Possible resources on the table:
1. Teacher's Curriculum Institute….#3 Communist China and Modern Japan (which means that they likely put out other similar ones http://www.teachtci.com/)
2. Asian History Facts on File (big folder)
3. Spotlight on China: traditions old and new (ed. Hazel Sara Greenberg, The American Forum for Global Education…published with the support of the U.S. Dept. of Education http://www.globaled.org/database/)
Kwok lecture 3D Global Village
· Alan Watts, the best English source for understanding Zen and Daoism…the two are so similar
· Watts, a former Anglican priest…
· Quote from Watts on beginning to think about Daoism (terrabess asian online…4 essays by Watts)
· Picture of Daoists in Hong Kong (religious Daoism)…Hong Kong digital vision (http://hkdigit.blogspot.com)
· Kwok, admits being no good at religious Daoism
· Laozi (Li Dan, Lao Dan)
o Commenting on the world of grave troubles,
o Daodejing…81 stanzas
· 2 delusions
o everything in the world is happening to me
o I have to do everything in the world (I have to solve everything, I have to be on the top of the tree)
· Wu (无, no-thing-ness), you (有, thing-ness)
· Ziran 自然—"self-so-ness, thus-ness" things that are because that is what they are…civilization is un-ziran…the most un-ziran to say is "I love you" (linear language, not circular language)…being 'natural' is very difficult…some times this can be retreatist…the "I" gets in the way
o "Rule a big country as if you would fry a tiny fish" (Daodejing)…basic point is to be natural…don't take things too seriously, don't act as if you are putting on a major feast for 100s…
· Wei (為, action), wuwei (无為, non-action)
o Wei to do
o Wuwei to not do…how does this work, how does one accomplish everything by doing nothing…here you have to appreciate the word xin…talk of defining xin…connects the 'ego' with xin…
o Wuwei… originally translated as inaction as the opposite of action, but in the 20th century changed this to non-action
· Xin (心, minding), wuxin (无心, no-mind)
o Xin…minding is psychic action (connection to wei)…bothered by things, examples of things bothering you…people not doing what you would like them to do, or the opposite of someone doing something you don't want them to…that is minding…
o Wuxin…same as taught by Zen Buddhism
o Wuxin…when this idea came to the U.S., this colored everything…a one-sided reading…should not be an excuse for civic laziness…
· Zhuangzi 莊子/庄子 (Zhuang Zhou 庄周, 370-286?)
o Speaks of freedom…not political freedom…free yourself from yourself...letting go of self (the cause of the two delusions)
o The ultimate sense of freedom…you don't hang on to something…
· Confucianism, needed Daoism…Daoism a mental cushion for China, much more in life than achievements and "un-success"…gets away from the focus on "me"…in a more active sense, it has been influential in Chinese art and literature, intuitive, spiritually vibrant
· How can one explain "nothing"?
· Daoism the most native of Chinese thought (dismissive of Victor Mair's idea that it came from China)
· We are bounded by words…if a word for doesn't exist for something, then IT doesn't exist…linguistic positivism
· Looking at the page of quotes from the Daodejing…doubletalk, similar to the way psychologists speak…
· What makes a doorway…two posts and the top (frame)…if put on a wall, then it is not a doorway, you need the open space for it to be a doorway…that is no-thing-ness…the rice bowl…one thing is the bowl, but for someone who is hungry, it is the size of the space inside where the rice can be, that is important…
· The chaotic world, the world of seeming truths, the symbols are truth themselves…
· Bothersome when we want an answer and it doesn't come…
· From the point of view of Victorian Positivism, Daoism is negativism, but it is much more than that
· Daoism is full of 'koans'…talk of the big goose in a bottle with a small neck…how to get it out…lots of creative solutions, but no one ever asked…who put it in there? Or, answering 'I will take it out the way you put it in there'…
· Needham gives Daoism a lot of credit…not for its alchemy, but for its assumption of nothing-ness in the mind, results in putting out things that are very precise
· Back to the mental cushion…landscape paintings…things become more understandable…
· Art a great way to approach the ideas of Daoism
· Tries to teach without teaching…example of a class without speaking, hard for the students and for the teaching…silence/emptiness is hard…
Part II…Parting of the Way: As religion and as a Philosophy
· As religion, emergence messianic form in 1st b.c.e. (messianic outlook connected probably to the shamanism in China, specially in North Eastern China coastal region)
o Huang-Lao masters as adherents to Laozi
§ Fangshi ???
§ Huang—Yellow Emperor
§ Lao—Laozi
§ Utopian outlook…looking for grand peace
o Yellow Turban rebellion against the Han dynasty, strong Daoist elements but the idea of rebellion also important in C…
o Rise of Tianshi (Celestial Masters)—Zhang Daoling (c. 142 c.e.)—messianism and confessions of sin…ceremonies of ablution
§ Religious Daoism usually traced to Zhang Daoling…sent from heaven…received his Daoist enlightenment directly from Laozi
§ Associated with another rebellion…5 piculs of rice rebellion
§ Changed much…development of rituals…conception of sin introduced
§ Sin from unclean living caused diseases and problems
§ Rituals become paramount in the Daoist way of life
o Rise of Daoism accompanied the fall of the Han dynasty…rise of the tribes in the North, Chinese dynasties/structure went south
o Daoism, too, moved South
o Zhen ren…the complete person
o Development of sects and schools
o Rituals a point of similarity to B
o Alchemy developed…looking for the elixirs of life, to prolong life, mercury as a prime element…
o Cultivation of marijuana (wushi san, the powdering of the five stones)…the age of the Chinese hippies…without the C state and the exams, free to live more as you like…
o Support of Buddhism in the North by the Toba Wei, Buddhism gained more supporters around this time, too.
o Xi Wangmu—Queen Mother of the West
o Laozi as Taishang Laojun
o Inner pill, outer pill
§ Inner pill (philosopher's stone)…the source of qi gong…inner source cultivation started as the Daoist medical attention to the body…the body is already mapped out with the meridians by this time…along the meridians flowed qi…
· Breathing exercises…
· Daoism and the growth of Chinese medicine go hand-in-hand
§ Outer pill…the philosophizing…the form qi…
§ The point is to combine the two pills, with the inner pill a little more emphasized/important
o Qi (primal force)…aikido, qi gong, standing still qi…
o Tao Hongjing wrote Zhenling weiye tu, in which there were 7 levels of deities. The top three were Yuanshi tiandao at center, Gaoshang daojun at left, and Yuanhuang daojun at right. Laozi became the fourth.
§ Bureaucracy of this world duplicated in the other world
§ Daoists priests become important in terms of guiding believers to heaven or hell
§ Hall of the three Pure ones (?)
· 3 in one…B, D, C…many people on the streets cannot tell the difference between the religions…
· Daoism can in some ways be considered the Chinese form of Anarchy, not the type found in the West, but in the highest sense of no need for government
· D as Philosophy—Guo Xiang (d. 312), Ge Hong (253-333), Wang Bi (c. 300)
o Alchemy and immortality
o Commentaries
o Wang Bi…a Confucian…famous for his idea: outer kingliness, inner sageliness (empty non-being inside you, to be the true sage)…the ultimate ruler…the cosmology
o Ge Hong, a scientist…commentary on the Zhuangzi…no such thing as non-being, instead it is freedom from being
o Writings of these full of wit
· Tang dynasty
o Support of Daoism
o Empress Wu, the Buddhist empress, reinstated the civil service exam
o the Daodejing became part of the civil service exam
o Foreign Rulers began to ask for the Daoist texts
§ Cosmopolitan nature of Chang'an…debates on religion at the court
o Daoist canon compiled (initially, built over time)
· Daoism influenced the other two religions enormously
o B, particularly Zen,
o C, providing the mental cushion
· Popular today
· Influential in the West, a virtual cottage industry…including herbology and feng shui
· story of Roger Ames after June 4, 1989…supporting the government crackdown on the students…Kwok saw the New Confucianists as a new authoritarianism…"Roger the fascist"
· Daoist richest in its attitude
· Daoist influences and manifestations in Art (poetry, calligraphy…in the end, landscape painting is calligraphy, )
o Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove
o Tao Yuanming
o Wan Xizhi
o Wu Kaizhi???
o Didn't leave up long, so this is not complete…
· Showing of Daoist paintings (many from the Ming Dynasties)
o Laozi
o Zhuangzi
o 8 worthies (various paintings)
o amulets…Woodblocks of Daoist heavens and hells
o mushrooms
o famous alchemist
o commercialization of Daoism…
o High Art…instructions to a palace woman…Song landscape (detailed foreground, distant hills, and much emptiness in between)…Another Song landscape painting of the Northern School (used a very dry brush, flying cloud approach)…a worthy chopping bamboo…painting of the poet Li Bai (powerful strokes, few lines used…great economy)…two more paintings with a foreground, 'emptiness' and then mountains in the distance…