Chapter 23

Commentary::

This chapter offers insight into the notion of View, Method, and Fruition. It simply refers to cultivation (Method) as being reliant on View and associated with a particular Fruition. It presents this not with the idea that we should adopt one in favor of the other, but that the mechanism of View, Method, and Fruition is always at work in our experience-running as an expression of our natural condition and as the measure of our relative condition.

Stillness and silence are so-of-themselves. This line may simply be the mention of zuowang (non-conceptual meditation) in relation to ziran (things-as-they-are). Laozi is saying that zuowang is not a meditation “on” something-not a focus on something, but simply an appreciation of our inherent stillness in silence.

Another interpretation that was perhaps more common in the Zhou era was that this line referred to a fangshi lineage sometimes called a line of “whis-perers:” those who secretly or discreetly offered the particular instructions of wuweidao from one generation to another. My interpretation follows the sense that this text is about meditation and veers away from the later philosophical approach to Daodejing created by the modern psychoanalytic and sociological’ Chinese commentators like Wang Bi (3rd century CE) that removed any reference to such lineages or practices.

Squalls and torrents are short-lived. Whose actions are these tumults? Heaven and Earth. This short-lived violence of Heaven and Earth is comparable to human effort.? The “squalls and torrents” refer to our compulsion to do and have- the antithesis of wuweidao. In the practice of zuowang, this compulsion is akin to our thought-streams that rise up like a sudden storm and then naturally subside. Laozi is not demonizing thought, but likening it to a storm created by Heaven/Earth (Nature). Laozi’s sense of zuowang is our natural condi-tion, which takes no effort at all. There is no need or suggestion to watch the arising or the subsiding, no need or suggestion to follow the squalls. Our natural condition lacks nothing and needs no “control.” All efforts are self-exhausting gales. As always, Laozi is not making a critical analysis or compari-son, but pointing directly to our natural condition (wuweidao).

In this second section of the chapter, which may be apocryphal, Laozi offers three ways of alternating appreciation of the stillness/silence that is the way-things-are. He implies that cultivating Da has no fixed ground, no correct or established Way. Cultivation is simply relenting; relaxing one’s efforts and compulsions and feeling the openness of Da (things-as-they-are, unchanged). Relaxation, in this case, does not mean passivity or dullness. He lays out three patterns of cultivation and connects their View, Method, and Fruition.

Those who cultivate Dao, align3 themselves with Dao. The first Way is “cul-tivating Dao, according to Dao.” Those who experience this Way hold the View that absolutely everything is cultivation. Everyone and everything is seamlessly woven together by Nature Itself (Da). Practice is unfixed and based on and inspired by the notion that we are inseparable from Dao. Practice only demonstrates this and does not “produce” it. This View lacks the anxiety/struggle common to religion, and the need to correct or resolve something, to change our conduct and/or mind. This form of cultivation lacks form or symbol and is apparently without goal or self. It has no reference point. This is the path of wuwei. The practice of zuowang, referred to so often in this text, is the penultimate practice of Dao according to Dao (wuweidao). What appears to be indolence is, in fact, a direct experience of an indistinguishable View, Method, and Fruit. According to this first Way, life is a self-resolving, effortless, and constant expression of Dao.

Those who identify with their nature, align themselves with success. The second Way is realizing or recognizing one’s nature. In this second Way there may be a sense of discovery and illumination. Those who acquire a kind of enlightenment or perfection align themselves with success.? This Way holds to the notion that our nature, rather than our self, is the reference point of cultivation. Cultivating according to the second Way, we observe our intercon-nectedness to Dao through a focus on our qi and the dance of change or trans-formation. Along this path there appears to be a kind of “improvement” or transformation. The Method called Daoist alchemy or neidan uses this View. In this practice, we “distill” our experience: taking the experience of refinement of essence (jing to gi and gi to shen) as a “highest” relative condition. Though this Way deals directly with our relative condition, it recognizes the relative condition as a mutable, not abiding, “energy-not-static” form.

Those who strive,& align themselves with loss. Sometimes our experience seems “outside of ourselves,” the result of external conditions. Self and world appear as a series of entanglements, an abiding dual world. In the third Way, cultivating Dao is like “work,” and there is a strong sense of fear and confusion that inspires renunciation, discipline, and armoring. This path requires purg-ing, the redirecting of energy, and empowerments to sustain it. This View gathers inspiration from what seems like negative external forces. The term “loss” refers to a sense of exorcistic purges, and ultimately a sense of yoga (union). Loss° can be a category of ghosts.’ The practice of astrogeomantic ritual complies with this View. In this third Way, one seeks the natural condition, a kind of treasure that is buried in the relative condition or transforms the relative condition into the natural condition through effort.

When all three of these Views inspire a single and continuous cultivation, we begin to comprehend the Dao of Laozi’s Daoist Adepts. They are at once profound universal philosophers, magically transforming alchemists, and ritual shaman extraordinaire, and yet, not only is their View and Method three-in-one, but their Fruition is three-in-one. Each View/Method engulfs them in a single fathomless sea of Fruition.

Dao embraces those who align themselves with Dao. Non-conceptual practice has no boundaries. It is openness that embraces. Method is View and Fruition. Success embraces those who cultivate Dao according to their nature. Revelation is the gate to openness when we focus on the “discovery” of our nature. Discovering what is inherent in our experience, that perception and experience are inseparable, is the very essence of “success.” Success is the Great Enterprise itself.

Loss swallows those who strive. A deity fills openness with light and energy before resolving back into openness. Using the imagination to fill a “world” with activity, only to clear away that activity, takes force (“striving”). Yet even force, like the squalls of Heaven/Earth, automatically subsides into openness.

Basically, the Path is not a path; the Da is not a dao. There is no Three, only constancy and continuity. Da is nothing in particular, not a concept. It certainly does not do anything (wuwei); it does not respond to any particular promptings, and yet it is at the core of all our experience. This chapter is consistent with the text as a whole when Laozi presents three ways and no suggestion that one is somehow the “truth.”

The most difficult aspect of Chinese Daoism to comprehend for modern people is certainly its synthesis of a highly refined and profound philosophy,” its subtle mastery of personal transformation 2 which is, in turn, no different from powerfully negotiating an orthodox path through a cosmos of struggling angels and demons.‘3 The opposite View, held by most modern people, is that analysis (and the small fragments and essential substances it produces) is the way to a deeper understanding of things. By comparison, Laozi’s View is enormous and inclusive. It is about synthesis and continuity, not analysis and editing.

It is obvious to me that no translator or contemporary Asian scholar has seen this chapter in this light, which only goes to prove how incomprehensible this ancient text has become without the experience of some sort of personal practice. Though we can describe the Three Ways as different from one other, Laozi’s Daoist Adept does not choose or prefer any one of the Three Ways. Indeed, Laozi’s Adept recognizes all Three Views, Methods, and Fruitions as inseparably linked. It doesn’t get any more Laozi than this!

Footnotes::

1. Confucian
2. compulsion to do or have
3. The term refers to synchronicity, the acceptance of success/ defeat with equanimity, and/or to submit to a lord/vassal.
4. immortal
5. de
6. illumination
7. fruition
8. also ghost; unfamiliar facets of our experience; confusion
9. shi
10. unresolved ancestors, relationships with deities and/or, in modern parlance, unresolved "issues"
11. Laozi, Zhuangzi, etc. (pure thought)
12. alchemy/neidan (qi recalibration)
13. exorcistic ritual (community temples)