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The Unitarian Universalist Society
of Fairhaven, Massachusetts
Flowing with the Tao
Rev. Ann C. Fox
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A friend told me a story about her four-year old son. He was born with a bright red, heart-shaped birthmark over his right eyebrow. One day, the family was discussing Sunday school. She thought she'd ask him "What do you know about God?" He replied, "God is in my heart." She was so thrilled at the marvelous job their Sunday school was doing that she picked him up and hugged him. Then he pointed to his birthmark and said, "God is here in my heart." She still hugged him but laughed at her own misunderstanding. Many Unitarian Universalists say, "God is love." However, preschool children cannot understand the concept of God. They're very literal. If the Sunday school teacher had told this small boy that God is love, this child obviously associated it with the heart on his brow.
At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, many people of reason questioned the Calvinist idea of a vengeful, selective male God. It was simply too literal for them. The Unitarian and Universalist religions were born out of their inability to accept the traditional view of a God who sends blessings to the righteous and curses to wrong doers (personal observation just doesn't support it) and who acts in history.
Our Unitarian Universalist history is characterized by a struggle for a way of describing the force that draws us together. Our hymns that address the holy are either evidence of our inability to clearly say who or what God is or evidence of our decision not to be clear. The hymn we just sang says finally, "Great, living God, never fully known…far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing…" The hymn we'll sing later is called "Mysterious Presence, Source of All." We have settled for the mystery. This is why many Unitarian Universalists have an attraction for the Tao, the mysterious power or force described by the ancient Chinese sages.
The Third of the seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism calls us to spiritual growth. We must each determine for ourselves what constitutes spiritual growth. My own spiritual teachers have all said, each in their own way that studying scripture is one way to spiritual growth.
This year, a group of us here have studied eastern religions. This study ended with Taoism. Following our study of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, I offered a sermon on each. So today I offer one on Taoism. Let us have a look at Taoism's roots, its main ideas, and some of its scripture beyond the scripture that David read to us earlier.
The ancient Chinese believed that when there is serious deterioration in human culture, a wise person appears with a teaching that will help us achieve a better balance. The Chinese honor the old believing that wisdom comes with age. The text that David read from is called the Tao Te Ching. It is supposed to have been written by an old man called Lao Tzu. The words Lao Tzu mean Grand Old Master. He lived at the time of the Buddha and Confucius. He was supposed to have been born in the year 600 BCE. As an old man, he is said to have thought that the people were unable to understand his teachings and so he decided to leave his city and go off into the mountains, riding on his water buffalo. The gate keeper of the city, thinking Lao Tzu was a very great thinker, asked him to at least write down all that he knew before he left. Lao Tzu agreed and stayed three days to write down his knowledge. The collection of his thoughts are said to make up the Tao Te Ching. Legend has it that he then he got on his water buffalo and rode off into the sunset towards Tibet.
Scholars doubt that Lao Tzu ever existed. The collection of sayings may have been collected over a thousand years and compiled as we know the Tao Te Ching in the third century BCE. The title Tao Te Ching can be translated as The Way and Its Power or the Scripture of the Power of the Life Force. It is a slender volume. Huston Smith tells us that you can "read it in a day or in a lifetime." (Smith. 197). I personally am not surprised that the author of this book disappeared without claiming any fame and glory. His writings do not seek to impress but simply to set forth a different way of perceiving the world and life.
Of the Power, the Tao Te Ching says (translations that follow are from Novak, pp 146-164):
1.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.
2.
The Tao is like an inexhaustible well: used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
4.
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
Empty yet inexhaustible.
It gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
51.
Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao.
It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free,
It takes on a physical body, and lets circumstances complete it.
That is why every being spontaneously honors the Tao.
Taoism tells us that we cannot know the Tao by our intellect. Thus we cannot name it. We can only know it by our intuition. We can only perceive it or intuit it, never explain it. This attitude set Taoism at odds with Confucianism, which sought to explain everything.
Do you hear the mystery in the description of the Tao? The author never tries to make the Tao concrete. My own spiritual teacher, Jose Stevens, said that he uses the term Tao for the divine principle because it has less baggage around it than the word God that has had so much negative doctrine. How does it correspond to your own concept of a Divine Principle?
What I have said so far is the easiest to understand of Taoism. We are speaking here of philosophical Taoism, the philosophy that is described in the Tao Te Ching. Another aspect of the Tao Te Ching is that of the opposites and of the balance of opposites. David's reading told us:
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other.
You might have seen the symbol of ancient China called the Yin/Yang. It is a big circle with a back to front "S" shape. One side is black (yang or male energy) with a white dot, the other is white (yin or female energy) with a black dot. The dots indicate each carries the potential of the other. The Tao Te Ching actually counsels us to be like a woman---receptive and accepting.
To deal with the opposites of life, this scripture counsels us:
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action watch the timing.
No fight: No blame.
This scripture is particularly concerned with leaders being facilitators of the best that is in the person. This is the counsel for good leadership:
57.
If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control. . .
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have, the less self-reliant people will be.
Thus the Master is content to serve as an example
And not to impose his or her will.
59.
Center your country in the Tao and evil will have no power. . . .
I hope you can hold these concepts in your mind while I shift now to two other aspects of Taoism. So let us leave philosophical Taoism and turn very briefly to religious Taoism. It is like any other other religion you have known but more fantastic. In all cultures, many people need or prefer a close personal god. Religious Taoism has many gods and goddesses from which to pick and choose. There are many heavens and hells where one's ancestors reside. If an ancestor wants to get him- or herself into a higher level of heaven or hell, he or she will send you curses that manifest in things going wrong in your work, business, or family until you make offerings to satisfy his or her superior. This would involve having a shaman or priest being a diviner to find out who it is that requires offerings and what the offerings should be (often a contribution to the temple or priest). This heaven and hell hierarchy reflected historical china. It is very superstitious. People would be afraid of a person brushing up the dust in their house for they'd be stirring up the ghosts of their ancestors. But it is also very rich in mythology that makes little sense to us but can remind us of Christian medieval saints, devils, heavens and hells and being able to buy a relatives place out of purgatory..
Almost all modern-day Chinese accept another aspect of Taoism: it is the health and exercise part of the Tao. With no necessity of belief in a divine principle, the average Chinese person accepts the existence of chi (pronounced chee). Chi is essentially stuff, that creative energy that runs through every living and non-living entity of the Universe. It may also be more than the sum total of the Universe but that we cannot know. This stuff runs through our bodies. Imagine the spread-eagle diagram of Michealangelo. The channels begin at the top of your head and run on either side of the spine. Two offshoots run from the neck through the shoulders and arms and fingers. Two more channels run from the bottom of the spine down through the legs, feet and toes. These channels are meridians. When we are ill, the Chinese believe that the chi is stuck and needs to be unstuck by acupuncture or accupressure so that the body can heal itself.
If you go to Boston Common before 6:30 am any morning, you will see many Chinese people doing Tai Chi. Usually they will be next to a tree. Do not look at them face on or they will stop in embarrasment. Look at them from your periphery vision while you walk. You may catch sight of one of them pushing the invisible chi from the tree towards his own body to help it heal. Know that they do not think of this energy as God. They may not believe in God per ce, but they may believe in chi as a divine principle substance. So, then, chi flows through everything there is. It is in you and around you and in and around everything else.
So what can it mean to flow with the Tao. It means to be in the present moment, without thought of the past or future, experiencing the essence of what the present moment holds without any association. Perceiving the Tao in all things, requires a quietness and stillness of mind and body such that our level of awareness sees, hears, and feels every aspect of the object of observation, including its within and its without. This is a quiet being with. It cannot be explained, it must be perceived. It is easiest to practice first in nature, allowing the self to be absorbed in, say, observation of a flower or a body of water, a sunset, a humming bird hovering over a flower. Then this same attention can be practiced in observation of people, and finally in the exchange of relationship.
You can practice this for yourself in your own way if you relate to this Tao concept. If some of this sounds Buddhist-like. It is. The Chinese sages were enamoured of Buddhism when it first came to China in the third century BCE and over the next several centuries it entered massively into China. They equated many Buddhist terms with Chinese Taoist concepts. From ancient times, various emperors have established Taoist colleges and made knowledge of the Tao Te Ching a required text for all government jobs. Taoist scholars were hired just for consultation. In the 1960's Mao Tse Tung killed most of the priests and scholars of these monasteries. Nowadays western scholars have been helping the Chinese to restore their ancient knowledge.
I said earlier that our Third Principle called us to spiritual growth. This is true but it isn't the full Principle. The Third Principle states: We covenant to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. "Acceptance of one another" allows us our individual interpretation of the divine principle or whatever we define as the attraction to come together in community. Perhaps we could even celebrate our freedom to encourage one another to define for ourselves our relationship with the universe. Is there spiritual growth in acceptance of one another? Oh yes, indeed, there is! Here are some final words from the Tao Te Ching:
47.
Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.
The most thoughtful science acknowledges a mysterious underpinning of this world. May the mystery engage us and may we accept and honor the differences amongst us for the sake of our spiritual growth.
References
The following have informed and inspired this sermon:
Cleary, Thomas, The Essential Tao, New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1998.
Novak, Philip. The World's Wisdom, New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1995.
Smith, Huston. The World's Religions, New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins, 1991.
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