Gospel & Universe ♒️ A River Journey

A Chinese Interlude

Pope’s Pierian Spring on Mount Helicon suggests a higher, more enlightened vision, yet we can take his water metaphor in other directions as well. The mountain rises to great heights and its waters flow down the slopes and ravines to the benefit of everything below. In this downward flow of water lies the Daoist symbol for God, which is referred to as the Way (the Dao), which is seen as the Force behind and within the operations of Nature. What’s particularly striking about this version of God, especially in comparison with the God of the Old Testament, is that it doesn’t ask for any sort of recognition. The Dao is less like a lofty mountain with its sacred springs than like a humble valley with its low-lying flow:

Highest good is like water. Because water excels in benefitting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way. (Daode Jing 1.8, trans. D.C. Lau)

My equation of God and Dao is a bit suspect, since in the first Daoist text (The Daode Jing, written in the 6th C. BC by the legendary Laozi) we also find that the Dao “images the forefather of God” (1.4). Yet most of the time the Dao is referred to as the pre-eminent, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal Force in the universe. And yet, it acts like it’s nothing at all:

The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority; / It gives them life yet claims no possession; / It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude; / It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit. / It is because it lays claim to no merit / That its merit never deserts it. (Daode Jing 1.2)

This Force is at once imminent in the workings of nature, and transcendent beyond these workings. It doesn’t announce itself or take the form of any one God or god. Nor is there a book that can sum it up, or a set of beliefs that define its operation. The first two lines of the Daode Jing indicate the direction this philosophy will take: “The way that can be spoken of / Is not the constant way.” Later in this short collection of aphoristic wisdom, the legendary Laozi writes: “One who knows does not speak; / one who speaks does not know” (2.56). For this reason, the Daoist sage doesn’t refer to moral principles or theological doctrines, but rather to the greater Spirit within Nature that breathes, vibrates, or lies inherent in everything. Laozi ignores theological doctrine and focuses on omnipresence and unity — similar to the Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius:

Think always of the universe as one living creature, comprising one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness; how a single impulse governs all its actions; how all things collaborate in all that happens; the very web and mesh of it all.” (Meditations 4.40, trans. Martin Hammond)

Water is a perfect analogy for the Dao, since water takes the highest, most etherial state (in the glaciers and clouds, and most poetically in the misty mountain peaks) as well as the lowest, most physical state (in the ravines and canals, and finally in the rivers and ocean). Without it, sentient life as we know it couldn’t exist.

There’s nothing doctrinal in the understanding of water, and of water’s place in the cycles and fundamental requirements of nature. It’s not surprising that we encounter this understanding of the changing and ever-connected forms of nature from one end of the earth to the next. From mystic poetry and obscure philosophy to the practical fields of meteorology, geology, and hydrology. From Laozi’s China to Aurelius’ Rome:

Adopt a systematic study of the way all things change into one another: pay constant attention to this aspect of nature and train yourself in it. (Meditations 10:11)

Keep constantly in your mind an impression of the whole of time and the whole of existence – and the thought that each individual thing is, on the scale of existence, a mere fig-seed; on the scale of time, one turn of a drill. / Consider any existing object and reflect that it is even now in the process of dissolution and change, in a sense regenerating through decay or dispersal: in other words, to what sort of ‘death’ each thing is born. (10.17-18)

Aurelius’ Nature is very close to Laozi’s Dao, yet the Daoists differ from Aurelius in one key regard: they don’t hold out reason as the god-like spark within us that will lead us confidently through this world.

Perhaps this difference lies behind Aurelius’ disdain of Christians and what he calls their ‘theatrics.’ For while Aurelius sees a proud and rational way forward through life’s difficulties, the Christians stressed meekness rather than strength, forgiveness rather than dominance, emotion rather than logic, humility rather than pride. The Old Testament stresses the stern Father on Mount Sinai while the New stresses the gentle Son, his loving mother, the redemption of the prostitute, and ideas such as the last shall be the first and Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Aurelius on the other hand, was already the first, perhaps the most powerful person in the world: the Emperor of Rome. In addition to governing a vast empire, he persecuted Christians and spent the last decade of his life subjugating warlike tribes along the Danube. In this sense, Jesus and Saint Francis are more in line with Laozi, who suggests that we avoid controlling others and instead embrace the ‘female’ role of supporting others and bending with the forces we meet. He urges us to be meek like the water running down the ravine and into the valley, which was shaped by the river and will shape the river’s course to the infinity of the sea:

Know the male / But keep to the role of the female / And be a ravine to the empire. / If you are a ravine to the empire, / Then the constant virtue will not desert you […] And you will return to the infinite. / Know honour / But keep to the role of the disgraced / And be a valley to the empire. / If you are a valley to the empire, / Then the constant virtue will be sufficient / And you will return to being the uncarved block. (1.28)

The way is to the world as the River and the Sea are to rivulets and streams. (1.32)

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Dao means the Way or the Path, which suggests something which leads somewhere else, rather than a thing, like reason, that can be grasped and used to solve specific problems. Obvious examples of the Daoist path are roads and byways, yet the unique, meandering, low-lying qualities of water, river, and sea are most often used to suggest that 1. there’s no one fixed thing that correlates to the Dao, 2. there’s no fixed way to understand the Dao, and 3. each individual needs to understand the Dao for themselves.

The Daoist antagonism to doctrine is illustrated in the poem “Under the Pines” by Jia Dao (779–843), which I’ve inserted below into a painting by Ma Lin (c. 1180–1256). Here the master teaches the student in absentia, emphasizing the point that absence, dormancy, and apparent nothingness are also central concepts used to get at the ineffable Dao. The teacher’s absence encourages the student to think about why the master is absent, about why he has gone into the mountains, about what sort of balm might be found there, and about what type of clouds make it hard to see where he’s gone…

In the Daoist conception, humans are only a very small part of the greater picture:

And yet Daoism manages to circumvent alienation and meaninglessness, the feeling of being a cog in the greater heartless machine of Nature, by suggesting that being lost in immensity is to be found. It’s to be free, unbound, connected to everything.

The first great historical Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (4th C. BC) was deeply skeptical about our ability to know anything. He refused to pronounce judgment on the possibility of the afterlife, yet he urged his readers to dive into the waters of life. In one of his stories, Confucius stands amazed as the Daoist sage jumps into a raging river. Confucius is even more stunned when, afterward, he sees the sage walking calmly along the riverbank. For Daoists, the waters in which we fish or swim are all connected in a greater Whole, which is mysteriously overseen by the unseen Dao. By allowing yourself to enter the raging waters and to let the waters take you where they may, you follow Nature, rather than the limited personal senses that would make you struggle against It. This is of course a metaphor, and Zhuangzi isn’t suggesting that we throw ourselves into raging rivers. Yet the metaphor applies to behaviour and also to thinking: by opening your mind to new ideas, you learn more than if you already have fixed ideas and try to make everything conform to them.

Like Zhuangzi, Aurelius suggest that humility before Mother Nature allows the mind to explore the world freely:

Nature gives all and takes all back. To her the man educated into humility says: ‘Give what you will; take back what you will.’ And he says this in no spirit of defiance, but simply as her loyal subject. / The time you have left is short. Live it as if you were on a mountain. Here or there makes no difference, if wherever you live you take the world as your city. (10.14-15)

Aurelius also insists that we don’t get stuck on one metaphor. River, mountain, city. Nature changes all the time, so the metaphors are also likely to change. But what doesn’t change is change itself:

Always remember Heraclitus: ‘The death of earth is the birth of water; the death of water is the birth of air; the death of air is fire, and back again.’ Remember too his image of the man who forgets his way home; his saying that men are at odds with their most constant companion, the Reason which governs all things; that their everyday experience takes them by surprise; that we must not act or speak as if asleep, and sleep brings the illusion of speech and action; and that we should not be like children with their parents, simply accepting what we are told. (4.46)

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As in Hinduism, where the waters of the goddess Ganga flow from Shiva’s mountain domain down through Rishikesh and Haridwar, Prayagraj and Varanasi to the sea, water metaphors are used extensively in poetry and mysticism to suggest the source of life, the flow of the spirit, and the final oceanic state of union with the universe. The location of the river isn’t as important as the fact that it flows and it gives life. Yet it also takes life, so the sage of whatever country says with Aurelius, “Give what you will; take back what you will”;

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. (4.43)

Whether the sacred river springs from Olympus in Greece, from Gangotri in the Himalayas, or from the Bayan Har Mountains of Qinghai, it joins other streams and becomes a river, which joins other rivers, which eventually lose themselves in the sea.

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To follow the Dao is to follow this natural way of humility:

The reason why the River and the Sea are able to be king of the hundred valleys is that they excel in taking the lower position” (Daode Jing 66).

Springs, rivers, and oceans are part of a cycle: the water in the ocean rises into the clouds, falls over the mountains, builds up in the glaciers, and flows in the underground tables, springs, and rivers, all of which flow back into the ocean. This is a series of interconnected cycles, not a regional event. The Alps aren’t the summit of things, nor are the Himalayas. More important than summits altogether is the connection between things. Adopt a systematic study of the way all things change into one another:

The tip of the Jungfrau and the top of Mount Qingcheng are where the sky begins. The Earth itself is formed and controlled by forces of gravity and matter that lie beyond our control:

The way of heaven excels in overcoming, though it does not contend; in responding though it does not speak; in attracting though it does not summon; in laying plans though it appears slack. The net of heaven is cast wide. Though the mesh is not fine, yet nothing ever slips through. (Daode Jing 73)

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Next: Montaigne

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