Watching the Tree: A Chinese Daughter Reflects on Happiness, Spiritual Beliefs and Universal Wisdom. Adeline Mah Yen
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and the entire text will fit on a single sheet of newspaper. Divided into eighty-one separate, tersely worded and rhymed chapters, its concepts are subtle and profound, but its cryptic language lends itself to many different interpretations.
The central theme revolves around the tao
The book begins enigmatically:
The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao;
The name which can be defined is not the eternal name.
The tao is the ancestor of all things. It is powerful but is also invisible and inaudible. It is hidden and nameless dao yin wu ming
Lao Zi’s metaphysical concept bears an uncanny resemblance to the teachings of the Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1632–77). Like Lao Zi, Spinoza finds his God in the whole of the universe, which contains all reality. His pantheism essentially restates the same ideas as the Tao Te Ching. Rejecting the concept of a personal and emotional God, or one with human attributes who meddles in human affairs, Spinoza envisaged a higher being who acts according to the necessity of His own nature and does not interfere in the everyday life of men. Lao Zi expressed it thus:
Hence the wise man depends on non-action for action,
Continues teaching his ‘lessons of silence’.
Yet the multitudinous creatures are influenced by him;
He does not reject them.
He nurtures them, but claims no possession of them,
Oversees them, but does not put pressure on them.
Accomplishes his purpose, but does not dwell on his achievements,
And precisely because he calls no attention to his actions
He is not banished from the completion of his tasks.
In the Tao Te Ching, the tao is compared to water, which accomplishes much while being meek and receptive. It is all-powerful in its humility. Called by some the ‘master of camouflage’, Lao Zi taught that power can be disguised as weakness and non-violence will overcome force.
Nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water,
Yet nothing surpasses it in battling the hard and strong.
Like water, the tao affects the universe through wu wei: a non-invasive and persuasive love whose strengths are its virtue and submission. Lao Zi wrote:
The best of the best is similar to water.
Water aids and benefits ten thousand different creatures,
Yet it neither tussles nor contends,
But rests content in places despised by others.
It is this which makes water so near to the Tao.
Man should consider his home a good dwelling place,
In his thoughts, he should value the profound,
In his friendship, he should be gentle and kind,
In his words, he should be truthful and sincere,
In his government, he should abide by good order,
In his affairs, he should be proficient and effective,
In his actions, he should seize the opportune moment.
Although many of the concepts in the Tao Te Ching reach lofty and mystical heights, their effectiveness can be understood and appreciated only through personal transformation. Lao Zi anticipated this problem:
When a scholar of great talent hears the Tao
He tries his best to practice it.
When a scholar of average talent hears the Tao,
He is torn between applying it and not applying it.
When a scholar of inferior talent hears the Tao,
He laughs loudly at it.
If it did not provoke laughter, it would not be the Tao.
He wrote of the sense of hidden divine influence in the universe, expressing the mystery and beauty of the tao poetically:
Look at it, but one sees nothing,
It is called illusory.
Listen to it, but one hears no sound,
It is called undetectable.
Feel for it, but one touches a void,
It is called minuscule.
These three, because they elude us,
Meld to become one.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century traditional western thought based on Aristotelian logic of the either/or classification is being increasingly challenged by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Ironically, 2500 years ago Lao Zi had already written about the rise of relative opposites in his book:
Existence and non-existence are dependent on each other
Difficult and easy give rise to the same concept
Long and short are derived by comparison
High differs from low only by position
Sound and echo blend into one harmony
Front and back follow one another in sequence.
In 1927 Werner Heisenberg propounded the Principle of Uncertainty for subatomic particles. ‘In the subatomic situation,’ he wrote, ‘the effects introduced by the observer to observe the phenomenon automatically introduces a degree of uncertainty in the observed phenomenon.’ Lao Zi expressed similar sentiments in these words:
He who knows does not speak;
He who speaks does not know.
Dualistic thinking in terms of unified opposites was expressed thus:
Thirty spokes are joined at the nave to build a wheel
But it is the space between that lets it function
Lumps of clay are fashioned into a vessel
But it is the emptiness within that renders it useful
Doors and windows are cut to build a room
But it is the enclosure that furnishes a shelter
As we benefit from that which exists,
Let us recognise the utility of that which does not.
Lao Zi’s intuition about the hidden might of the tao is succinctly captured in a few short lines. Without the empty space of the hub in which the wheel turns, the cart cannot move. Without the hollowness in the vessel, the vase has no function. Without the emptiness behind the windows and doors, there is no place to live.
The development of Taoism can be roughly divided into three periods:
Ancient Period (from 571 BC to 221 BC, when China became united by Qin Shi Huang Di, first emperor of China)
Middle Period (from 221 BC to AD 906)
Third Period (from AD 906 to the present).
The wisdom of Lao Zi was supplemented and expanded two centuries after its inception by Zhuang Zi (Master Zuang), who wrote the book also known as