Western scholarship has traditionally portrayed Chinese cultural as patriarchal and not supportive of women. This perspective often fails to look at ways that the feminine has been acknowledged and honored in major Chinese religious traditions. Kuan Yin, for example, was originally the male bodhisattva of Indian Buddhism, Avalokestesvara. In China she changed gender and became a female bodhisattva in the Buddhist tradition and an Immortal in the Taoist tradition. During a long period of time there were more images of her in Buddhist temples throughout China than any other Buddhist figure.The Tao Te Ching, the book that contains the basic teachings for the religion of Taoism and sets out the philosophy that has guided millions of practitioners of Taoism in China for more than two millennia, also gives a very prominent role to the feminine in religious practice. This paper will explore how feminine images are portrayed in the Tao Te Ching and what those images might mean
[...] the female is the epitome of nonaction.[35] However, Schwartz does not see the image of the mother in the Tao Te Ching as a personification. He says that the image of the mother has nurturing association, but that the Tao is not “consciously providential.”[36] He sees nature in the Tao Te Ching as the ordinary nature of human experience and not anything more, though he does acknowledge a value judgment in the text in favor of the feminine and traits associated with it.[37] Michael LaFarge argues that images of The Mother in the Tao Te Ching, like images of Stillness, Emptiness, Femininity, Softness/Weakness, Harmony, Clarity, The Merging, The Oneness, The Uncarved Block, Tao, Te, and Excellence are all references to states of mind that are being described or hypostatized.[38] He believes that these references are not analytical explanations, but discussions of experiences that were experientially evocative to the reader.[39] LaFargue believes that Stillness, Emptiness, Clarity, Harmony, and Softness are fairly clearly states to be cultivated in the language of the text, but that The Mother, Tao, and The Oneness are less obvious references to states of mind. [...]
[...] He sees the work as a “rather down-to-earth philosophy aimed at the mundane purpose of personal survival and political order.”[21] He steadfastly refuses to see any transcendent philosophy, arguing that chapter which talks about the valley and the mysterious female, is possibly just a piece of cosmogony that may echo some primitive creation myth.[22] He describes those and other references to the mother and the female as, more than a picturesque way of describing how the universe came to be, and an expression of wonder at the inexhaustible nature of this creative process.[23] Because he does not believe that the Tao Te Ching is a unified work, he does not think that such references to possible cosmogony should be used to interpret the work as a whole.[24] The majority of commentators, however, do not agree with Lau's view. [...]
[...] Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press Chen, Ellen M., The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary. New York: Paragon House LaFargue, Michael, Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao Te Ching. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ed. D. C. Lau. London: Penguin Books Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: The Classic book of Integrity and the Way, translated by Victor H. Mair. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club Schwartz, Benjamin, Thought of the Tao-te-ching”, in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, eds. [...]
[...] She points out that the Tao Te Ching does not pit the feminine against the masculine, but appeals to all form to remember its root in the womb.[50] She believes that the valley spirit and dark mare of chapter 6 identify the Tao with the feminine principle and probably point to some primitive religious beliefs.[51] The valley, in Chen's interpretation, is the location of fertility. The valley gives birth to and nourishes all beings.[52] The dark mare, too, is a womb symbol.[53] Chen cites other Chinese texts that refer to the Valley Spirit and connect the valley to the moon.[54] The images of uncarved wood, the valley, and murky water are all feminine symbols of the unformed, yielding, and receptive.[55] It is the dynamism of the mother that qualifies her to be the mother of all beings.[56] Chen interprets chapter 52 of the Tao Te Ching, where knowing the mother one knows the son or child, as follows: Tao as mother has no substance, it is nothing (wu). [...]
[...] In the first instance, in chapter the Tao Te Ching says: The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth; The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.[9] That chapter goes on to say: These two are the same But diverge in name as they issue forth. Being the same they are called mysteries, Mystery upon mystery The gateway of the manifold secrets.[10] The next mention of the mother is in chapter 20, when the Tao Te Ching is describing the nature of the sage in the first person: I alone am different from others And value being fed by the mother.[11] way' is described as the potential mother of the world in chapter 25: There is a thing confusedly formed, Born before heaven and earth. [...]
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