Douglas J. SoccioDouglas J. Soccio

Chapter 2Chapter 2 The Asian Sages: Lao-tzu, The Asian Sages: Lao-tzu,

Confucius and BuddhaConfucius and Buddha

On completion of this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:What are the qualities of the sage?What is Tao?What are Yin and Yang?What is the Golden Mean?What is Humanism?What is Li?What is Jen?What are the Four Noble Truths?What is Bodhisattva?What is Nirvana?

The sage is the oldest of philosophical archetypes. The English word sage is derived from the Latin

sapiens, meaning “wise.” The term has been used to refer to masters associated with religious traditions and to the wise elders of a group or tribe. Sages understand and teach the requirements of a good life.

Sages tend to be humanists who believe that human intelligence and effort are capable of improving conditions in the here and now.

Our survey focuses on three of the most influential sages of all time – Lao-tzu, Confucius, and Buddha.

In ancient Asian cosmologies, all events were said to be interconnected. The harmonious interaction of all things was referred to as the Tao. While the word literally means “way” or “path,”

the Tao cannot be precisely defined or “named.” It is variously translated as the source of all

existence, principle of all things, the path of the universe, and the moral law.

Tao “unfolds” and “influences” all of nature while remaining hidden from empirical (sensory) experience.

In this cosmology, Heaven and Earth form a single reality, in which nature consists of two opposing but inseparable forces, comprising a sort of Heaven-Earth.

These are the forces of yin and yang. Yin (the passive element of Earth) is weak,

negative, dark, and destructive. Yang (the active element of Heaven) is strong,

positive, light, and constructive. Together they form a perpetual balance

whose interplay constitutes the natural order of things.

If life consists of some fundamental, never-ending, and harmonious exchange, why do we so often experience it as a series of apparently independent events and either-or options? The short answer is “Because we are confused and

unenlightened about the nature of things.” It falls then to the sage to identify and preserve Tao

by refining the way we talk about it and to offer insight into how one can align oneself with the nature of things.

However, each of the sages – Lao-tzu, Confucious, and Buddha -- offers a different interpretation of the Tao, and of the human situation.

The sages’ focus on achieving harmony and virtue here and now is a response to

the social conditions in which they lived. For Lao-tzu and Confucius, this was a time of

such widespread political and social turmoil that it came to be known as the Period of the Warring States.

A. C. Graham describes the teachings of the ancient sages as responses to the “breakdown of the rule of Heaven,” and the moral and political chaos that resulted. Where, they wondered, is the way back to social order and proper conduct?

Lao-tzu (c.575 B.C.E.), the first great Asian sage,

wrote the Tao te Ching (or The Classic of the Way and the Power).

Its opening lines tell us that absolute dogmas and theories pale beside living itself, beside the ever-flowing Tao, which cannot be expressed adequately in words.

Just because the Way cannot be “reduced” to words or principles does not mean that nothing important and useful can be said about it. Poignantly, Lao-tzu says that although we cannot talk about Tao, “people cannot cease discussing It.”

Lao-tzu accepts that the whole of nature consists of the continual interaction of two opposing forces yin and yang . What we call the bad “produces” the good (and

the good is but the necessary other side of the bad). Conversely, what we call the good “produces” the bad.

However, in approaching the opposites, Lao-tzu repeatedly advises his readers to prefer yin to yang.

YANG (TO BE RESISTED)

Something Doing something Knowledge Male Full Above Before Moving Strong Hard Straight

YIN (TO BE PREFERRED) Nothing Doing nothing Ignorance Female Empty Below After Still Weak Soft Bent

If everything is part of one whole, and opposites interact, why bother to resist yang and to prefer yin? Lao-tzu lived in a time of widespread

corruption, intrigue and violence. The common response was to meet force

with counter-force – that is, to attempt and exert control.

But this doesn’t work – it just creates more disorder.

So Lao-tzu argues: “Do nothing (and great deeds are accomplished).”

The principle “Do nothing” is known as “wu-wei,” the paradox of attempting to achieve a goal by ceasing to aim for it deliberately. For example, rather than set out to “save the

environment,” the sage spontaneously picks up trash while he takes his morning walk.

Rather than agitate and argue to put an end to racism, the sage naturally and spontaneously (without calculation or ulterior motive) associates with all sorts of people—and naturally, spontaneously , and unobtrusively walks away when a co-worker tells racist jokes.

Confucius (551-479 B.C.) is the Latinized name of K’ung Fu-tzu, a legendary teacher who sought political office so that he could initiate a series of governmental reforms. He said, “Guide the people by governmental measures,

and regulate them by the threat of punishment, and the people will have no sense of honor and shame. Guide the people by virtue and regulate them by li (rules of conduct and sense of propriety), and the people will have a sense of honor and respect

His efforts at political reform failed, but a collection of his conversations, known as The Analects survives as the single most influential book of Asian Philosophy.

Confucius embraced a version of humanism, which departs radically from the traditional Chinese emphasis on nature spirits. Humanism is the name given to any philosophy that

emphasizes human welfare and dignity. In general, humanism is based on the belief that human

intelligence and effort are capable of improving present conditions.

Confucian humanism assumes that “man can make the Way (Tao) great .”

However, unlike Taoism, it assumes the Tao must be cultivated through learning and preserving dying social customs.

For Confucius, learning the Tao means learning how to moderate human affairs, how to keep them in balance by finding the Golden Mean, (chung-yun) or point of harmony and equilibrium.

By restoring equilibrium and harmony to the individual, Confucius thought, order would be restored to the family, to other relationships, to the state, to the world, and to the universe We can get a fuller sense of his teachings about the Mean, by learning a few Chinese terms used by Confucius.

The Golden Mean requires cultivating Te or virtue, the power to affect others without using physical force. Te is morally neutral in the way that a knife’s

“virtues”—strength, flexibility, sharpness—are neutral. The same knife can be used to save a life in surgery or to take a life in anger.

We also need to cultivate Li which means “ceremony.” Li encompasses rites, customs, and conventions

ranging from ritual sacrifices honoring one’s ancestors to everyday etiquette.

By following Li we become gracious and and well-mannered, treating others with dignity.

Clarifying how the Mean is realized in human conduct, leads Confucius to rethink the traditional notion of the chun-tzu, the superior man. Now the chun-tzu becomes the morally superior

person, who integrates te and li.The opposite of the chun-tzu is the hsiao-jen, the base or vulgar person who thinks only of himself, and lacks both “Li” and “Te.”

The nobilty of the “chun-tzu” is a matter of character, or specifically of humanity, or jen. and not of bloodline or political status. Jen is a general human virtue, the humane

principle rooted in empathy and fellow feeling.

The Chinese character for jen is composed of “two” and “man,” signifying the relationship between men.

Jen has been translated as human, humane, humanitarian, humanity, and benevolence.

The original meaning of Buddha in Sanskrit is the “awakened” or “enlightened one,” and refers to Siddhartha Gautama (c. 560-480 B.C.E.).

Today, the archetype of the Buddha is a major source of meaning and purpose for over two billion people.

Despite his vast influence, we have very little factual information about him; most of what we know comes from oral tradition and myth.

Living in his father’s palace, in what is today Nepal, Siddhartha was protected from the outside world.

According to one story, Siddhartha was entirely shielded from unpleasant realities out side of the palace where he lived, such as poverty and suffering. But ignorance could not protect him forever.

Driven by the restless boredom that almost always accompanies an unproductive life, Siddhartha felt compelled to stray outside the walls of the palace.

Once outside the palace walls, Siddhartha, quite by accident, saw an old man, a sick person, a corpse and a monk. Siddhartha brought the troubling questions

these sights raised for him to his servant, Channa. To every question Siddhartha raised, Channa could only reply, with great sadness and resignation, “Yes, master, there is no escape. Old age, sickness, death—such is the lot of all men. There is no escape – old age, sickness, death – such is the lot of all men.”

This opened Siddhartha’s eyes and set him on a journey in search of answers.

During Siddhartha’s journey, he lived as a wandering monk and consulted numerous gurus and sages. Still receiving no satisfactory answers to his questions, Siddhartha settled in a grove of trees on the outskirts of an Indian village, forming a small community with a few other seekers. Attempting to gain control over his own

mind, he became an ascetic – that is, a person who turns away from pleasure and severely limits his desires in order to achieve salvation or peace of mind.

For six years he meditated and fasted, concentrating on his original questions. But still he found no answers.

Although the practice of asceticism allowed him to conquer his physical appetites and weaknesses and to control “the mad monkey of the mind, Siddhartha realized that ascetic self-denial was not an adequate way of life.

The lesson was clear: The Way cannot be found by either indulgence or denial. We must walk a Middle Path.

While sitting under a fig tree one day, a young woman gave Siddhartha a golden bowl of rice milk, saying he reminded her of a figure she had seen in a vision.

When he finished the milk he threw the bowl into the river, where it miraculously floated upstream (symbolizing that his teachings go against the currents of ordinary thinking).

“Here I shall remain until I am answered or dead,” Siddhartha said. This he did, sitting and fasting, until 49 days later, in May of 524 B.C.E., he was “awakened.” Buddhist tradition refers to this as “the greatest event in human history.”

From that point on, the tree became known as the Bodhi Tree – the Tree of Wisdom.

According to Buddhist teachings, it is impossible to “explain” the awakening. However, a rough idea might be that the

individual sees him or herself and all of life as part of an unending process of change, that the universe is a system of interconnected inseparable parts, composed of all varieties of life forever moving from one form to another.

Siddhartha had reached a state of bliss and utter detachment called nirvana.

This is a state of emptiness or “no-thing-ness,” where the individual ego is annihilated, and so, released from suffering.

Siddhartha now faced an important decision – remain in the state of nirvana or share his vision with others.

At last, the “Great Heart of Infinite Compassion” prevailed, and the Buddha chose to remain among the people. One who does this to help others is known as

a bodhisattva among some branches of Buddhism.

A bodhisattva is not a “savior,” or one who intercedes for others, but an enlightened being who voluntarily postpones his own nirvana to help other conscious life-forms find “supreme release.”

After his enlightenment, the Buddha shared his insight into three fundamental aspects of reality: impermanence (annica) suffering (dukkha) and egolessness or no-self (annata) . Impermanence refers to the ever-

changing, insubstantial nature of everything in our experience.

Suffering refers to the fact that human life is always vulnerable to various forms of mental and physical suffering.

Egolessness or No-self refers to the fact that an independent, substantial self does not exist.

The Buddha’s teaching is ultimately not pessimistic because he believed that we could learn the Middle Way and so be freed from suffering.

Karma refers to “the law of moral causation, to acts of the will expressed in thought, word, or deed.” Good or bad karma thus results from our own actions, and should not be confused with fate or predestination. Buddha did not teach that everything that happens

is due to karma. First, different laws govern natural change, physical phenomena, certain psychological processes, and so forth. Second, if karma alone accounted for the human condition, a person with good karma would always be good, and a person with bad karma would always be bad. Yet such is not the case.

The path to liberation is found in realizing and living in light of the four noble truths.1. Suffering is the condition of all

existence.2. Suffering comes from being self-

centered.3. This egocentrism can be

understood, overcome, and rooted out.

4. This can be done by following the Eightfold Path.

Right Understanding

Right Purpose

Right Speech

Right Conduct

Right Livelihood

Right Effort

Right Mindfulness

Right Meditation

It helps to remind ourselves that the Eightfold Path is designed to change us by changing our way of seeing things (consciousness), changing our behavior, and changing our emotions

It is designed to liberate us from our egocentric sense of an independent, substantial identity, replacing the self-centered me with a compassionate heart. If I can change the way I view things, I have, in

effect, changed the world.

Ultimately, Buddha calls on us to adopt a way of life, rather than “having a philosophy” as we understand in the West. According to the Buddha, someone who

takes a purely theoretical approach to solving the problem of suffering, is like a man who is wounded with a poisoned arrow who will not allow a physician to remove the arrow until he has received a complete explanation of all the causes of his being wounded.

“That man would die, without having learned this….In exactly the same way . . . anyone who should say, “I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One shall explain to me that the world is eternal or that the world is not eternal . . . or that the saint either exists or does not exist after death”;—that person would die . . . before [it was]ever explained to him.”

Which of the three sages did you find the most compelling and why?

How do the three sages differ in their understanding of the nature of the Tao or the Way?

Based what you’ve read so far, can you think of any contemporary examples of sages? If you can, what specific qualities or teachings impress

you as sage like? How does this sage differ from Lao-tzu, Confucius and

the Buddha?

Sage Tao (or Dao) Yin/Yang wu wei chung-yung Humanism te li chung-tzu hsiao-jen

jen Lao-Tzu Confucius Siddhartha Gautama Ascetics Nirvana Bodhisattva Karma Four Noble Truths Eightfold Path