I don’t recycle too many posts here, but this is the busy season. I am running out the door to the store and library and who knows where else. So, let me re-post something that goes back to 2005, some Taoist reflections on the Winter solstice. The light is coming!
Let me
step back a moment from my political blogging on Dongzhou and turn to
an odd little question, which may be philosophical, about winter
solstice: are we, at some deep unconscious level, afraid of it?
For readers in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore – nice warm places
this time of year – this may seem a remote topic. But for those of us
sitting in the darkening north, the impending longest night of the year
cannot but demand our attention. And we have historically made a lot
of it culturally. To escape the dark, northern Christians throw
themselves into Christmas. We (I am including northern agnostics and
atheists here as well) get together at holiday parties (perhaps in
unspoken hope that being with other people will keep the dark at bay),
we drape our homes with lights inside (on trees) and outside (on
eaves). When I think about it, however, it strikes me that the "season
of joy" is actually driven by a certain fear: of all of the cultural referents that attach to darkness, especially death.
OK, that seems rather morbid. But I think it’s true. To distract
ourselves from our fear of the dark, and of death, we seek out close
companionship and light.
I mention this because I have
begun to think about what a Taoist would make of Christmas, and I am
having some trouble. The first thing I noticed, however, was how a
Taoist would likely remark upon our apparent fear of the dark. Why do
we chose to do Christmas at roughly the Winter Solstice? A Taoist
would probably answer with the observation that we desire to distract
ourselves from the dark.
This would amuse a Taoist.
He/she would find it familiar: after all, in ancient Chinese culture,
"light" (the yang side of the Yin-Yang complement) has a more positive
rhetorical valence than "dark." This, at least, is something we could
take from many I Ching passages (I am sure my I Ching friends might
differ with me here). The "dark" cannot be, and should not be, denied
or overcome, but the "light" is stronger, more dynamic, more creative
and powerful than the "dark."
Taoism struggles against the cultural preference for the "light." The Tao Te Ching,
especially, champions the low, the dark. Darkness is an attribute of
Tao (Way). In passage 21 (Legge translation), Tao is referred to
thusly: "
Profound it is,
dark and obscure; Things’ essences all there endure." Dusky, obscure,
dark are all words used to describe Tao. So, why be afraid, if dark is
Tao?
A Taoist would not be afraid of
Winter Solstice. Nor would he/she celebrate it as the imminent return
of the light. Rather, a Taoist would embrace the dark in and of
itself, knowing that it is not permanent (nothing is in Tao) but that
it is essential and, in its own way, beautiful.
Whatever my Taoist sympathies, I
do not follow its path this time of year. I am not afraid of the
Solstice or the dark – I rather like the Winter, in fact. But I give
myself over to the dominant cultural practices: I like the lights on
our Christmas tree, and the lights framing our big picture window
outside. And I like the cooking and people and all. The real test
would be: what if all of that was taken away? Could we be happy in the
dark?
The Useless Tree 
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