Unleashing the Good that is Already Within
Thomas Merton is man I like
to listen to as he thinks out loud. He
has written two of my favorites books, Contemplative
Prayer and The Way of Chuang Tzu
(although it is twenty page introduction to the second volume that captivates
me in that book).
In The Way of Chuang Tzu he tells us we can
only understand CT in context, because this thinker was responding to,
interacting with, other thinkers, his contemporaries and others from earlier
ages. “But before we can understand even
a little of his subtlety, one must situate him in his cultural and historical
context.”
This is a common claim among
social scientists and cultural critics, though rarely followed through on as
thoughtfully and intentionally and meaningfully as Merton does here. In fact, Merton argues one might see CT as
silly or profane or illogical if one did not interpret his words as responses, countervailing
forces, designed to illuminate (both the strengths and weaknesses in the position
being responded to as well as CT’s own position, without actually ‘taking sides’
in the traditional sense).
Which leads to one of my
favorite passages (pages 22-24)…
Merton notes that CT is
concerned about both the means and the ends that Confucians focus on, because “the
whole concept of ‘happiness’ and ‘unhappiness’ is ambiguous from the start,
since it is situated in the world of objects.
This is no less true of more refined concepts like virtue, justice, and
so on. In fact, it is especially true of
‘good and evil,’ or ‘right and wrong.’
From the moment they are treated as ‘objects to be
attained,’ these values lead to delusion and alienation.
Therefore CT agrees with the
paradox of Lao Tzu, ‘When all the world recognizes good as good, it becomes
evil,’ because it becomes something that one does not have and which one must
constantly be pursuing until, in effect, it become unattainable.
The more one seeks ‘the good’
outside oneself as something to be acquired, the more one is faced with the
necessity of discussing, studying, understanding, analyzing the nature of the
good. The more, therefore, one becomes
involved in abstractions and in the confusion of divergent opinions. The more ‘the good’ is objectively analyzed,
the more it is treated as something to be attained by special virtuous
techniques, the less real it becomes. As
it becomes less real, it recedes further into the distance of abstraction,
futurity, unattainability. The more,
therefore, one concentrates on the means to be used to attain it. And as the end becomes more remote and more
difficult, the means becomes more elaborate and complex, until finally the mere
study of the means becomes so demanding that all one’s efforts must be
concentrated on this, and the end is forgotten.
Hence the nobility of the Ju
[Confucian] scholar becomes, in reality, a
devotion to the systematic uselessness of practicing means which lead
nowhere. This is, in fact, nothing but
organized despair: ‘the good’ that is preached and exacted by the moralist thus
finally becomes an evil, and all the more so since the hopeless pursuit of it
distracts one from the real good which one already possesses and which one now
despises or ignores.
The way of Tao is to begin
with the simple good with which one is endowed by the very fact of existence. Instead of self-conscious cultivation of this
good (which vanished when we look at it and become intangible when we try to
grasp it), we grow quietly in the humility of a simple, ordinary life, and this
way is analogous to the Christian ‘life of faith.’ It is more a matter of believing
the good than of seeing it as the fruit of one’s efforts.
The secret of the way
proposed by CT is therefore not the accumulation of virtue and merit taught by
Ju, but wu wei, the non-doing, or
non-action, which is not intent upon results and is not concerned with
consciously laid plans or deliberately organized endeavors.
‘My greatest happiness
consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain
happiness…if you ask ‘what ought to be done’ and ‘what ought not to be dong’ on
earth to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have [a fixed
and predetermined] answer’ to suit every case.
If one is in harmony with Tao…the answer will make itself clear when the
time comes to act, for then one will act not according to the human and
self-conscious mode of deliberation, but according to the divine and
spontaneous mode of wu wei, which is the mode of action of Tao itself, and is
therefore the source of all good.
The other way…is
fundamentally a way of self-aggrandizement…CT is not against virtue, but he
sees that mere virtuousness [of Ju] is without meaning and without deep effect
either in the life of the individual or in society.
Once this is clear, we see
that CT’s ironic statements about ‘righteousness’ and ‘ceremonies’ are made not
in the name of lawless hedonism and antinomianism, but in the name of that
genuine virtue which is ‘beyond virtuousness.’
Once that is clear, one can
reasonably see an a certain analogy between CT and St. Paul’s…teaching on faith
and grace, contrasted with the ‘works of the Old Law.’”
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