Taoism.

Which Taoism? there is the Taoist religion, which started as an organized movedment in the late Han Dynasty by combining various ancient shamanistic worship practices and some bits of Laozi's metaphysical thoughts, harnessed for new use with propaganda and mass movement tactics; it soon generated armed rebellions that nearly destroyed everything, including the religious movement itself leaving just rump factions in isolated areas that managed to escape the chaos. While the Taoist temples in China and elsewhere do share some common ideas and worship practices, it is rather hard to separate Taoism from the ancestor worship practices (which are family and village based) that have little connection with Laozi's philosophy, whose primary objectives are political and social, even though the thought process is metaphysical.
About Taoism as formulated by Laozi: Its starting observation is that policies have side effects. Well intentioned ideas carried out by well intentioned officials may nevertheless leave some people worse off, both materially by consuming resources previously available to them, and psychologically by making them relatively inferior to those who benefitted. Hence the initial idea is similar to Confucian moderation: officials must be careful and considerate. The more laws you pass, the more people are made criminals; the heavier you tax, the poorer the people become, and the less tax you will get later (sounds like Reagonomics!).
Taking it further, since everything is relative, opposites seem to be related: good is good only relative to bad, and making some more good would only make others more bad; more and less; have and have not, all seem to create each other. Hence, thing and nothing create each other.
Here Taoism goes off the track actually: it confused "status" with "substance". Like: before my son was born, I was not a father; afterwards, I was; hence, son creates father - but I existed before his arrival, which gave me the status of father, not my substance.
But Taoism makes this "leap of faith" because the result looks so satisfactory: it has the answer to "where did the world come from?"; the proud and seemingly profound answer: the world came from nothing, because thing and nothing create each other!! For people looking for simple answers, this is such a nice answer. Further, since nothing is the basis of everything, doing anything requires you to follow the principle of nothing. Less is more; not trying is the best way to achieve, etc. Nothing is the Tao, and Tao is everything. No government is the best government, etc.
Though we lack concrete evidence to reliably trace the development of this type of metaphysics before Laozi, he does not appear to have invented it. The Book of Changes, written in the Western Zhou period before him, already contains "The Nil produces the Ultimate; the Ultimate produces the Duo (i.e., Yin and Yang), the Duo produces the Four Aspects, the Four Aspects produce the Eight Orientations (i.e., bagua). " Looking at the above digram, which shows a Manchurian jade dragon, from 5000 years ago, with its tail circling back towards its mouth, next to a Gansu pottery jar, which is slightly older, having a human-faced fish with its tail touching the head, together with a set of Uroboros diagrams showing a snake swallowing its own tail that appears in Middle East folk art and European witchcraft, we see the idea of "begin is end" or "life is death" or "thing is nothing"; them below we have some ancient Europen rock carvings of the swastika, made up of four entangle snakes - a fertility symbol; next is the Taoist yin-yang emblem, actually two entangled snakes All these indicate that the Tao ideas actuall had much older origins than Laozi, whose main contribution was to apply the abstract thinking to political and social issues.
In the yin-yang emblem, the black in the white and white in the black were originally the eyes of the two snakes - this was later mystically interpreted as the fuzziness of categories. Yin and yang are philosophically significant in that contrast is the basis of change and dynamism - the switchover of day and night moves time forward; union between male and female leads to breeding to continue the specis- with all binary contrasts being logically equivalent to the contrast of Heaven and Earth, hence all binary relationships are mystical. The bagua emblem has 8 combinations of broken (1) and unbroken (0) line segments, in other words the binary numbers 1 to 8, again receiving mystical interpretations with 1 representing heaven and 8 representing earth, etc.
Later Chinese scholars of the Song Dynasty combined Taoism with ideas from Buddhism (desire causes suffering; so have no desires) and brought the two into Confucianism as well with one school postulating that morality is in the nature - by observing how things work in nature, we figure out how we ourselves ought to behave, while another school has it that our minds are already pre-programmed with behavioural methodologies; followers of these scholars soon predominated in the civil services and the ideas, collectively known as the Methdologies (理学）, became the official Conficianism of Song and Ming dynasties.

谈谈老子

新加坡国立大学 阮宗光

  
易经中记述，"无极生太极， 太极生两仪， 两仪生四象， 四象生八卦" 考古队在甘肃西坪找到陶瓶上有尾交首人面鱼,西亚有uroboros自吞尾蛇，已见有无（头尾）相生循环不息之意，可见这些思想早于老子；他的贡献是把这些思想系统地用在政治上：政府拿了太多资源，人民就会贫困；某些人地位提高，其他人相对或绝对地会降低，所以多同少，有同无，是相连相生的

有无相生，所以有可由无产生，所以世界自动产生，无所谓来源，始终；无既然是一切的基础，我们做人做事应以无为做原则；刻意求功，会因加得减；民心朴实，容易世界太平
  
老子是什么时代的人？道德经中某些思想，像是战国后期乱世才有的，但自从银雀战国墓出土更早的木简后，很明显看到道德经在战国早期或更早已经成书，但后人有改动。所以史记说老子是春秋人，与孔子同时略早，是可信的；庄子等书内不但多次谈到老子，而且用了不少道德经的文字，也可以做旁证；战国的太史儋，极可能是老子后人，把他的思想纪录整理成书，因而有老子即太史儋的说法   
 
老子的思想有利用价值，所以会给人提高到大宗师，神仙的地位，但因此也会给人改得面目全非；政府有很多事情管不了的时候，就喜欢说说老子；各朝代兴起的各种道教，用的其实是更古老的巫术加些后来的大众传播技术，偏喜欢用老子的玄思维名义；庄子思想其实跟老子社会政治目标大有不同，偏要拉他做出世同路人；韩非子也来解解老，因为统治者需要一种深不可测的态度，让手下不敢离开法律而以讨好上司为目标

有出于无在当时是非常先进的抽象思想，西亚犹太人差不多同时产生同类的抽象概念用在宗教上：别族拜树石金牛，犹太族却说神无形无名但无所不在无所不能，同老子有异曲同工之妙；因为吞尾蛇在西亚流传甚广，汉人同犹太人的抽象思维应是同源的。  基督教的失乐园思想，即人吃了知识树的果子后必须离开天堂，即是老子人之初混混沌沌美好社会想法。
  
为什么说上帝无名？耶和华源自iaoue，是祭司祈祷的呼声；文字发明先有子音当时还未有母音，iaoue无法写，所以神无名(和，华两声中h子音是由长声呼叫中吸一口气而来；古犹太人有文字后用YHWH写上帝名，后来才有Yahweh和Jahoveh的写法）

老子是不是孔子的老师？孔子要编历史，跑去中央政府档案部看文件，向管理人请教，是完全合理的, 但有关故事不一定正确'比如 《史记·孔子世家》：“南宫敬叔言鲁君曰：请与孔子适周。鲁君与之一乘车，两马，一竖子，俱适周问礼，盖见老子。” 这段引起不少争议，因礼记说孔子见老子遇日食，但日食那年南宫敬叔13岁年纪太小不能远行，又正在守父丧等理由。其实这出于误会：《说苑》同 《孔子家语·致思》有：

“孔子曰：季孙之赐我粟千钟，而交益亲，自南宫敬叔之乘我车也，而道加行。”

南宫敬叔跟孔子学礼，献车给老师乘坐，并非特地为了去周；后人把两件事混起来了

肝胆侠义看金庸，粋奇机变学古龙
新建文学有心览，旧传古史无师通
庄周枯鱼喻税吏，孔丘列国访明公
书堆五车多尘埃，明镜台边枉思空
1   早上，老子走进他的办公厅，站在两旁的学生，随从弯腰向他鞠躬，走到他的席那里（椅子是唐朝才有的，以前都是跪坐在席上，今日日本人还是），他的书记正把今天他要注的一本书铺在小几上，一边小声说"您的学生孔丘一会儿来问候"
"我的高徒，名将之子"
"不过听说。。"
"我知道；他出世时父亲已快70岁；早一年他有带妻子去尼山求子"
"据说是个很淫乱的场合"
"周人是不大会在这种地方求子的，不过宋人习俗不同"
他们停止谈话，因为孔子带了两个随从进来了，孔子对老子深深一揶，跟随两人下跪磕头，孔子好像也要下跪，但老子答礼的姿态表示同他平等，不当他是属下 "请坐"
"厄。。也许我应该。。"
"哪里哪里；以前您是学生，今日自成一家，或许已经青出于蓝；凡事无常"
"但是'事凡常无"
"哈哈，您已经看了我的新书"
"正是；王臣幸鲁赠送了一册给我公；确实博大精深"
"就算是总结了我一生的思考观察留给后人，因为即将退休，很高兴我还在时您来；以为您会早些来的"
"原来是想早些来拜侯，不过有节哀之事"
"愿老夫人安息；好像她是几年前过世的？"
"三年多了；不过我们殷人是遵守三年守丧的规则"
"对对；孔氏还是保持殷人习俗；现在宋国还守着商的祖庙；我们李氏居陈，也遵守舜祖的规训"
啊大国殷商，赶牛出身，很早学会了养马，冶铜，架着战车由北方来，战无不胜，安阳城的宏大宫殿坟墓都是商人建的，有各种青铜重器，玉雕；伟大啊；但有一日 他们失去了天命，商王妹夫的儿子，因为他父亲功高震主，被商王处死，起兵复仇，轻轻易易打败了大十倍的商军；凡事无常呀
周人得胜后自己也有点莫名其妙，好在周王的弟弟周公有治国之才，制作了一套方案；先把商族臣民集中在伊水洛水之间叫他们建了一座新城洛阳，再分配土地给他 们耕种，城内驻了重兵，放了由商那里缴获的九鼎，把几位亲属分封在周围齐，鲁，卫，郑各地，再把商王的哥哥封在宋地守着商的祖庙，大家都有面子，能平平安 安过过日子
周公又制作了一套周礼让士官诸侯遵守，包括周王在内；必须按时朝见，巡行，表现上下尊卑，每国都要全国人一起祭祖，表现团结一致，周王诸侯都要按时举行籍 田礼表示尊重农业，射礼尊军人，乡饮尊老，明堂尊文士等等；各国诸侯士官都把子弟送来都城文史馆学习周礼，回去以尊礼的方式治国；商人只要求各族按时进贡 珍宝美女，别的不管，周人真的有全国的政府
但结果这一套也垮了，周王诸侯都做不到尽礼，尤其是继位之礼；年轻的妃子挖空心思要让自己的儿子继位取代已定的太子，兄弟争斗；就是因为幽王废太子，太子 得到外公申候和犬戎兴兵支持，结果周廷失去了西方的土地，今天周王能够命令的只是洛阳城而已
2  "现在除了孝服，是否快出来任官位？"
"阳货有这样建议；我还在考虑"
"他就是季氏的家臣？"
"不错；季孙把所有的事务都委托了他处理；因为季孙是鲁国司徒，他也就专了鲁国之政"
"一个家臣专国政，很高詹呀；他很看得起您吧？"
"家母去世时，他很客气亲自来吊丧；就是那天他顺便告诉我季孙宴请全国的士，虽然我是不能参加的；三年守丧完毕后，他马上派人馈赠了一只烤猪"
"那可是件大礼啊；宗庙祭拜用品;按礼您需要去见他道谢才对啊"
"我有上门拜见不过正好是他出外的时候，所以还是遵礼的"
"倒是够中庸"
"不过回家路上正好遇到他的车队所以还是见到了"
"那他怎样说呢？"
"怀其宝而迷其邦，好从事而亟失时，日月逝矣，岁不我与"
"很仰望您呢；但是您还在考虑？是不是希望情况更恰当再出山？"
孔子听到这样问，有点紧张；侧目望了一望自己的随从，想想这些话会不会有一天传去阳货耳中；阳货僭越夺权这种行为，恐怕得意不了多久，但这不能说出来。颜回是个孩子，书呆子气；子路性情冲动些，忠心应该不是问题；至于老子那边的人。。。
"我既然受了公家千钟的俸禄，自然有责任任职，不过我的教学，可以算是足够的任务吧？"
"我有看到您编写的讲义，做得很好；把诗书易史精要写在三千条竹简上，让每人能全部记得。可惜我们文史馆学生不多，不值得花那么多工夫；多些学生，帮忙汇编的人手也多点"
"总之我如果任职，一定会遵照周礼"
"很乐意听到您这样说；虽然很多人觉得这太老派太迂腐了"
"不过这是必要的"
"书是先人的话，不是先人的神，不是先人的行；我们看圣贤言，还要感其神守其行"
"就是要循其道；但何为道？"
3。 老子给孔子一个没有牙齿的笑脸，又伸出舌头
"老师是说，硬的掉了，软的还在？"
"很好；您看看这条玉龙"
"自吞其尾，就是说，终既是始，天道循环不息？"
"更深一层；天地从何而来？"
"未有天地一片混沌；"
"可见天地从无而来"
"噢，我现在明白老师'事凡常无'的意义了，因为有生于无，无即是有"
"道在此中；太多会变成太少；大智若愚；无欲者刚"
"老师觉得我有欲为官错了？"
"这倒不见得；我们在有之世，做有之人；不过我们以有作有，也思无循无"
"。。。"
"治国犹如煮鲜鱼，翻动多了就会烂"
"。。。" 
"民心察察则国事乱乱；无知者无忧；去汝之欲，益汝之神"

Laozi 老子

1.
It was morning, and Laozi was entering his reception hall in the Zhou Archival Office for his day's work; as he approached his official mat (chairs were not used in China before the Tang Dynasty; till then people knelt on cushions placed on mats, a practice still followed in Japan), his pupils and attendants standing on the two sides bowed low, and his chief clerk placed the manuscript he was to annotate on the low table in front of his cushion. As he seated himself, the clerk whispered

"Your former pupil Kong Qiu will be coming to pay his respects shortly"

"Oh yes my best student, the son of the celebrated general"
"Except that..."
"I know; his father was nearly 70 when he was born and people say his mother conceived him taking part in the Ni Hills Fertility Festival the year before"
"Quite an orgy I hear"
"It is uncommon for Zhou clansmen to pray for children at such shrines, but the Songs are not of the clan and are free to follow different customs"
They stopped talking, as Confucius was announced and entered with two attendants. He bowed low before Laozi, while his attendants prostrated themselves on the floor; Confucius made a motion to do the same but was stopped by Laozi's gesture in reply, indicating that Confucius was considered to be an equal rather than a subordinate
"Pray be seated"
"Oh Sir perhaps I ought..."
"Not at all; once I was your teacher; now you are a learned man in your own right and might even have things to teach me; no thing is constant"
"But 'nothing' is constant"
"Ah I see you have read my new book"
"I have indeed; a copy was presented to my Duke by the Royal Emissary; a truly profound piece of work"
"Well it summarizes my life's thoughts and observations, to leave behind as I retire soon from this office; I am glad you came in time to see me still here; I was hoping you could have come earlier"
"I very much wished to, but my bereavement..."
"My sympathies, and may the senior lady's rest be eternally peaceful; but I believe she passed away some years ago?"
"More than three, but we Shang desendents maintain the tradition of a three-year mourning period"
"Ah yes the great Shangs; and your clan the Kongs keep up the traditions, just as the Songs still maintain the Shang shrine and honour their heavenly ancestors; we the Li clan, domiciled in Chen State and descended from the Great Shun, try to live up to our particular past also"

2
Yes the Shangs, the cattle drovers who learned to breed horses and forge bronze weapons, rode down from the north on their chariots and was all conquering; they built their great palaces and tombs in Anyang, and filled them with bronze utensils and jade artifacts; a truly impressive tribe, but they lost their mandate of heaven one day, when the son of the King's brother in law, whom the King first promoted and then executed, led a small army to the east in vengeance and defeated the 10-times larger Shang army almost effortlessly. No thing is constant, indeed.
History is always written by the victors. Zhou historians came up with numerous accounts of the tyranicaly rule of the final Shang King, known as Shou; he was said to drink excessively (a charged also leveled against all Shang nobility), failing to perform sacrifices to his ancestors in the correct way, listening to his concubines in making decisions relating to the state, killing his vassals over trivial issues, executing his loyal ministers who tried to provide restraining advice, using cruel forms of torture and execution, opening the belly of a pregnant woman to find out the sex of the fetus, and chopping off the feet of a man wading through the river in winter without showing fear of cold to see what's so special about him.
No doubt some of charges had factual basis, but one particular charge was certainly true: he was said to amuse himself by watching naked men and women chasing each other in the woods where ponds of wine and stacks of meat were available to encourage wild abandon: this approximately described the fertility festivals of the old Shenlong tribesmen, who had lived in Northern China for thousands of years before the Zhous came along, and who had already been successively ruled by the Yellow Emperor dynasty, assuming you count Yao and Shun as his family, the Xia dynastry started by Yu, and the Shang dynasty, always maintaining their old way of life, which the Zhous found hard to understand. The practical Romans and the abtract thinking Hebrews had the same uncomprehending view of the more artistic and romantic Greeks. However, the same fertility festivals continued to be held in various of Zhou vassal states where the Shenlong descendents were predominant, and occasionally even the Zhou clan people joined in. Folk poems collected by the Zhou archival office, which Confucius later edited, had many pieces of a romantic, almost erotic, nature, which later Confucian scholars, living in a more repressed age, found highly embarrassing.
After the battle, the victorious Zhous were themselves surprised and almost unsure what to do, but the Zhou King's brother, the Duke of Zhou, had brains for statecraft as well as war. He gathered the defeated Shang subjects at a site between the Luo and Yi rivers, made them build the new city Luoyang, storing in the town the nine great bronze cauldrons for the nine territories, and distributed farming land to the Shang subjects, after putting a strong garrison in the town and putting the King's relatives as lords in surrounding states of Qi, Lu, Wei and Zheng, while setting up the Shang King's brother in Song to maintain the Shang ancestral shrine. Everyone had "face" and could live in peace thereafter.
The Duke of Zhou also devised the Zhou Conventions, specifying the right conduct for lords, knights and officials, even the King himself: he regularly received lords in audience and banquet, and went on inspection tours, to confirm their lord-vassal relationship; lords and subjects in each state together worshiped their ancestral gods, to show their family affinity; and the King/Lords all took part in the Plow Ceremony to pay respect to agriculture, the Shooting Ceremony to honour the soldier, the Drink Ceremony to bow to the Elders, the School Ceremony to honour learning and scholarship... The states sent children of lords and knights to the Zhou capital to learn from the books in the Archival Office about rituals and stately conduct, so that they went back to become state officials and perform their duty in accordance with the Zhou Conventions; unlike the Shangs, who left the various tribes to govern themselves as long as they presented the right tributes to the royal court (in bronze, jade, silk, slave workers, pretty women...), the Zhous actually had a national government
But that too fell apart; the Kings and Lords failed in their duties, most seriously in failing to always maintain the proper system of succession, because young concubines kept trying to supersede the official heirs with their own sons; it was such a sibling conflict, with the King You driving away his heir, who then received help from his maternal grandfather, and barbarians, to fight his father, that caused the Zhous to lose their wide western territories. Today the Zhou King could only command Luoyang itself.

3.
"now that your bereavement is over, will you be taking up a Lu State appointment?"
"Yang Huo suggested this to me, and I am still considering."
"That's the Steward of the Ji household?"
"That's correct; Lord Ji has entrusted the entire clan affairs to him, and as Lord Ji is the Duke's Chancellor, Yang Huo has also taken charge of state affairs on behalf of Lord Ji"
"That's quite a large role for a household steward; I believe he is well disposed towards your good self?"
"It appears to be so; he honoured my household by paying respect to my mother at her wake - it was during this visit that I heard from him about the great banquet Lord Ji gave for all the knights of his clan, though I could not be a guest myself; immediately after the end of my bereavement, his messenger presented me with a roasted hog"
"Now that is a major gift, the shrine offering category; I trust you were obliged by convention to pay him a visit to express thanks for the gift?"
"Indeed, but I visited his manor when he was absent, and merely left my calling card without an audience"
"Ah...a neutral gesture..."
"But it so happens I encountered his entourage on the way home so we did have a conversation; he reminded me of the crime of wasted talent not put at the disposal of the state, and the pressing of time"
"very earnest search for talent; I am sure he has high esteem for you; but you are still considering? perhaps you prefer to take up appointment in somewhat different circumstances?"
Confucius felt somewhat nervous at the question; he glanced at his two attendants and wondered whether any of this conversation would get reported to Yang Huo one day; Yang Huo's arrogant usurpation of the powers of his betters might soon lead to his downfall, but in the mean time one could hardly say so; now my student Yan Hui is a mere boy, scholastic and innocent, while my deputy Zi Lu might be a bit impulsive, but is surely loyal. As for Laozi's people...
"of course, as the recipient of a 1000 bushel state allowance, I am obliged to be of service, but my training classes may be considered sufficient service already"
"and I have seen the material you edited for the students' benefit; they were very well done; you have extracted the most important parts of the history, poetry and divination books and put them on just 3000 bamboo slices, so that a student can learn them all; I wish our own archive had enough students to justify that kind of effort; more students also mean more people to help out with the editing and compilation"
"In any case, any official appointment I undertake will be in accordance with Zhou Conventions"
"I am so glad to hear this; you know this might be considered old fashioned and bookish these days"
"but necessary"
"books capture the sages' words, but not their spirits, not their deeds; we read the books, but we need to feel their spirits and trace their deeds"
"to follow the Tao; but what is the Tao?"

4.
Laozi gave Confucius a toothless smile; then stuck out his tongue.
"I see that the hard has decayed, but the soft has remained"
"Very good; you see that jade dragon?"
"which swallows its own tail? the end is also the beginning? the Tao goes on and on?"
"but a step more; where does the world come from?"
"in the beginning there was the void"
"and from nothing arose everything"
"now I see what you meant by 'nothing' is constant, because nothing is everything"
"and therein lies the Tao; too much will turn into too little; clever is dumb; the strongest is the one who needs nothing"
"so it would be futile for me to aspire to office?"
"not at all; we are thing, not nothing, and we live in a world of thing; but when we have thing and do thing, our spirit should be with nothing"
"..."
"governing a state is like cooking a tender fish; turn it too many times, and it turns into a pile of mess"
"..."
"the more clever the people, the less governable is the state; only the ignorant are blissful; the wise, like yourself, are full of burden; cast off your egoistic desires and your spirits may soar free"