Taoism outline - some fundamentals

The following is the first on a series of 3 articles on Taoism outline. This is a way of looking at life completely different from what we are used to.

Taoism outline consists of the following fundamental concepts –

1) All opposites are polarities – you cannot have good without bad, life without death, good government without misrule, male without female and so on. Opposites are not in conflict with each other but are like opposite poles through which electric current flows. They are like two sides of a coin and go together.

All Yang elements contain the seed of Yin and Yin contains the seed of Yang. Good cannot be separated from bad; you cannot have just the one and not the other. Good changes into bad and vice versa and we can never know if what we are striving for and achieving is really the best thing to happen to us.

2) Taoism outline also sees mankind and therefore individual man as a part of nature and the Universe. There is no division between self and other as is common to Western culture. The West sees Nature as something to be subjugated and controlled and bent to our wishes and plans. This attitude is totally alien to Taoism and any outline should include this as a basic concept.

Nature, the Universe and our own selves are seen to be in a state of organic spontaneous growth. There is no concept - as in the Christian view – of a God separate from the Universe and presiding and ruling over it.

3) Any Taoism outline must also include the cyclical view of life. In the West we see progress in our lives and in the history of mankind as inevitable. Our view is linear. Taoism however sees life as cyclical – like the seasons. The seasons come and go. Spring is followed by summer and then autumn and then winter and again spring. When spring comes this year it has no wish or desire to be better than the spring that came a year ago. It is content to be itself. In out lives too, birth is followed by childhood then youth, adulthood, old age, death and then presumably another birth. These patterns repeat themselves in a cyclical manner.

The story is told of a man and his horse. The horse ran away and his neighbors came to console him for his misfortune. The man said, “How do you know that this is bad luck.” Later the horse returned with 6 other wild horses. This time his neighbors congratulated the man. He said, “How do you know that this is good luck.” Then the man’s son fell while trying to ride one of the wild horses and broke his leg. The man told his neighbors, “How do you know that this is good luck.” Some time later agents from the Government military came and there was compulsory enlistment of all young men into the military to fight a war. However due to his broken leg the man’s son was rejected. Again his neighbors came this time to congratulate him. And the man said, “How do you know that this is good luck.”

And so life flows on in a cyclical pattern.

This view must be stated in any exposition of Taoism outline. It is also a more accepting and restful view of life as opposed to the Western view of linear progress. If we accept the view of Taoism then we are content to enjoy the seasons as they come and go in our lives. We are not continually striving for betterment in the ever-receding future. We are content to live life in the present, in the eternal Now without the cares and worries that plague people influenced by Western culture.

The Taoism outline views Nature, the Universe and mankind too as being in a state of organic and spontaneous growth. There is no concept of a God separate from and presiding over his creation. We can regard ourselves in the same way and this has important implication for the way in which we handle and perceive ourselves.

For – accepting he western view – we divide ourselves also into fragments. There is an I which controls and a me which this I attempts to control fruitlessly.

“I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.”

This is a political as opposed to an organic view of ourselves. Just as there is a God who governs the Universe so also we attempt to govern ourselves. This creates a divided self, a split in our being and personality.

According to any Taoism outline however we are beings in a state of organic and spontaneous growth responding to circumstances – both within and without – as they arise. The Tao is not separate but manifests itself in all these aspects of our being. If we accept this view then we will be content to let ourselves be. We will be able to accept ourselves instead of trying to govern and change and improve ourselves all the time.

And the moment we thus accept ourselves, the moment we no longer create divisions between an I and a myself we grow to wholeness. The split within us heals and we accept all aspects of our being. There is simply nothing else to be done; these aspects of our being are also the I.

And having done that, paradoxically, we open ourselves to the possibility of change. We give our impulses room to play themselves out by observing them mindfully and then we are free of them.

In this Taoism outline I have explained just a few of the important concepts of this philosophy. It is of utmost interest as it is a view that is and which comes from a culture totally different from Western culture.

Any Taoism outline challenges our most basic assumptions and forces us to look at life differently. Hence it is immensely valuable.

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