Ming-Dao Deng - Wisdom of the Tao: Ancient Stories that Delight, Inform, and Inspire

Other books by Deng Ming-Dao

The Chronicles of Tao

The Wandering Taoist

Seven Bamboo Tablets of the Cloudy Satchel

Gateway to a Vast World

Scholar Warrior

365 Tao

Everyday Tao

Zen: The Art of Modern Eastern Cooking

The Living I Ching

The Lunar Tao

Copyright 2018 by Deng Ming-Dao

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

REVIEWERS MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES.

Cover design by Deng Ming-Dao

Cover art: Clearing After Rain Over Streams and Mountains, by Wang Hui (Chinese, Qing dynasty, 1662) Hanging scroll; ink on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988

Interior image by Deng Ming-Dao, based on Night-Shining White, by Han Gan, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Interior design and typsettting by Side By Side Studios, San Francisco, CA

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22906

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ISBN: 978-1-57174-837-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958286

Printed in Canada

MAR

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Imagine old-time China when people heard their news and tales from wandering storytellers. In the villages, these chroniclers might have shouted for people to gather under a shady tree. In the cities, they might have banged on a cymbal to attract people moving through parks or marketplaces. They were the journalists, entertainers, dramatists, and comedians of their day, and they jostled for attention among acrobats, fortune-tellers, bards, minstrels, commentators, healers, and mendicants. Whoever was the most exciting, the most informative, and the most intriguing was the winner who drew the largest crowds. Imagine, then, these people coming to your town, stirring up the sleepy populace, fascinating listeners with stories both familiar and novel, and perhaps even inspiring a few to run away to find adventure.

All the stories in this book are thousands of years old. They had to be special to last through years of telling and retelling, and they were compelling enough for visitors to carry them beyond the borders of China, to translate them, and to retell them in other lands. They expressed great wisdom by fusing anecdote with philosophy. The stories are frequently humorous, ribald, irreverent, pithy, or sarcasticbut they always speak to great and universal truths.

Their form often took on the guise of tall talesdistances and measurements were highly exaggerated, time was indistinct (the better to put us in an eternal present), historical personages were made into tropes or used for poking fun, fictional characters were thrown in willy-nilly, and an age of legendary kings was invoked as a utopian idealeven though those centuries were already in the distant past when these anecdotes were first told. (In this book, you can tell when a person was real by dates given in parentheses at their first mention.)

These stories were recorded in scattered writings, but it's apparent that those texts were scaffolds for further telling. The ideas continued to evolve over long periods. They were not organized into static persuasive texts but remained a seemingly random jumble of themes. They borrow similar formats from one another, sometimes reworking themes from different angles and reinforcing the idea that these tales were meant for improvisation, adaptation, and variation. The stories were passed on as people needed them, their wording meandered creatively, and they were embellished to this day as storytelling was always meant to do.

This process was augmented by how learning developed in the ancient tradition: the teachers insisted on memorization and experience over the written word. Many of these stories originate from the era of The Hundred Schools of Thought (sixth century221 BCE), a time that ended when the First Emperor grew frustrated at the many arguments of bickering scholars and ordered most of the books in the empire burned. The Emperor Wenzong (r. 827840) of the Tang Dynasty made a valiant attempt at standardization by ordering twelve classics carved into the front and back of 114 massive stone slabs and installed in public so that no one could ever argue about versions again. But those steles stood in one placethe Imperial College in Chang'an (now Xi'an). The country was vast. A large number of individual teachers continued to wander the roads and sail the rivers looking for pupils or, in emulation of their greatest example, Confucius, who sought the patronage of an emperor, duke, or at least a rich merchant family with whom they would live. The storytellers went everywhere too, with more itinerant goals, but with similar messages.

As a result, the stories evolved into myths. They became the essential distillation of shared wisdom and vital gifts to anyone who heard them. Each generation adapted them and found fresh understanding in them. Accordingly, the stories in this book have been edited and their language has been updated. If you're curious about the sources, initials in parentheses and a key at the end of the book provide identification.

In imperial times, it was seldom safe to criticize officials, let alone the king or emperor. But these stories don't shy away from that, holding the rich and powerful up to ridicule and satirizing the very logic, morality, history, and rhetoric that had been carved into stone.

The storytellers took the dry format of dialogue between a master teacher and student, debates between philosophers, or the interchanges between minister and ruler and inflated them wildly. The point was unabashedly political: turn away from pomposity and corruption, remember the common people, share generously, and be aware of the pitfalls of being king. These stories speak truth to power. That helps us, because each generation wrestles with the same questions of inequality, justice, and social good.

When I was a boy, I didn't get specific lessons on how to live. I got stories. If I asked why I had to believe some concept, a person such as my grandmother might reply with, This is true because of what happened to the Yellow Emperor, and then the story would follow. What intrigues me is that this habit hasn't changed even after China's revolution, rapid modernization, digital technology, and global culture. People still say, It's true because... before they invoke a story that is more than two thousand years old.

We need stories. They help us make sense of who we are and how we got here. They keep us sane as we try to absorb our experiences, our aging, and our thoughts. We want to know that we're living in a way that measures up, and we do that by comparing ourselves to stories. We tell stories to children to prepare them for the world. Stories help us visualize the future by taking the messages of yesterday and helping us get tomorrow right.

The stories collected in this book speak to two important emotions: fear and love. Repeatedly, fear is identified as the greatest threat. Even death is acceptable, as it must be, but fear is shown to be the more troublesome of the two. We need not fear as long as we gain insight into ourselves and we understand that we are part of nature and connected to one another. We are urged to turn away from indigence and instead seek clarity of character. At the same time, love is held up as one of the greatest qualities of life. We are urged to love all of existence, to see ourselves on a par with all creatures, to show kindness to others, to love ourselves even if that means others might consider us ugly or useless, and to embrace love as the most honest truth of the heart.