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The Philosophy of Asia
by Alan Watts
CONTENTS
The Relevance of Oriental Philosophy
The Mythology of Hinduism
Eco-Zen
Swallowing a BaU of Hot Iron
Intellectual Yoga
Introduction to Buddhism
The Taoist Way of Karma
For Example;
THE TAOIST WAY OF KARMA
CHAPTER SEVEN
The philosophy of the Tao is one of the two great principle components of Chinese thought. There are, of course, quite a number of forms of Chinese philosophy, but there are two great currents that have thoroughly molded the culture of China-Taoism and Confucianismand they play a curious game with each other. Let me start by saying something about Confucianism originating with K'ung Fu-tzu or Confucius, who lived a little after 630 B.c. He is often supposed to have been a contemporary of Lao-tzu, who is the supposed founder of the Taoist way. It seems more likely, however, that Laotzu lived later than 400 B.c., according to most modern scholars.CHAPTER SEVEN
Confucianism is not a religion, it is a social ritual and a way of ordering society-so much so that the first great Catholic missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, who was a Jesuit, found it perfectly consistent with his Catholicism to participate in Confucian rituals. He saw them as something of a kind of national character, as one might pay respect to the flag or something like that in our own times. He found that Confucianism involved no conflict with Catholicism and no commitment to any belief or dogma that would be at variance with the Catholic faith. So, Confucianism is an order of society and involves ideas of human relations, including the government and the family. This order is based on the principle of what is called in Chinese ren, which is an extraordinarily interesting word. The word ren is often translated as "benevolence," but that is not a good translation at all. This word means "human-heartedness" (that's the nearest we can get to it in English), and it was regarded by Confucius as the highest of all virtues, but one that he always refused to define. It is above righteousness, justice, propriety, and other great Confucian virtues, and it involves the principle that human nature is a fundamentally good arrangement, including not only our virtuous side but also our passionate side-our appetites and our waywardness. The Hebrews have a term that they call the yetzer ha-ra, which means "the wayward inclination," or what I like to call the element of irreducible rascality that God put into all human beings because it was a good thing. It was good for humans to have these two elements in them. So, a truly human-hearted person is a gentleman with a slight touch of rascality, just as one has to have salt in a stew.
Confucius said the goody-goodies are the thieves of virtue, meaning that to try to be wholly righteous is to go beyond humanity and to be something that isn't human. So, this gives the Confucian approach to life, justice, and all those sorts of things a kind of queer humor, a sort of "boys will be boys" attitude,,which is nevertheless a very mature way of handling human problems.
It was, of course, for this reason that the Japanese Buddhist priests (especially Zen priests) who visited China to study Buddhism introduced Confucianism into Japan. Despite certain limitations that Confucianism has-and it always needs the Taoist philosophy as a counterbalance-it has been one of the most successful philosophies in all history for regulation of governmental and family relationships. Confucianism prescribes all kinds of formal relationships-linguistic, ceremonial, musical, in etiquette, and in all the spheres of moralsand for this reason has always been twitted by the Taoists for being unnatural. But you need these two components, and they play against each other beautifully in Chinese society.
Roughly speaking, the Confucian way of life is for people involved in the world. The Taoist way of life is for people who get disentangled. Now, as we know in our own modern times, there are various ways of getting disentangled from the regular lifestyle of the United States. If you want to go through the regular lifestyle of the United States, you go to high school and college, and then you go into a profession or a business. You own a standard house, raise a family, have a car or two, and do all that jazz. But a lot of people don't want to live that way, and there are lots of other ways of living besides that. So, you could say that those of us who go along with the pattern correspond to the Confucians. Those who are bohemians, bums, beatniks, or whatever, and don't correspond with the pattern, are more like the Taoists. Actually, in Chinese history, Taoism is a way of life for older people. Lao-tzu, the name given to the founder of Taoism, means "the old boy," and the legend is that when he was born he already had a white beard.>> readmore now
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