Transcription
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"Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
These wise phrases, which you've no doubt heard before, are over two thousand years old. They come from Laozi's Dao De Jing, what many people consider to be the founding document of Taoism. This organized religious tradition is known for its care for nature, peace, and going with the flow.
But what exactly is Daoism? What do Yin and Yang and Qi mean, and what does it all have to do with Obi-Wan Kenobi? Well, let's find out.
[Music]
First of all, is it Taoism or Daoism? Well, Chinese is a complicated language to translate into English. The reason there are two Taoisms is because of two different systems attempting to write Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The Wade-Giles system, which spells Dao with a "T," was popular during the 19th and 20th centuries, but the Chinese never really liked the system and so developed Hanyu Pinyin, the system that gave us the "D" in the 1950s. This is why “Tao” is now “Dao,” but many American publications still use the old Wade-Giles system, so you'll still see "Tao" and "Taoism" around. Either way, with the "T" or the "D," it's pronounced "Dao."
Daoism is an indigenous Chinese religion, but it isn't the only religion of China. China has three major religious traditions: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Most Chinese people practice all three. Apart from priests, Chinese people rarely identify with only one religion.
Daoism first appears during an incredible time in Chinese history: the Warring States period, a time when states warred from the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE. During this period, multiple philosophers such as Confucius put forward ideas on how to control people, armies, and states. But one philosopher stood on the sidelines and laughed at the idea that humans could even begin to know the correct way to do things when our minds and perspectives were so small. This was wise old gray-bearded Laozi, or the Old Master. His book, the Dao De Jing, and Zhuangzi’s book, the Zhuangzi, spoke of a universal force known as the Dao.
So, what exactly is the Dao?
Dao is something unformed and complete. Before heaven and earth were born, solitary and silent, it stands alone and unchanging, pervading all things without limit. It is like the mother of all things under heaven. But I don’t know its name; better call it Dao. Better call it the Great Dao. (Dao De Jing, Chapter 25.)
I guess you assume that Taoism has something to do with the Dao, and it does, but Dao isn't a god, and Daoists don’t worship the Dao. Dao simply means "the way." The word for avenue in Chinese is "da," as in "Dao," which means "wide way," for example. But in Taoism, the word is a tad more mystical.
The first line of the Dao De Jing makes it clear that the Dao cannot be fully understood: "The Dao that can be told of is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” For Laozi, it’s impossible to explain the Dao in words, and only a complete and utter idiot would think they could explain it.
Let me explain: the Dao is the flow of the universe. It is the source of reality; it’s infinite yet empty, yet complete, and it creates and directs the endlessly diverse universe. Or, in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, "It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." But the Dao was never created; it exists by and of itself. The universe was born from the Dao, but the Dao has no interest in it. It doesn’t create for a reason; it simply creates and constantly transforms.
Any idea that the universe cares about humans only comes from our own human-centeredness. But even though the Dao is unknowable, it has an order which can be recognized in nature. This kind of order is called "Li," a word which meant the markings in jade or the grain of wood. "Li" kind of means organic order: the random yet perfect patterns of flowing water, the shapes of trees, clouds, and snowflakes. It is by observing "Li" that we can see the workings of the Dao.
Laozi and Zhuangzi point out that because the Dao lies at the root of all existence, the universe takes care of itself perfectly well of its own accord. The sun goes up, the sun goes down; the tide goes in, the tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. The rhythm of life which rises from the earth grows, matures, decays, and eventually returns to the earth. It all happens without force or order or effort. Change is the only constant, but this change is regular, recognizable, and fundamentally good. That is Dao, or at least how I understand it.
Laozi and Zhuangzi make it very clear that the Dao cannot be expressed in words, and this is an important part of Taoism. Language is limited and based on our human perspectives, which are narrow. Language puts ideas in boxes, but you can't put the Dao in a box, in the same way you can't put a river in a bucket. The aim of Taoism, then, is to help people feel the Dao, to see it in nature, and to be able to move in harmony with it.
One way to do this is through "Wu Wei."
"Wu Wei," in its most basic sense, means "not doing" or "not acting." Laozi confusingly talks about "Wei Wu Wei," about doing the non-doing, which means that doing nothing requires the doer to do something. One interpretation is that "Wei" is to act on social or personal expectations—to do things because you think that's what you're supposed to do, to act within a rigid mindset.
Since the universe is always changing, if you try to navigate it with an unchanging mindset, you're gonna have a bad time. "Wu Wei" is to act, but acting without intent. So rather than not doing, it kind of means not forcing, not swimming against the stream of the Dao.
So "Wu Wei" isn't doing nothing. Think of Japanese judo, where an opponent is defeated not by brute strength but by using the movement of their own force against them. One of the recurring metaphors for the Dao in the Dao De Jing is “Pu,” or uncarved wood. This uncarved wood captures what is so difficult to describe about the Dao: its simplicity and naturalness, its lack of specific features, and its creative potential. Uncarved wood can be anything, but it can only be anything because it hasn't been carved.
There’s a saying that humans have been carved up by language, forced morality, and selfishness. They’ve been processed from humble raw material, with infinite potential, into a product sculpted by their environment. So the only way to move with the Dao is to get yourself out of rigid, inflexible perspectives. Stop thinking of yourself as separate from nature and as processes from thinking that you stand outside the stream and can dictate which way it will flow. You're in the stream; you can either row against it or sail along it.
Texts like the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi are considered by many non-Taoists to be the two most important books in Taoism. The Dao De Jing is a series of short, poetic statements about the Dao and its power. It’s very short; you can read this book in an afternoon, but it'll be a fairly confusing afternoon. Some of its sayings, such as "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step," are fairly easy to understand. Others, like "Good knots have no rope but cannot be untied" and "Governing big countries is like cooking a little fish," are a bit trickier.
The Dao De Jing, like many texts at the time, was written to teach a ruler, but Laozi's advice was pretty radical. He said that the best way to rule was to not rule, like "Wu Wei," to let the world live according to its natural pattern, and that would bring about harmony and peace.
The Dao De Jing can be interpreted in many different ways, which is why it's been translated into English more times than any other book except the Bible. It has fully made its way into pop culture; you can now learn about the "Tao of Meow," the "Tao of Dating," the "Tao of Network Security Monitoring," the "Tao of Horses," the "Tao of Banjo," and even the "Tao of Bill Murray."
Next to Laozi, no other Daoist commands more attention than Zhuangzi. Whereas the Dao De Jing was written to teach rulers, Zhuangzi is aimed more at ordinary people. In the Zhuangzi, the wise person is someone completely untroubled by regular concerns like politics and money. They simply skip over life's obstacles without worries.
Zhuangzi constantly lets us know that our perceptions are unreliable. How we see life and death, good and bad, beautiful and ugly depend on our life experiences and what we, or our culture, value. But these are artificial constructs; they hurt spontaneity and happiness. Zhuangzi compares life to when a drunken man falls out of a carriage. He has no idea what's going on; he doesn’t even know he's fallen. And so, unaware and relaxed, he bounces off the ground, brushes himself off, and is completely unharmed. Whereas a sober person who stiffens up upon falling would have broken several bones.
Because the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi are easily the best-known Daoist texts outside of China, people imagine that they are also the most important Taoist texts. But they're not. There are thousands of those texts; they're just mostly unknown. When was the last time you heard of the "Code of Nüqing for Controlling Demons," which lists 36,000 demons that can be warded off by knowing their names? Or poems made while beating the ground, which includes a series of 135 poems, each of which begins and ends with the line, “Yaufu does not write poems merely for fun”? Or my favorite Daoist text, because it's apparently named after the YouTube comment section: "The Forest of Opinions" by my Yang?
Taoists don't only read the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi; they function as ingredients, not gospel, in the complicated stew of Taoism. All the recognized Dao scriptures are assembled in a massive collection called the Taoist Canon, which contains about 1,500 texts. There is so much information in these texts that Taoists discovered a cure for malaria in a Daoist text called "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One Sleeve" and won a Nobel Prize for it.
Yin and Yang: the Taoists see an order in the world. Things grow from the earth; they mature, they age, they die, and then they return to the earth in a recognizable pattern. The name for this pattern is Yin and Yang. To understand the meaning of Yin and Yang in Daoism, let's look at its original meaning, which was the shady and sunny sides of a hill.
The shady and sunny sides of hills are always changing. The side that is in the sun in the morning will be in the shade in the afternoon and vice versa. This shows how nothing in the world ever stays the same, and that cycle goes on forever. The shady side isn’t better than the sunny side; neither is preferable, and neither can really exist without the other. Something can only be Yin until it reaches peak Yang, and then it will transition into Yin again. That will go back and forth; so there can be no growth without decline, no joy without sadness, and no life without death.
Qi: much like Yin and Yang, the word Qi has made its way into pop culture. What is Qi? Well, in modern Chinese, the word means "air." The Chinese term for balloon is "qìbā," for example. But just like the Dao in Daoist thought, Qi is more complicated than its original meaning. Qi refers to the stuff or energy that makes up and connects the universe. Solids, liquids, gases—they're all composed of Qi. But so are less material things like energy, thoughts, and willpower.
Qi flows through your body; when the Qi is flowing, you stay alive. When the Qi stops, you're dead. Everyone gets a certain amount of Qi at birth and uses it throughout life. By cultivating Qi through breathing exercises, diet, and meditation, you can live longer and better connect with the Dao.
Daoists see the heavens, the earth, and the body as reflections of each other. A stimulus in one area will ripple into all the other areas. We're all interrelated parts of one organic network, and Qi connects this network. It's like the internet but for all of reality.
So Daoist belief has just as much to do with ritual and faith as it does with physical exercise, forms of meditation, and diet. This is why breathing and physical exercises have become kind of the face of Taoism. Tai Chi is probably the main thing non-Chinese people associate with Taoism.
So let's have a look at it. Its full name is Tai Chi Chuan, and I know I said that wrong. It means "the boxing of the great ultimate." It's an inner boxing, one that focuses on the internal circulation of Qi rather than brute strength. The philosophy of Tai Chi is not to resist an incoming force but to meet it with softness until the incoming force exhausts itself or can be safely redirected.
Non-combat Tai Chi, the one you see elderly people doing at parks, is a slowed-down version. It stimulates blood circulation, relaxation, and helps Qi flow more freely through the body. Tai Chi is considered a great exercise for those with low mobility.
Gods and Goddesses: while Laozi is usually credited as the founder of Taoism, the person who most deserves the title is Chang Dao Ling. In 142 CE, he received a revelation from the Most Elevated Lord Lao, the god version of Laozi. Lord Lao revealed to Chang that the heavens were organized in a celestial bureaucracy. Like it says in the Dao De Jing, the earth is a reflection of the heavens, so if there's a bureaucracy on earth, it's because there was already one in heaven.
Chang and his followers were given special access to a network of celestial bureaucrats who control the fates of people in this world and the next. So, for example, if you had a family member that you were afraid might not get into heaven, you could contact your local Taoist priest. They would do a ritual, and you could kind of state your case to the relevant celestial bureaucrat. The group Chang founded was called the Way of the Celestial Masters, and Chang served as the first Celestial Master.
While Laozi and Zhuangzi wrote centuries before this group appeared, this was the first time a group of organized people had come together to consciously practice Daoism. Many of the features you associate with organized religion, like gods, priests, sacred texts, and rituals, show up first in Taoism with the Way of the Celestial Masters.
Now, the Way of the Celestial Masters didn't last, but their ideas influenced all future Daoist groups. Many people believe Taoism is a religion without gods. That isn’t true. While the Dao De Jing does not mention gods, Taoism is full of them. Chinese religion, in general, has always included many gods, local deities, spirits, ghosts, and other beings.
Local deities fill particular purposes, like helping with rain and agriculture, and they would occupy specific places in the world. Rural villages would often have their own gods, and families might even honor the Kitchen Gods in their homes. Most deities were once people who earned god status, so ordinary humans can ascend to godhood or immortality, like Laozi, who is now Lord Lao and is seen as almost an incarnation of the Dao itself.
So which of these deities are the most important in Daoist life? Well, the top gods are probably the Three Pure Ones, one of which is the deified Laozi, the Jade Emperor, and there's also the Eight Immortals.
You may be imagining that they get the most attention, but actually, no. Think of it like this: whenever you need something from the government, like getting a driver's license, you don't call the Prime Minister; instead, you call the relevant government department for your particular problem. The celestial government works the same way. If you're having a problem with demons, you're going to want to do an offer to this guy. If you're having marriage problems, you'll be looking for this fellow to help out. And if you want help on an exam, then this nerd would be your best bet.
So those are the basics of Taoism. You might still be confused, and you should be. This is a very complicated religion and is inherently difficult to understand. Remember: "The Dao that can be told of is not the eternal Dao."
This video isn't even close to covering everything. It would take much longer than 20 minutes to explain a religion, which is why we've put an exclusive commentary on what we left out over on Patreon and Nebula.
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