Taoism, Buddhism and Tai Chi Cuan

Last time I wrote on this blog I alluded to the idea that Taoism is supposed by some to have influenced Buddhism. I was not actually thinking of Chinese Buddhist traditions here, but Indian. I was skeptical that Taoists in the first century BC had traveled to India and pow-wowed with the Buddha or his followers, but I had a strong recollection of having read this somewhere “authoritative.” A careful exploration of my bookshelf did indeed yield a little scholarly treasure: Chinese Thought From Confucius to Mao Tse-Tung, by H. G. Creel, written in 1953 (my paperback copy is from 1960.) H. G. Creel was a Professor of Chinese Literature and Institutions at the University of Chicago and worked for Military Intelligence as an expert on the Far East. In it, Creel often relates that this work or that work may be a forgery or may have been revised by some later Chinese scholar, however, he strives to reflect the nature of the truth behind the influence Chinese thought/philosophy/religion  has had on its culture throughout its long history. He says of Taoism and Buddhism:

Taoism and Buddhism were commonly associated in the Chinese mind. Many Taoist terms were used in translating Buddhist scriptures, and many Chinese studied Taoism and Buddhism together. The Buddhist were often quite tolerant of Taoism and sometimes even included Taoist deities in their temples. Taoism… copied Buddhism by establishing temples, monks, nuns, scriptures and doctrines which in many respects are astonishingly similar. The Taoists, however, were not so tolerant of the Buddhists as the Buddhists were of them;  perhaps their extensive borrowing from Buddhism left them with a bad conscience. The Taoists said the Lao Tzu had gone to India and taught the Buddha, so that Buddhism was nothing more than an offshoot of Taoism.

I was glad my memory was good enough to pull this out of the cobwebs, as it isn’t my normal reading matter. So problem solved, right? Those naughty Taoists were telling tales again. But questions of Taoist and Buddhist influences on the development of Tai Chi Cuan still were rattling around my brain. A more contemporary scholarly effort is found at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-BJ001/93608.htm in the manuscript called  The Taoist Influence on Hua-yen Buddhism: A Case of the Sinicization of Buddhism in China, by Kang-nam Oh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Regina (May 2000). Hua-yen was one of the earliest schools of Buddhism to be developed in China. The schools reinterpreted Indian Buddhism to fit the Chinese way of thinking and its social order and the paper points out many instances where Taoism, or more properly, Neo-Taoism, had inspired its development. For example, the “Manifold Mysteries” of the Taoists relates to the “Ultimate” truth of the Buddhists. Both share the dual concept of Substance and Function which can be traced to the Tao Te Ching.

Enter Bodhidharma. In the 5th or 6th century, Bodhidharma, who was probably Persian but hailed from Southern India where he was a Buddhist Monk, migrated to Northern China bringing with him the first, or at least the most, influential concepts of Zen Buddhism. He became a patron Saint of the Shaolin Monastery and is attributed with having created the beginnings of Kung Fu there. He is supposed to have sat facing a wall for nine years without speaking. Bodhidharma is said to have been a disciple of the Buddha who later traveled extensively and developed many exercises to strengthen his body. He taught these as part of the discipline of Zen and they most likely merged with existent boxing styles known to the Shaolin monks.  However, some historians maintain that the story of Bodhidharma at Shaolin Monastery is based a forged qigong manual written in the 17th century, interestingly, by a Taoist with the pen name of Purple Coagulation Man of the Way. Oh well.

So we have a semi-mythical Taoist deity, Lao Tzu, riding off on his blue water buffalo to instruct Siddhartha Gautama, who would later be the Buddha, in concepts of wu wei, (being and non-being), which would later become Taoism, and a semi-mythical Buddhist Saint from Iran staring at a wall and creating Kung Fu. Not to mention Zhang Sanfeng, who lived to be 600 years old, could fly, and invented Tai Chi on Wudang Mountain. Before we logical, science-based Westerners scoff we would be best to remember that Moses parted the waters, Jesus walked on them and Muhammad traveled to heaven on a winged horse.

And, you might well ask, where does the I Ching come in to all this? After all, it comes to us from the 1st century BCE and embodies the concepts of Yin and Yang and the Trigram diagrams which the Taoists later adopted into their philosophy.  Its commentaries may or may not have been written by Confucius, who is said to have advocated the practice of martial arts, but at least not to have invented it. So closes our can of Chinese worms. I’m off to read something I can be sure isn’t fiction. Like the political history of the United States.