SUFISM AND TAOISM: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
by Toshihiko Izutsu 1983
First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo
This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984,
Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philosophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67.
=====
First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo
This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984,
Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philosophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67.
=====
Contents
Preface by T. Izutsu
Introduction
Part II - Lao-Tzii & Chuang-Tzu
I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu
II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
III Dream and Reality
IV Beyond This and That
V The Birth of a New Ego
VI Against Essentialism
VII The Way
VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders
IX Determinism and Freedom
X Absolute Reversai of Values
XI The Perfect Man
XII Homo Politicus
Part III - A Comparative Reftection
I Methodological Preliminaries
II The Inner Transformation of Man
III The Multistratified Structure of Reality
IV Essence and Existence
V The Self-evolvement of Existence
===
111 Dream and Reality
In the foregoing chapter we talked about the myth of Chaos, the
primordial undifferentiation which preceded the beginning of the
cosmos. In its original shamanic form, the figure of Chaos as a
featureless monster looks very bizarre, primitive and grotesque.
Symbolically, however, it is of profound importance, for the
philosophical idea symbolized by it directly touches the core of the
reality of Being.
In the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the reality of Being is
Chaos. And therein lies the very gist of their ontology. But this
proposition does not mean that the world we live in is simply chaotic
and disorderly as an empirical fact. For the empirical world, as we
daily observe it, is far from being as 'featureless' and' amorphous' as
the face of the bird-monster of the Shan Hai Ching. On the con-
trary, it is a world where we observe man y things that are clearly
distinguishable from one another, each having its peculiar 'name',
and each being definitely delineated and determined. Everything
therein has its own place; the things are neatly ordered in a hier-
archy. We live in such a world, and do perceive our world in such a
light. According to the Taoist philosophers, that precisely is
the malady of our Reason. And it is difficult for an ordinary mind
not to see the distinctions in the world. The world, in brief, is not
chaotic.
It will be the first task of a Chuang-tzü to shatter to pieces these
seemingly watertight compartments of Being, allowing us to have a
glimpse into the fathomless depth of primeval Chaos. But this is not
in any way an easy task. Chuang-tzu actually tries many different
approaches. Probably the easiest of them all for us to understand is
his attempt at the 'chaotification' - if we are allowed to coin such a
word - of 'dream' and 'reality'. By a seemingly very simple descrip-
tive and narrative language, he tries to raise us immediately to an
ontological level where 'dream' and 'reality' cease to be distinguish-
able from each other, 1 and merge together into something
'amorphous'.311
The following is a very famous passage in the Chuang-tzü, in
which the sage tries to give us a glimpse of the 'chaotification' of
things: 2
Once, 1, Chuang Chou,3 dreamt that 1 was a butterfty. Flitting about
at ease and to my heart's content, 1 was indeed a butterfty. Happy and
cheerful, 1 had no consciousness of being Chou.
Ali of a sudden 1 awoke, and Io, 1 was Chou.
Did Chou dream that he was a butterfty? Or did the butterfty dream
that it was Chou? How do 1 know? There is, however, undeniably a
difference between Chou and a butterfty. This situation is what 1
would call the Transmutation of things.
The latter half of this passage touches upon the central theme of
Chuang-tzü. In the kind of situation here described, he himself and
the butterfly have become undistinguishable, each having lost his or
its essential self-identity. And yet, he says, 'there is undeniably a
difference between Chou and a butterfly'. This last statement refers
to the situation of things in the phenomenal world, which
ordinarily calls 'reality'. On this level of existence, 'man' cannot be
'butterfly', and 'butterfly' cannot be 'man'. These two things which
are thus definitely different and distinguishable from each other do
lose their distinction on a certain level of human consciousness, and
go into the state of undifferentiation - Chaos.
This ontological situation is called by Chuang-tzü the Transmuta-
tion of things, wu hua .4 The wu hua is one of the most important
key-terms of Chuang-tzü's philosophy. It will be dealt with in detail
presently. Here 1 shall give in translation another passage in which
the same concept is explained through similar images. 5
A man drinks wine in a dream, and weeps and wails in the morning
(when he awakes). A man weeps in a (sad) dream, but in the morning
he goes joyously hunting. While he is dreaming he is not aware that
he is dreaming; he even tries (in his dream) to interpret his dream.
Only after he awakes from sleep does he realize that it was a dream.
Likewise, only when one experiences a Great Awakening does one
realize that all this6 is but a Big Dream. But the stupid imagine that
they are actually awake. Deceived by their petty intelligence,7 they
consider themselves smart enough to differentiate between what is
noble and what is ignoble. How deep-rooted and irremediable their
stupidity is!
In reality, however, both 1 and you are a dream. Nay, the very fact
that 1 am telling you that you are dreaming is itself a dream!
This kind of statement is hable to be labeled bizarre sophistry. (But it
looks so precisely because it reveals the Truth), and a great sage
capable of penetrating its mystery is barely to be expected to appear
in the world in ten thousand years.
312 The same idea is repeated in the following passage: 8
Suppose you dream that you are a bird. (In that state) you do soar up
into the sky. Suppose you dream that you are a fish. You do go down
deep into the pool. (While you are experiencing ail this in your
dream, what you experience is your 'reality' .) Judging by this,
no body can be sure whether we -y ou and I, who are actually engaged
in conversation in this way - are awake or just dreaming. 9
Such a view reduces the distinction between Me and Thee to a mere
semblance, or at least it renders the distinction very doubtful and
groundless.
Each one of us is convinced that 'this' is I (and consequently 'other
than this' is You or He). On reflexion, however, how do I know for
sure that this 'I' which I consider as 'I' is really my 'I'? 10
Thus even my own 'ego' which I regard as the most solid and reliable
core of existence, - and the only absolutely indubitable entity even
when I doubt the existence of everything else, in the Cartesian sense
- becomes transformed all of a sudden into something dreamlike
and unreal.
Thus by what might seem 'bizarre sophistry' Chuang-tzu reduces
everything to a Big Dream. This abrupt negation of 'reality' is but a
first step into his philosophy, for his philosophy does have a positive
side. But before disclosing the positive side - which our 'petty
intelligence' can never hope to understand - he deals a mortal blow
to this 'intelligence' and Reason by depriving them of the very
ground on which they stand.
The world is a dream; that which we ordinarily consider solid
'reality' is a dream. Furthermore, the man who tells others that
everything is a dream, and those who are listening to his teaching,
are all part of a dream.
What does Chuang-tzu want to suggest by this? He wants to
suggest that Reality in the real sense of the word is something totally
different from what Reason regards as 'reality'. In order to grasp the
true meaning of this, our normal consciousness must first lose its
self-identity. And together with the 'ego', all the abjects of its
perception and intellection must also lose their self-identities and
be brought into a state of confusion which we called above the
primordial Chaos. This latter is an ontological level at which
'dream' and 'reality' lose the essential distinction between them, at
which the significance itself of such distinctions is lost. On its subjec-
tive side, it is a state of consciousness in which nothing any longer
remains 'itself', and anything can be anything else. It is an entirely
new order of Being, where all beings, liberated from the shackles of
their semantic determinations freely transform themselves into one
another. This is what Chuang-tzu calls the Transmutation of things.313
The Transmutation of things, as conceived by Chuang-tzu, must
be understood in terms of two different points of reference. On the
one hand, it designates a metaphysical situation in which all things
are found to be 'transmutable' to one another, so much so that
ultimately they become merged together into an absolute Unity. In
this sense it transcends 'time'; it is a supra-temporal order of things.
In the eye of one who has experienced the Great Awakening, all
things are One; all things are the Reality itself. At the same time,
however, this unique Reality discloses to his eye a kaleidoscopic
view of infinitely various and variegated things which are 'essen-
tially' different one from another, and the world of Being, in this
aspect, is manifold and multiple. Those two aspects are to be recon-
ciled with each other by our considering these 'things' as so many
phenomenal forms of the absolute One. The 'unity of existence',
thus understood, constitutes the very core of the philosophy of
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu.
The same Transmutation can, on the other hand, be understood
as a temporal process. And this is also actually done by Chuang-tzu.
A thing, a, continues to subsistas a for some time; then, when the
limit which has been naturally assigned toit cornes, 11 it ceases to be a
and becomes transmuted or transformed into another thing, b.
From the viewpoint of supra-temporality, a and b are metaphysi-
cally one and the same thing, the difference between them being
merely a matter of phenomenon. In this sense, even before a ceases
to be a -that is, from the beginning -ais b, and bis a. There is, th en,
no question of a 'becoming' b, because a, by the very fact that it is a,
is already b.
From the second viewpoint, however, a is a and nothing else. And
this a 'becomes', in a temporal process, something else, b. The
former' changes' into the latter. But here again we run into the sa me
metaphysical Unity, by, so to speak, a roundabout way. For a, by
'becoming' and 'changing into' b, refers itself back toits own origin
and source. The whole process constitutes an ontological circle,
because through the very act of becoming b, a simply 'becomes'
itself - only in a different form.
Applied to the concepts of 'life' and 'death', such an idea natur-
ally produces a peculiar Philosophy of Life, a basically optimistic
view of human existence. It is 'optimisic' because it completely
obliterates the very distinction between Life and Death. Viewed in
this light, the so-called problem of Death turns out to be but a
pseudo-problem.
Although it is thus a pseudo-problem from the point of view of
those who have seen the Truth, Chuang-tzu often takes up this
theme and develops his thought around it. Indeed, it is one of his
most favorite topics. This is so because actually it is a problem, or the
problem. Death, in particular, happens to be the most disquieting
problem for the ordinary mind. 314
And a man's having overcome the
existential angoisse of being faced constantly and at every moment
with the horror of his own annihilation is the sign of his being at the
stage of a 'true man'. Besides, since it happens to be such a vital
problem, its solution is sure to bring home to the mind the
significance of the concept of Transmutation. Otherwise, every-
thing else is exactly in the same ontological situation as Life and
Death.
Now to go back to the point at which Chuang-tzu has reduced
everything to a dreamlike mode of existence. Nothing in the world
of Being is solidly self-subsistent. In scholastic terminology we
might describe the situation by saying that nothing has - except in
semblance and appearance - an unchangeable 'quiddity' or
'essence'. And in this fluid state of things, we are no longer sure of
the self-identity of anything whatsoever. We never know whether a
is really a itself.
And this essential dreamlike uncertainty of indetermination
naturally holds true of Life and Death. The conceptual structure of
this statement will easily be seen if one replaces the terms Life and
Death by a and b, and tries to represent the whole situation in terms
of the a-b pattern which has been given above.
Speaking of a 'true man' from the state of Lu, Chuang-tzu says:
He does not care to know why he lives. Nor does he care to know why
he dies. He does not even know which cornes first and which cornes
last. (i.e., Life and Death are in his mind undifferentiated from each
other, the distinction between them being insignificant). Following
the natural course of Transmutation he has become a certain thing;
now he is simply awaiting further Transmutation.
Besides, when a man is undergoing Transmutation, how can he be
sure that he is (in reality) not being transmuted? And when he is not
undergoing Transmutation, how can he be sure that he has (in
reality) not already been transmuted? 12
In a similar passage concerned with the problem of Death and the
proper attitude of 'true men' toward it, Chuang-tzu lets Confucius
make the following statement. 13 Confucius here, needless to say, is a
fictitious figure having nothing to do with the historical persan, but
there is of course a touch of irony in the very fact that Confucius is
made to make such a remark.
They (i.e., the 'true men') are those who freely wander beyond the
boundaries (i.e., the ordinary norms of proper behavior), while men
like myself are those who wander freely only within the boundaries.
'Beyond the boundaries' and 'within the boundaries' are poles asun-
der from one another.
i I,
Dream and Reality 315
They are those who, being completely unified with the Creator
Himself, take delight in being in the realm of the original Unity of the
vital energy14 before it is divided into Heaven and Earth.
To their minds Life (or Birth) is just the growth of an excrescence, a
wart, and Death is the breaking of a boil, the bursting of a tumor.
Such being the case, how should we expect them to care about the
question as to which is better and which is worse - Life or Death?
They simply borrow different elements, and put them together in the
corn mon form of a body .15 Hence they are conscious neither of their
liver nor of their gall, and they leave aside their ears and eyes. 16
Abandoning themselves to infinitely recurrent waves of Ending and
Beginning, they go on revolving in a circle, of which they know
neither the beginning-point nor the ending-point.
For Chuang-tzu Death is nothing but one of the endlessly varieg-
ated phenomenal forms of one eternal Reality. To our mind's eye
this metaphysical Reality actualizes itself and develops itself as a
process evolving in time. But even when conceived in such a tem-
poral form, the process depicts only an eternally revolving circle, of
which no one knows the real beginning and the real end. Death is
but a stage in this circle. When it occurs, one particular phenomenal
form is effaced from the circle and disappears only to reappear as an
entirely different phenomenal form. Nature continuously makes
and unmakes. But the circle itself, that is, Reality itself is always
there unchanged and unperturbed. Being one with Reality, the
mind of a 'true man' never becomes perturbed.
A 'true man', Chuang-tzu related, 17 saw his own body hideously
deformed in the last days of his life. He hobbled to a well, looked at
his image reflected in the water and said, 'Alas! That the Creator has
made me so crooked and deformed!' Thereupon a friend of his
asked him, 'Do you resent your condition?' Here is the answer that
the dying 'true man' gave to this question:
No, why should 1 resent it? It may be that the process of Transmuta-
tion will change my left arm into a rooster. 1 would, then, simply use it
to crow to tell the coming of the morning. It may be that the process
goes on and might change my right arm into a crossbow. 1 would,
th en, simply use it to shoot down a bird for roasting. It may be that the
process will change my buttocks into a wheel and my spirit into a
horse. 1 would, then, simply ride in the carriage. 1 would not have
even to put another horse to it.
Whatever we obtain (i.e., being born into this world in a particular
form) is due to the coming of the time. Whatever we lose (i.e., death)
is also due to the arrivai of the turn. We must be content with the
'time' and accept the 'turn'. Then neither sorrow nor joy will ever
creep in. Such an attitude used to be called among the Ancients
'loosing the tie'. 18 If man cannot loose himself from the tie, it is
because 'things' bind him fast.
316 Sufism and Taoism
Another 'true man' had a visit in his last moments from one of his
friends, who was also a 'true man'. The conversation between them
as related by Chuang-tzu19 is interesting. The visitor seeing the wife
and children who stood around the man on the deathbed weeping
and wailing, said to them, 'Hush! Get away! Do not disturb him as
he is passing through the process of Transmutation!'
Then turning to the dying man, he said:
How great the Creator is! What is he going to make of you now?
Whither is he going to take you? Is he going to make of you a rat's
liver? Oris he going to make of you an insect's arm?'
To this the dying man replies:
(No matter what the Creator makes of me, 1 accept the situation and
follow his command.) Don't you see? In the relationship between a
son and his parents, the son goes wherever they command him to go,
east, west, south, or north. But the relation between the Yin-Yang
(i.e., the Law regulating the cosmic process of Becoming) and a man
is incomparably doser than the relation between him and his parents.
Now they (the Yin and Yang) have brought me to the verge of death.
Should 1 refuse to submit to them, it would simply be an act of
obstinacy on my part . . . ·
Suppose here is a great master smith, casting metal. If the metal
should jump up and begin to shout, 'I must be made into a sword like
Mo Yeh,20 nothing else!' The smith would surely regard the metal as
something very evil. (The sa·me would be true of) a man who, on the
ground that he has by chance assumed a human form, should insist
and say: 'I want to be a man, only man! Nothing else!' The Creator
would surely regard him as of a very evil nature.
Just imagine the whole world as a big furnace, and the Creator as a
master smith. Wherever we may go, everything will be ail right.
Calmly we will go to sleep (i.e., die), and suddenly we will find
ourselves awake (in a new form of existence).
The concept of the Transmutation of things as conceived by
Chuang-tzü. might seem to resemble the doctrine of 'transmigra-
tion'. But the resemblance is only superficial. Chuang-tzu does not
say that the soul goes on transmigrating from one body to another.
The gist of his thought on this point is that everything is a pheno-
menal form of one unique Reality which goes on assuming succes-
sively different forms of self-manifestation. Besides, as we have
seen before, this temporal process itself is but a phenomenon.
Properly speaking, all this is something taking place on an eternal,
a-temporal level of Being. All things are one eternally, beyond
Time and Space.
Notes
317
1. We may do well to recall at this stage a chapter in the first part of the present
study, where we took the undifferentiation or indistinction between 'dream' and
'reality' as our starting-point for going into the metaphysical world of Ibn 'Arabî.
There Ibn 'Arabî speaks of the ontological level of 'images' and 'similitudes'.
Chuang-tzü, as we shall see presently, uses a different set of concepts for interpreting
his basic vision. But the visions themselves of these two thinkers are surprisingly
similar to each other.
2. II, p. 112. The heading itself of this Chapter, ch'i wu J!!f4o/.J, is qui te significant in this
respect, meaning as it does 'equalization of things'.
3. nm, the real name of Chuang-tzü.
4. '1'J.o{I:::, meaning literally: 'things-transform'.
5. II., pp. 104-105.
6. i.e., everything that one experiences in this world of so-called 'reality'. 'Great
Awakening': ta chüeh 7.:1!.
7. i.e., being unaware of the fact that 'life' itself, the 'reality' itself is but a dream.
8. VI., p. 275.
9. i.e., it may very well be that somebody-or something-is dreaming that he (or it)
is a man, and thinks in the dream that he is talking with somebody else.
10. ibid.
11. This problem will be dealt with in detail in a later chapter which will be devoted
to the problem of determinism and freedom in the world-view of Taoism.
12. The meaning of this sentence can, 1 think, be paraphrazed as follows. lt may well
be that 'being transmuted' (for example, from Life to Death, i.e., 'to die') is in reality
'not to be transmuted' (i.e., 'not to die'). Likewise nobody knows for sure whether by
'not being transmuted' (i.e., remaining alive without dying) he has already been
transmuted (i.e., is already dead). The original sentence runs:
Kuo Hsiang in his commentary - which happens to be the oldest
commentary now in existence - explains it by saying: Bfl::.lffî1:.,
*11::.mi ?E. (p. 276), meaning; 'Once transmuted into a living being,
how cana man know the state of affairs which preceded his birth? And while he is not
yet transmuted and is not yet dead, how can he know the state of affairs that will corne
after death?' 1 mention this point because many people follow Kuo Hsiang' s
interpretation in understanding the present passage. (VI, p. 274).
13. VI, pp. 267-268.
14. i.e., the primordial cosmic energy which, as we saw in the last chapter, is thought
to have existed before the creation of the world. lt refers to the cosmogonie state in
which neither Heaven and Earth nor the Negative and the Positive were yet divided.
Philosophically it means the metaphysical One in its pure state of Unity.
15. According to their view, human existence is nothing but a provisional pheno-
Il
l1i
111
1
318 Sufism and Taoism
menai form composed by different elements (i.e., four basic elements: earth, air,
water and fire) which by chance have been united in the physical form of a body.
16. They do not pay any attention to their physical existence.
17. VI, pp. 259-260.
18. Hsien chieh 'loosing the tie', i.e., an absolute freedom.
19. ibid., p. 261-262.
20. A noted sword made in the state of in the sixth century B.C.
