In the West today, Daoism is associated with alternative medicine, self-reliance, the Green Movement, a growing awareness of and interest in Chinese culture, and George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, where spiritually-inclined rebels in search of a just and natural life battle tyrannical, high-tech imperial armies bent upon expansion and conquest. Daoist themes are also increasingly found in rewilding, mindfulness, sustainable agriculture, industry without planned obsolescence, human rights, and self-care. Its circular, black-and-white symbol appears on everything from surf wear to bumper stickers. Interestingly, its Western popularity is even driving a Daoist resurgence in China, revitalizing an important aspect of traditional Chinese culture. International interest in Daoism is also generating the hopeful expectation that this edgy, out-of-the-book form of ancient wisdom might just be able to heal the world.
Daoists don’t believe in any separation between man and nature. Abuse of nature, therefore, is tantamount to abusing ourselves. Indeed, because its seeds sprouted in Neolithic proto-China, a time when men and women lived in necessary and intimate association with nature, Daoism may be the original environmentalism. Daoism sees everything in the known and unknown universe as part of an interconnected fabric characterized by a cyclical, balanced, and harmonious interplay between opposing forces or qualities known as yin and yang. Yin is associated with the feminine, dark, heavy, mysterious, and slow; yang, with the male, bright, weightless, obvious, and quick. Yin and yang are not static qualities, but rather are fluid concepts constantly shifting, changing places, dancing, one becoming the other in a myriad of different ways. Many recent discoveries in quantum mechanics, theoretical physics, astronomy, cosmology, and mathematics support this fluid, not-merely-binary model, along with the concept of multiple layers of reality, or multiverses found in very early Daoist thought.
Daoism’s growing popularity worldwide likely arises from the way it generates a community of like-minded people who have found its tenets practical and usable as both a spiritual system and recipe for living. Using intellection, meditation, and physical practice, its adherents develop calm, clear minds and an abiding sense of the rationally unfathomable fabric out of which our world is made. This peaceful state serves as a welcome antidote to the frenzy of modern living, and to the disenfranchised sense of alienation and isolation that leads many people to depression and despair. It counters both the personal and societal challenges arising from beliefs that Planet Earth is all about us.
Daoism’s shamanic emphasis on understanding natural cycles and energetics also puts it very much in tune with the modern science of biology, particularly when it comes to the nuanced relationship between body and mind. Thousands of years before the field of epigenetics was coined, Daoism addressed the same processes that branch of science studies today—namely, the way our environment can shape our beliefs and moods, and how those mental states can in turn change our physical bodies. Modern scientists engaged in basic research, driven by curiosity rather than corporate or government directive, are doing the same work early Daoists did when they closely observed nature. Perhaps it is this underlying link that allows Daoism to exist as a complement to modern science rather than standing in opposition to it like so many other world religions.
Over time, Daoists cultivate what are known as the Three Treasures: compassion, frugality, and humility. Daoists see these as our natural inclination, the way we saw things, and behaved, during simpler times, before agriculture and industry, when we were able to more easily fit in with the unfolding of nature. It was then, and it is now, perfectly normal to be sensitive to the feelings, wants, and needs of others, utterly regular to be careful with resources, and quite effortless to be humble when we realize our tiny place in the universe and our insignificant role in the unfolding of history. These are not, therefore, qualities to strive for but rather ones that exist within us at all times. No matter how violent, unpredictable, or treacherous the seas of life may prove, Daoism teaches us that if we but lightly seek these qualities under our skins, we will find them in ample supply.
Religious Daoism exists in pockets across China. It features multiple lineages and sects. These answer to no central authority, do not exclude other belief systems (Daoists who are also Buddhists are common), and do not proselytize. This expression of Daoism, however, stands apart from the focus of this book, which is on the philosophical principles that both antedate and underpin its ritual manifestations. Beyond this enormously powerful body of wisdom, Daoism is also interesting for its far-flung community, and for the fact that its adherents enjoy reduced preoccupation with material things and a rekindling of their inner light.
Living a Daoist lifestyle means staying cool, calm, and collected, all the while sensing the unfolding of events and the subtle energies at work in the world. This rock-steady, insightful state is so personally rewarding, it may be the primary driver of the global Daoist awakening. Daoists call this state wuji, the same term used to describe a step in the Daoist cosmogony, or creation story. Analogous to the void from which God created heaven and earth as chronicled in the Book of Genesis, wuji is a state of perfect stillness—empty but pregnant with infinite possibility. In wuji, anything and everything is about to happen, but nothing yet has.
When the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great entered the Phrygian capital of Gordium (in what is now Turkey), he was presented with a knot so thick and tight, nobody could untangle it. His answer was to slice through it with his blade. Our prejudices, limitations, habits, and beliefs are our own version of that Gordian Knot. We can spend lifetimes trying to untangle it, or we can cut through it in one fell stroke, returning to wuji by bringing yin and yang into balance within ourselves and then in the world outside. The process of returning to wuji is called tai chi, part of the name for the increasingly popular martial art that serves as the backbone for my personal Daoist practice.
Another way in which I personally cultivate wuji is to guide others in doing the work the world requires. That is the purpose of this manifesto. I may not be able to physically restore tropical rainforests, save whales, end factory farming, prosecute the cause of global birth control, wipe out tyranny and the poisonous concept of the free market, educate the ignorant, and help to see wealth redistributed worldwide, but I can certainly have an effect on the intentions of those who are in positions to achieve these goals.
A summary of my apparently unlikely trajectory from Manhattanite to monk shows why it was not really so very unlikely after all. That’s because I was born a seeker. While certain folks swim hard and fast against the river of life, others navel-gaze on the bank, and some simply float along without a care, seekers yearn to know what secrets lie beneath the river’s surface. We, seekers, are a suspicious lot. We distrust glib and facile answers, and we doubt what we’re told about the world. We worry that, if we conform to social norms, we will lose touch with the truths buried deep inside our own consciousness and want to dig for those truths. While many people focus their efforts on career, money, luxury, fame, sex, family, and community, seekers are driven to discover their own true natures, and that of the world.
As a child growing up in the home of a famous physician, I found some of the people around me—scientists, teachers, artists, even a Nobel Peace Prize laureate—to be genuine and compassionate. Yet others, often the richest and most famous, struck me as vainglorious and narcissistic. More to the point, I sensed waves of disquiet in them. They went to prison for tax evasion. They killed their wives. They were depressed. Their children hated them. They committed suicide. Even so, the general population seemed enchanted by their celebrity lives. This made no sense to me, and set me to questioning the prevailing social narrative.
If what I was being told about wealth and fame and power was suspect, might other tales be equally dubious? What about religion and politics? What about life and death? If business is really the primary way in which people interact, should personal profit really be its sine qua non? What about equal opportunity for every color and creed? What about social contracts and class warfare? Questioning memes and mores set me to looking at larger issues. Is America’s role as beneficent policeman to the world accurate, for example, or are we simply a self-serving empire? What about socialism and communism? Is the military campaign against