Can the principles of Taoism be commodified and sold? It would seem that some are trying to do this:
THE Chinese philosophy of Taoism advocates the natural way of things
and the harmonious blending of the two opposite principles of yin and
yang for man to form a trinity with heaven and earth. It is widely
believed that Tao bears love, love bears restraint, restraint bears
acceptance and acceptance bears the world. As such, all things begin
with love and end with restraint, but it is acceptance that brings
harmony.As a result, the refining of Chinese culture throughout
the ages cultivated a deep sense of restraint in all aspects of social
and personal life. Chinese familial relations are famously strong on
ties, but also unique in their restraint from obvious displays of
affection while the concept of face implies restraint from uncontrolled
public expressions of emotions. Even traditional Chinese fashion has
reflections of restraint, such as foot binding, the form-fitting qi pao
and layers of restricting undergarments.For its
Spring/Summer 2010 collection for men and women, international Chinese
luxury brand Shanghai Tang taps into this characteristic Chinese
culture of personal restraint and the universal emotion of passionate
love and romance to proclaim the seductive female form with a subtle
Chinese sensual essence….
Let's start with largest-scale irony here: the conspicuous consumption of "restraint." The purpose of luxury branding is to call attention to oneself, to demonstrate that one has the means to be surrounded with high-priced commodities. "Dressing down" in a certain style is an expensive and noticeable posture, a pose. It is, in short, the opposite of "restraint." Thus, the luxury branding of Tao is a most un-Tao like activity.
Notice the other distortions at work here. Who says "Tao bears love"? What does that even mean? It seems to me that even a cursory reading of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu reveals a kind of emotional detachment, a notion of transcending, or at least disentangling from, both love and hate. "Love" in conventional terms is just another form of worldly attachment that can cause us to lose sight of Tao. That's why Chuang Tzu stops mourning his wife in a traditional manner. And that is why the Tao Te Ching recognizes that Tao encompasses both good and evil:
Way is the mystery of these ten thousand things.
It's a good person's treasure and an evil person's refuge. Its beautiful words are bought and sold and its noble deeds are gifts enriching people.
It never abandons even the evil among us. (62)
So, yes Tao bears love, but it also bears hate and ugliness and tragedy. To simply assert "Tao bears love" is to create a sanitized concept that does not challenge our sense of the world, a vapid feel good idea that can ease bourgeois anxieties. Again, not Tao at all.
And do they really want to invoke foot-binding as a model of restraint? The practice was "restraining" only in the sense of forcing the natural development of the female body into a distortion meant only to please sexual and aesthetic senses. How is that in any way keeping with Taoist ideas?
It's strange what happens when a marketing department meets ancient cultural ideas and practices: fetishisms of various sorts are made into symbols of restraint.
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