Diary 1/18/25: Daoism Study
I often receive questions from students. A student told me that, in response to my advice, she is taking lessons in Daoism with scholar Livia Kohn twice a month. I gave a few suggestions for her and those who are interested in studying Daoism. Studying Daoism is a long, difficult and possibly costly education.
Consider the different areas you have to study:
1. Massage/tuina
2. Martial arts (Tai chi chuan, Pa-Kua, Hsing-I)
3. Nutrition/dietetics
4. Herbology
5. Dieda/traumatology
6. Feng-shui/Wind and Water/ geomancy
7. Astrology
8. Essential oils
9. Stones and Minerals
10.Neidan/internal alchemy
11.Sexology
12.Acupuncture
13.Qigong/Daoyin
14.Zhan Zhuang/Stationary Postures (these are in a way like the different asanas in Hindu yoga)
Several of these subjects have their own “syllabus” or “curriculum.” Tai chi chuan, for instance, would include Zhan Zhuang, fajing, Push Hands, and fist and weapons forms and some forms of meditation like Microcosmic Orbit. With some of these subjects, a book could help but you may have to go to a formal school or get a teacher (if you could find one). And then there are the foundational texts/scriptures, a few of which are listed below. For a guide to the Daoist canon/Daozang, try to get the 3-volume text compiled by Kristoffer Schipper, et al. A friend gave it to me for my birthday some 15 years ago. It is like the encyclopedia of Daoist writings. Schipper was also one of the editors of the museum guide “Taoism and the Arts of China” and the author of “The Taoist Body,” an extremely informative book on Daoist principles and practices.
Red Pine/Bill Cooper has one of the best translations of the Dao De Jing with commentaries from the masters. He has a new hard-cover edition of the DDJ. James Legge’s early translation has been reprinted with illustrations and an introduction by Livia Kohn.
The Complete Writings of Zhuangzi/Chuangtzu by Burton Watson is probably available on Amazon. If you cannot get it, you’ll probably find another translation but only for the Inner Teachings.
Also get a copy of Sunzi’s The Art of War. It is a great book on strategy and tactic. As a healer, it helps in how you heal not just diseases but the whole person and the society and environment/habitat.
The Yijing/I Ching/Book of Changes is a more difficult text. I had my first copy of it in 1968 when I started studying Yang Tai Ji Quan at Hua Eng in Manila’s Chinatown. It was an early translation by James Legge. Since then I’ve acquired at least10 different translations. The one I often use now is by Al Huang. I have 3 copies. I gave one to a Filipino student recently. Confucius said that if 50 years were added to his life, he would devote it to the study of the Yijing. The thing is, study the Yijing not only as an oracle and the cycle of life but as a guide in internal alchemy/neidan.
I’ve made it a habit to get my hands on every new version of these books.
There are a few other basic texts. When you have more time (and money), try to get the books that cover specific Daoist subjects like the healing arts.
Within each subject, there are different schools and styles and so-called lineages. There are also the other arts: calligraphy, painting, poetry (the 3 Perfections), music, etc. Daoism is a comprehensive system and has a comprehensive paradigm of the human body. Taking one subject or reading the Dao De Jing would not make you a Daoist.
Of course, as the expression goes: this is just the finger pointing at the moon. You still have to find a teacher who could guide you through the path of each subject and there are several. It is more complicated when and if you enter a monastic system which would include rituals and ceremonies in a temple or mountain retreat.
Another area that you have to consider if you are interested in Daoism and eastern practices is the issue of “lineage,” a word that originally meant a bloodline but has been used also to refer to a teaching or a method. It does not mean just genetics – father or mother to son or daughter through the family ancestry but also to a culture, style or a curriculum. Hence, lineage would include for instance a style of practice like Tai chi chuan, a style of healing, religion or yoga. In this sense it is an uncertain concept. What does it include? Who are the masters or what style or technique does it embrace? In Shaolin, for instance, there are Hung Gar styles that trace their ancestry to the Buddhist monk Hung Hei Gun. What was the curriculum of courses, principles and practices handed down like an artifact, from generation to generation? Have they been packaged as a kind of unchanging curriculum that you could trace back to the first patriarch? Or has there been a change –addition of a form or concept or subtraction — down the line?
With Tai chi chuan, it is a little more complicated. In the first place, the name Tai chi chuan is of recent invention. We do not know where the name came from or who invented it. There is really no consensus in the story. Did Tai chi chuan come from a wandering Taoist, a family or a temple? Was it really choreographed by Zhang Sanfeng in Wudang mountain? There are several origins stories, none of them reliable as history. What was the original “curriculum”? What forms were taught? Who put together the practices and the principles? Has the curriculum remained the same through all its history? I suspect that the curriculum evolved over the years. Perhaps it started with simple postures and movements and then it systematized the movements and forms and eventually the curriculum and the “philosophy.”
There is another more recent origins story from the Li family about three masters who are credited with having created or choreographed 3 forms called “Wuji HPMA,” Taiji HPMA” and 13-Momentums.” I am still studying the relevant documents. It should be easier to understand the documents, especially since there is a long commentary by scholar and Tai chi chuan practitioner Douglas Wile. But it is not so easy. Mr. Wile himself concluded:
No, the dust has not yet settled on the taijiquan origins debate, and
the new documents may have raised the particulate level to new
highs. It is perhaps premature to say for sure whether there are grains
of truth among that dust, much less to expect consensus around a
new paradigm. Two things are certain at this stage, however: That
no history of taijiquan can be written today without taking the new
documents into account and that the debate itself has thrown fault lines
in China’s intellectual landscape into sharp focus.
So we’ll leave that origins story in the meantime and let the historians stir the pot!