After many years studying the Daodejing (published in Tao and Method), I came to the view that the central value unifying the very diverse sayings that appear in this book, is best described as “organic harmony.” This is something like our ideal of “being natural”–except that Laoists think this does not mean just “doing what comes naturally.” There are many “natural” human tendencies (such as competing for for social status) that they regard as obstacles to achieving the deep organic harmony in one’s being that they value most highly. So this does not mean just resting content with the present state of one’s own being, but is an ideal that might take a long time to achieve. Organic harmony is a kind of cultivated naturalness.
I found two other writings that illustrate this idea of cultivated naturalness very well.
One is from a writing by John Blofeld, who traveled visiting Buddhist and Daoist communities in China in the 1930’s, before the Communist revolution closed all monasteries in China. What he noticed when he approached a particular Daoist monastery, he noticed a subtle change in the surrounding woods.
It could be seen that the recluses’ love of unspoiled beauty had not deterred them from lending nature a helping hand. The immediate environs of the Valley Spirit Hermitage gave the impression of a series of rocks and caverns, overhung by ferns and luxuriant plants, which just happened to emerge from the undergrowth in this vicinity, adding enormously to its picturesqueness. What aroused my suspicion was that no other section of the mountain, apart from the chasms and waterfall, looked so exactly like the original of a Daoist painting. There was, of course, no obvious symmetry, but yet a sense of underlying harmony that was just a shade too pronounced to be altogether natural. Whoever had been responsible for making the ‘guided wildness’ of the approach to the hermitage even lovelier than nature’s untouched handiwork had surely been a master of subtlety, for there was not an object within sight of the stairway of which one could confidently affirm it had been tampered with.
So the Daoist monks did not leave “nature” alone. What they did required first getting a sense of what was already beautiful in the woods, but then doing a lot of subtle work to enhance this “natural” beauty.
The point here is similar to another passage I found in another early Daoist writing called the Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu). This is about a woodcarver artist named Ching, who was commissioned by a local Duke to construct a wooden stand for a large bell.
When the bellstand was complete, those who saw it were amazed, [because it] seemed like [something belonging to the realm of] spirits. The Marquis of Lu went to see it, and then asked, “By what secret art did you make this?” [Ching] answered, “Your servant is [only] an artisan, how could I have a “secret art”? However, there is one thing.
Suppose your servant is going to make a bellstand.
I dare not let my qi dissipate.
I make sure to fast, to still my mind.
After fasting three days, I no longer presume to think of recognition and reward, of rank and salary.
After fasting five days, I no longer presume to think of praise or blame, of skill or clumsiness.
After seven days, I am so concentrated that I forget I have four limbs or a body.
By this time [for me] there is no Duke or court.
The skill [for the work] concentrates and outside distractions disappear.
Only after all this do I go into the mountain forest.
[There I set about] observing the nature of Heaven [‘s work].
[When I discover wood whose] form and substance have reached perfection
Only after this is [everything] complete, [enabling me to] see the bellstand.
Only after this do I set my hand to work.
[If things do] not [happen] like this, I give up.
Thus I join Heaven to Heaven.
This again is a good example of cultivated naturalness. Woodcarver Ching had first to spend a week fasting and clearing his mind of all worldly distractions, then going to the woods observing the natural beauty of trees produced by divine handiwork, until finally he came to a tree which inspired him, enabling him to “see” an extraordinarily beautiful bell-stand in this tree. The “heavenly” state of mind that he achieved through preparation enabled him to see the “heavenly” beauty of a bellstand potentially present in the tree. But of course he did not leave the tree alone in its natural state, but set about carving it into a beautiful bell-stand.
These are good analogies helping to understand the ideal state of mind which Laoists wanted to cultivate in their own being. What this requires is first paying attention to the unique character of your own being, your natural likes and dislikes, natural interests and natural priorities for attention and concern, natural instinctual responses, natural talents, and so on. But then do not leave these alone, but imagine what your own unique being would be at its very best, when all these elements were working harmoniously together. This would be an “organic” harmony, based on your own unique nature. Cultivating this ideal state of mind is what is necessary to “get Dao.”
In the Laoist imagination, this Dao or “organic harmony” is imagined as an “original” state, which people in their normal state have departed from (amounting to a Laoist “legend of the Fall” from an ideal original state). So several sayings urge people to “turn back” or “return” to this ideal “origin.” This is how we should understand those sayings that picture Dao as “the origin of the world” (a key element of the Laoist “origin myth.”)
Thus it is helpful to make a distinction between (1) the Laoist ideal of (cultivated) “naturalness,” and (2) what might be called “human normalcy”. The Daodejing assumes that all of us taken in our ordinary “normal” state have already departed greatly from the ideal of “natural” organic harmony which they urge “returning” to. In Western terms, this is what makes Daoism what Max Weber called a “salvation religion”: there is something radically deficient about all of us in our present “normal” state, from which we need to be “saved” by “getting Dao.”
The Daodejing has a somewhat detailed analysis of those factors embedded in human normalcy that cause movement away from this ideal “origin,” a movement which we need to reverse by “turning back” to Dao as organic harmony.
One of the main such factors is competition for social status, the desire to gain recognition and the admiration of others, requiring conforming to social pressure. This causes people to try to live up to social standards foreign to their own nature.
Laoists extend this to any kind of striving for ideals conceptualized in the intellect and imposed on one’s being by will-power (as opposed to deriving ideals from careful attention to one’s own natural tendencies). One image relevant here is the image of an “uncarved” block of wood, representing one’s own “uncarved” state, which people often try to “carve up” into ideal shapes forced on one’s being from outside. This is the context for understanding Laoist opposition to “forcing.”
This is also the context for understanding the Laoist ideal of “not working” or “not doing” (wu wei). This can’t mean literally exerting no effort at all. “Working” here refers to attempts to try to impose on one’s being norms or standards derived from sources outside one’s own being. Organic harmony, cultivated naturalness, as an ideal state of organic harmony, does not come naturally, but takes a lot of carefully directed long-term efforts at self-cultivation.
Laoists experienced organic harmony as something that, once achieved, provides a person with a sense of internal nourishment and satisfaction in one’s own being, Unfortunately, we all tend to ignore this possibility and seek for external stimulation and excitement, another way in which we depart from and lose contact with our “original” nature.
