The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult
Does Tao mean going with the flow, while Buddhist practices often are practices of making our live difficult? We examine by comparing Taoism and Buddhism.
The Chinese are often considered incomprehensible because they have a triad of beliefs, they have three 'religions': Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The three have a lot in common, and sometimes they complement each other, but at times they contradict each other.
How can one have beliefs which are (partially) contradictory. Either the Chinese are illogical, or they tolerate a greater amount of inconsistency than the average people. Actually everybody have inconsistencies, and it is not always bad to be inconsistent.
I am not going to go into a general discussion of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism here.
But just for a summary, Confucianism believes in order and rationality in society. Order (and discipline and some rituals) is necessary, children must learn it. But order can become outdated, and leads to conservatism. Worse, rituals are often observed just for rituals sake.
Taoism's keyword is harmony with nature. It is also order, but it believes in the natural flow of things. Order comes from spontaneous action.
Buddhism brings a new element, dukkha, which means that nature is basically chaotic, and we need to practice control of chaos.
Out of the three characteristics in Buddhism, change, no-self, and incompleteness, Taoism shares the first two but not the third. On no-self, Taoism believes that self is a product of our thinking, and like Zen, it considers thinking as a hindrance.
In analogy, the difference between Confucianism and Taoism on the one side and Buddhism on the other is like classical, non-chaotic physics and modern physics or chaotic world models. Buddhism recognizes dukkha as fundamental in nature, manifesting itself as suffering, dissatisfaction, Gödel's incompleteness in logic , Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and in mathematical chaos.
This difference between Taoism and Buddhism, the first maintaining that nature is in harmony, and the second that nature is basically chaotic, is crucial.
If nature is in harmony, we don't need to do anything except to be in harmony with nature, to know the flow and just follow it effortlessly.
Elaborate practices causing suffering are just arts of making our lives difficult.
If nature is basically chaotic, we have to exert ourselves to control the chaos through mindfulness. Buddhism believes that the mind is very (infinitely?) malleable, it can be trained e.g. in the five faculties, just like we train our muscles. (Please note the word "control" is not meant as in controlling a machine, subjecting it to our will, but control through mindfulness).
Part of the practice may involve suffering, but this is necessary because suffering is one of the three characteristics of being. Experience is all important in Buddhism, it is the way to know something, including the experience of suffering.
If one day, scientists should developed an enlightenment pill, it would not be very useful, because the process of getting there is more important than the result.
In Buddhism "mind harbors all", Taoism does not have the equivalent of mindfulness.
Finally, I am not suggesting that Confucianism and Taoism are not valuable. The Confucian values for society has played an important role in the economic development of many East Asian countries, and Taoist concept of harmony is what is needed in ecology, for example. Order is mostly good, as in Gtd.
Note: I borrowed the title "The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult" from Theo Fischer's book: "Yu wei. Die Kunst, sich das Leben schwer zu machen"
but the opinions expressed here are different from the book's.
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4 komentar:
I wouldn't say the Tao doesn't include the idea of chaos, merely that chaos is part of nature.
Not all of nature is orderly, after all.
Donna, thanks for the comment. Of course chaos is part of nature, but I am saying that one cannot find chaotic characteristics in the teachings of Tao. Except perhaps, in the sense that Tao is the ultimate mysterious that includes everything. Please tell me if I am mistaken.
The Chinese and Japanese have an advantage with their multiple religions. None of them is strong enough to strangle thought, which is what is being done by fundamentalism in the US and Islam in large parts of the world, including Western Europe and the US.
Compare Greece with Palestine 2400 years ago. Those Greeks left us a precious legacy in art and science. They had dozens of gods, too many to take seriously. The Romans inherited this advantage, and added to the legacy. Judaism, through its mutant, Christianity, pretty well strangled this for 1500 years until enough heretics appeared to rediscover the legacy of heathen antiquity.
It's only the unbelievers in the West, with the Chinese and Japanese, who are in a position to do the kind of thinking that the world needs to survive.
Strange, isn't it? In my opinion, religions which deal with metaphysics and the supernatural, including all the Semitic religions will sooner or later clash with science. Religions which are willing to jettison their doctrines and beliefs at any time, if found unscientific, and instead only concentrates on developing insight and loving kindness by direct experience have a better promise.
Thinking is a very important part of our mental muscles, but the mind as understood in Buddhism is not just thought, it includes bodily sensations, feeling, intuition, perceptions, and thought formations. Many traditions like Zen and Taoism discourage thinking when it comes to the fundamental problems of life, as thought gets us trapped in dualities.
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