tao

Heart and soul, body and mind, meet me on the river of time
Van Morrison

Taoism is an ancient body of knowledge that has manifested itself in a multitude of diverse phenomena throughout Chinese history. Its influence has been so pervasive that it is difficult to name a single facet of Chinese civilization that has not been touched by it in some way. There is an enormous amount of specialist Taoist literature extant, much of it couched in a number of esoteric languages. The methods that have been employed in Taoist practice over the ages are also many and varied. They vary from philosophic exercises to physical exercises such as T’ai Chi. There are also many concentration exercises using such aids as special patterns of walking, thinking and writing. Other exercises involve human service and the cultivation of certain types of social relations. In his Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura, says that Taoism deals with the aesthetic aspects and Zen with the practical aspects of being. And there is much to be said as both are no sectarian religions, know no dogmas but only stress the importance of finding your strength in your 'self'. A strength which is natural and which is all around. Zen can be found and practiced in every activity, the Tao is that which cannot be seen but is everywhere.

You cannot describe it, you cannot picture it,
You cannot admire it, you cannot sense it.
It is your true self, it has nowhere to hide.
When the world is destroyed,
it will not be destroyed.
Mumon, Zen monk

The earliest known Taoist text seems to be the I Ching, the Book of Changes. The I Ching writings have the outward form of oracles (cf. provocation). After the I Ching, the most famous and popular of Taoist classics is undoubtedly the Tao te ching. This text was compiled and recorded at a time of great conflict, not surprisingly therefore, much of the Tao te ching is presented in terms of advice to rulers. The reputed recorder of it is Lao-tze. For Taoists the present is the moving infinity, it is the place of the Relative. Relativity seeks adjustment; adjustment is art. The art of life lies in the constant readjustment to our surroundings. Taoism accepts the mundane as it is and, unlike Confucians and the Buddhists, tries to find beauty in our world of woe and sorry. The Sung allegory of the Three Vinegar Tasters explains admirably the trend of the three doctrines. Sakyamuni, Confucius and Lao-tse once stood before a jar of vinegar -the symbol of life- and each dipped in his fingers to taste the brew. The matter of fact Confucius found it sour, the Buddha called it bitter, and Lao-tse pronounced it sweet. The Taoists claimed that the comedy of life would be more interesting if everyone would preserve the unities, the balance. To maintain the proportion of thin gas and give place to others without losing one's own position was the secret of success in life. We must know the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of totality must never be lost in that of the individual. In ethics the Taoist had great problems with the laws and the moral codes of society, for them right and wrong were but relative terms. Our standards of morality are based on the needs of society in the past, but society will not remain the same. Observance of tradition involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. Education, they said, in order to keep up the big illusion, encourages a form of ignorance. Our anxieties are the result of our frightful self-consciousness. We find it hard to forgive others because we know that we ourselves are in the wrong. We seek refuge in pride because we are afraid to accept the truth about ourselves.
It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living. D.W. Winnicott
This is exactly what Winnicott refers to. This is in fact what creativity is all about. Creativity is to be found by the individual by perceiving the environment and making the connection. Lao-tse illustrates this by his favourite metaphor of the vacuum. He claimed that only in vacuum lay the truly essential. The reality of a room, for instance, is to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. Creativity lies in the vacuum an individual can create within himself, vacuum has every potential because it is all containing, the whole can always dominate the part. As physicists tells us the universe started with the big bang. The motion and sounds of this big bang are what makes the universe expand and grow bigger and bigger. This big bang, the Taoists say, is the Tao the motion that makes everything move or grow.
The nature of the Tao
The Tao is empty and yet useful; Somehow it never fills up. So profound! It resembles the source of All Things.
Lao-tse
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Very much like a stone thrown into a pond, the ripples and waves will make everything in the pond move. It is the individual's task to find the natural movement and adjust to that, then one can act in accordance with the laws of nature. Crossing a big river in a small boat will be easier when one goes with the stream and not against it. The difficulty may very well be to find out which way the rivers streams.
Creativity is a potent force, when the correct environment is created, it combines with the dormant force in the environment and becomes a liberating energy (Chinese Ch'i). It is considered the life force and symbolized by yin and yang.
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Very much related to the Tao seems Active imagination (see also there) which relates to the unconscious in a vertical dimension, whereas working with relationship, is taking on the unconscious in the horizontal dimension. The former leads to the experience of the "God—Within," as Spiegelman has called it, whereas the latter leads to the "God—Among." One can see that the relationship to one's self (active imagination) is naturally complemented by a psychological relationship with another person and vice-versa. A further limitation of active imagination, even when pursued
to the "end," is that the method does not seem to effect, positively, one's relation to the "world," except by the withdrawal of projections. An exception, of course, is that the method regularly leads to the occurrence of synchronistic events, in which one is related to the world in a deep, mystical way. The ongoing, reciprocal relationship with outer reality, however, remains essentially untouched. The hope, of course, is that one is so changed by the inner work that the "world" also changes -- at least one's relationship to it. This image, fantasy, or expectation is a central one in
Jungian psychology and might be called "The Rainmaker Image." It is based on the following story, told by the Sinologist, Richard Wilhelm (author of the Golden Flower): Richard Wilhelm was in a remote Chinese village which was suffering from a most unusually prolonged drought. Everything had been done to put an end to it, and every kind of prayer and charm had been used, but all to no avail. So the elders of the village told Wilhelm that the only thing to do now was to send for a rainmaker from a distance. This interested him enormously and he was careful to be present when the rainmaker arrived. He came in a covered car, a small wizened old man. He got out of the car, sniffed the air in distaste, then asked for a cottage on the outskirts of the village. He made the condition that no one should disturb him and that his food should be put down outside the door. Nothing was heard of him for three days, then everyone woke up to a downpour of rain. It even snowed, which was unknown at that time of year. Wilhelm was greatly impressed and sought out the rainmaker, who had now come out of his seclusion. Wilhelm asked him in wonder: "So you can make rain?" The old man scoffed at the very idea and said "of course" he could not. "But there was the most persistent drought until you came," Wilhelm retorted, "and then -- within three days -- it rains?" "Oh," replied the old man, "that was something quite different. You see, I come from a region where everything is in order, it rains when it should and is fine when that is needed, and the people also are in order and in themselves. But that was not the case with the people here, they were all out of Tao and out of themselves. I was at once infected when I arrived, so I had to be quite alone until I was once more in Tao and then naturally it rained!"