The Yin and Yang of Nature's Way

The Yin and Yang of Nature’s Way:

Daoism’s Ecological Legacy

Dirk Dunbar

My passion for Daoism was immediate. While writing a high school essay on yin and yang, something clicked for me. I sensed right away that Daoism offers a path like no other. The notion of a sacred force that pervades and guides the natural world captured my own sense of ultimate reality and love of nature. I took every Eastern religion and philosophy class I could, focused every paper possible on Daoism, and studied Chinese in hopes of better understanding the Daode jing. I have been teaching related courses for the past two decades. All along, my goal has not been the mere understanding of the tradition, but also finding ways to live by its principles. Not withstanding the Daoist claims that the more you learn the less you know and those who know do not speak, I remain convinced that the Daoist expressions of balance reveal—in both ancient and contemporary terms—life’s aim and nature’s lesson.[1]

Many share that conviction. Daoism has become a focus for all kinds of rhetoric, including that of New Age healers, self-help psychologists, and environmental activists. While based on a healthy instinct, there are problems—even dangers—in advancing commercialized notions of Daoist thought. Popularizations often ignore the history of China’s earth wisdom tradition, adulterate cosmological concepts and principles, and thereby compromise the tradition’s context and potential contemporary value. My aim, admittedly ambitious, is to trace authentic principles and practices that ground the rhetoric and verify Daoism’s ecological legacy.

I believe that yin, yang, and the Dao convey the most profound cultural expressions of the forces that guide the cosmic journey. Shaped by thousands of years of observing and following her cycles, those expressions evolved from myths, rituals, and divination into poetic and practical expositions of how to enact nature’s balance. Shamans, farmers, healers and sages all recognized the primacy of nature’s ebb and flow, forces that became known as yin and yang. Yin, the dark, receptive, feminine principle represents earth, softness, spontaneity, and nature’s chaotic, mysterious essence. It interacts with yang, the light, assertive, masculine power that reflects the sun and heavens, hardness, control, and order. Their interdependence ordains that—as the Yijing asserts—whenever a thing reaches an extreme, it reverts toward its opposite. Rain falls when clouds absorb too much moisture, day peaks and turns toward night, and decaying matter gives birth to new life. The steady sway between opposing yet complementary forces reveals the Dao.

The Character for “Dao” originally depicted a traveler and a path and gradually came to mean the way or force that guides the universe. Perhaps the most prominent character in the Chinese language, Dao refers to “ways” in general, whether streets, disciplines, doctrines, or systems. The first known inscription of Dao stems from bronze vessels of the Early or Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 1100-771 BCE) when the character contained three radicals—a human head, human feet, and a crossroad—which might have meant a tribal chief or walking into a crossroad. By the sixth century BCE, the character was simplified to two radicals that symbolized a human head and running, which probably referred to a pathfinder, leader, and/or walking the way of wisdom. The Dao’s philosophical meaning may have been recorded first in the Great Commentary (an appendix to the Yijing), which calls it the force that “lets now the dark, now the light appear.”[2] By the advent of Daojia or Contemplative Daoism, Dao became “the Way” that cannot be named.

The first record of the terms “yin” and “yang” also derives from the Western Zhou, when the ideogram for yang represented the sun and sunbeams and the character yin comprised a sun and clouds. They referred to the sunny and shady sides of mountains and rivers, respectively. By the writing of the Daode jing the terms were identified as cosmic principles. In verse 42, they are aligned with the concept of qi: “All beings carry yin and embrace yang, and blending the vital force [qi] of each creates harmony” (translated freely).[3]

The vital energy or “breath” of nature, qi moves through circulatory systems such as blood streams and air currents in patterns of varying degrees of yin and yang intensity. Originally associated with ancestor spirits, qi became renowned as the force that runs through the dragon veins—a still extant metaphor for the earth’s meridian lines—that connect the sky with mountains, valleys, and rivers. Through stars and canyons to hearts and fingers, its movement is harmonious when flowing in a balanced manner and unhealthy when blocked or coursing in an unbalanced way. Balancing the yin and yang of qi connects age-old practices involving nutrition and medicine, meditation and taiji, fengshui and acupuncture, and calligraphy and painting—all of which compose a singular yet multifarious earth wisdom tradition.

That monolithic tradition is unique to the planet. Extant aboriginal traditions may be as old, but none has developed in such an unequivocal manner, replete with a unified language, culture, and worldview.[4] Wrapped in shamanic practices, religious rituals, artistic activities, and philosophical concepts, the Daoist understanding of nature’s balance could serve as a model not just for me, but for Western culture as a whole.

Shamanism, Alchemy, and Health Care

The Dao permeates popular culture. The yin-yang symbol is a media icon, visible on car bumpers, T-shirts, surfboards, and TV shows and commercials; while books such as The Tao of Pooh, The Chinese Tao of Business, and the Tao/Dao of about anything imaginable can be found in most bookstores. Nowhere are Daoist principles more utilized than in health care, particularly in terms of what we now call “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” A cornerstone of today’s alternative medicine, TCM concentrates on sustaining health by balancing the flow of yin and yang qi. Beyond the marketing TCM invokes ancient earth and body wisdom that portends spiritual as well as medicinal value.

TCM, and the Daoist tradition as a whole, grew out of shamanism. The earliest shamans were most likely tribal chieftains in the Xia (c. 2200-1750 BCE) and Shang (c. 1750-1100 BCE) Dynasties. The shamans communicated with animistic forces through consciousness altering dances, astral travel, and oracular devices. Harbingers of divination, alchemy, and meditation, they predicted natural catastrophes, discovered the secret powers of plants and animals, and healed by entreating beneficial forces and shunning malevolent ones. By the Western Zhou, shamans were employed by aristocrats to heal, prolong life, interpret dreams, predict the future, and assess omens of nature.

Shamans initiated the pursuit of immortality (xian). A mixture of legendary immortals, celestial trips to eternity, and talismans, that pursuit gave rise to magical elixirs, which included metals such as mercury, gold, and cinnabar as well as minerals and plants. Though death via poisoning was common, it was believed that ingesting chemical concoctions could furbish the body with indestructible qualities of metals. Refining the practice became the territory of ancient alchemists. Of alchemy’s two major branches, external (waidan) and internal (neidan), external was codified first and concentrates on blending plants, minerals, and/or metals.[5]

A nebulous group of alchemists called the fang-shih—or “masters of the secret arts”—helped craft waidan while extending the practices of shamans into the aristocratic courts of the Late or Eastern Zhou Dynasty (c. 770-256 BCE). The fang-shih performed exorcisms and ritual dances while wearing bearskin masks, a clear link to their shamanic heritage. They also utilized the furnace, cauldrons, and bellows that became hallmarks of creating the liquid metals used for centuries in external alchemy. The fang-shih most likely helped institute the School of Yin and Yang. Although little is known about the school, it—more than any other source, including Contemplative Daoism—helped popularize yin, yang, and their properties. Those properties became the foci of two significant, interrelated theories—namely, “mutual arising” (xiang-sheng) and “the five phases” (wuxing)—that bridge shamanic insight with Daoist philosophy.

Xiang-sheng refers to the spontaneous, asymmetrical process that directs the constant interchange of nature’s polarities through the five phases. The process designates the mutual creation-destruction that corresponds to the interdependence of—among other natural phenomena—the five elements: earth, water, fire, metal, and wood. Each element carries a yin or yang import in relation to the others. At the two poles are yang fire and yin water. Their rising and falling is marked by heat’s ability to evaporate water and water’s dissipating power over fire. Every element has creative and destructive opposites that mutually arise or dissipate relative to one another and the situation. Wood, for instance, can be consumed by fire and nourished by earth and water; metal can cut wood, be melted by fire, cooled by water, and embraced in earth. Their constant transformation propels nature’s cycles.

The transmutation process is not bound by a linear, cause-and-effect relationship, which makes it very hard to describe. Most of us in the West understand the physical world to be controlled by natural laws that govern nature’s building blocks—such as atoms, molecules, and amino acids. Considered separate entities, those building blocks are defined by properties that can be measured and understood through the law of cause and effect. The elements of wuxing are allegorical and immeasurable. Their interaction is spontaneous as well as cyclical. More an event than “thing,” each element has innumerable correlates, such as a season, direction, planet, color, taste, musical tone, and weather condition. For instance, wood relates to spring and wind, fire to summer and heat, earth to “early fall” and dampness, metal to autumn and dryness, and water to winter and coldness. Together, they symbolize variations throughout the year, such as germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, and decay. Because the variations necessitate one another, the five phases transcend separation—hence, their mutual arising.

Wuxing also connects organs with emotions: the heart is paired with joy, the kidney with fear, the spleen with worry, the liver with anger, and the lungs with sorrow. [6] Certain connections are obviously pragmatic (for instance, worry encourages ulcers and joy increases the chance of having a healthy heart); however, the relationships are metaphorical. They symbolize the bond between health and environmental reciprocity. The internal world of organs, emotions, and energy cycles of pulses, breaths, and fluids operate in or out of balance with the external world of day and night, weather, elements, ocean currents, and star patterns. The mutual arising and dissipation of opposites not only make possible the deep greens of summer and autumn’s rustic colors, the bitter or sweet taste of apples, and the warmth or coldness of a river, but also connect the body’s circulatory patterns with environmental rhythms.

TCM is a compendium of practices used to kindle those spontaneous yet rhythmic relationships. Some of them work and some do not. The archaic practices of drinking liquid mercury to live longer or eating a tiger’s liver for virility are extreme examples of the trial and error process that constitutes TCM. Moreover, many contemporary derivatives involving herbs, acupuncture, yoga, martial arts, and self-help books that claim TCM as their heritage offer promises they cannot fulfill. Although it is beyond my aim to debunk or authenticate ancient or contemporary practices, let me briefly characterize TCM’s attentiveness to balancing nature’s polarities.

Concerned primarily with retaining health and secondarily with cures, TCM practitioners see health as a balance of yin and yang, and illness as excess or deficiency. All forms of nourishment—solids, liquids, and medicines alike—are classified according to yin and yang principles and prescribed as mixtures that correspond to maintaining a person’s flow of qi.[7] Healers make prescriptions tailored to the character of the patient and his or her lacking or ailment. Herbal tea mixtures, for example, can stimulate or diminish yin or yang elements that regulate bodily operations such as organ function, blood pressure, sleep, and excretory patterns.

TCM’s oldest practice may be the shaman’s dance, which opens doors to spirits of ancestors, animals, and/or gods to enter and impart powers to prophesy, heal, and bring back messages from the spirit world. Many primal dances dramatize religious myths that symbolize earthly processes and often involve movements that imitate animals. Celebrations of life and affirmations of communal stability, those dances assure “right relations” with the natural world. One such dance is the Pace of Yu—the sage-king who shape-shifted into a variety of animals. Scripted as bear prints, the steps traverse the stars and lead the dancer to immortality. Yu, Huangdi (the legendary Yellow Emperor), and Laozi (in later religious myths) are a few of the sage-divinities that ascended to immortality. Huangdi developed his own dance movement called Dao Yin, which aims at circulating the body’s blood and breath in rhythm with the renewal powers of nature. As the movement’s mythic aspects evolved, the aim became ever clearer: to balance the yin and yang of qi.

Still reenacted today, the Pace of Yu and Dao Yin inspired taiji, qigong, and other disciplines that merge meditation and movement. Taiji, or taijiquan (called the “Great Polarity”), proffers a soft or yin form of martial arts as opposed to other more aggressive methods of self defense. It concentrates on relaxing and loosening muscles while attempting to turn the attacking energy back on the aggressor. The effect of practicing slow, repetitive movement gently opens the pathways that distribute qi evenly throughout the body. The disciplined practitioner expresses movements and patterns in nature by learning to emulate rivers flowing, wind blowing, birds flying, tigers running, or cranes standing. Qigong, the meditative counterpart to the more physically oriented martial arts, concentrates on regulating blood, air, and qi throughout the body through proper breathing and mental relaxation.[8]

The art of proper breathing is attributed to Huangdi’s “Tu Na.” Tu refers to exhaling and Na to inhaling, and the two were eventually equated with yin and yang, respectively. Daoist breathing exercises are designed, to paraphrase Zhuangzi, to reach the still point of Dao. Early alchemical techniques to balance the prenatal breath of the abdomen (or “reviving the infant’s breath”) with the postnatal breathing of the throat and lungs led to Quick and Slow Breathing methods. Quick Breathing, a yang process, increases warmth and energy and quickly deposes “old” air. Yin or Slow Breathing techniques aim at calming and recovering qi.[9] The purpose of those and hundreds of other techniques remains uniform: to balance qi and sustain or restore well being.

Breathing exercises work hand in hand with meditation. Meditation most likely started as an attempt to contact gods or spirits, but “just sitting,” as Zhuangzi called it, serves as a means to balance emotions, quell desire, and invigorate mental and physical health. Whether driving out demons by summoning gods or deposing toxins by directing qi, the collective powers of breathing, dancing, and meditating could—depending on the time period and practice—transport shamans, enlighten practitioners, or heal patients.

Practices such as fengshui and acupuncture also bear witness to TCM’s evolution. Translated as “wind-water,” fengshui refers to ways of accommodating energy patterns that circulate in and around earth’s various topographies. Originally designed to appease the spirits of the dead that inhabit a locality, fengshui is based on the conviction that the land is alive and the flow of a region’s energy has potentially healthy or unhealthy affects on humans. One of the oldest forms of divination, fengshui has many schools. Some of the more recent schools involve numerology and astrological forecasting, but the two oldest, the Compass and Form schools, engage the eight trigrams, cardinal directions, five phases, and symbolic animals to ground their practice. While the methods are diverse and complex, the principles are quite simple.

Fengshui practitioners recognize that qi flows with various yin and yang intensity down mountains and hills, along roads and rivers, and into valleys, communities, and homes. Qi that meanders tends to be beneficial while qi that stagnates or rushes down slopes or streams is often harmful. Practitioners exercise an understanding of the best possible arrangement of elements based on balancing qi within an environment. Whether planning the placement of a building, garden, grave site, or doors, windows, and implements of the home, the goal is to harness beneficial qi, to optimize its impact on the mind, body, and spirit, and to promote health and fortune.

Also aimed at synchronizing circulatory systems, acupuncture serves as a means to balance yin and yang qi as it travels through pathways or meridians that can be manipulated at specific points along the body. The term zhen jiu—which roughly translates as “needle” and “fire”—refers to both acupuncture and moxibustion, a related practice that consists of burning herbs along the meridians. Acupuncture probably started as acupressure as early as the Xia Dynasty, when pointed rocks and stone knives were applied to pressure points. Following centuries of inserting slivers shaved from bamboo or animal bones into meridian points, acupuncturists now use stainless steel needles of various length and gauge, depending upon the patient’s physical and mental state. The aim is to engage the body’s innate healing powers and dissolve imbalances that—by stagnating, over stimulating, or misdirecting qi—promote pain, illness, depression, stress, a sedentary lifestyle, and/or spiritual disarray.

Acupuncture, like most healing practices, requires unique treatment for each individual, even when maladies appear similar. For instance, if two people are suffering from headaches, the treatment may be quite different depending upon the healer’s understanding of the patient’s psychological and physical state. The length and gauge of the needles along with the duration and depth of the manipulation depends on the where the needles are placed and why. Furthermore, acupuncture is usually only part of the prescription. The kind of breathing exercise, type of food and medicine to be consumed, or change in lifestyle are all subject to the healer’s understanding of not just the patient, but also the processes that guide nature. This helps explain why the tradition of healing is based on apprenticeship.

Over millennia Chinese healers have integrated empirical observation, personal dialogue as well as contact, and concern for spiritual well being and harmony with nature to sustain and restore health. One result is that the healer typically needs to understand not just the patient’s symptoms, but also his or her feelings, beliefs, and general state of mind before checking and making sense of the artery pulse of the body’s meridian points, the color of the eyes and tongue, and the relative warmth or coolness of various parts of the body. By assessing the whole person, physically, mentally, and spiritually, the healer diagnoses not only the agent—such as a virus—that prompts a particular illness, but also treats the disparity in nutrition, sleep patterns, and/or lifestyle that make one susceptible. TCM practitioners maintain that each person is unique and has her or his own healing processes that should be assisted, not interfered with when illness strikes.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has much to offer Western medical practice. Though the efficacy of practices involving herbs, acupuncture, and fengshui co-opted by the West’s multi-billion dollar health care business are still questionable, TCM’s approach and many of the principles could help balance our analytic, technological, and illness oriented system. The West’s allopathic approach—which has proven extremely effective in treating serious injuries and critical, life threatening conditions—counteracts dysfunction based on symptoms of a particular illness. After a diagnosis is determined, invasive drug therapy or surgery is often the recommended treatment. Doctors spotlight the afflicted part of the body and attack the agent of illness. Unlike the narrow focus of Western medicine, TCM utilizes a holistic method that seeks to empower the body’s natural defense system.

Western doctors are taught to specialize on specific illnesses and parts of the body, while Chinese healers are taught to view health holistically, to understand nature’s interconnectedness and to value the balance of the forces that channel nature’s cycles and bodily systems. TCM’s merit as well as its appeal owes largely to its uniform attempt to harmonize the yin and yang of qi. By balancing the in-and-out of breathing, the meridians of the body’s energy system, the intake of nourishment and medicines, the arrangement of objects in the physical environment, and the movement of the body through space, practitioners aim at balancing the forces that connect mind, body, and spirit to the natural world.

Myths, Oracles, and Nature’s Patterns

Long before the terms Dao, yin, and yang were used, the notions were symbolized in myths and divination rites. The oldest myths, the World Parents, convey the union of Father Sky and Mother Earth. In one such myth, the goddess Nu Gua is impregnated by the god Fu Xi and gives birth to a primal entity—a cosmic egg, gourd, or mass of flesh—that Fu Xi cuts into pieces to form earth, sky, and the infinite variety of things. An embodiment of nature’s primal yin, feminine force, Nu Gua’s “mass of flesh” represents the primordial state of the universe. Fu Xi portrays the yang, causal, orderly, masculine power that organizes existence. Unlike the male gods of the Abrahamic traditions that create the world without a feminine counterpart, the World Parents precipitate the interdependent feminine and masculine archetypes that center Daoist thought.

In other creation myths the cosmic egg or gourd appears as the universal primal condition, thereby emphasizing the unity as opposed to the duality of the World Parents. Like the “mass of flesh,” the egg‑gourd represents undifferentiated being; however, the distinctions of male and female are not present. Both the stuff and source of “the ten-thousand things” (an ancient metaphor for nature’s infinite diversity), the egg or gourd may be the earliest expression, also used later in classical Daoist texts, of the Dao concept in ancient Chinese thought.

Archetypal expressions of Dao, yin, and yang are also conveyed in ancient divination practices. Bearing strong resemblance to Nu Gua and Fu Xi, the polar principles, Kun and Qian, serve as foundations of ancient divinatory rites and texts. Their evolution, however, is much more complex—beginning, perhaps, with the shamanic practice of interpreting the lines that formed after cracking animal bones or turtle shells with heated sticks. Seeking guidance and blessings from the forces that govern change, shamans were employed by rulers to sketch questions on bones or shells and, after they were cracked, to forecast what the patterns held for answers. The ability to read the lines correlated with understanding the patterns that course through the natural world. Those patterns regulate wind and respiratory systems, spread through snowflakes and tea leaves, and forge events that steer change and reflect the future. The forecasts dealt with anything from healing and catastrophes to harvesting and battle plans.

Though unclear when the cracks were replaced by specific lines, indications suggest it was an ancient process. According to an old, prominent myth, Fu Xi—the divine sage responsible for writing, fishing, and trapping—discerned a sacred pattern essential to divination on the back of a dragon rising out of the River Ho. In other celebrated myths, Fu Xi or Yu discovered the lines essential to divination on the shell of giant tortoise emerging from a river. Though the myths insinuate that multiple lines comprised the earliest divinations, the oracular powers of lines probably originated with a single unbroken line that represented “yes” and a divided line that meant “no”—which most likely referred to good or bad fortune, depending upon the question. Those lines were eventually called “firm” or yang and “yielding” or yin, respectively. Centuries before the earliest compilations of the Yijing, the consummate text of Chinese divination, oracular capabilities were based on alternations of three horizontal lines and three broken horizontal lines, or trigrams.

The alternations result from throwing yarrow stalks or coins multiple times, a procedure that replaced the cracking of bones and shells. The practice of throwing, which creates the trigrams line by line from the bottom up, retained the spontaneity and chance related to the earlier techniques, but the codification of lines helped standardize the process. Of the eight trigrams, the primary are Kun, or Mother Earth, which is composed of three yin lines, and Qian, or Father Sky, which is represented by three yang lines. Kun, the Receptive, relates to earth, water, darkness, the feminine, motherhood, and late fall. Her powers are considered yielding, flexible, and cooperative. Qian, the Creative, is associated with heaven, fire, light, early summer, the masculine, fatherhood and is characterized as strong, forceful, and active. The other trigrams and their corresponding meanings shift with the waxing and waning of Kun and Qian.

As Kun and Qian represent Earth and Heaven, each of the other trigrams relate to specific natural entities—namely, Wind, Water, Fire, Mountain, Lake, and Thunder. Also guided by xiang-sheng, the relationships are metaphorical and tied symbolically to numbers, animals, directions, colors, and stars. The trigrams are also related to the so-called Nine Palaces, astrology, and calendar making. The Nine Palaces show the trigrams as they revolve around the cardinal directions and thereby reveal patterns of change. Once again the human microcosm is encompassed in the universal macrocosm—which in this case involves the movements of the sun, moon, planets, stars, and comets as they relate to human health, activity, and good or bad fortune.

The eight trigrams were eventually combined to create sixty-four hexagrams composed of six lines each. Kun and Qian—represented by six yin and six yang lines, respectively—retained their bipolarity. How and when hexagrams were standardized and used in consultation with a text is conjecture, but an important step in converting interpreters into philosophers occurred early (traditionally set at 1122 BCE) in the Zhou Dynasty, when King Wen and his son, the Duke of Zhou, changed the function of the oracle by introducing “counsels for correct conduct.” Because one could affect the outcome of the oracle by acting in accordance with the counsels, the consultation process was expanded from mere fortune telling to understanding a particular situation and discerning the proper action to be taken.

The counsels, which may have accompanied the emergence of the hexagrams (also attributed to King Wen), were interpreted first as aphorisms—drawn from the longstanding tendencies and symbols—that were associated with the placement and numerical value of lines in each particular hexagram. For instance, the hexagram Chung Fu, or “Inner Truth,” inspires the following aphorisms found in the Yijing:

Being prepared brings good fortune.

If there are secret designs, it is disquieting.

And:

A crane calling in the shade.

Its young answers it.

I have a good goblet.

I will share it with you.[10]

The first aphorism could mean that inner truth is dependent upon being balanced, flexible, and prepared, and that to engage in secret affairs or hidden agendas may compromise the force of that truth. The second aphorism is more obtuse and reflects the difficulty in interpreting a particular meaning or counsel. As Richard Wilhelm indicates, the focus may be on the relationship between one’s inner truth and a “kindred spirit.” The crane’s call—even when made from a hidden place in the shade—represents a note that will be received and answered unconditionally by its young. In the same vein, a companion will always be prepared to share a drink, joy, and inner truth with a kindred spirit.[11] Inner truth, a counsel might read, may depend on being open to guidance from a familiar, intimate source and, in turn, sharing joyously that truth.

Aphorisms related to the hexagrams were also advanced as “judgments” and “commentaries.” The judgments and their commentaries appeared originally as appendices to the Yijing, the most significant collection of which is called the Ten Wings. In the first two Wings, compiled for centuries and called the T’uan Chuan, or Commentary on the Decision, the judgments are attributed to King Wen and the commentaries to Confucius. Judgments are also terse and open to interpretation. For instance, the judgment for Chung Fu is:

Inner Truth. Pigs and fishes.

Good fortune.

It furthers one to cross the great water.

Perseverance furthers.[12]

The commentary, added to clarify the judgment; reads:

Inner Truth. The yielding are within, yet the strong hold the middle. Joyous and gentle: thereby truly the country is transformed.

“Pigs and Fishes. Good fortune.” The power of trust extends even to pigs and fishes.

“It furthers one to cross the great water.” One makes use of the hollow of a wooden boat. Inner truth, and perseverance to further one: thus man is in accord with heaven.[13]

The trigrams that make up the Chung Fu hexagram, Sun and Tui, are associated with the Gentle and the Joyous, respectively. The “yielding” or broken yin lines are in the middle of the hexagram, bordered by two positive or unbroken yang lines above and below—or, the feminine is centered in the masculine. The centered feminine, one may assume, leads to the gentle acceptance of change, which is a precursor to good fortune. The simplicity of following nature’s way, the source of inner truth, is exemplified by its relevance to even pigs and fishes. When in touch with that simplicity, the time may be right to take risks, to make use of one’s ability “to cross the great water” and—through perseverance—assure a harmonious fate.

Of course, one can only guess (as I just have) what the judgments and commentaries mean. Moreover, limitations regarding those guesses abound, especially for us in the West. Not only are the aphorisms open to interpretation, the difficulties of language and the cultural contexts regarding the imagery make their “original” meanings rather impenetrable. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the aphorisms rendered in the Yijing foreshadowed much of the wisdom as well as the style and approach of Daoist writings, and why the book’s ultimate significance abides not in its oracular capabilities, but as a book of earth wisdom. Despite being sold alongside tarot cards, numerologies, astrology readings, and other such devices, its value for us today has less to do with fortune telling than understanding its teachings regarding the balance of nature’s polarities, the sacred patterns of change, and universal connectedness.

The Fundamentals of Contemplative Daoism

Daojia, or Contemplative Daoism, is one of the so-called “One Hundred Schools” that initiated Chinese philosophy’s classical period, which coincides with two sub-periods of the Eastern Zhou. The first sub-period is called the Spring and Autumn Period (c. 770-475 BCE), named after the Spring and Summer Annals attributed to Confucius. The period marks the division of the Zhou into approximately 170 feudal states. The second is called the Warring States Period (c. 475-221 BCE), wherein the feudal states were joined forcibly into seven major states. During that time of warlords, strife, poverty, oppression, and social disarray, the search for meaning, human purpose, social reform, and personal transformation initiated a philosophical explosion. Only a few of the One Hundred Schools survived. The two most significant—not to devalue Legalism and Mohism—are Daoism and its counterpart, Confucianism. The two have juxtaposed and jostled with one another throughout the evolution of Chinese culture.

The teachings of Confucius are primarily analytical and rite-and-rule oriented, whereas Daoist writings are poetic and express intuitive truths.[14] Confucius and his followers fathered ideals such as the “Chun Tzu,” the just man, and “jen,” the art of being humane. Though both require a sense of compassion, the ideal invokes the individual to act in accordance with rites and customs. Daoists, on the other hand, reject dogma, social convention, and offer an anti-Confucian worldview and value system.

The difference in traditions is abundantly clear in the concepts that inform each, beginning with their disparate meanings of Dao. While Confucians stress the rational, orderly aspect, Daoists emphasize the mystical and spontaneous. Ambivalent in regards to the metaphysical realm, Confucius limited his discussion of the Dao to social phenomena and tended to consider it mechanistically, often indicating that it could render pleasant and lawful social relationships if properly manipulated. Filial piety, particularly toward the patriarch, was the keystone of Confucian values. That Confucianism’s use of Dao was aimed at governing human behavior is indicated by phrases such as “Dao of fatherhood,” “Dao of sonship,” and “Dao of wifeliness.”

Similarly, Confucians interpret li, wuwei, and de in rather mechanical, quantitative ways. Li means order. Order for Confucians has mainly social and political ramifications, and refers basically to rituals, ceremony, decorum, and rules of propriety and proper custom. Wuwei literally translates as “no action.” Although the concept is used often by later Confucians, Confucius purportedly used wuwei one time, which was in reference to the effectively active rule of a political leader. For Confucians, de means virtue in the sense of ethical uprightness and conformity, with emphasis again on social stratification, or, how virtuous one is in terms of following political precepts. Unlike yang-oriented Confucianism, Daoism is decidedly yin.

The Daode jing and the Zhuangzi—though not linked originally because of their unique political ideologies—characterize philosophical Daoism. The Daode jing is attributed to Laozi, or “Old Master,” whose historical identity may owe to an imperial librarian named Li Er, who may have lived in the fifth century BCE. Most, if not all is legend, such as his enlightenment and subsequent departure from China, whereupon a “gatekeeper” (a frontier guardsman) persuaded him to write the 5,000 characters that comprise the Daode jing—a myth designed to emphasize the text’s anti-proselytizing, countercultural nature. Many verses teach how to be a successful leader as well as a sage, or follower of the Dao. While both are anti-war works that were scripted during the Warring States, the Daode jing regards statecraft and political engagement as relevant to the Dao, but the Zhuangzi heeds anarchy and noninvolvement.

Zhuangzi (c. 360-290 BCE) was also a purported government official-turned-hermit, but remained adamant about social involvement as a key distraction to realizing the Dao. The texts were not linked until the end of the Han Dynasty, when the similarities they shared philosophically became more important than their political differences. Later texts, such as the Liezi, Huahu jing (also attributed to Laozi), and Huainanzi, are also considered major scriptures of philosophical Daoism—another clear indication of the retrospective nature of the tradition.

Seeking to balance yin with the yang, Daoist authors employ prose and paradoxes, theories and humor, and intuition and common sense to promote harmony with nature. Defying the Confucian emphasis on rules and laws of civility, Daoist philosophers consider li to be nature’s hidden order which takes shape in the asymmetrical patterns associated with the movement of the Dao, as in the flight formation of ducks and the stripes on a tiger. Unlike the legal or structured order that Confucians prescribe, Daoists understand li as nature’s non-repetitive dynamics at work in the universe—from galactic spirals to spider webs.

Wuwei creates li by constantly swaying between the orderly yang and chaotic yin. Wuwei does not mean passivity, but a natural, unstructured, egoless manner of action that is distinct from the socially regulated activity that constitutes Confucian goals and tradition. Daoists emphatically deflect (often using humor) Confucian “face work”—which is based on social conformity and individual shame—with concepts such as “the uncarved block,” “facelessness,” “primal identity,” and the “sage” or “the person of Dao.” A sage is at peace, free of desire, and able to act without concern for personal benefit—as verse 10 (translated freely) of the Daode jing indicates:

Can you still your mind

and embrace original oneness?

In harmonizing qi,

can you return to infancy?

By embracing wuwei, the person of Dao is as effortless and selfless as flowing water, which moves with a subtle forcefulness that finds the path of least resistance. Guided by gravity to the lowest places, flowing water is a recurrent Daoist analogy. As verse 8 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing asserts:

Supreme goodness is like water.

It nourishes all things without effort.

It flows to low places loathed by people.

Thus it mirrors Dao.

Being humble, modest, and free of social convention, the follower of the Dao possesses power that is unassuming, yet—like water—insurmountable. As verse 78 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing asserts:

In the world is nothing

so soft and gentle as water.

Yet nothing hard and inflexible

can withstand its power.

Although balanced and tranquil, the sage is not immune to pain, afraid to express grief, to confront injustice, or avoid obstacles to personal development; but is able to allow feeling and action to unfold of and by itself. As verse 3 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing acclaims, “Practice wuwei, and everything falls into place.” Or, as verse 48 (tr. fr.) suggests:

By not forcing things,

you embrace wuwei.

When nothing is forced,

nothing is left undone.

We use many phrases, as Alan Watts points out, to characterize wuwei, such as “going with the grain, rolling with the punch, swimming with the current, trimming the sails to the wind, taking the tide at its flood, and stooping to conquer.” While learning to flow with the Dao requires extreme discipline and constant practice, ironically, it is not a matter of will. In contradistinction to almost everything we in the West are taught to succeed, learning to follow the Dao involves surrender, the ability to “let go.” Watts calls wuwei a means of “taking the line of least resistance in all one’s actions” by exercising the “unconscious intelligence of the whole organism and, in particular the innate wisdom of the nervous system.”[15]

By exercising that wisdom, one fulfills one’s de. De, for the Contemplative Daoists, refers to the virtues—such as calmness, compassion, and flexibility—gained by following the Dao. To follow the Dao is, as verse 37 (tr. fr.) of Daode jing shares, to “Embrace the great formless and let things go their way.” That way always implies a “return to the beginning.” Defining expressions of Daojia, the beginning implies the Dao and the return refers to a state of mystical awareness wherein all notions of distinction and separation give way to cosmic wholeness.

The return to a primordial state, infancy, or the Dao before distinctions is related to the cosmic egg/gourd motif called “hundun” in both early myths and in Contemplative Daoism. Zhuangzi’s most famous description of “chaotic no-form” involves the faceless, egg-shaped ruler called Hundun, who often welcomed the rulers of the Northern and Southern kingdoms, Light (Hu) and Darkness (Shu) into his “middle” kingdom. To repay his kindness, Hu and Shu decided to bore holes in “Primal Chaos” so she could see, hear, eat, and breathe. “So every day they bored one hole, and on the seventh day, Primal Chaos died.”[16] Instead of boring holes in chaos, Zhuangzi would have one become faceless—or recognize one’s universal identity.

The Daode jing correlates hundun with the Dao and the “eternal feminine,” which is referred to as “primal,” “chaotic,” and “mysterious.” Verse 25 calls the Dao “the mother of the universe,” the “something formless and complete” that “permeates all things” and to which “all things return.” Verse 52 (tr. fr.) also attributes the primal beginning to the eternal feminine:

All things have a common origin,

called the Mother of the world.

Knowing the Mother,

one knows the children.

Knowing the children,

one returns to the Mother,

and abides in peace.

Dao, Mother, hundun, and other related metaphors reflect the source from which the two as well as “the ten thousand things” emerge and return. The child embodies the cosmic purity and the natural response to being here, which is trust and reverence. “Returning to infancy,” “becoming the fetus,” or retrieving “the infant’s breath” all serve as pre-Daoist and Daoist signifiers of the unity beyond manifestations that are constantly being reconstituted into the larger Self, the Mother or Dao. As verse 28 (tr. fr.) explains:

By knowing the masculine,

but embracing the feminine,

one becomes a valley to the world.

By being a valley to the world,

one lives the eternal way,

and returns to infancy.

The valley is yin, yielding, and always offering herself to rivers, life, and human communities. By being a valley to the world, one puts service and relationship before personal goals and does all things without desire or effort, thereby perpetuating harmony with others and with the more-than-human world. As verse 6 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing avows:

The valley spirit cannot die.

She is the mysterious feminine.

The doorway to the mysterious feminine

is called the source of heaven and earth.

Barely visible, she gives endlessly,

yet never runs dry.

The mysterious feminine not only represents the primal state of the universe, the original paradise to which the Daoist sage seeks to return, but also serves as the guiding force that enables that return. The sage emanates the subtle feminine force by cutting through the conventions of civilization that evince a fall from paradise. Zhuangzi evokes the primal paradise in a number of myths, all of which describe “the people of old” as sharing the tranquility that belonged to the time when “the yin and yang were harmonious and still”—the time “called the state of unity. At that time, there was no action on the part of anyone—but a constant manifestation of spontaneity.”[17] During the original paradise, humans lived at one with nature, “the same as birds and beasts.”

Almost half of the characters who speak for Zhuangzi are animals, for in their innocence and instinct, they are sage-like in their “stupidity” regarding the ways of civilization. Laozi calls the sage “an idiot, chaotic and dull!” Zhuangzi declares, “Your reunification, how chaotic! As if you were stupid!”[18] Reunification can only be achieved when one is simple, spontaneous, and so completely merged with the Dao that all signs of separate identity and distinction fade. By returning to the beginning, the Daoist sage (often compared to a dead man) becomes faceless, like the mass of flesh and cosmic egg. In the Huainanzi, the Daoist sage explains that, upon reunification, his eyes became like his ears, his ears like his nose, his nose like his mouth; and everything became identical—faceless and perfect.[19]

The sage is renowned for being joyous as well as humorous. Always careful not to take anything too seriously, including death, the sage recognizes the transitory nature of existence, but sees it as the Dao in endless states of transformation. Aware of the relativity of all positions, including his or her own, the person of the Dao warns of the fallibility of not seeing the limits of distinctions and convictions. Zhuangzi insists, “We cling to our own point of view as though everything depended on it.” However:

One man cannot see things as another sees them. One can only know things through knowing oneself . . . There is right because of wrong, and wrong because of right. Thus, the sage does not bother with these distinctions but seeks enlightenment from heaven.[20]

The distinctions between “this” and “that” are human-made conventions, but “When there is no more separation between ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the still-point of Dao . . . the light beyond right and wrong.” By seeing the relativity of all particular positions, “the sage harmonizes right with wrong and rests in the balance of nature.”[21]

Free of separation and able to abandon the ego, the sage transcends the competitive, dominating attitude that breeds pride, hostility, and hatred. As verse 2 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing states:

When people call something beautiful,

ugliness comes into being.

When people call something good,

evil comes into being.

Because there is a degree of yin in everything that is yang, and vice-versa, they cannot be regarded as good and evil. Good and evil, portrayed as absolute opposites, belie the harmonious interplay of yin and yang. By conciliating opposites, the balanced person liberates herself from the attachments that cause anger, desire, sorrow, separation, and expectations. Although the “person of Dao” experiences those feelings, she is able to recognize their impermanence and, thereby, learns to move gracefully through them. As Chapter 7 of the Huahu jing (Hua Hu Ching) states:

Those who wish to attain oneness must practice undiscriminating virtue.

They must dissolve all ideas of duality: good and bad,

beautiful and ugly, high and low.

They will be obliged to abandon any mental bias born

of cultural or religious belief.

Indeed, they should hold their minds free of any

thought which interferes with their understanding

of the universe as a harmonious oneness.[22]

Practicing undiscriminating virtue is a prerequisite to leadership. The Daode jing is filled with advice concerning leadership, including the famous notion that the leader who governs best governs least. The best leaders are barely known because they serve without reward and rule without dictating. A leader must trust to be trusted, faithful to arouse faith, and peaceful to create peace. By inspiring others to be their own leaders, a leader must learn to follow and act without interfering. As verse 10 (tr. fr.) states:

Acting without expectations,

leading without dominating,

this is called the supreme virtue.

Besides teaching tolerance, Contemplative Daoists implore compassion. To cooperate with the Dao is, very simply, to revere nature, honor balance, and love all things unconditionally. As verse 13 (tr. fr.) of the Daode jing contends:

One who treasures one’s self,

may be entrusted with the world.

One who loves the world,

is able to care for all things.

According to all Contemplative sources, following the Dao brings joy, humor, tolerance, patience, flexibility, spontaneity, creativity, peace, and unconditional love. The sense of belonging to the cosmos, of a self connected to nature, and of acting in harmony with that awareness is clearly the legacy of Contemplative Daoism.

From Daojia to Daojiao

Because of its cultural impact, doctrinal ambiguity, and ineffable concepts, Daojia helped spawn a variety of hybrids—which have been collectively classified as Daojiao, or Religious Daoism. A mixture of shamanic practices, folklore, divine pantheons, altar worship, and philosophical concepts, Daojiao formed early in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) and characterizes much of the popular Daoism practiced in Asian cultures today. One of the earliest sects, Huang-Lao (in deference to Huangdi and Laozi) drew from Contemplative teachings while adopting the pursuit of immortality. Typifying Daojiao’s eclecticism, Huang-Lao also absorbed smaller schools and mixed Confucian tenets with the magical arts of the fang shih.

A highly popular sect, the still extant Celestial Masters, began in western China near the end of the Han Dynasty with revelations given by a deified Laozi to an aristocrat, Chang Dao-ling, who, along with his sons, purportedly established the first Daoist church and divine pantheon. They also created a hereditary clergy. The Shangqing or “Highest Clarity” Daoist tradition, which began in the fourth century CE in southern China, condemned the Celestial Masters tradition as crude, superstitious, and fraudulent. Initiated by an elite group of celibates, Shangqing disseminates practices that, still revered today, emphasize transformation by connecting the body’s gods and energy patterns with those of the surrounding environment. While introducing a new pantheon of gods, Shangqing propounds the ecological mysticism of Laozi and Zhuangzi.[23]

Even more eclectic, the Numinous Treasure School assimilated Buddhist elements and created new rites and practices and its own pantheon and revealed scriptures. That tradition was crowned in the twelfth century by the Complete Perfection tradition, which united Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian ideals and practices and became very popular throughout Asia. The Complete Perfection tradition is—despite Communist China’s abolition of religion—active today and has a center in Beijing, which is the home of officially recognized Chinese Daoism Association.

Alongside the variation of Daoist sects, schools, and traditions, the multitude of scriptures is equally complex and diverse. The first official Daoist canon, or Daozang, was compiled in 748. The canon of 1445 contains over 1,500 texts and the present canon has well over 5,000. From ancestor worship, burial rites, alchemical elixirs, and political “heavenly orders” to various formulas of balancing yin and yang, the content of those texts bespeak the relevance as well as the irrelevance of the concepts and themes that comprise Daoism.

Clearly, the texts of Contemplative Daoism have had the most significant impact. Although there is no way to trace that impact, doctrines such as the One Hundred and Eighty Precepts affirm the significance of Contemplative perspectives regarding the compassion and care for nature. Collected from a variety of sources, the Precepts equal a culmination of Daoist regulations that—scripted perhaps as early as the first century CE—call for political noninvolvement, warn of “vulgar” immortality cults and practices, and demand the welfare of plants, animals, and the environment in general. For instance, one should not “wantonly fell trees,” “dig holes in the ground and thereby destroy the earth,” “dry up wet marshes,” or do anything that would senselessly harm nature. [24] Despite the popularity of Daojiao, the reverence of nature, a clear Contemplative theme, helps account for its preeminence in what has become known as Daoism.

Daoist Aesthetics of Balance

Daoist sensibilities suffuse many age-old Chinese art forms. The overarching target of those forms—such as landscape painting, calligraphy, and garden design—is environmental harmony. Invariably drawing from and reflecting the powers of nature, Chinese art shares the Daoist enchantment with balance. For instance, Shanshui, or “mountain water,” means landscape as well as painting and suggests the harmony of yin and yang. Associated with mountains, fire, heat, volcanoes, and power, shan reflects the masculine yang that merges with the nourishing, creative, and yielding aspects of shui, or the feminine yin—often represented by valleys and rivers.

Mountains and flowing water are central elements of most landscape paintings, but humans and other animals are many times interspersed as subjects that appear blended into the environment in humble and harmonious ways. The mist that so often wraps around mountainsides may well represent qi, as it permeates and unites all aspects of the landscape. The bridges that so often lead to paths that disappear into the forest or up a mountain symbolize not only “the way” that humans can interact graciously with nature, but also hint of the potential of the eternal return. The deliberate portrayal of open space, which interplays with the subject matter, signifies the Daoist sense of void or non-being from which all things emerge and return.

While many of the landscape paintings present the subject matter from a great distance, others offer a very close up perspective. The very intricate designs of a bird’s feather, the grain in bamboo, or veins in a leaf tender soft portrayals of nature’s swerving patterns in humble, yet majestic ways. The concern for animals and their innate beauty render the sense of a shared world in which humans play a participatory role.

Chinese calligraphy also suggests a symbiotic relationship with nature. Part of the reason that most literate Chinese today can read texts as they were written over three thousand years ago is that, unlike alphabetic language that focuses on the sound of individual letters and syllables, ideographic writing is based on vision. Although the evolution of the characters involves a great deal of complexity and abstraction, the language has retained part of the ideographic or “gestalt” dimension, which helps explain why the Chinese regard the quality of expression as part of the meaning and calligraphy as an art form. When performed properly, the act of composing compels a meditative, “be-here-now” experience and the characters emulate the flow of water, as is indicated by the strokes themselves. The aim is to evoke the dynamic balance between the ineffable, mysterious yin and the rational, conceptual yang, making the process and product one.

Chinese garden design also incorporates yin and yang principles that, being aligned directly with fengshui, necessitate an understanding of the nature and motion of qi. A model of collaboration, the garden serves as a means for humans to recognize and adhere to nature’s patterns. The house or building, partly because of the straight lines and rectangles, is considered yang and the garden, which is frequently circular and always engages the curved lines found in nature, is recognized as yin. The garden and its paths are asymmetrical, indicating the reverence of the way in which nature enacts spontaneity. Large rocks are essential components used not only to channel qi, but also symbolize the Chinese passion for mountains. The same is true of flowing water, which often falls on the rocks and/or meanders in a gentle current through the garden. A clear symbol of an earthly paradise, the garden intimates the time before distinctions, where humans and nature lived in harmony. The process of creating a garden testifies to the Daoist precept that nature is to be followed, not governed.

The Contemporary Relevance of Daoist Thought

Any portrayal of Daoism is subject to limitations and obstacles. An obvious limitation, which I have found extremely daunting, is the immensity of the tradition. The social and political realities that helped forge the concepts, the thousands of diverse myths, scriptures, and practices, and the living sects and contemporary commercialization all weave a web that makes a definitive analysis or interpretation impossible. My biggest obstacle may be my agenda, which is grounded in environmental and psychological rhetoric. The danger is to affirm assumptions that claim contemporary value but have little or no connection to authentic teachings. Nevertheless, the strongest reason that Daoism suffuses popular culture is because it has something relevant to say to us. That relevance, which I sensed while writing my high school essay, can be summated as follows: Western civilization has eulogized the yang and oppressed the yin.

That message reverberates most clearly through Contemplative Daoism, which is, in large part, a spiritual revolt against Confucianism. Unapologetically, Daojia emphasizes yin tendencies and rebuffs the yang. Attacking convention, traditional mores, and the rules of culture, Daoist philosophers implore mysterious and sometimes obtuse aims precisely because they aim at counterbalancing Confucianism. Daoism’s nonconforming tendencies appeal to countercultural aspects of New Age thinking, which has both healthy and unhealthy potentials. The unhealthy aspects include bias against reason, scientific inquiry, allopathic medicine, and anything else that is proactively yang. Such bias allows for imbalance. On the other hand, because of its pro-yin sentiment, Daoism could provide a model to rebalance Western culture’s yang-dominant values.

The conviction is shared by a number of scholars. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell professed our need for yin archetypes, while Alan Watts and Fritjof Capra, disciples of Daisetz Suzuki and Thomas Merton, outlined and helped popularize the yin in a variety of theoretic and practical terms. Deep ecologists such as Arne Naess and ecofeminists such as Charlene Spretnak have also utilized the Dao to re-envision Western ways of thinking, doing, and being.[25] The perspectives may differ, but a common rhetoric has emerged, which I will briefly summarize.

We in the West need to reconsider our emphasis on masculine, aggressive, and technological powers. That emphasis helps explain our unsustainable lifestyles—shaped by corporate dominion, the advertising industry, and unbridled consumerism—which signal our appetite for progress, instant gratification, and material quick fixes. While confusing what we have with who we are, building frightfully more shopping malls than youth centers, and eating “fast food” to “save time,” we have created a culture that is obsessed with getting ahead, with doing rather than being, with competition more than cooperation. Because the yang embodies ego identity and concentrates on doing, it separates “in here” and “out there” and leads us to feel that we act “on” rather than “with” the environment.

Most of us in urban industrial cultures have been taught since childhood to order our existence around yang objectives—such as order, control, and progress, which helps explain why we continually quantify our perceptions of reality with facts, numbers, and measurement. From learning to fixate our mental abilities on skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic to determining as quickly as possible “what are we going to be when we grow up,” we figure out how to steer our conscious self through a world “out there” by religiously following the clock, the mandates of our job, and the dictates of citizenship. The pursuit of money, products, and luxury as part of the daily “earning-a-living” routine has become a major source of identity and helped create epidemic levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. The environmental crisis may be the clearest sign of our collusive alienation from nature, the feminine impulse, and cosmic purpose.

By activating our intuitive, ecstatic abilities, the yin binds us to the more-than-human world and disowns many of the boundaries set by ego-consciousness. It centers on being rather than doing and identifies the self more through relationships than achievements. Less concerned with goals than the present moment and more apt to imagine than intellectualize, to yield than dominate, and to associate than discriminate, yin attitudes and ways of being help balance goals, plans, and progress born of desires and expectations. By embracing spontaneity, simplicity, patience, and tolerance, the yin does not undermine the power of reason or mean that we should not plan and seek order in existence, but that we need to cherish life’s interconnectedness, revere the mysterious, and celebrate the given. The notion of “letting things be,” of recognizing and trusting a force that could—if allowed—help create a harmonious balance between human and nature, is the heart of Daoist teachings.

The cultivation of a yin impulse might start with teaching children meditation, music, painting, poetry, and world religions. Revitalizing the joy of learning as opposed to learning for standardized tests and grades could be invaluable to a student’s curiosity, imagination, and productivity. Taking long, deep breaths when feeling tense, eating organic foods, recycling, making composts, buying and consuming less, and stretching and walking in natural settings could help integrate yin awareness in daily life. Time free from phones, televisions, and computers could help supplant sensory overload with silence, solitude, and opportunities to find the spiritual in the natural by opening space for gardening, picnics, bicycle or canoe trips, or any number of activities would not only benefit mind and body, but also expand communal experience.

To balance yin and yang on the personal level requires a blending of seemingly conflicting opposites such as competition and surrender, strategy and spontaneity, aggression and patience, and self-sufficiency and cooperation. That kind of balance requires a harmony of self and surroundings, a unity that is captured in the Chinese notion of ziran. Literally translated as “self-so,” ziran means both nature and spontaneity and is illustrated in the endlessly unique configurations of snowflakes, in the meandering of rivers and evolution, and in patterns of waves and seasons. Ziran signals a sort of planned randomness that allows action to unfold spontaneously ordered; unwilled, but driven; aimed, but goal-free. To embody ziran is to recognize oneself as a partner to the action as opposed to being its source, which opens the door to action that is selfless, masterful, and completely embedded in the here and now. The secret is to surrender to an inner force that can be trained but not controlled, and to a way of being that embraces a Self beyond the self. That Self is called Dao.

While following the Dao can foster peaceful relations, not following the Dao can result in discord. As verse 39 of the Tao Te Ching prophetically announces:

The sky remains pristine

united in the One.

The earth remains peaceful

united in the One.

Spirits remain energized

united in the One.

Valleys remain replenished

united in the One.

All creatures remain content

united in the One.

Rulers remain virtuous and empires pure,

united in the One.

The One engenders all this.

The sky would crumble

detached from the One.

The earth would quake

detached from the One.

Spirits would dissolve

detached from the One.

Valleys would run dry

detached from the One.

All creatures would perish

detached from the One.

Rulers would stumble and kingdoms fall

detached from the One.

Being one with Dao is to be aware that we are part of nature and that nature is not completed by human consciousness. That awareness, which reveals nature’s perfection, encourages a reverence for all being and teaches the value of balance. To find the Dao is to find ways to counteract anger and pain, to realize that we are our relationships, and to be content in the search that is life by embracing its dynamic and ever-changing nature. By trusting natural processes, from sunsets to healing, and accepting disasters, from hurricanes to illness, we are more apt to release fear, anxiety, and depression that serve as obstacles to growth and compassion. The multi-millenarian tradition called Daoism continues to convey principles and practices that allow the seeker to realize “the Way.”

Notes