4 - The Yang and the Yin of Chinese Thought

In common with the rest of mankind, the Chinese began by both fearing and worshipping Nature. From the way things happened in the world around them, it was quite obvious that some forms of Nature were friendly and that others were not. So naturally they began to do all manner of things to please the friendly ones and to quieten the unfriendly. They had festivals, they made sacrifices, they offered gifts—all to keep on the right side of the good spirits (Shen) and of the bad spirits (Kwei).

Then—possibly about 3,000 years ago—a change began to take place. A few men, who were more thoughtful than most, began to wonder about the why and how of Nature. Instead of just accepting it as it seemed, they wondered how it all came about, and at last they put forward a clever explanation.

Everything in the whole of creation, they said, is made up of two opposites—the Yang and the Yin. These opposites appear in as many different forms as there are in Nature itself and in as many different amounts. While a rock may have a great deal of Yang in it, and very little Yin, a clump of grass may have mostly Yin and very little Yang, and there is absolutely no end to the varying amounts of these two in every single thing on Earth and in Heaven.

Yang is a strong, masculine kind of force, while Yin is a weaker, feminine kind. If Yang is the hardness of a tree-trunk, Yin is the softness of its leaves. If Yang is heat, Yin is cold. If Yang is light, Yin is shade.

But there is never any rivalry or unfriendliness between them. They exist together in perfect harmony, because there is a power much greater than either of them, a power impossible to describe or to imagine. Its name is Tao, and it brings all things together. Yang and Yin could not possibly quarrel with each other or divide, because there is Tao. Tao existed long before they did—long before anything did. It never started, and it will never finish.

If man lives quietly and peacefully, under the laws of Nature, his affairs go well, and he is happy. But if, as so often happens, he flies in the face of Nature, and chases after his own selfish ends, he upsets the delicate balance between the Yang and Yin in his own life. He destroys the perfect flow and rhythm, and nothing but trouble comes his way.

It may be said that, in the beginning and down through many generations, no other group of people had quite as deep-rooted a sense of unity with Nature as had the people of China.

But Yang, Yin, and especially Tao were shadowy, formless, and difficult to understand. So, in their need for something more definite in the way of gods, the people worshipped the great T'ien, who lived in Heaven and was master of all. They also worshipped the god immediately under him, Shang Ti, who had complete control over people, animals and the Nature spirits. And they also worshipped their ancestors. Not only the ancestors of their own families, but also the spirits of dead emperors, and heroes, and sages.

In addition, they held special festivals every year, first to ask the gods to send them good crops, and later to give thanks for a good harvest.

To be sure, T'ien and Shang Ti seemed a long way off, but the spirits of sun, moon, rivers, trees, mountains, and so on, were with them all the time, and their ancestors also were always with them—actual members of their family, who must be constantly remembered, honoured and fed.

Looked after in this way, they brought good fortune to the whole family. But the spirit of an ancestor who was not properly looked after could be very troublesome. He would most likely drift off and join a gang of demons, then come back and do real mischief.

Then came the sixth century B.C. That was the time when Buddha lived in India. And strange to say, in this same century, not only one, but two great thinkers were born in China. The first of these was Lao Tzu, the second was Confucius—and you could scarcely find any two people more different than they were.

We know so little about Lao Tzu that he seems almost to have been imagined rather than real. About Confucius, on the other hand, we know every detail, even what he ate, and how he fished.

Lao Tzu, although he was a very learned man himself, believed that people needed no learning in order to achieve goodness and happiness, that they needed only to understand the wonderful working of Tao and to feel this, deep inside them, trust it and rest in it. Confucius, however, believed that goodness and happiness depended upon education above all other things.

Lao Tzu taught that the spirit of man is greater than his body, and that this goes on living after his body dies. Confucius refused to teach anything whatever about life after death. He said it was not very likely he could understand that, when he understood so little about life right here on earth.

Lao Tzu believed that, to gain goodness and happiness, one must live an utterly simple life hand-in-hand with Nature, far from all the rules and manners of civilisation.

Confucius believed that goodness and happiness were possible only for those who knew exactly how to behave well at all times in their dealings with other people. While Lao Tzu concerned himself with things of the spirit, Confucius concerned himself only with the practical, everyday affairs of man's existence on earth.

Yet the strange thing is that the teachings of these two great thinkers joined together in moulding the Chinese way of thought for many generations. True, there were those who leaned more toward Lao Tzu. Because of his devoted striving for an understanding of Tao, these were called Taoists. Then there were those who leaned more toward Confucius. But all Taoists sometimes thought the way Confucius did, and all Confucians sometimes felt the way Lao Tzu did. In short, these two completely different attitudes were part and parcel of the whole Chinese character. They were indeed the Yang and the Yin of the pattern of Chinese thought.

Confucius—the Yang

In China, wonderful stories used to be told about the birth of Confucius. An extraordinary animal, the kilin—part unicorn, part dragon, part deer—came and presented to his mother a precious stone on which was written 'Thy son shall be a throneless king'. Then, two kindly dragons patrolled the skies to ward off evil influences, and five old men came down from heaven to keep guard over the place where he was born, and all the while the air was filled with strange, heavenly music.

We cannot be quite sure about all that, but what we do know for certain is that Confucius was born in 551 B.C., into a noble though not wealthy family, and that his father was well over two metres high—a real hero of a man, as strong as he was huge.

Little Confucius (or Ch'iu K'ung, as his parents called him) was given a great welcome when he arrived, because the nine other children born to his parents had all been girls, and that was considered more than enough girls in the China of those days. After all, a man had to have a son to keep worshipping him after he died, since his daughters would be kept too busy worshipping their husbands' ancestors.

When Ch'iu K'ung was three years old his father died, and, although his mother was very poor, she did not let this stand in the child's way. She saw to it that he had an excellent education, and her efforts for him were not wasted. Not only did he learn quickly, but he showed such depth of wisdom and understanding that grown-up people came to him for advice about their problems even while he himself was still a mere boy.

He was only 17 when he took his first Government position, looking after a section of the public lands and the storage of grain. This brought him into contact with rival herdsmen who always seemed to be quarrelling about something; and not only did he have a happy knack for settling arguments, but he always sent them off with something special to think about, a neat little phrase full of wisdom. The idea was that they could think this over at their leisure, then use it as a guide when the next bit of trouble cropped up.

Even at this early age, Ch'iu K'ung was able to express the most difficult reasoning in a few short, simple words which the least educated people could understand. So altogether it is no wonder that people began to call him K'ung-fu-tze—or Confucius, as we pronounce it— meaning K'ung the Philosopher.

He worked very well in his position, and was well paid for it, but his dearest wish was that he might spend the whole of his life studying poetry, music, history, and the works of ancient writers. As it was, he did the next best thing, and studied untiringly through all of his leisure hours.

But he had to earn a living, and especially when he turned 19 and his mother chose a wife for him. As the obedient son that he was, he married this girl, and they had one son and two daughters. But Confucius was not as good at marriage as he was at other things. He no doubt expected his wife to be as perfect as he was himself in every detail of behaviour, and he made a constant study of this. He was faddy and finicky over everything. He would not sit on a mat that was the slightest bit crooked. He must always face a certain point of the compass at meal-times, and he had all kinds of strict rules about the style and colour of clothes, as well as about special manners for every occasion. It must have been very difficult indeed for his wife or anyone else to find favour with him.

Then, when he was 23, his mother died, and—as was the custom—he retired, to go into mourning for her for three years. He was not altogether unhappy about this, because, although he truly grieved for his mother, he also had three years of almost unbroken time for his beloved studies. Afterwards, instead of returning to his Government position, he bought himself an ox-cart and set out in it to travel the open roads. A band of pupils and admirers followed him, walking at an easy pace beside his cart and listening to his many teachings—about music, poetry, history, manners, archery, morals—all kinds of subjects. He had something wise and learned to say about them all.

By the time he was 34 he had 3000 pupils, but Confucius wanted more than this. He wanted to find a ruler of a city who would give him a chance to put his many excellent ideas into practice on a large scale. And he did at last find such a ruler, but not until he was 52 years old.

The Duke of the province called Lu realised how contented and orderly were all the people who came under the influence of Confucius, and as he himself had a particularly troublesome lot of people to govern, he asked Confucius to become his Minister of Crime.

Confucius accepted gladly, and before long the people of Lu were living happy, useful lives. This was because Confucius acted as a good doctor would act: a doctor who finds out what it is that is making his patient sick, then removes it. Confucius tried to find out why the people of Lu were so troublesome, why they were always committing crimes and getting into gaol. He discovered that nearly all of them were uneducated and poor.

He made arrangements for them to be taught useful trades and crafts so that they could earn a good living, and interesting things with which to fill their minds. In about two years' time, Lu was the happiest and most well-to-do province in China.

Realising this, the rulers of all the other provinces became so jealous of the Duke of Lu, that they plotted to undo all of Confucius's good work. Cunningly, they sent the Duke a gift of many fine racing horses, and 80 beautiful dancing girls, to distract his attention from the serious work of government. The Duke foolishly fell into this trap, and spent so much time in idle pleasures that Confucius could no longer persuade him to go to the trouble of passing good laws, and Lu quickly fell back again into its old unhappy state.

Bitterly disappointed, Confucius left the province, and travelled around once more for 15 years. He was poor and homeless, with a deeply sorrowful feeling that his life was a failure. But without being able to help it, he kept on studying, constantly learning more and more, from books and from life itself—and teaching as he learned. When he died, at the age of 73, large numbers of students mourned him for three years, as though he had been their own father.

Confucianism and the Chinese People

But this was only one of the many interesting things that happened. The sayings and lessons of Confucius were collected into a book called The Analects, and he had an adoring grandson named Keigh, who spent his whole life teaching the wisdom of the great philosopher.

About 100 years later, his teachings were spread much farther again by Mang-tze (we pronounce it Mencius), who travelled far and wide throughout China, carrying the message of Confucius. Emperors began to worship at his grave, and gradually the people of China came to think of him as a god.

The present system of government in China has outlawed the teachings of Confucius. But for 25 centuries before this, the whole of China's great civilisation was moulded around them. They lay at the root of Chinese education, and had to be thoroughly understood for all public service examinations.

However, the Chinese people did not have to have Confucianism forced upon them by their Government. They accepted it because they loved it, and because they were already prepared for it by their own inborn feelings.

Although the Chinese were worshippers of Nature, they had never been deeply religious the way the Hindus were. Their way of thinking was mainly down-to-earth, and the teachings of Confucius were down-to-earth, too. He simply would not be drawn into any discussion about what we call the soul of man, or life after death. He taught people how to be happy and good right here and now.

Then, the Chinese had always been great lovers of family: the love of parents for their children, the loving obedience of children toward their parents, the constant honouring of ancestors, and the feeling of the whole country as one large family, with the emperor as its father.

So, as a true man of his time, Confucius was actually voicing the deep-rooted instinct of the Chinese people themselves—and, as a man of great wisdom, he developed this into something of real dignity and nobility.

Taken together, they do not form a religion, but rather a set of rules for good behaviour under all possible human circumstances.

He explained that people were related to one another in five different ways: as husband and wife, parent and child, old and young, ruler and subject, friend and friend. In all of these relationships and at all times, he insisted that everybody must be loyal and truthful, polite and self-controlled, without ever going to extremes in anything, and that, above everything else, one should always be kind.

These rules applied to everyone without exception: to a parent as much as to a child, to the emperor as much as to the lowliest of his subjects. In fact, being a father or an emperor was by no means easy, because it was then your duty to give a perfect example of character and conduct 24 hours a day.

Confucius believed that people are all good to begin with, but that many of them become bad as time goes on, because they are not properly educated, or because they are following the example of an evil ruler. If a ruler wants his people to be honest, peaceable and happy, he must begin by being beyond reproach himself. And where there is goodness, there must be happiness. You cannot have one without the other.

This theme of the 'good life' ran right through the teachings of Confucius day after day, year after year, and at last, when one of his students asked him what he actually meant by goodness, this is how he answered:

'Behave when away from home as though you were in the presence of an important guest. Deal with the common people as if you were officiating at an important sacrifice. Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.'

And if you cannot have happiness without goodness, you cannot have goodness without love. So, naturally, Confucius enjoyed talking about love more than about almost anything else—not in a small, personal sense, but for instance, like this:

'The joy of doing something not for the prize one would get in the end but for the joy itself, that may be called love. To do good not because you are going to be rewarded for it, ... but because you enjoy doing good, that is to love good. Love is its own reward. Love makes all things look beautiful. Love offers peace .... A heart set on love can do no wrong'.

Lao Tzu—the Yin

But with all these beautiful thoughts about love, Confucius never went as far as did Lao Tzu, who insisted that we should return good for evil. No, said Confucius— reward good with good, and bring evil to justice. If you reward evil with good, how then do you reward good? Lao Tzu had a very simple answer for this:

'To those who are good to me, I am good. And to those who are not good to me, I am also good. And thus all get to be good.'

He insisted upon this most strongly. He said:

'Repay evil with good .... Heaven arms with love those it would not see destroyed.'

The meaning of this was clear enough, although Confucius never agreed with it. But there was much of what Lao Tzu said that Confucius could not even understand. We are told that once, after the two great men had met and talked together for a while, Confucius came out and said to some of his students:

'I know how the birds fly, how fish swim, and how animals run .... But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how it mounts on the wind through the clouds and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao Tzu, and I can only compare him to the dragon.'

Now, this seems a strange thing to have said, for a man as clever as Confucius. But then, Lao Tzu was what we call a mystic, and quite often he spoke with a kind of vision that had nothing to do with reason. Some people work things out step by step, like problems in mathematics; other people discover them suddenly, in flashes of inspiration. Reason belongs to the mind, but inspiration belongs to the spirit and is often experienced by mystics.

We know very little about the life of Lao Tzu, except that he was born into a poor family, and that, while he was still very young, he became Keeper of the Royal Archives in the city of Lo-yang. He very much enjoyed his work here, because of all the wonderful books in the Imperial Library which he was able to read and study.

As the years went by, he became one of the most learned among men, and well known throughout the province for the wisdom of his thoughts. It was now that people began to call him Lao Tzu, which meant Old Master, and it is by this name that he has been known ever since.

Life was very pleasant and peaceful for Lao Tzu, with his books and studies and thoughts. So much so that he would have liked it to go on like this for ever. But there was such corruption among those who were ruling the province that at last he began to feel bad about staying there. So, at the age of 90, he packed up a few modest belongings and set out, in a cart drawn by two oxen, to leave the province where he had lived all his life.

But when he came to the border, the gate-keeper recognised him, and asked him not to leave without first setting down in writing the thoughts and beliefs which had made him famous. Lao Tzu gladly did this, and by the end of a few days had written a small book filled with wonderful thoughts intermingled with such puzzling phrases that nobody could understand them. He then trundled away with his cart and oxen, and was never heard of again.

The book he wrote was called the Tao Te Ching, and became the Sacred Book of the religion Taoism. Taoism is so named because its great central idea is that Tao lies at the root of everything, and has absolute power. Tao is, of course, what we ourselves call God. It cannot possibly be described, because every description would take the form of something seen or heard or felt with our human senses, and this would limit Tao—yet the greatest truth about Tao is that it has no limits.

It is said that once, when Confucius asked Lao Tzu what Tao actually was, the old man answered:

'The heaven cannot help being high, the earth cannot help being wide, ... and all things of the creation cannot help but live and grow. Perhaps this is Tao. ... Fathomless, it is like the sea. Awe-inspiring, the cycle begins again when it ends. ... What gives life to all creation and is itself inexhaustible—that is Tao.'

The word Tao itself means a road or a way, but in the religious sense it means the way of life, and the only way to enjoy a good, happy and peaceful life is to carry the feeling of Tao within you, to trust it completely, and to do nothing for your own small self which might interfere with the working of Tao for the good of the whole world.

So once again it becomes clear that if everyone truly lived according to Taoism—or according to Buddhism, Judaism or any of the other great religions—we would have a world filled with kindness, understanding and love.

Certainly we could never have any quarrels or crimes, any selfishness, jealousy or wars.

But of course it is only a very few Taoists who really live their religion. And, unfortunately, there are great numbers of them who practise rites that seem rather like black magic. This is because they choose to ignore the many beautifully clear and simple truths in the Tao Te Ching, and explain the strange, difficult parts in foolish ways to suit themselves. They have come to feel that the greatest thing one can possibly achieve is to live for ever, right here on Earth. They believe that an island exists somewhere which gives immortality to anyone who finds it and walks upon it, and that there is a river which gives eternal youth to all who bathe in it. They also believe that there are goblins, devils, vampires, and many other bad spirits forever lying in wait to harm people, but that if these people keep carrying around with them certain charms and talismans, the bad spirits will not be able to hurt them.

Today there are about 30,000,000 Taoists in the world and if Lao Tzu could see what most of them are doing with his beautiful teachings, his heart might very well be broken.

But in the earliest centuries of Taoism, it was very different. Then, when it was linked with Confucianism in the moulding of Chinese thought, it dwelt upon the spirit of man while Confucianism dwelt upon his earthly experiences. It taught about the great wisdom and harmony of Tao while Confucianism taught how gentlemen should behave themselves. Taoism taught that there was a spiritual solution for all problems, while Confucianism taught that solutions could always be found in quiet reason and dignified conduct.

It is because of all this that we started by saying that Confucianism and Taoism could truly be considered as the Yang and the Yin—the body and the spirit—of traditional Chinese thought.