Turtle Planet. Yun Rou
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to communicate to other members of their species in murky, underwater conditions. Other tortoises vocalize loudly when mating.
Turtles inhabit Earth’s most intimate spaces. So alien to us and yet so familiar that we routinely take them for granted, turtles remind us that despite our preoccupation with finding intelligent life out in the cosmos, such life is right here beside and below us. They remind us that we are most definitely not alone, though that is something that could also be said of many, many other types of animals. The real reason I chose them is that of all the creatures that crawl, fly, swim, run, slither, burrow, and climb in and through our world, they are the ones closest to my heart and the ones I know best.
Daoism, Meditation, and How a Monk Talks to Turtles
Popular with Chinese elites since the fifth century BCE, Daoism can be seen as a religion, a philosophy, or both. Its fundamental permeability makes it nearly inextricable from the Chinese culture that birthed it, although right from the start, it proposed looking at the world in a way quantum physics, game theory, systems theory, and medicine all came to echo millennia later. Perhaps the first coherent environmentalism and argument for sustainable living, Daoism also foreshadowed Deep Ecology, a scientifically dubious but emotionally appealing philosophy first advanced in 1973 by the Norwegian Arne Næss and later popularized by British author James Lovelock.
The word Dao suggests a path or way, yet it is neither an entity nor a verb. Perhaps it is a process or presence, though Laozi, greatest of all Daoist sages, warns us not to confuse the word Dao with Dao itself. In the same sense that the word moon is not the heavenly orb, Laozi declares, “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal [real] Dao.” In fact, it is easier to say what Dao is not than what Dao is. It is neither goodness nor God, though some see it as benevolent. Perhaps it is easiest just to think of Dao as nature, itself a complex and multilayered concept. Venerating nature and its workings, Daoists see all living things as part of the same vast, ever-changing tapestry of matter and energy. We believe that in our original state, unsullied by propaganda, commerce, and the bewildering array of agendas forced upon us in our modern lives, we all have access to the direct, spiritual experience of “something going on.”
Westerners know more of Daoism than they realize, as George Lucas clearly drew upon Daoism when creating his wildly popular Star Wars franchise—so much so that late entries into that filmdom even feature overtly Daoist symbols. In that fictional world, the rebels represent Daoists while the empire represents the competing, more rigid philosophy of Confucius, which relies upon strict codes of moral conduct, government regulations, and inviolable social roles and positions. On the surface, Star Wars chronicles the struggle between Jedi masters who understand universal forces and wield swords like kung fu heroes on the one hand, and generals and soldiers who embrace guns and bombs as the tools of tyranny on the other. On a deeper, more real-world level, it is the conflict between lovers of nature and lovers of law and order, between free-thinkers and conformists, between those who embrace evolution and change and those who fear and resist both, between, dare I say it, literal (not political) liberals and conservatives.
What Star Wars fans do not know is that in addition to conjuring a love of nature and an Eastern view of the world, Daoism offers physical practices, rituals, techniques, poetry, literature, music, and arts, all of which brim with exoticism, wildness, insubordination, revolutionary evolutionism, a deep love of truth, individuality, diversity, and a nonjudgmental, egalitarian world view. Today’s flesh-and-blood Daoists may not carry light sabers, but they have little tolerance for submitting to authority nor to conforming to societal norms. Rather, they live balanced, spiritually rich lives, embracing compassion, frugality, and humility, Daoism’s three spiritual treasures. The ideal Daoist life is one of free and easy wandering, whilst being maximally effective with minimum effort. A term for this attitude in action, or nonaction, is wu wei.
Change is integral to Daoism and is represented by the yin/yang symbol seen on everything from surf-board-toting pickup truck windows to hip clothing. Yin and yang are terms commonly used to describe forces, states, energies, or qualities and are typically portrayed as opposites. More accurately, they exist only inside the circle that encompasses them and are, together with that circle, a symbol connoting motion and constant change. The symbol, properly called the taijitu is best seen as a movie rather than a still image. In that movie, yin and yang exist only in relation one to the other and are in a constant state of exchange, one perpetually replacing the other. Think of the way day replaces night, the two changing places at dawn, and how male and female each contain a bit of the other. This rich tapestry of constant change is quintessentially Daoist and is seen as an accurate portrayal of the way nature “works.”
Although many schools and lineages people the history of Daoism, and many great teachers were themselves students of even greater ones, it is also true that many highly respected masters received their education in a fashion recognizable to followers of other faiths. As the God of the Old Testament is said to have transmitted the Ten Commandments to Moses or the Archangel Gabriel planted in Muhammad the seeds of the Quran, ascended masters in the Daoist tradition, essentially gods, sometimes contacted individuals they deemed worthy of profound lessons. Such deities include Lord Lao himself (a deified version of the author of the Daodejing) and the so-called Eight Immortals, some of whom were purely fictional characters while others were mythical versions of actual historical personages.
We cannot share the exact experience of receiving such transmissions, for we cannot even get inside the heads of people right next to us, never mind people long dead. What we do know, though, is that colorful adventures, verbal instructions, visions, and more were grist for the mystical mill. Such mystical experiences have been linked to extended and rigorous meditation sessions, sometimes in groups in a sylvan setting, sometimes alone in a cave in the dark for weeks or even months on end. Although few Daoist teachers these days speak much about it, some early Daoist shamans may also have used consciousness-altering drugs, either marijuana or frank hallucinogens, as part of their consciousness-raising rituals.
Though present in the mystical traditions of other religions as well, exploring the types and nature of consciousness is a quintessentially Daoist pursuit. Indeed, Zhuangzi, one of the most famous and most beloved of all Daoist sages—and China’s first novelist, too—wonders aloud, in a famous passage in his eponymous work, whether he is a man dreaming he is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man. The fact that he chose a butterfly for this inquiry, as opposed to a prince or warrior or king, in turn reveals just how important the natural world is to Daoists, and just how strong the continuous link is between all living things.
The information transmitted during these trances sometimes pertained to the circulation of energy in the body, sometimes to the nature of reality, and often to achieving immortality, still a major goal of religious Daoist practice. Once a religious figure received this information, he or she was likely to share the new information with their flock. This sharing involved sermons and so-called spirit-writing (fuji or fuluan in Mandarin Chinese). Spirit-writing is deeply ingrained in Daoist tradition and is a major source of classical Daoist wisdom to this day. In some writings, the author holds a question or goal in mind and seeks an answer or guidance. In other writings, the author empties his or her mind and waits for the deity’s input. Both methods are legitimate, and each has their potential pleasures and pitfalls, benefits and limitations.
In keeping with the spirit-writing tradition, which has greatly inspired me over the decades of my Daoist career, I offer this book. Rather than receiving transmissions from Lord Lao or any of the classical Eight Immortals, I am taught by immortal turtles. Sometimes I ask them questions and sometimes they tell me what’s on their minds. When the first of these chelonian masters appeared to me, I could only feel a great sense of “rightness” to the experience, for shelled reptiles had been with me all my life. I felt, and still feel, no more deserving of these marvelous transmissions than, I suppose, any historic Daoist sage did when confronted by a luminous teacher offering blessings. All the same, I drank the wisdom like a fine wine and