Organic harmony refers to that kind of harmonious organization that is brought about by spontaneous mutual adjustment of all the elements in a whole – in contrast to that kind of organization brought about when one element in a system dominates and subordinates all other elements to it, or when organization is imposed by some plan or force outside the system itself.
Organic harmony refers to those kinds of spontaneous tendencies that lead to harmony – in contrast to spontaneous tendencies of individual parts to assert themselves in competition with others, at the expense of the whole.
Organic harmony is similar to the modern concept of "what is natural," but there are also some major differences.
The term "natural" usually refers to what would happen if things were left completely alone. But organic harmony is something that definitely needs to be cultivated and coaxed along.
For modern Westerners, a central image for "what is natural" is "untouched nature" – some area of the world which has remained totally affected in any way by human intervention.
A central image of Laoist "organic harmony" is a beautiful, low-maintenance, natural-looking garden, such as one still finds in Japan. A person creating such a garden is trying to recreate and enhance the feeling she has gotten in some unusually beautiful natural setting. The garden has a beautiful arrangement of parts, brought about by careful planning, but the planning should not be obvious and visible (as it is in a formal English garden). And all the plants should be suited to their particular place in the garden; once it is planted, the garden should not take much more work to maintain (as it would, for example, if a plant needing a lot of water were planted in a place that is usually dry).
Another helpful image: learning to ride a bicycle. Riding a bicycle is not "natural" in the sense that all people are born with the skill of riding bicycles. This is a skill that must be cultivated. When I first started, it took conscious effort on my part to learn to ride a bicycle. But after I learned this skill, then bicycle riding appears to "come naturally" to me – i.e. I spontaneously do what I need to do to maintain my balance, without conscious thought or conscious effort.
If one thinks that Laoists were in favor of "being natural," in our sense, then much of Laoism will appear contradictory and hypocritical. Laoists will seem to be wanting to appear "natural," when actually everything is ultimately brought about by conscious human effort. If one realizes that they are aiming for organic harmony rather than "being natural" in our sense, this apparent contradiction and hypocrisy disappears.
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The Tao-te-ching applies this ideal of organic harmony to many different areas of human life. It can apply to social life, where it refers to a certain ideal of social harmony. But it also applies to a person’s own consciousness, to her personality, and to her own physical/emotional being.
– as to consciousness, it refers to a holistic approach to understanding the constant flux of the world, involving the whole of one’s being – as opposed to a mode of understanding common among educated people, which emphasizes rational, analytical, conceptual learning at the expense of intuitive feeling responses to the world. Such learning tends to ‘pigeon hole’ things in rigid categories, and so overlooks the constantly changing configurations characteristic of each unique situation.
– as to personality, it refers to an attempt to integrate all aspects of one’s being, in contrast to "bending oneself out of shape" – forcing oneself to exhibit some qualities, and forcefully repressing others, in order to conform to one’s own or to society’s concept of some ideal personality.
– as to one’s physical/emotional being, it refers to caring for the ongoing health and well being of one’s whole being. Laoists think that what mainly interferes with this is overstimulation and overwork – too much stimulation and excitement, too much desire stimulated by external things, to much straining and exhausting oneself by prolonged concentration on achieving a single goal.
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Individual players on some basketball teams are competing with each other, each wanting to clearly stand out above the others as the most outstanding player. Other teams have worked together for a long time to play as a team – each player spontaneously adjusts his play so as to maximize the potential of all the others and the team as a whole.
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When bowling, sometimes if you let your mind focus too much on the goal of knocking down all the pins, it interferes with careful attention to your "form," the movement of your legs and arms as you make your approach. Sometimes it helps to not consciously think of knocking down the pins as you approach, but to concentrate on making the motion of your legs and arms as smooth and harmonious as possible. (Such attention to bodily form rather than concentration on goals is characteristic of much training in the Asian martial arts, and represents Laoism’s contribution to these arts.)
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In group discussions, it often seems as though other people are extremely articulate – clear words and polished speech just pop out of their mouth. By comparison, a person might feel about herself that she has interesting and valuable ideas, but that these ideas are most difficult to put into clear words and polished speech. The view of things she wants to express exists in a kind of dark space in her mind, mixed with intuitive feelings, strong emotions, and visceral reactions. Such a person might feel embarrassed to speak up, wishing that her ideas also occurred polished and ready-made in her mind. But Laoists think that this latter kind of understanding is more organic, a product of a direct involvement of the whole person with the real world. The real human truth about the human real world is by nature not easy to put into words. Polished speech often achieves clarity and impressiveness by artificially casting things in a pre-set mold, ("cutting up the Uncarved Block,")
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Being in a group, individuals often feel embarrassed about something about themselves. They feel stupid when everyone else in the group seems very bright and knowledgeable. They feel afraid when they know they are supposed to be brave. They can’t afford to give the kind of gifts others are giving each other. They feel depressed when the rest of the group wants to be having a good time. Men have an impulse to cry when they know men are not supposed to cry. Women wish they had the figure or the hair of their neighbors. And so on. Responding to this social pressure, individuals often strain themselves and artificially bend themselves out of shape to try to present the kind of appearance others admire. This kind of strain Laoists call "working." By contrast, they think that each person is a unique package containing many different elements, with spontaneous tendencies to work themselves into a balanced integrated whole. Their ideal is to fully accept the "embarrassing" aspects of one’s total being, ("cultivate what is shameful"), and foster an organic harmony among all these parts.
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When raising a child, some parents begin with some ideal image of what this child is supposed to be like, and try to make the child conform to this image. The contrasting Laoist ideal would not be to let the child do whatever she wants. It would be to pay careful attention to this child’s actual unique characteristics, abilities, and impulses, and try to imagine what this child would be like at her best, then coax the child along in this direction, trying to "bring out the best" in this particular child.
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"Tao" is the name for the subtle feeling one gets when in the presence of some high degree of organic harmony. For example, some Asian art has this subtle kind of beauty. A picture has a wonderful feeling about it, but one cannot point to any particular part of the picture that stands out as wonderful. The beauty does not consist in the outstanding beauty of any individual parts, but in the way the parts are related to each other in an organic whole.
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A high degree of organic harmony is the goal Laoism sets for those persons who want to raise their lives above the level of just doing what is expected of them in society. In fact Laoists think that much of social pressure operates in a way contrary to organic harmony, so a great deal of Laoist advice on how to cultivate organic harmony takes the form of paradoxical sayings that run directly contrary to conventional thinking. (E.g. "The highest virtue does not appear virtuous.")
Laoists encourage idealistic individuals to strive for a very high degree of organic harmony. One who does achieve a very high degree of organic harmony is thought to exemplify the highest kind of excellence there is. Cultivating this kind of personal excellence is called "cultivating Tao." One who has achieved a very high degree of organic harmony is said to "have Tao."
In this interpretation, the word "Tao" is essentially an "hypostatized" feeling or state of mind. "Hypostatize" comes from the Greek word "hypostasis" which refers to any kind of independent entity. When we say, "How is the stock market doing," we "hypostatize" the stock market – we speak of "the stock market" as though it were an independent entity or force. In the same way, the term "Tao" hypostatizes the subtle feeling one gets when a high degree of organic harmony has been achieved, speaking of this subtle feeling as though it were an independent entity or force.
Hypostatizing Tao also gave Laoists a way of expressing the fact that, in their eyes, the person who has Tao has "transcended" conventional thinking and conventional social standards. "Tao is the norm of the world," means that Tao (i.e. organic harmony) is the basis for all that is of genuine and highest value in the world. This is also expressed sometimes by saying that Tao is the "root," the "ancestor," or the "origin" of the world.
The idea that Tao is the "origin of the world" has led some to compare Tao to the creator-God of Christianity and other religions. But creation accounts in theistic religions have a much different purpose in theistic religions than they do in Laoism. In theistic religions, the purpose of creation accounts is to tell people the purpose of the universe, and how their lives fit into this purpose, so that they can conform their lives to this purpose. Creation accounts in the Tao-te-ching are mainly a means of celebrating the basic and wonderful "cosmic" importance of Tao, i.e. of organic harmony. (It’s like "Love makes the world go round." This is not a theory about what makes the earth spin, it is a celebration of the basic and wonderful, "cosmic"importance of love.)
The image of Tao as world origin has led others to think that "Tao" refers to something existing in the physical world. It has been compared to the "laws of nature" that scientists discover by observing the laws that govern the physical world. In popular American culture Tao is also often compared to "The Force" in the movie "Star Wars," – a kind of energy existing in the universe that a person can tap into, becoming "one with the universe." But the Tao-te-ching never says that one can learn about Tao by observing the physical world, and never says that having Tao makes a person one with the universe outside herself.
Rather, in the Tao-te-ching, Tao is primarily something (organic harmony) some idealistic individuals cultivate in themselves, then bring into the world. That is, in the ideal Laoist society, the chief role models would be people who had cultivated Tao (organic harmony) in themselves. This Tao existing in the role models would set a tone for the rest of society – i.e. it would make itself felt in the vibes ("Te") they give off, and in the style of behavior expressive of the organic harmony they have in their own being, and the tone they set in this way would act as a subtle force bringing about organic harmony in the society.
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Organic harmony is something difficult to bring about by direct efforts. That is, if a person conceives in her mind some ideal kind of harmony and then tries to impose it on her being, this harmony will be something imposed from outside rather than "organic." A person can however indirectly cultivate organic harmony by providing a mental environment more conducive to organic harmony. For example, one way of doing this is by getting rest and relaxation, and deepening this relaxation by meditation exercises aimed at "cultivating Stillness." "Stillness" is also hypostatized in the Tao-te-ching as a kind of independent force existing in the person who is very relaxed – in contrast to the person who is very "hyper" because of constant stimulation (partying), or because she is constantly straining to be productive (a workaholic).
The Tao-te-ching uses several other words like this to describe different aspects of the state of mind Laoists cultivate in themselves. Besides Stillness, the main such terms are: Emptiness, Softness, Weakness, Femininity, Uncarved, Oneness, Steadiness, Clarity, Harmony. All of these terms are different aspects of "Tao" – Tao is a summary term referring to the collection of all these qualities. (Note that "Emptiness," in the Tao-te-ching means something very different than it does in Buddhism. Laoist Emptiness is defined by contrast with what feels solid and worthwhile – in the sense that we speak of a "solid citizen." Some qualities seem "solid" because they receive a lot of recognition and admiration in society. "Empty" refers to qualities that appear worthless, because they do not gain a person recognition or admiration in society. But Laoists think that "yearning for solidity" is one of the main obstacles to organic harmony. Cultivating organic harmony requires paying special attention to some characteristics in oneself that will usually appear not solid, "empty," even embarrassing, from a conventional point of view.)
For Laoists, cultivating Tao required cultivating qualities that are the opposite of those that ordinarily make for recognition and success in conventional society. This meant being willing to feel "left out" and receive no social support for one’s way of being. (Laoists did not envision converting the entire society to Laoism.) But cultivating Tao also gave them an internal sense of Tao as a kind of supportive force they could feel within themselves, to substitute for the support that they did not receive from society around them. For this reason, they also hypostatized Tao as an internal nourishing energy called "The Mother." As one passage says: "I am alone, different from others, treasuring the nourishing Mother."
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Western theistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have a strong tradition of confrontational moral crusades or "holy wars." When things conditions in society are not as they should be, the righteous person should stand up and denounce them, and demand eradication of unrighteousness in the world. The idea of God as a "transcendent" being is connected to the idea that those trying to "follow the will of God" should stand up confrontationally against unrighteousness in the world. God is a completely just being existing outside the unjust social system, and to bring about the "Kingdom of God" is to bring about a utopian state ruled by this just God.
This tradition has become a pervasive feature of Western culture, even among people who are not religious. It shows itself in a certain style of social "revolutionary" protest, usually focused on single issues. This is common among Leftists such as Marxists. But even conservative politicians today speak of "the Reagan revolution," and promise further "revolutions" to reverse present conditions, eradicate unfairness in taxation, welfare programs, etc.
I think it is useful to see the way in which the Laoist idea of Tao as a transcendent reality led to the exact opposite of this attitude. Laoists also thought that conventional social life is pervaded by false values. The transcendent Tao is something that stands in contrast to these false values. But Tao is just a name that refers to organic harmony in its most excellent form. And organic harmony is a state in which no one element dominates in any given system, especially no one element that exists outside the system. This makes "Tao" very different from "God." A system is which "Tao rules" would not be a system in which some force outside the system dominates the system. It would be a system in which all the elements of the system exist in organic harmony with each other, mutually adjusting themselves to each other without the intervention of some outside force. So even though Tao is transcendent, it is not some force existing separate from the individual parts of some given system – the social system, or the "system" existing in a person’s own psycho-physical being. Tao is only the name for the system itself in a state of ideal, transcendent, organic harmony.
Similarly, in trying to bring about organic harmony, the direct confrontational tactics characteristic of Western moralistic revolutionary movements constitute the absolute worst strategy. One must get things done by finding subtle and indirect ways of intervening, in which "Soft" interventions can be inserted into the already existing flow of things, coaxing them gradually in the right direction, rather than confrontationally forcing them to go in the direction opposite their current flow.
The following passage is from a book by John Blofeld, who traveled visiting Buddhist and Taoist communities in China in the 1930's. Blofeld gives the following description of his visit to a remote Taoist hermitage in China:
(From John Blofeld, The Secret and the Sublime: Taoist mysteries and magic. London: George Allyn and Unwin, Ltd. 1973. p. 116-118.)Not far from where the hermitage clung to the steep rock-face... where the path took a sharp turn towards a stone stairway leading to the main gate, it could be seen that the recluses' love of unspoiled beauty had not deterred them from lending nature a helping hand. The immediate environs of the Valley Spirit Hermitage gave the impression of a series of rocks and caverns, overhung by ferns and luxuriant plants, which just happened to emerge from the undergrowth in this vicinity, adding enormously to its picturesqueness. What aroused my suspicion was that no other section of the mountain, apart from the chasms and waterfall, looked so exactly like the original of a Taoist painting. There was, of course, no obvious symmetry, but yet a sense of underlying harmony that was just a shade too pronounced to be altogether natural. Whoever had been responsible for making the 'guided wildness' of the approach to the hermitage even lovelier than nature's untouched handiwork had surely been a master of subtlety, for there was not an object within sight of the stairway of which one could confidently affirm it had been tampered with.
Taoists, the ancient progenitors of several horticultural arts now widely associated with Zen, such as flower-arrangement, certain kinds of landscape gardening and the growing of dwarf trees, were wont to employ loving artistry in subtly modifying nature... In landscaping, the underlying principle was to avoid artificiality not by refraining from improving on natural forms, but by bringing out or highlighting shapes -- beautiful, amusing or grotesque -- already inherent in the objects worked upon. A square should not be rounded, but a rough sphere could be made rounder; a shrub should be made to resemble a stork only if the stork already existed potentially in the plant's natural shape; water might be diverted from one pile of rocks to another to heighten the beauty of a cataract, but only if there were nothing inherently unnatural in the resulting flow and fall. Nature could be assisted to achieve masterly effects, but the concept in the improver's mind must in itself be based on intimate knowledge of nature's manifestations. In short, the aim in most cases was to assist nature to do what it might under more favorable circumstances have done for itself.
Readers are sometimes offended at the "hypocritical" attitude toward nature that they see reflected in Blofeld’s description. The hermits seem to be pretending to be "nature lovers" while at the same time betraying that attitude most offensive to modern nature-lovers, the arrogant, "anthropocentric" assumption that human values and human ideas about how the world ought to be, are superior to nature in its pure untouched state. A true nature lover would simply leave nature alone. Many people today have a strictly disjunctive view of the relation between "nature" and "human culture." Blofeld’s hermits clearly do not share this disjunctive view, but favor a kind of "cultivated nature." They have a aesthetic appreciation of a certain kind of naturally occurring beauty in woods and streams, but their main focus is the beauty – the "organic harmony" – present in certain parts of the woods. They set about rearranging the rest of the woods so as to enhance this "natural" beauty.
What Blofeld says in about Taoist hermits reflects a view of things that closely matches the views expressed in another earl Taoist work called the Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu). I will illustrated this by a close reading of one passage that tells how Woodcarver Ching went about carving an awesomely beautiful bellstand:
When the bellstand was complete, those who saw it were amazed, [because it] seemed like [something belonging to the realm of] spirits. The Marquis of Lu went to see it, and then asked, "By what secret art did you make this?"
[Ching] answered, "Your servant is [only] an artisan, how could I have a "secret art"? However, there is one thing. Suppose your servant is going to make a bellstand. I dare not let my qi dissipate. I make sure to fast, to still my mind. After fasting three days, I no longer presume to think of recognition and reward, of rank and salary. After fasting five days, I no longer presume to think of praise or blame, of skill or clumsiness. After seven days, I am so concentrated that I forget I have four limbs or a body. By this time [for me] there is no Duke or court. The skill [for the work] concentrates and outside distractions disappear.
Only after all this do I go into the mountain forest.
[There I set about] observing the [inner] nature of Heaven [‘s work].
[When I discover wood whose] form and substance have reached perfection,
Only after this is [everything] complete, [enabling me to] see the bellstand.
Only after this do I set my hand to work.
[If things do] not [happen] like this, I give up.
Thus I join Heaven to Heaven.
This is probably the reason why the bellstand seems like something from the spirit-world.
The first thing I want to point out is the way that this passage seems from a modern point of view to illustrate a confusion between nature and human culture similar to that in the Blofeld passage. Clearly Woodcarver Ching is a kind of "nature lover," in that he got the inspiration for his bell-stand by a kind of careful and reverential observation of nature. On the other hand, the result of his nature-observation was not a grasp of how nature works, but an ability to "see" in a tree a very useful human product, a bellstand. And his "reverence for nature" did not express itself in admiration of trees as they exist in their natural habitat themselves, but rather in chopping down and carving up a "natural" tree to produce a luxury item for the court of a local duke.
In translating this passage I have tried for a rather literal rendering, and printed the last sentences on separate lines because the wording especially in these last lines is very interesting and significant in several places. First, after entering the forest, and before he was able to "see" the bellstand, the text says that Ching spent some time guan tian xing (guan/observing tian/Heaven’s xing/nature). Xing is the word often translated as "nature." It usually refers to some core tendency of a being, not itself immediately visible, but which is the root of visible conduct. (As for example Mencius says that people’s desire to rescue a child from a well is a manifestation of a inner core tendency toward empathy and compassion; a manifestation of an internal "commiserating xing."). When the text says that Ching is observing Heaven’s nature, "Heaven" in the context seems to refer to what we call "Nature" in a different sense, Nature as a personification of the forces operative in the natural world of the forest, outside human control. A literal translation of guan tian xing might then be "observing Nature’s nature." The context seems to indicate that Woodcarver Ching spends time carefully observing the shapes of trees in the mountain forest, contemplating that kind of beauty observable in naturally occurring forms. He thinks of this as learning about "the nature of Nature" the inner spirit of Nature. This contemplation is what eventually enables him "see a bellstand" in a piece of wood "[whose] form and substance have reached perfection." That is, a piece of wood is said to have "reached perfection" when it exemplifies this "natural" kind of beauty, this "Nature’s nature" to a very high degree -- exhibiting this beauty of course in the form of a plausible bellstand.
Ching says that when everything comes together in this way, he is able to "join Heaven to Heaven." One "Heaven" here is clearly the xing of Heaven/Nature that Ching spent time observing, which he now sees in the wood. Following suggestions evident in other Zhuangzi passages, the other "Heaven" is most likely Ching’s own mind, the mental state he was in as a result of conserving his qi, fasting, stilling his mind, and ridding himself of all the concerns for fame and social advantages that Zhuangzi rails against, and to which Ching as a court artisan would have usually been susceptible. This kind of mental self-cultivation is what gave Ching a "Heavenly" mind. The finished bellstand was "like a spirit" (gui-shen) to people who saw it – it had that mysteriously awesome aura that Chinese associated with spirits – precisely because it was the result of combining Ching’s "Heavenly" state of mind with the Heavenly beauty of natural forms he was able to perceive by his careful study of naturally occurring forms in the forest.