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
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II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
In the preceding chapter I indicated in a preliminary way the possi-
bility of there being a very strong connection between Taoist
philosophy and shamanism.
I suggested that the thought or world-
view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu may perhaps be best studied
against the background of the age-old tradition of the shamanic
spirit in ancient China.
The present chapter will be devoted to a
more detailed discussion of this problem, namely, the shamanic
background of Taoist philosophy as represented by the Tao Tê
Ching and Chuang-tzü.
In fact, throughout the long history of Chinese thought there runs
what might properly be called a 'shamanic mode of thinking'. We
observe this specific mode of thinking manifesting itself in diverse
forms and on various levels in accordance with the particular cir-
cumstances of time and place, sometimes in a popular, fan tas tic
form, often going to the limit of superstition and obscenity, and
sometimes in an intellectually refined and logically elaborated form.
We observe also that this mode of thinking stands in sharp contrast
to the realistic and rationalistic mode of thinking as represented by
the austere ethical world-view of Confucius and his followers.
Briefly stated, I consider the Taoist world-view of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu as a philosophical elaboration or culmination of this
shamanic mode of thinking; as, in other words,
a particular form of philosophy which grew out of the persona! existential experience peculiar to persons endowed with the capacity of seeing things on a
supra-sensible plane of consciousness through an ecstatic encounter
with the Absolute and through the archetypal images emerging out
of it.
The Taoist philosophers who produced works like the Tao Tê
Ching and Chuang-tzü were 'shamans' on the one hand, as far as
concerns the experiential basis of their world-vision,
but they were on the other, intellectual thinkers who, not content to remain on the primitive level of popular shamanism, exercised their intellect in
order to elevate and elaborate their original vision into a system of
metaphysical concepts designed to expIain the very structure of Being.
[301]
Lao-tzu talks about shêng-jên 1 or the 'sacred man'. It is one of the
key-concepts of his philosophical world-view, and as such plays an
exceedingly important rôle in his thought. The 'sacred man' is a man
who has attained to the highest stage of the intuition of the Way, to
the extent of being completely unified with it, and who behaves
accordingly in this world following the dictates of the Way that he
feels active in himself. He is, in brief, a human embodiment of the
Way. In exactly the same sense, Chuang-tzu speaks of chên-jên2 or
the 'true man', chih-jên3 or the 'ultimate man', shên-jên4 or the
'divine (or super-human) man'. The man designated by these vari-
ous words is in reality nothing other than a philosophical shaman, or
a shaman whose visionary intuition of the world has been refined
and elaborated into a philosophical vision of Being.
That the underlying concept has historically a close connection
with shamanism is revealed by the etymological meaning of the
word shêng here translated as 'sacred'. The Shuo Wên Chieh Tzü,
the oldest etymological dictionary ( compiled in 100 A.D.), in its
explanation of the etymological structure of this word states: 'Shêng
designates a man whose orifices of the ears are extraordinarily
receptive' .5
In other words, the term designates a man, endowed
with an unusually keen ear, who is capable of hearing the voice of a
super-natural being, god or spirit, and understands directly the will
or intention of the latter. In the concrete historical circumstances of
the ancient Yin Dynasty, such a man can be no other than a divine
priest professionally engaged in divination.
It is interesting to remark in this connection that in the Tao Tê
Ching the 'sacred man' is spoken of as the supreme ruler of astate,
or 'king', and that this equation (Saint= King) is made as if it were a
matter of common sense, something to be taken for granted. We
must keep in mind that in the Yin Dynasty6 shamanism was deeply
related to poli tics. In that dynasty, the civil officiais of the higher
ranks who possessed and exercised a tremendous power over the
administration of the state were all originally shamans. And in the
earliest periods of the same dynasty, the Grand Shaman was the
high priest-vizier, or even the king himself.7
This would seem to indicate that behind the 'sacred man' as the
Taoist ideal of the Perfect Man there is hidden the image of a
shaman, and that under the surface of the metaphysical world-view
of Taoism there is perceivable a shamanic cosmology going back to
the most ancient times of Chinese history.
For the immediate purposes of the present study, we do not have to
go into a detailed theoretical discussion of the concept of shaman-
ism.8 We may be content with defining it in a provisional way by
saying that it is a phenomenon in which an inspired seer in a state of
ecstasy communes with supernatural beings, gods or spirits. As is
well known, a man who has a natural capacity of this kind tends to
serve in a primitive society as an intermediary between his tribes-
men and the unseen world.
As one of the most typical features of the shamanic mentality we
shall consider first of all the phenomenon of mythopoiesis.
Shamans are by definition men who, in their ecstatic-archetypal visions per-
ceive things which are totally different from what ordinary people
see in their normal states through their sensible experiences, and
this naturally tends to induce the shamans to interpret and structuralize the world itself quite differently from ordinary people. That which characterizes their reality experience in the most remarkable way is that things appear to their 'imaginai' consciousness in symbolic and mythical forms. The world which a shaman sees in the state of trance is a world of 'creative imagination', as Henry Corbin
has aptly named it, however crude it may still be. On this level of
consciousness, the things we perceive around us leave their natural,
common-sense mode of existence and transform themselves into images and symbols. And those images, when they become systematized and ordered according to the patterns of development which are inherent in them, tend to produce a mythical cosmology.
The shamanic tradition in ancient China did produce such a
cosmology. In the Elegies of Ch'u to which reference was made in
the preceding chapter, we can trace almost step by step and in a very
concrete form the actual process by which the shamanic experience
of reality produces a peculiar, 'imaginai' cosmology. And by com-
paring, further, the Elegies ofCh'u with a book like Huai Nan Tzu, 9
we can observe the most intimate relationship that exists between
the shamanic cosmology and Taoist metaphysics. There one seessur
le vif how the mythical world-view represented by the former
develops and is transformed into the ontology of the Way.
Another fact which seems to confirm the existence of a close
relationship, both essential and historical, between the Taoist
metaphysics and the shamanic vision of the world is found in the
history of Taoism after the Warring States period. In fact, the
development of Taoism, after having reached its philosophical
zenith with Lao-tzii and Chuang-tzii, goes on steadily describing a
curve of 'degeneration' - as it is generally called - even under a
strong influence of the Tao Tê Ching and Chuang-tzu, and returns to
its original mythopoeic form, revealing thereby its shamanic basis,
until it reaches in the Later Han Dynasty a stage at which Taoism
becomes almost synonymous with superstition, magic and witch-
craft. The outward structure of Taoist metaphysics itself discloses
almost no palpable trace of its shamanic background, but in the
philosophical description of the tao by Lao-tzii, for instance, there is
undeniably something uncanny and uncouth that would seem to be
indicative of its original connection with shamanism.303
Lao-tzii depicts, as we shall see later in more detail, the Way (tao) as
Something shadowy and dark, prior to the existence of Heaven and
Earth, unknown and unknowable, impenetrable and intangible to
the degree of only being properly described as Non-Being, and yet
pregnant with forms, images and things, which lie latent in the midst
of its primordial obscurity. The metaphysical Way thus depicted has
an interesting counterpart in the popular mythopoeic imagination
as represented by Shan Hai Ching, 10 in which it appears in a fantas-
tic form.
Three hundred and fifty miles further to the West there is a mountain
called Heaven Mountain. The mountain produces much gold and
jade. lt produces also blue sulphide. And the River Ying takes its rise
therefrom and wanders southwestward until it runs into the Valley of
Boiling Water. Now in this mountain there lives a Divine Bird whose
body is like a yellow sack, red as burning tire, who has six legs and
four wings. lt is strangely amorphous, having no face, no eyes, but it is
very good at singing and dancing. In reality, this Bird is no other than
the god Chiang.
In the passage here quoted, two things attract our attention. One is
the fact that the monster-bird is described as being good at singing
and dancing. The relevance of this point to the particular problem
we are now discussing will immediately be understood if one
remembers that 'singing and dancing', i.e., ritual dance, invariably
accompanies the phenomenon of shamanism. Dancing in ancient
China was a powerful means of seeking for the divine Will, of
inducing the state of ecstasy in men, and of 'calling down' spirits
from the invisible world. The above-mentioned dictionary, Shuo
Wên, defines the word wu (shaman) as 'a woman who is naturally fit
for serving the formless (i.e., invisible beings) and who, by means of
dancing call down spirits' .11 It is interesting that the same dictionary
explains the character itself which represents this word, IB , by
saying that it pictures a woman dancing with two long sleeves
hanging down on the right and the left. In the still earlier stage of its
development, 12 it represents the figure of a shaman holding up jade
with two hands in front of a spirit or god.
It is also significant that the monster is'said to be a bird, which is
most probably an indication that the shamanic dancing here in
question was some kind of feather-dance in which the shaman was
ritually ornamented with a feathered headdress.
The second point to be noticed in the above-given passage from
the Shan Hai Ching - and this point is of far greater relevance to the
==
present study than the first - is the particular expression used in the
description of the monster's visage, hun tun, 13 which 1 have provi-
sionally translated above as 'strangely amorphous'. lt means a
chaotic state of things, an amorphous state where nothing is clearly
delineated, nothing is clearly distinguishable, but which is far from
being sheer non-being; it is, on the contrary, an extremely obscure
'presence' in which the existence of something - or some things, still
undifferentiated - is vaguely and dimly sensed.
The relation between this word as used in this passage and
Chuang-tzu's allegory of the divine Emperor Hun Tun has been
noticed long ago by philologists of the Ch'ing dynasty. The com-
mentator of the Shan Hai Ching, Pi Yüan, for instance, explicitly
connects this description of the monster with the featureless face of
the Emperor Hun Tun.
The allegory given by Chuang-tzu reads as follows:' 4
The Emperor of the South Sea was called Shu, the Emperor of the
North Sea was called Hu, 15 and the Emperor of the central domain
was called Hun Tun. 16 Once, Shu and Hu met in the domain of Hun
Tun, who treated both of them very well. Thereupon, Shu and Hu
deliberated together over the way in which they might possibly repay
his goodness.
'All men', they said, 'are possessed of seven orifices for seeing,
hearing, eating, and breathing. But this one (i.e., Hun Tun) alone
does not possess any (orifice). Come, let us bore some for him.'
They went on boring one orifice every day, until on the seventh day
Hun Tun died.
This story describes in symbolic terms the destructive effect exer-
cised by the essentialist type of philosophy on the Reality. lt is a
merciless denunciation of this type of philosophy on behalf of a
peculiar form of existentialist philosophy which, as we shall see
later, Chuang-tzu was eager to uphold. Shu and Hu, symbolizing the
precariousness of human existence, met in the central domain of
Hun Tun; they were very kindly treated and they became happy for
a brief period of time as their names themselves indicate. This event
would seem to symbolize the human intellect stepping into the
domain of the supra-sensible world of 'un-differentiation', the
Absolute, and finding a momentary felicity there - the ecstasy of a
mystical intuition of Being, which, regrettably, lasts but for a short
time. Encouraged by this experience, the human intellect, or
Reason, tries to bore holes in the Absolu te, that is to say, tries to
mark distinctions and bring out to actuality all the forms that have
remained latent in the original undifferentiation. The result of
'boring' is nothing but the philosophy of Names (ming) as rep-
resented by Confucius and his school, an essentialist philosophy,
where all things are clearly marked, delineated, and sharply disting-
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 305 uished from one another ori the ontological level of essences. But the moment orifices were bored in Hun Tun's face, he died. This means that the Absolu te can be brought into the grasp of Reason by 'essential' distinctions being made in the reality of the Absolute, and becomes thereby something understandable; but the moment it becomes understandable to Reason, the Absolute dies. lt is not time yet for us to go into the details of the existentialist position taken by Chuang-tzu. 1 simply wanted to show by this example how closely the shamanic mythopoeic imagination was originally related with the birth of Taoist philosophy, and yet, at the same time, how far removed the latter was in its philosophical import from the former. This sense of distance between shamanism and philosophy may be alleviated to a considerable extent if we place between the two terms of the relation the cosmogonical story - a product of the mythopoeic mentality - which purports to explain how Heaven and Earth came into being. lt is not exactly a 'story'; it is a 'theory' and is meant to be one. lt is a result of a serious attempt to describe and explain theoretically the very origin of the world of Being and the process by which all things in the world have corne to acquire the forms with which we are now familiar. The cosmogony constitutes in this sense the middle term - structurally, if not historically - between the crude shamanic myth and the highly developed metaphysics of the Way. Here we give in translation the cosmogony as formulated in the above-mentioned Huai Nan Tzü: 11 Heaven and Earth had no form yet. lt was astate of formless ftuidity; nothing stable, nothing definite. This state is called the Great Begin- ning. The Great Beginning produced 18 a spotless void. The spotless void produced the Cosmos. The Cosmos produced (the all- pervading) vital energy. 19 The vital energy had in itself distinctions. That which was limpid and light went up hovering in thin layers to form Heaven, while that which was heavy and turbid coagulated and became Earth. The coming together of limpid and fine elements is naturally easy, while the coagulation of heavy and turbid elements is difficult to occur. For this reason, Heaven was the first to be formed, then Earth became established. Heaven and Earth gathered together the finer elements of their vital energy to form the principles of Negative (Yin) and Positive (Yang), and the Negative and Positive gathered together the finer elements of their vital energy to constitute the four seasons. The four seasons scattered their vital energy to bring into being the ten thousand things. The calorie energy of the Positive principle, having been accumulated, gave birth to fire, and the essence of the energy of fire became the sun. The energy of coldness peculiar to the Negative principle, having been accumulated became water, and the essence of
===
the energy of water became the moon. The overflow of the sun and
the moon, having become refined, turned into stars and planets.
Heaven received the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Earth received
water, puddles, dust, and soil.
In the passage her quoted we encounter again that undifferen-
tiated, featureless Something, the primordial Chaos, this time as a
cosmogonie principle or the Great Beginning, representing the state
of affairs before the creation of the world. The Great Beginning is
certainly different from the mythical monster of the Shan Hai Ching
and the metaphysical principle of the Tao Tê Ching. But it is evident
at the same time that these three are but different 'phenomena' of
one and the same thing.
Similarly in a different passage20 in the same book we read:
Long long ago, when Heaven and Earth were still non-existent, there
were no definite figures, no definite forms. Mysteriously profound,
opaque and dark: nothing was distinguishable, nothing was fathom-
able; limitlessly remote, vast and void; nobody would have discerned
its gate.
Then there were born together two divinities, and they began to rule
Heaven and to govern Earth. lnfinitely deep (was Heaven), and no
one knew where it came to a limit. Vastly extensive (was Earth), and
no one knew where it ceased.
Thereupon (Being) divided itself into the Negative and the Positive,
which, then, separated into the eight cardinal directions.
The hard and the soft complemented each other, and as a result the
ten thousand things acquired their definite forms. The gross and
confused elements of the vital energy produced animais (including
beasts, birds, reptiles and fish). The finer vital energy produced man.
This is the reason why the spiritual properly belongs to Heaven, while
the bodily belongs to Earth.
Historically speaking, this and similar cosmogonical theories seem
to have been considerably inflùenced by Taoism and its metaphys-
ics. Structurally, however, they furnish a connecting link between
myth and philosophy, pertaining as they do to both of them and yet
differing from them in spirit and structure. The cosmogony discloses
to our eyes in this sense the mythopoeic background of the
metaphysics of the Way as formulated by Lao-tzii and Chuang-tzii.
In a similar fashion, we can bring to light the subjective - i.e.,
epistemological - aspect of the relationship between shamanism
and Taoist philosophy by comparing the above-mentioned Elegies
of Ch'u and the books of Lao-tzii and Chuang-tzii. The possibility of
obtaining an interesting result from a comparative study of Ch'ü
Yüan, the great shaman-poet of the state of Ch'u, and the
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 307
philosophers of Taoism was noted long ago by Henri Maspero,21
although death prevented him from fully developing his idea.
ln the Li Sao22 and the Yüan Yu, 23 the shaman-poet describes in
detail the process of visionary states through which a soul in an
ecstatic state, helped and assisted by various gods and spirits,
ascends to the heavenly city where the 'etemal beings' live. This is in
reality nothing but a description of a shamanic unio mystica. And
the shamanic ascension is paralleled by a visionary ascension of a
similar structure in the Chuang-tzu, the only essential difference
between the two being that in the latter case the experience of the
spiritual joumey is refined and elaborated into the form of a
metaphysical contemplation. Just as the shaman-poet experiences
in his ecstatic oblivion of the ego a kind of immortality and eternity,
so the Taoist philosopher experiences immortality and 'long life' in
the midst of the etemal Way, by being unified with it. lt is interesting
to notice in this respect that the poet says in the final stage of his
spiritual experience that he 'transcends the Non-Doing,24 reaches
the primordial Purity, and stands side by si de with the Great Begin-
ning' .25 In Taoist terminology, we would say that the poet at this
stage 'stands side by side with the Way', that is, 'is completely
unified with the Way', there being no discrepancy between them.
In the Li Sao the poet does not ascend to such a height. Standing
on the basic assumption that both the Li Sao and Yüan Yu are
authentic works of Ch'ü Yüan, Maspero remarks that the Li Sao
represents an earlier stage in the spiritual development of the poet,
at which he, as a shaman, has not yet attained to the final goal,
whereas the Yüan Yu represents a later stage at which the poet 'has
already reached the extremity of mysticism'.
Such an interpretation is of course untenable if we know for
certain that the Yüan Yu is a work composed by a later poet and
surreptitiously attributed to Ch'ü Yüan. In any case, the poem in its
actual form is markedly Taoistic, and some of the ideas are undeni-
ably borrowings from Lao-tzii and Chuang-tzii. Here again,
however, the problem of authenticity is by no means a matter of
primary importance tous. For even if we admit that the poem - or
some parts of - it is a Han Dynasty forgery, it remains true that the
very fact that Taoist metaphysics could be so naturally transformed
- or brought back - into a shamanic world-vision is itself a proof
of a real congeniality that existed between shamanism and
Taoism.
A detailed analytic comparison between the Elegies of Ch'u and
the books of Lao-tzii and Chuang-tzii is sure to make an extremely
fruitful and rewarding work. But to do so will take us too far afield
beyond the main topic of the present study. Besides, we are going to
describe in detail in the first chapters of this book the philosophical
version of the spiritual journey which has just been mentioned. And
this must suffice us for our present purposes.308
Let us now leave the problem of the shamanic origin of Taoism,
and turn to the purely philosophical aspects of the latter. Our main
concern will henceforward be exclusively with the actual structure
of Taoist metaphysics and its key-concepts.
Notes
1. IRA.
2. •A·
3. "'!P.A. i.e., a man who has attained to the furthest limit (of perfection).
4. 4if!A. We may note that this and the preceding words ail refer to one and the same
concept which is the Taoist counterpart of the concept of insân kâmil or the Perfect
Man, which we discussed in the first part of this study.
5. J: Miî::E§îJ.
6. Reference has been made in the preceding chapter to the possible historical
connection between the Yin dynasty and the spirit of the state of Ch'u.
7. For more details about the problem of the shaman ( (.JP; wu) representing the
highest administrative power in the non-secularized state in ancient China, see for
example Liang Ch' i Ch' ao: A History of Political Thought in the Periods Prior to the
Ch'in Dynasty 1923, Shanghai, Ch. II.
8. 1 would refer the reader to Mircea Eliade's basic work: Shamanism, Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy, English tr., London, 1964.
9. lrltlîîTJ, an eclectic work compiled by thinkers of various schools who were
gathered by the king of Huai Nan, Liu An j!J'i(, at his court, in the second century B.C.
The book is of an eclectic nature, but its basic thought is that of the Taoist school.
1 O. one of the most important source-books for Chinese mythology, giving
a detailed description of ail kinds of mythological monsters living in mountains and
seas. The following quotation is taken from a new edition of the book,
(11$.li-*iUl), with a commentary by Pi Yüan of the Ch'ing dynasty,
Tai Pei, 1945, p. 57.
11.
12. The character it appears in the oracle-bones is: fR or /ti.
13. Plfi(. The word is written in the Chuang-tzu iaiflti.
14. Chapter VII entitled 'Fit to be Emperors and Kings', p. 309.
15. Bo th shu ( fl) and hu ( %!. ) lite rail y mean a brief span of time, symbolizing in this
allegory the precariousness of existence.
309
16. Important to note is the fact that hun tun, the' undifferentiation' is placed in the
center. It means that hun tun represents the true 'reality' of Being, bordering on both
sides on 'precariousness'. The philosophical implication of all this will be elucidated
in a later chapter.
17. lf'ltiîîî-J, III, T'ien Wên ::RXlllil.
18. The received text as it stands is apparently unintelligible. Following the emenda-
tion suggested by Wang Yin Chih ( 3:%Z) 1 read: l;J&B:kAHifH!f1Tf!IJri· ..... 1.
19. The' all-pervading vital energy' is a clumsy translation of the Chinese word ch'i
which plays an exceedingly important rôle in the history of Chinese thought. lt is a
'reality', proto-material and formless, which cannot be grasped by the senses. It is a
kind of vital force, a creative principle of ail things; it pervades the whole world, and
being immanent in everything, molds it and makes it grow into what it really is.
Everything that has a 'form', whether animate or inanimate, has a share in the ch'i.
The concept of ch'i has been studied by many scholars. As one of the most detailed
analytic studies of it we may mention Teikichi Hiraoka: A Study of Ch'i in Huai Nan
Tzu,Zf'IMJmii Tokyo 1969.
20. ibid., VII, mij]lj!itfll.
21. ibid., III.
22.
23. l:&i!J. Many scholars entertain serious doubts-with reason, 1 think - as to the
authenticity of this important and interesting work. Most probably it is a product of
the Han Dynasty (see #Jillflm nUU1îtt3l<litJ), composed in the very atmosphere of
a, fully developed philosophy of Taoism.
24. wu-wei one of the key-terms of Taoist philosophy, which we shall analyze
in a la ter passage. 'Non-Doing' means, in short, man's abandoning ail artificial,
unnatural effort to do something, and identifying himself completely with the activity
of Nature which is nothing other than the spontaneous self-manifestation of the Way
itself. Here the poet daims that at the final stage of his spiritual development he goes
even beyond the level of 'non-activity' and of being one with Nature, and steps
further into the very core of the Way. In his consciousness - or in his 'non-
consciousness', we should rather say
