What Is Daoism?
A complex religion - hard to summarize but the SomonaSage will try
(Picture: Gateway to the Baoan Daoist Temple, Taipei, Taiwan)
Daoism is an old philosophy which transformed, over several hundred years, into a religion. As time passed, its adherents made a number of claims which proved to be false. This was noticed and by 1800, Daoism had ceased to be distinct from Sino-Buddhism. Today, Daoism is like Jainism, or Zoroasterism, not quite dead but close.
Note: Most people in American spell Daoism as Taoism. I prefer using Daoism because I hear the Beijing accent version of Mandarin every day and they say “Dao” not “Tao”. It’s the same thing, either way you spell it.
Daoism is said to have started based on the teachings of a mysterious figure named Lao Tzu / Laozi. Evidence for Lau Tzu’s existence is poor but if he was an actual man, he lived around the time of Confucius / Kongfuzi about 2,500 years ago. Lau Tzu (literally Old Master, and thus, not a name) is said to have written the Dao De Jing - the Book of the Way of Virtue.
Seven hundred year later, as the Han Dynasty was falling to pieces, a group of Daoists took over part of Szechuan province and set up the first Daoist state, transforming Daoism into an organized religion. They called their religion the Way of the Celestial Masters and they are part of the famous Three Kingdoms period of time. Daoists made several important claims at this time:
By following their philosophy and life-style rules, people would be free from disease.
True masters of Daoism gained the ability to fly through the air, gained power over natural forces such as wind and rain.
The greatest masters of Daoism became immortal and ascended into a lesser heaven, where they continued to work on perfecting their spirit, with the goal of becoming one of the gods.
Unfortunetly for the Daoists, none of these claims proved to be true. Their followers still came down with illnesses, their leaders did not have powers over wind and rain, and none of their leaders gained immortality - other than in stories. Despite these problems, Daoism continued to exert a hold on the imagination of millions of Chinese people over the next 1,000 years. Time after time we read of rich and powerful men who adopted Daoist practices in an attempt to gain immortality or supernatural powers, or just renew their sex drive so they could have more children later in life - a very important thing for men, not just in China.
Daoism in the Tang and Sung Dynasties took on a new role within Chinese society, that of the third way, the alternative to Sino-Buddhism, and the increasingly religious direction of neo-Confucianism. Daoism around 1200 began to split into two paths: (1) a philosophy which argued that the world was fundamentally knowable though meditation and alchemy and (2) a religion which acted as low-cost healthcare for the poor and sick.
The serious philosophical Daoists slowly declined in numbers as - despite their best efforts - they simply could not get Daoist alchemy to work. Several Ming Dynasty emperors tried to extend their life-span by following Daosit practices and yet, they still died, and not in their 90s, but in their 40s or 50s. No rational Chinese man could continue to believe in Daoism as a strategy for gaining immortality when even the Emperor of China, with access to the highest quality drugs, elixiers & experts, failed to have any success in following Daoist dietary & lifestyle practices.
However, the low-cost healthcare side of Daoism continued all the way to the 1950s. It is my belief that Daoist magic works to help people in the same way that placebos work in the USA and Europe. It is a fact that if a man who you think is a doctor, dressed in his white coat, gives you a pill which you think is medicine. and you take it, about 1/3 of the time you will get better - even though the pill is just made of a bit of sugar. The placebo effect is real. Yes, most of the time it fails, but as low-cost health-care, it works better than nothing.
Most Daoist priests in the Ming and Qing Dynasty, went from town to town, dressed in highly theatrical costumes and proclaimed they could drive out demons (gui) which were making people sick. They would sell cheap amulets made of tin or zinc, and if you paid them a modest fee, they would do an exorcism ritual, involving colored smoke, mirrors, and an assistant or two who would dress up as a demon which the Daoist priest would then drive off in a commanding voice using archaic language. These ceremonies would be performed late at night, with the family of the sick person seated at a safe distance. I have no doubt the Daoist rituals worked, sometimes. As I said, we now know that the placebo effect is real.
Daoist monasteries existed in China all the way till the Chinese Communist Party took over in 1949. A few of the Daoists relocated to Taiwan after 1949 and so some remnant of traditional Daoism still exists today. In Taipei, the Daoist Temples are nearly indistinguishable from the Buddhist temples, which tells me that the Daoism has essentially merged with Sino-Buddhism in the modern era.
The core tenant of Daoism remains: men can attain a state of physical perfection which results in extremely long and healthy life, and - for a few - actual immortality. The fact that this has not been verifiably documented for at least the last 1,300 years has been a significant problem for Daoism, but hope springs eternal.
The other beliefs of Daoism such as: the way is the non-way, or action is non-action, or you master the way by not thinking of what you are doing - these are just fragments of illogical nonsense. Much like Zen koans, this part of Daoism is useless as it offers no guidance for making any decisions in life. If you want to follow a philosophy which offers no answers to any serious questions and just answers questions with more questions, be my guest. That part of Daoism is dead in China and barely alive in Taiwan, while Sino-Buddhism is still very much alive with hundreds of millions of followers.
One last note: it takes little skill in reading between the lines to see that Daoism offers little for women. In Daoism, a man can - theoretically - attain perfect health by expelling all of the Yin element within his body. Yin is an attribute of the feminine so how does a woman expel the Yin element? If there is an answer to this question within Daoism, I don’t know it.
The SonomaSage is very grateful to Phyllis Brooks for her supurb translation of Professor Robinet’s magnum opus Taoism - Growth of a Religion.