THE TAOISM PART

The Indian scholar and teacher Bodhidharma is credited with founding the Ch'an school of Buddhism in China in the 6th century A.D. This came at a time when Buddhism had already claimed an imperial convert, the Emperor Wu Ti of the Liang dynasty. Buddhism was rapidly becoming accepted by the Chinese population as a simplified version of Taoism. As it happened Buddhism and Taoism shared many philosophical similarities making Chinese acclimation to the new religion much easier. And the more dogmatic ways in which Buddhism was practiced helped it to get the fast track on becoming the predominant religion in China. The Ch'an sect was a blend of Buddhism and Taoism. The word "ch'an" is the Chinese attempt at the Sanskrit word "dhyana," meaning meditation, as is the Japanese word "zen."

But now what exactly is this Taoism that Buddhism merged with? Chinese thinkers wanted to account for the apparent harmony and order in nature. They developed the concept of the Tao. The harmony and orderliness of heaven and earth were, they said, the result of the cosmic energy of the Tao, which literally means "a way" or "a road." Sometimes it denotes the "channel" of a river. In general the Tao means "the-way-to-go," the "natural way."

The Tao is conceived to be eternal. Taoists concluded that the way in which the universe runs must have existed before the universe itself did. They believed that this way of nature's functioning is a way of perfection, a pre-established pattern into which all things ought to fall if they are to be in their proper place and do their proper work. The Tao is emphatically a way of harmony, integration, and cooperation. Its natural tendency is toward peace, prosperity, and health. This would quickly become evident were it not for perverse human beings who refuse to adjust themselves to it. In fact, if the Tao were ever to be followed everywhere, heaven, humankind, and earth would form a single, harmonious unit, every part cooperating toward universal well-being.

Central to Taoism is "wu-wei." This has been translated variously as "inaction, quietism, non-aggression," but it more accurately means non-interference. It means not getting in the way of things. The culprit is the human ego and its analytical mind which sees as its purpose the control and manipulation of the world, which is like creating a dam in a river that is flowing naturally on its way. This is an important understanding in Ch'an. The controlling self and mind are the trouble.

The two names most often associated with Taoism are Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Lao-tzu, who may have been several people who used that name to write under, was the apparent author of the TAO TE CHING or TREATISE OF THE TAO AND ITS POWER. In lines that were at times obscure and cryptic, he laid out his view of things whereupon he completely vanished. Chuang-tzu, who most certainly did exist solely as himself, went on to popularized Lao-tzu's teachings when he produced thirty-three essays, most of which were by his own hand. Among his views were that yin and yang, springing from the Tao, produce each other, influence each other, and destroy each other in a never ceasing process, much as Buddhism states in its "mutually arising opposites."

Neither Lao-tzu nor Chuang-tzu could have foreseen the decline of Taoism over time. It so happened that the people who had been attracted to the thoughtfulness of Taoism became discouraged by it, turning finally to magic and potions in what turned into Taoism the cult. Some found in the contemporary Confucianism a more direct and practical help, and adopted it. Those drawn to the meditative aspect of Taoism found the same and more in the spreading Buddhism.

THE MYSTIC

Though mysticism may be associated with religion, it need not be. The mystic often represents a type that the religious institution (e.g. church) does not and cannot produce and does not know what to do with if and when one appears. Sill, mysticism has its fount in what is the raw material of all religion and is also the inspiration of much of philosophy, poetry, art, and music, a consciousness of a "beyond," of something which, though it is interwoven with it, is not the external world of material phenomena. It is a consciousness of an "unseen" over and above the seen. In the developed mystic this consciousness is present in an intense and highly specialized form. Though he may not be able to describe it in words, though he may not be able to logically demonstrate its validity, to the mystic his experience is fully and absolutely valid and is surrounded with complete certainty. He has been "there," he has "seen," he "knows."

Mystical experience, however, is not the sole domain of the mystic, according to some. As Ram Dass points out, there are many planes of awareness, many levels of consciousness. William James said, "Our normal waking consciousness is but one type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie other types of consciousness and we spend our entire lives not knowing of their existence. But apply the requisite stimulus and there they are in their completeness."

The word "mystic" has its origin in the Greek Mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries. A mystic was one who was initiated into these mysteries, through which he gained an esoteric knowledge of divine things and was "reborn into eternity." His goal was to breakthrough the everyday world into that of eternity and timelessness. This entailed a secret wisdom about which it was unlawful for him to speak. The word "mystery" (mysterion) comes from the Greek word "muo," to shut or close the lips or eyes.

Both Vedanta and Buddhism are rooted in mysticism. Even the nontheistic Buddhism has its mystical aspects, without calling it such, found for example in the jhana meditation of early Buddhism and in satori in Zen. Dr. D. T. Suzuki described his own satori in ZEN BUDDHISM: SELECTED WRITINGS OF D. T. SUZUKI (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), pp. 103-108. It gives the flavor of all mystical experience.

1. Irrationality. "By this I mean that satori is not a conclusion to be reached by reasoning, and defies all intellectual determination. Those who have experienced it are always at a loss to explain it coherently or logically."

2. Intuitive Insight. "That there is noetic quality in mystic experiences has been pointed out by (William) James...Another name for satori is "kensho" (chien-hsing in Chinese) meaning "to see essence or nature," which apparently proves that there is "seeing" or "perceiving" in satori...Without this noetic quality satori will lose all its pungency, for it is really the reason of satori itself. "

3. Authoritativeness. "By this I mean that the knowledge realized by satori is final, that no amount of logical argument can refute it. Being direct and personal it is sufficient unto itself. All that logic can do here is to explain it, to interpret it in connection to other kinds of knowledge with which our minds are filled. Satori is thus a form of perception, an inner perception, which takes place in the most interior part of consciousness.

4. Affirmation. "What is authoritative and final can never be negative. Though the satori experience is sometimes expressed in negative terms, it is essentially an affirmative attitude towards all things that exist; it accepts them as they come along regardless of their moral values."

5. Sense of the Beyond. "...in satori there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience indeed is my own but I feel it to be rooted elsewhere. The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of satori. Not, necessarily, that I get unified with a being greater than myself or absorbed in it, but that my individuality, which I found rigidly held together and definitely kept separate from other individual existences, becomes loosened somehow from its tightening grip and melts away into something indescribable, something which is of quite a different order from what I am accustomed to. The feeling that follows is that of complete release or a complete rest---the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination...As far as the psychology of satori is considered, a sense of the Beyond is all we can say about it; to call this the Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself and to plunge into a theology or metaphysics."

6. Impersonal Tone. "Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Zen experience is that it has no personal note in it as is observable in Christian mystic experiences."

7. Feeling of exaltation. "That this feeling inevitably accompanies satori is due to the fact that it is the breaking-up of the restriction imposed on one as an individual being, and this breaking up is not a mere negative incident but quite a positive one fraught with significance because it means an infinite expansion of the individual."

8. Momentariness. "Satori comes upon one abruptly and is a momentary experience. In fact, if it is not abrupt and momentary, it is not satori.

UNITIVE EXPERIENCE

Alan Watts said that he looked up at the stars and felt that he didn't relate to any of it, all the billions of galaxies out there. They weren't him. But then it occurred to him that he didn't relate either to all the wiggly stuff, all the biological things that were the inner workings of his body that were in personal terms him. He said that he did not achieve a unitive sense until it dawned on him that "Alan Watts" shared a boundary with the outside world, that the outline of his body was the border he shared with everything else that existed. It was this border that was the unifying factor for him, to where he now felt that he was everything else.

This was an intellectual determination, however, which in light of the fact that Watts was a trained philosopher and scholar should not be surprising. The unitive experience, though, can be realized free of the analytical mind. The Mandukya Upanishad outlines three states of consciousness, namely, waking, sleeping, and dreamless sleep. But there is a fourth state called turiya, the transcendental state, known also as samadhi. It is here that the unitive experience, free of the intellect, occurs. The Sanskrit word for this unitive state is "yoga," from which is derived our english word "yoke," meaning union.

The classical yoga of Patanjali sets out eight stages, or "limbs," all of which are necessary for reaching samadhi. First of all one must abstain from injuring any being through thoughts, words, or acts, known as ahimsa. Proper yogic posture is required. Proper inhalation, retention, and exhalation maintains control and focus of the life force. Attention must be directed inwardly and not be permitted to race haphazardly outwardly. The mind must be fixed on an object of meditation, for example a spot placed on a wall, or the midpoint between the eyebrows, to name just two. The seventh stage is maintaining an undisturbed flow of thought around the object of meditation. In the final stage the mind is completely absorbed in the object of meditation, becoming one with it. In this state, the ego-sense has grown weak, to where one's essential nature is no longer concealed. The result is what Christian writers call "the mystical union," and what Vedantists term transcendental consciousness, or samadhi.

Beyond the intellectual approach of Watts, and the technical means, so called, of Patanjali, there is one other avenue for the unitive experience, although this one is not in one's immediate control. This is the sudden flash of insight, realizing in an instant, out of the blue, by direct intuition, that you are the whole works. This happens to a person who is not aware that he is aware. There is spotlight consciousness, as it is described, where an individual's attention is on the task at hand, and there is floodlight consciousness where his focus, whether he knows it immediately or not, is on the big picture. It is when floodlight consciousness breaks through suddenly into spotlight consciousness that there is the abrupt insight.

KARMA AND REINCARNATION

Both Vedanta and Buddhism ascribe to the principle of karma which says that for our every deed in this existence there is, for better or ill, a consequence, baggage which we then carry from one life to the next. But what exactly is karma?

"Karma" means action, work, a deed, not only physical action, conscious or reflex, but mental action as well, conscious or subconscious. Karma is everything that we think or do. Karma also means the Law of Causation, i.e. from this follows that.

When we do an action or think a thought, Vedanta says that this action and this thought, even though they apparently are over and done with, will inevitably, sooner or later, produce some effect. This effect may be pleasant, unpleasant, or a mixture of both. It may be long delayed. We may never notice it. We may have altogether forgotten the action or the thought which caused it. All the same, it will be produced.

Moreover, every action and every thought makes an impression upon the mind. This impression may be slight at first, but if the same action or thought is repeated, it will deepen into a groove of sorts, down which our future behavior will easily tend to run. These mental grooves we call our tendencies, which makes it possible to predict fairly accurately just how each of us will behave in any given situation. To put it another way, the sum of our karmas represents our character. As new karmas are added and previous karmas exhausted or neutralized, our character changes.

While agreeing on the phenomenon of karma, Vedanta and Buddhism have different views of reincarnation. With the former, a person who dies does not, except in the case where he or she has identified with the Atman, pass into a permanent state of being in heaven or hell or elsewhere, but is reborn into another existence which will terminate in due time and necessitate yet another birth. Rebirth follows rebirth in an endless chain and may occur in any of a series of planes, or upon earth in any of the forms of life, vegetable, animal, or human.

Since Buddhism does not accept the existence of a soul of any kind, it has a decidedly different take on reincarnation. In Buddhism the karma-laden ego passes from one life to the next but in the manner of, for example, a seal that is pressed upon wax. What passes from the former to the latter is the elements engraved on the seal and then retained by the wax. Nothing substantial is involved. Another analogy is the passing of a flame from one candle to another. In both Buddhism and Vedanta this process is quite impersonal, which is to say that unlike Christianity, there is no old man with a white beard sitting on a celestial throne passing judgement on one's fate. And one's fate does not include an endless heaven or hell.

Vedanta holds that the individual can escape from karma and reincarnation at any moment, as soon as he realizes, which can take a while, that he is the Atman. The Atman is not subject to reincarnation. In Buddhism, getting free of karma and reincarnation comes only with the attainment of enlightenment, when the individual ego ceases to call itself "I" and dissolves in the featureless purity of Nirvana, as a drop of spray is merged in a sea.