the impress of leaders that people respect and admire.”(Smith, 111) This power was called te, “the power of moral example,”(Smith, 111) an idea we will see again in the voice of Plato.
As we’ve said, Confucius’ mission to uplift the purposes of those governing did not come to fruition in his life. “Rulers,” Smith says, “were too afraid of his candor and integrity to appoint him to positions that carried power.”(Smith, 101) His ideas and counsels went largely ignored. And while he did have a small band of devoted disciples, he did not enjoy the influence he hoped for in his lifetime. Disappointed, he spent the last five years of his life teaching and quietly editing the I Ching, the classic ancient Chinese text. “Power and wealth could have been his for the asking if he had been willing to compromise his principles, but he preferred his integrity. He never regretted the choice.”(Smith, 101) “Is not he a true philosopher who, though he be unrecognized, cherishes no resentment?” (Smith, 102) “I will not grieve that others do not know me. I will grieve that I do not know others. Do not wish for quick results, nor look for small advantages.”(Smith, 102)
It was “his death [that] began his glorification,” and only then did “attention to his ideas” became widespread.(Smith, 102) Indeed, even “until this [20th] century, every Chinese school child for two thousand years raised his clasped hands each morning toward a table in the schoolroom that bore a plaque bearing Confucius’ name. Virtually every Chinese student has pored over his sayings for hours, with the result that they have become a part of the Chinese mind and trickled down to the illiterate in spoken proverbs.”(Smith, 102) As we’ve said, “For nearly two thousand years the first sentence every Chinese child was taught to read was, ‘Human beings are by nature good.’”(Smith, 109)
And so, from 130 BC until the Communist takeover in 1905 AD, Confucian texts were prerequisite for a career in government. Multiply the years times the numbers of people affected, and the result is the “most impressive social institution that human beings have devised.”(Smith, p.119) Confucianism has been said to be “the greatest single intellectual force among one-quarter of the world’s population.”(Smith, 102)
“One wonders whether anywhere other than Tibet…there has been such an attempt to effect Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king.”(Smith, p. 120) As Plato would later agree, “prophets have a way of outlasting politicians.”(Smith, p. 121)
“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists. Of a good leader, when his work is done the people will say, ‘We did this ourselves.’”(Tao Te Ching, Smith, p.136) As Confucius said, “If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there be harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there be order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”(Smith, 111)
Confucius considered learning and the arts to have “powers that elevate societies and the human heart.”(p.120) These include music, poetry, painting, not for their own sake, but because of their “power to ennoble the human spirit.”(Smith, 111) “’By poetry the mind is aroused; from music the finish is received. The odes quicken the mind. They induce self-contemplation. They teach the art of sensibility. They help to restrain resentment. They bring home the duty of serving one’s parents and one’s prince.’”(Smith, 111)
“This capacity of wen [thus] has a political dimension, for what succeeds in international relations? Ultimately, the victory goes to the state with the highest culture – the one with the finest art, the noblest philosophy, the grandest poetry. For in the end it is these that elicit the spontaneous admiration of women and men everywhere.”(Smith, 111)
In contrast with Confucius’ thought, Taoism showed “a dawning fascination with the inner as opposed to the outer self.”(Smith, p.130) Seeing that we do “not influence people by wealth, but by virtue,” the Taoists seek to maximize “the quiet power of being honorable and humble.”(I Ching, p.152) On thing all these traditions agreed on is that we must “hold onto the principle of the Golden Mean, that is, walking the central path.”(I Ching, p.80)
The Tao Te Ching. is said to have been written (in three days) by Lao Tze, who was apparently a friend of Confucius, but who nonetheless challenged the great one’s emphasis on tradition and social expectations). Born 604 BC, Lao Tzu too was “saddened by his people’s disinclination to cultivate the natural goodness he advocated, and seeking greater personal solitude for his closing years,” was leaving his home for Tibet on a water buffalo, when he was asked by a gate keeper to write his thoughts to leave a record of his beliefs. Scholars today tend to believe that the form we now know was written by many hands and ultimately completed in the 3rd century BC) Tao Te Ching translates The Way and Its Power (of 1. The ultimate reality, then 2. The universe, and 3. of human life, as if nested).
For these reasons, all of which trace back to the I Ching, Chinese culture enjoys an “unrivaled power of assimilation,” because those who come admire and voluntarily emulate what they see, comfortably mixing Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist and primal traditions in a way that serves the needs of all.(Smith, p.119)
[1] Smith describes this social pressure as the discomfort of being an outsider, like “a corporation executive were to forget his necktie.”(Smith, 103) But Socrates might ask if this isn’t less about extrinsic discomfort, and more about the inner comfort of self-respect, the intrinsic rewards of being one’s better self, not because others define it as good, and in fact, even when others define good as its very opposite (such as when Socrates was put to death for refusing to become complicit with an unjust state). Inner self worth will motivate those who understand the connection between it and the actions that give rise to it regardless of what others think.
[2] (Smith, 110)
[3] (Smith, 113)
[4] (Smith, 117)
[5] (Smith, 114)
[6] (Smith, 112)
[7] (Smith, 110)