Ethics – A Good Start for Spiritual Practice

Instead of lofty mystical ideas, I ended up needing something much more simple.

When I began to study Daoism in depth, I was initially thrilled because it resonated with what I think about the world and life in general. I had deconstructed my Christian faith a few years earlier, and since then I had been a spiritual seeker. Now, the term “spiritual seeker”, because it is a trendy and modern term, might create in one’s mind a picture of a rather casual spiritual but not religious person in the supermarket of religions, where they gather an à la carte version of spirituality by mixing this and that from different traditions that fit their personal preferences. In my case, it was anything but. I wonder if that is a rare outlier instead of the standard among spiritual seekers. (Sure, Daoism itself has a syncretistic aspect to it, especially in relation to Buddhism, but it is a religion that relies very much on lineages of masters, and I want to respect that.)

I was serious. I wanted to commit and belong. I wanted to find a ground on which my feet could firmly stand, and the truth that both my mind and my heart could embrace. But by the time I came across Daoism, I had grown sceptical, cynical and weary.

When I read the Dàodé Jīng, there was something that clicked. I have felt that in all religious and spiritual traditions there is something true and profound to them that I could not put a finger on. Something about understanding how to live a good life. Some sense of holiness, and reverence for that something. Sure, many teachings in those traditions are not correct, and in the era of science we know that the ancient worldviews did get many things wrong. But on the moral and practical level, there seems to be some sort of wisdom that modern people need to rediscover. The Dào, which is a principle that is at work in every thing that exists, nourishing them and guiding their course, seemed to me the perfect explanation for those bits of insight and wisdom in those traditions. People had a sense of that which the Dàodé Jīng called the Dào.

Moreover, the ideal of wú wéi also seemed the right way to approach life from my perspective. Wú wéi is to act and live in a way that you don’t force things to happen, and that you stop obsessing about things. Look at how things naturally unfold, and attune to those cycles and rhythms of the universe. It just made sense to me.

But after reading the Dàodé Jīng for a while, something just felt off. Daoism does not believe that there is a specific purpose to life. The Dào is not a personal god, it does not have a will or a consciousness of its own. It just emanates things and thus constantly generates differentiating beings of various kinds. I felt stale, stagnant and depressed. How should I then live, on a practical level? What should I do? Just sit? I could not find an insight that could transform my life in a way that I could feel a little bit more fulfilled. This experience caused me to drift away from it.

Then I ended up in a situation in my life that I became hopelessly depressed. I called to a crisis hotline and told about my suicidal thoughts. I started therapy again, but after a few sessions I noticed that just talking with a random professional did not help. I needed something to believe in, and something to do. Something to live for.

I took up reading the Dàodé Jīng again, and its teachings opened up more powerfully than before. However, it was not Dàodé Jīng that gave me the strongest impetus for a serious spiritual practice. It was actually two later Daoist works that edified me much more powerfully. One is called Scriptural Statutes of Lord Lao (Lǎojūn jīnglǜ, 老君經律). It is a work by a movement called the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tiānshī dào, 天師道) and it lays out ethical principlces for the community members to follow. These scriptural statutes are based on the teachings of the Dàodé Jīng, but instead of poetry, they are laid out as concise list of nine principles to follow. It is supplemented by additional 27 statutes that further elaborates those principles. The other scripture is called Scripture for Internal Daily Application (Nèi rìyòng jīng, 內日用經). It is a later work with leanings on inner alchemy teachings. At the beginning, it advises to keep one’s diet and talking in check, and to cultivate clarity and stillness of the mind.

These teachings were a godsend. They gave me clear guidelines to follow in my day-to-day life here and now. Look at what you eat. Don’t eat or drink too much, and cut some of those delicious things you want to get dopamine hits from. Look at how you consume social media. See how much time you spend on it. If you put your phone aside and just let yourself feel what is going on in your body and mind, do you feel a bit different? Sure I did. I found a new sense of groundedness.

So, what are these precepts I read about? Here are some of them.

Nine Practices

The teachers of the Way of the Celestial Masters studied the Dàodé Jīng, and created a list of nine foundational ethical or spiritual practices that the members of the community should follow. These practices are:

1. Practice effortlessness (xíng wúwéi 行無為)

2. Practice softness and weakness (xíng róuruò 行柔弱)

3. Practice guarding the feminine (xíng shǒucí 行守雌)

4. Practice namelessness (xíng wúmíng 行無名)

5. Practice clarity and stillness (xíng qīngjìng 行清靜)

6. Practice being adept (xíng zhūshàn 行諸善)

7. Practice desirelessness (xíng wúyù 行無欲)

8. Practice knowing how to stop and be content (xíng zhī zhǐzú 行知止足)

9. Practice yielding and withdrawing (xíng tuīràng 行推讓)

At the heart of these practices is to become more like the Dào. You are supposed to act by not forcing, and affect things in a subtle and soft manner. The individual with its desires and ego create an obstacle for the Dào to work through the person. The reason is that these maintain a sense of dichotomy between my needs and needs of others.

Daoism is known for its yin-yang symbol ☯, which represents the active and assertive yang principle as well as the receptive, soft and nurturing yin principle. Since I first read the Dàodé Jīng, I have thought that the book overwhelmingly teaches yin, but not so much yang, and I thought it was out of balance in that way. I still think so to some extent. But I believe that life begins from within yin, and proceeds later towards yang. A person is born out of the mother, fed and nurtured by her in their first years. But later on, the father is supposed to take a role in teaching and guiding his son or daughter to the wider world. This is especially important for boys, but I believe fathers are also essential for girls. Mother tongue, fatherland.

In the same way, spiritual life begins by the feminine, to build a foundation in reducing desires and developing clarity and stillness, and learning to let go of our obsessive habits and opinionated attitudes. We need to make space for the Dào. But then, after being empowered by something more than ourselves, we can proceed to actively nourishing and supporting the world and its beings. Only from a healthy mental and spiritual condition can a person make a positive change in the world at large. A Daoist should pursue to build a better world, not to grab power for himself and his group over against others.

The Nine Practices are a good reference point for developing a way of life and behaviour that calms down the over-assertive ego and rampant desires, and gives the person a steady foundation.

I revere being fed by the Mother.

- Dàodé Jīng 20

More Concrete Practices

The Nine Practices are a good summary of Daoist ethics, but I think they can be quite abstract and broad in application. What gave my life a new surge of energy were much more down to earth.

Awareness and healthy habits

First of all, some of these principles came from the Scripture of Internal Daily Application:

Now, considering daily application,
Keep your drinking and eating regulated.
Restrain your speaking and meditate alone –
Do not allow even a single thought to arise.

With the ten thousand affairs all forgotten,
Preserve spirit and stabilize awareness.
…
During the twelve double-hours of the day,
Constantly seek clarity and stillness.

- Nèi Rìyòng Jīng 1a

I tend to treat myself with tasty foods and beer, especially when I felt tired and upset. Earlier on, I also served myself several chocolate bars over the course of the week. When my food was not those delicious pizzas and hamburgers, I used to make sandwiches that were not so nutritious. I gained weight, and I did not feel so good inside. I have learnt from Daoism that food is not primarily for hedonistic pleasure but energising and nourishing the body so that we could be healthy. And when you are healthy, you are able to benefit from good energy and fitness, and enjoy doing useful and productive things.

Another temptation from the modern world comes from excessive stimulation of the mind. Just like many others, I indulge in binge watching, and my medium for that is YouTube. When I decide to take a break from that and sit in silence, I hear my ears ringing and some weird humming sound in my head. My heart is pounding and my body feels like being stirred. I think this is the result of constantly feeding the senses with stimuli, and not letting them rest.

This kind of addiction is said to dissipate the energies of mind and body. You are not in control of yourself, and you end up wasting your potential. The antidote to that is to practice clarity and stillness through meditation. In my previous experiences at Buddhist retreats, clarity and stillness creates a sense of happiness that is somehow pure, non-addictive and fulfilling.

The pure and happy awareness is cultivated in two ways. One is formal meditation that is typically done by sitting and paying attention to nothing else except bodily sensations and the breath. The other way, complementary to the first, is to be present in whatever task you are doing at the moment, and not distract your mind to something else all the time. For example, when you are eating, put all media and screens away, and just enjoy the meal. Let your mind rest in the taste of the food, stillness and quietness, the sounds of the environment, or the company of the people you are eating with. Just focus on the here and now, whatever you are doing.

When it comes to restraining your speech, I have not yet paid much attention to it, but what you are speaking is essential to what is going on in your mind. How about not gossiping and complaining about whatever is bugging your mind? How about looking for things to appreciate? Instead of complaining how wet the rain is, you can remember that the rain feeds the fields and forests and nourishes the nature where we get our food and so on. It takes creativity to “always look at the bright side of life”, but definitely worth it.

Don’t Delight in Aberrance

In the Scriptural Statutes, there were two precepts that piqued my interest.

Do not delight in aberrance.
Do not study aberrant literature.

- Lǎojūn jīnglǜ 1b

What is aberrance? Something unusual that breaks the norms and is considered inappropriate, twisted and wrong. Moralists can point out to all kinds of behaviours they don’t like and call it disgusting, but what could be a Daoist perspective on what is aberrant? I think it could be thought of as something unnatural. The first things that come into my mind relate to sexuality, especially pornography, prostitution and non-standard fetishistic practices. The reason why I think these are twisted practices is that they take a natural function and desire to procreate and bond, and use it for hedonistic pleasure and profit-making instead. The purpose of sexuality is to have children and nurture them, and part of that is to nurture the bond between a man and a woman.

Well, what about homosexuality? As long as sex is part of companionship, faithful commitment and mutual support, I don’t think it is a problem. What I see as a problem from a perspective of committed Daoist practice, doing things for the sake of desire prevents a person from advancing in the practice of clarity and stillness. But that is up to one’s personal discretion what role sexuality plays in their lives, and what impact it has. In general, I advise to move from hedonism and selfishness, taught by post-WWII liberal individualism, toward a more spiritual and duty-oriented thinking, which is taught by ancient traditions, and which helps us remain sane, good people, and keep our societies in good shape.

At the heart of avoiding aberrant influences is to keep our minds on things that support normal, peaceful and prosperous life. Aberrant influences could be related to sexuality as discussed above, but could also be about inciting hatred towards people groups such as white people, men, Jews or Muslims. Anything that makes our minds twisted, unhealthy and insane. The reason one should look for a spiritual or wisdom tradition to draw inspiration from is that the current atmosphere in our media, with its discussions on race, war and confusion of gender roles, will drive us crazy. You need a place where your mind can return to and be rejuvinated after being tainted by the madness of our age or your day-to-day grind.

Not delighting in aberrance is a specification on cutting social media usage and screen time in my case. It underscores the importance on not being entertained by the twisted pleasure of doomscrolling and consuming content where people are arguing or discussing trends and scandals that are just crazy and makes the mind dirty. Political content should be consumed for the educational purposes, for the sake of being informed about what is going on in our society, so that we could do better politics.

Not an Easy Path

I have noticed that during the past few weeks, the ethical practice has been quite challenging. After years of indulgence and living in the midst of modern society, it is not easy to transition to a more traditionalist way of life. It takes commitment and self-discipline. But we shouldn’t lose heart. Modernism is also very tolerant and pluralistic, which means that traditionalists also have a chance of living the way they want. This liberty in the West that we still have to some extent is to be appreciated and used for our advantage, to build a better future.

Spirituality is more than just ideas to entertain in your mind. First and foremost, it is a way of life. A way of life is about what choices you make, and how you behave. Through the ethical principles I read about, the hedonistic pleasure-seeking had a competitor. The great traditions of humankind have always taught self-restraint when it comes to pleasure, and directing one’s mind towards something higher and more noble. Through concrete moral guidelines to follow, one can start to behave in a way that is fitting for a citizen of a noble civilisation.

Sources

Komjathy, Louis
Handbooks for Daoist Practice. Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Vol II. Square Inch Press 方寸書社: Ravinia, Illinois, United States of America. 2023.

Attribution of the cover picture: Oksana Levchishinauser:DDanMar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons