What Does Benevolence and Righteousness Mean and How Should We Practice Them?
Musing on this particular section of the Zhuangzi [13.15-13.24.6] which is a dialogue between Lao Dan (Old Master Lao Tzu or Laozi) and Confucius.
Confucius is traveling westward to deposit his writings at the Zhou court, when one of his disciples, Zilu suggests he go visit "a certain Lao Dan..." to inquire about the "twelve classics" (I'll provide a link that lists all the "classics.") which seem to be a collection of Chinese poetry, philosophy, and mythological texts. As Confucius explains these twelve classics to Lao Dan, Lao Dan scoffs and requests to just hear the essentials, exclaiming this is too tedious [13.15-13.18]. To which Confucius responds in 13.19: "The essentials consist of benevolence and righteousness." To which both Confucius and Lao Dan agree that benevolence and righteousness are innate to one's own original nature [13.20-13.21].
Lao Dan then goes on to inquire about what 'benevolence' and 'righteousness' mean. Confucius could be correct in this explanation, but in so far as what benevolence and righteousness mean to Master Zhuang & Guo Xiang, that is another story. Confucius explains that, "One should take the happiness of others sincerely to heart and should love everyone impartially, this is what 'benevolence' and 'righteousness' really mean." [13.23]. Now, Lao Dan scoffs at this, and I did too when reading that. But this is a statement I would've agreed with not that long ago probably. To show love to all people is what I thought it meant to be good and benevolent.
Why Lao Dan (and Master Zhuang, the author) scoffs at such a remark is because he believes to keep in mind that one should "love everyone" with such conscious action is to actually act partially. It's an act that is partial to one's own self-interest, the most extreme form of self-interest: having that "impartial" love reciprocated. [13.24.2] "To be impartial in this way is actually a matter of self-interest." Guo Xiang's commentary on this one line reminds us that we must rid ourselves of any human notion of "impartiality." In the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, we are told to discard our preconceived notions of "what is" and "what is not" in chapter 2.10.4 of "Regarding All Things Equal 齊物論."
The idea Lao Dan is trying to convey, I think, is that instead of keeping in your mind consciously that you need to love everyone upon meeting them, rather we should, "trust freely in your virtue to act, keep in step with the Dao as you throw yourself into things, and you shall already be there." [13.24.4] meaning trust your innate principle that lies within you, and act according to what is being presented to you. Now to "act in accord with one's innate principle" is something I assume is truly brought about by participating in authentic Daoist practice, which I currently am not doing (just working on establishing a good relationship with my ancestors at the moment and philosophizing). So when we rely on "loving everyone impartially," this is an error. If a situation calls for benevolence and righteousness, and if it is in your nature to express that, then yes that is what we should do. But what about those situations where benevolence and righteousness are not called for? What then?
Online and in real life we will be faced with racists, bigots, and the like, to actively go out of your way to "love" these people is selfish because in wanting to love these kinds of people, its an act of displaying one own "uprightness" or morality. In Chapter 7 of the Zhuangzi, Fit To Be Sovereigns 應帝王, we are told, [7.26.1] "Don't play a role of befitting reputation. And again earlier in Chapter 2 "Regarding All Things Equal 齊物論," [2.14.23] "When uprightness would display its cleanliness, it won’t inspire trust."
This is a flaw Master Zhuang is trying to point out in the Confucius schools, for he says [13.24.5] "Why so energetically keep on promoting benevolence and righteousness, as if beating a drum were the way to catch a runaway?" I take this to mean that to consciously keep such "benevolence" and "righteousness" at the center of one's mind: this only drives people away from true benevolence and righteousness which is innate to everyone, as they both agreed in sections 13.20-13.21. The active and self-conscious effort to keep these things in mind and to practice them is to cause great confusion to our original nature. Our original nature calls us to act benevolent and righteous only when it is appropriate, according to Master Zhuang. To act with benevolence and righteousness when it is solely appropriate is to forget all about one's own preconceived notions of what "benevolent" and "righteousness" is, and thus acting in step with Heaven, in step with the inarticulate Dao [13.24.6].
We shoehorn another Dust into the end of a wintery month, putting politics, a global pandemic, bad weather and the final season of Better Call Saul aside to concentrate on the ever overwhelming flow of new music. This month spans the usual gamut of obscure but worthy genres, from free jazz to crunk to extreme noise to yet another take on Pachebel’s Canon. The clear star this month, though, is Matthew Shipp, who gets two slots for two different collaborations, and so commands our cover image. Writers include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ray Garraty, Ian Mathers, Justin Cober-Lake and Jonathan Shaw.
Lao Dan / Paul Flaherty / Randall Colbourne / Damon Smith — Live at Willimantic Records (Family Vineyard)
It’s a long way from China to Connecticut. But this quartet bridges the distance so masterfully, you would not know that it’s not only the first time they’ve played together; it’s the first time that alto saxophonist, bamboo flute, and suona player Lao Dan played in the United States. The musicians bring a combination of deep knowledge and fresh potential to the encounter. Saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Randall Colbourne have been playing together for decades, keeping the free jazz torch lit in times and places around New England where no one else knew what the fuck they were doing, let alone appreciated the fact that they were doing it. Lao Dan may be half their age, but since he’s spent his musical career playing in China’s major cities, he knows the experience of playing in an uncomprehending environment just as well. When he plays alto, he certainly sounds well acquainted with the conventions of free jazz, matching Flaherty’s growls and cries with aplomb. And while the moments when he plays traditional Chinese instruments sound distanced from free jazz convention, he finds space and rhythmic footing to make real contributions within the fertile matrix of force and rhythm laid out by Flaherty, Colbourne, and double bassist Damon Smith (at the time a Massachusetts resident, since relocated to St. Louis).
Bill Meyer
demitasse — Perfect Life (Bedlamb)
Perfect Life by demitasse
demitasse is the quiet alter-ago of Buttercup’s Erik Sanden and Joe Reyes. Though there are a couple of lo-fi rockers here, the main tenor is tremulous, emotive and rather lovely, with spider silk melodies that look wispy but turn out to have a fair amount of tensile strength. Take for instance, “Coming Out Wrong Again,” a gently delivered slip of a song framed in the barest frame of strumming, in a well-weathered voice with creaks in the corners. And yet, as it rolls on diffidently, the tune picks up momentum, and the chorus wreathes the title phrase in harmonies in a way that might remind you of Carissa’s Wierd or its successor Grand Archives. Which is to say, in a way that seems inevitable and right. In the more amplified parts, the singer picks up a bit of Jonathan Richman’s whimsied warble and drums kick through scratchier, more aggressive guitar playing. “Free Solo (for Alex Honnold)” (yes the rock climber) is perhaps the brashest and less constrained of these cuts, imbued with the muffled mania of its title character and approaching Chad VanGaalen’s whacked out tunefulness. The title cut, like most of the album, celebrates small lapidary moments – the singer’s dad cutting his hair— and their weight in memory. There’s a resonance to the smallest sounds here, and a significance in elliptical lines. demitasse is a small cup of wonder, just sitting there on the kitchen table in the midst of life itself.
Jennifer Kelly
Duke Deuce — Memphis Massacre 2 (Quality Control Music)
After the viral hit “Crunk Ain’t Dead” Tennessee rapper Duke Deuce dropped a full tape which got endorsed by Lil Jon, Project Pat and Juicy J. These Dirty South legends jumped on the remix of “Crunk Ain’t Dead”, a song that is literally supposed to slaughter strip clubs all the way up from Memphis to Canadian border. Crunk’s been leading zombie-ish life, being if not fully then almost dead for years. It’s hard to predict if Memphis Massacre 2 will spur a wave of neocrunk but even if it won’t, it will remain a gutsy punch to the soft rap belly. The slower songs on the tape, like “Trap Blues”, are weaker efforts as they are lost among same-y Southern rap ballads.
Ray Garraty
Arto Lindsay / Ken Vandermark / Joe McPhee / Phil Sudderberg—Largest Afternoon (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)
Largest Afternoon by Lindsay/Vandermark/McPhee/Sudderberg
After decades of frequent partnership, Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark have attained the level where they are being recruited for dream teams. Astral Spirits recently released Invitation to a Dream, a specially commissioned meeting between the two multi-horn players and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. And now comes Largest Afternoon, by a quartet comprising McPhee, Vandermark, drummer Phil Sudderberg (Marker, Spirits Having Fun, Vibrating Skull Trio) and guitarist Arto Lindsay (DNA, Ambitious Lovers, his own bad self) at the behest of the record label / art gallery, Corbett Vs. Dempsey. If you’re hoping for a combination of free jazz and Brazilian pop, keep your dancing shoes in their box; this CD documents a first-time, no-net encounter. On the rare occasions when Lindsay opens his mouth, it’s to emit strangled phonemes; by comparison, his utterances with DNA seem positively Dylan-esque. But if you want to hear feedback squaring off against soulful reed-song, valve-pops peppering amp-coughs and interactions between percussion, strings, and wind that verge on the tectonic, Largest Afternoon will make your day.
Bill Meyer
Jason McMahon — Odd West (Shinkoyo)
Odd West by Jason McMahon
Odd West delivers extremely soft focus (bordering on new-age-y) instrumentals plus effected vocals from a one-time Skeletons mainstay. The main instrument is acoustic guitar, pristinely recorded and glossed with a radiant glow. McMahon, a jazz-trained guitarist, learned to finger pick for this record, and there’s something a bit studied about these cascading bouts of iridescent sound, a bit too perfect, a bit too glassy and calm. “Ambisinistrous” ebbs and flows in minor key fret flurries, McMahon all alone with the guitar and sounding rather good at it. “Sunshine for Locksmith” floats “lahs” and “ahs” and lullaby “wooh-ooh-oohs” over its placid surface, tilting golden dust-moted rays onto all natural motifs until it seems too good to be real. By the end, I’d give a lot for a string squeak or even a stray false note. It’s like the old descriptions of heaven in Sunday school, too pretty to seem like somewhere you’d want to live.
Jennifer Kelly
Donovan Quinn — Absalom (Soft Abuse)
Absalom by Donovan Quinn
Donovan Quinn has been a mainstay of the Bay Area’s hand-made, lo-fi folk-psych-rock scene for almost two decades through the Skygreen Leopards with Glenn Donaldson, in New Bums with Ben Chasny (who also plays here) , in the one-off Fuckaroos with Sonny Smith and Kelley Stoltz and on his own in the 13th Month. Regardless of project, you can count on him for hazily soft-focus not-quite-rock, not-quite folk songs, that drone like VU outtakes wreathed in patchouli smoke, edgeless and adrift and whispery. That’s more or less what he’s doing here, with a variety of SF-adjacent talent in tow, not just Chasny and Elisa Ambrogio but Papercuts Jason Quever and underground songwriters Eric Amerman and Michael Tapscott. But it’s Quinn’s show, really, with Quinn’s soft unhurried voice, his loosely coalescing arrangements of guitar fuzz, drums and chamber strings, his subtly off center way with lyrics. “Satanic Summer Nights,” sings urgently of “a game with no rules,” but it’s not quite that; rather it’s a game where the rules are buried like power lines under enveloping clouds of free-form smoke, feeding structure and electricity into what seems like a passing daydream.
Jennifer Kelly
Matthew Shipp String Trio — Symbolic Reality (Rogue Art)
Pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, and violist Mat Maneri have a lengthy shared history, but Symbolic Reality is their first recording as a trio in 20 years. In its early years, this combo was the chamber music outlier of Shipp’s constellation of ensembles. But now the classical and jazz elements mix in his music like the eggs, flour and milk in your best cake batter. While it’s true that Maneri’s microtonal bowing still sets this apart from any other Shipp group, giving the music a unique pungency, the viola’s lack of auditory bulk is at least as important in defining the group sound. The presence of a third musician who is neither loud and nor chord-oriented induces Shipp to throttle back his attack a bit, which makes Parker’s foundational architecture stand out in bold relief; and the vinegary slurs in Maneri’s playing elicit a blues feeling that doesn’t often come to the fore in Shipp’s playing.
Bill Meyer
Matthew Shipp and Nate Wooley — What If? (Rogue Art)
Pianist Matthew Shipp and trumpet player Nate Wooley know how to surprise, creating both compositions and tones that get to weird places. The two have worked together before, but recent release What If? marks their first work as a duo. Shipp provided the composition, but it's clearly a two-man answer to the question. The artists touch on some more typical jazz modes, trading leads or letting Wooley play a melody over Shipp's broad chords. More intriguingly, they feed off each other's moods. Wooley doesn't shy from abrasive sounds, and on cuts like “Ktu,” Shipp matches his grating approach. “The Angle” plays with jittery space; Shipp's chords largely traded in for flutters that go with Wooley's reserved blips. Highlight “Space Junk” puts all the musicality and the enjoyment of the odd together. The duo plays a few moments that sound trad, then go for something avant, then turn somewhere new as ideas and moods run away from them. At times Wooley sounds like he wants to soundtrack a casual night out, and at times he wants to smash it; both of them find the whole enterprise entertaining. The “What if?” question remains open-ended, but the answer comes very specifically from these two artists, and it's more than sufficient for whatever's been asked.
Justin Cober-Lake
Sightless Pit — Grave of a Dog (Thrill Jockey)
Grave of a Dog by Sightless Pit
Sightless Pit is a collaboration among three significant names in contemporary heavy music: Lee Buford, of the Body; Dylan Walker, singer for Full of Hell; and Kristin Hayter, who records under the name Lingua Ignota. Made over two years at Machines with Magnets, the songs were shaped, executed and revised whenever one or two of the artists could get to the studio. It’s thus a sort of experiment in asynchronously generated music. Grave of a Dog (an unfortunate title) is likely best appreciated with that unconventional approach in mind —n ot a set of songs by a band so much as an ongoing, sonically mediated conversation among like-minded creators. Not surprisingly, the record really lights up whenever Hayter’s remarkable vocals move into the music’s foreground. She’s an unusual talent, with a big voice that can do drama, intimacy and lunacy to equal effect, and a compositional intelligence that grooves with Sightless Pit’s sound-collaging sensibility. “Kingscorpse” is a stirring combination of melody and power electronics, and the record’s solemn, fragile closer “Love Is Dead, All Love Is Dead” lets Hayter show off the full range of what she can do with her instrument.
Jonathan Shaw
Solar Woodroach — 7 Perversions on Pachelbel’s Canon (Nilamox)
7 Perversions on Pachelbel's Canon by Solar Woodroach
From the start of “How the West Was Won,” most music fans would be able to identify (if not necessarily name) the source material Solar Woodroach uses here even without the album title. Yes, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, one of the most overexposed pieces of music ever used, is getting dug up and sent shuffling our way again, this time from some enigmatic figure or figures known as Solar Woodroach. The best clue there, it must be said, is that the label is listed as “Nilamox,” also the name of whatever ex-Severed Heads man Tom Ellard is doing these days. But Ellard, or whoever, has more than just necromancy on their minds during these 7 Perversions; sometimes stretching and smearing the composition past the point of immediate recognition. But whether it’s the slow-motion glow of “Decomposition in D,” the mini-swarm of synthesized voice bits in “The Canonisation of St. Pachelbel,” or the eventual return of something like the original in the closing “The Pachelbel Spirit,” 7 Perversions proves, perversely enough, both that our takes on the Canon (or canon?) could be more inventive, and that there might be more life left in those standards than we give them credit for after an umpteenth listen. It’s a cheekily satisfying listen, maybe especially if (whisper it) you still enjoy the old Canon a bit too.
Ian Mathers
Rafael Toral / Mars Williams / Tim Daisy — Elevation (Relay)
Rafael Toral / Mars Williams / Tim Daisy :: Elevation :: (relay 027) by Relay Recordings
Interstellar Space. My Goals Beyond. Other Planes of There. The list of outward-bound jazz records that invite the listener to draw a bead on the furthest cosmic reaches is a long one, and despite the relative humility of its title, Elevation makes a similar request. The album’s three tracks are all named after cloud formations, and even in their most subdued moments the three musicians involved treat gravity as a negotiable notion, not an immutable law. Portuguese electronic musician Rafael Toral joined up with Chicagoans Mars Williams and Tim Daisy for just one day, during which they played one concert in a suburban library and the recording session yielded this CD. Daisy’s a highly accommodating drummer, and much of his playing on this record disperses beats and tones like a spray of cloud-born moisture. Williams balances incendiary blowing guided by the anything goes spirit he nurtures in Extraordinary Popular Delusions with little instrument forays that infuse this music with the spirit of A-list types like Sun Ra’s Arkestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. And Toral draws pure electricity into flashes and stretched bolts that illuminate “Stratus,” “Cirrus” and “Altostratus” from without and within. Keep your eyes and ears on the sky.
Bill Meyer
Tribe — Hometown: Detroit Sessions 1990-2014 (Strut)
Hometown: Detroit Sessions 1990-2014 by Tribe
This disc collects post-break-up material from the long-running Detroit cultural collective Tribe, a pan-arts organization led by saxophonist Wendell Harrison and trombonist Phil Ranelin. During its 1970s heyday, the Tribe organization put out jazz records, published monthly magazine covering black culture, collaborated with dance and theater groups and taught music in Detroit schools. This collection picks up after Ranelin moved to Los Angeles and the Tribe name had been retired. Still Harrison continued to preside over multidisciplinary creative coalition, tapping into a vibrant Detroit scene for Afro-centric visual arts, theater, dance, music and literature. Handclapped, percussive “Juba,” for instance, documents Tribe’s connections to modern dance; you can intuit movement in its chanted, panted, grunted and foot-stomped rhythms. The two spoken word pieces, “Marcus Garvey” and “Ode to Black Mothers,” showcase the works of Mbiyu Chui, a poet, pastor and founder of the Black Christian Nationalist Movement. The music, too, is very, very good, from the swaggering big band swing of “Wide and Blue,” to the smouldery sleek piano grooves of “Hometown” (Harrison’s wife Pamela Wise on keys) to the Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms that animate “Ode to Black Mothers.” Detroit was in about as bad a state as a city can be during the period this music was recorded, but art and pride and resilience run through every track.
Jennifer Kelly
Various Artists — Back from the Canigo: Garage Punks Vs Freakbeat Mods Perpignan 1989-1999 (Staubgold)
Back from the Canigó: Garage Punks Vs Freakbeat Mods Perpignan 1989-1999 by Various Artists
Perpignan is the southernmost French city, nestled in a curve of the Mediterranean just before it turns south into Spain. It also the unlikely headquarters of a Gallic garage rock scene centered around the Limiñanas, but incorporating another dozen or so bands represented on this compilation. (The Limiñanas themselves are absent, just to be clear.) The two oldest bands — Les Gardiens du Canigou and the Ugly Things — are the most vital, both rough-rocking outfits fond of wheedling organ fills and much indebted to the Troggs. “Baby I Don’t Want to Drive” from the Ugly Things has the grit and swagger of Wimple Witch’s “Save My Soul,” while Les Gardiens turn in a truly unhinged live cover of “Gloria.” Some of the younger bands follow this example closely. The Vox Men and The Feedback, for instance, pursue the exact same sort of screaming hedonism. However, others diverge. Beach Bitches take a day-glo, 1960s garage energy into joke-y surfy directions; their “Walking in the Jungle,” intersperses novelty record animal cries with banging drums and blasts of molten guitar. Les Buissons bustles and blares with a fully-orchestrated sound, James Brown doing battle with a community marching band and flop-haired psychedelia in “Buissons Theme I.” The whole comp is immensely enjoyable in a what-decade-is-it-anyway manner. It’s probably not what you picture when people say, “south of France,” but it rocks pretty hard.
Musing on chapters 14 & 16 of Master Zhuang's Outer Chapters: "The Revolving Heaven天運" & "Mending One's Original Nature or Correcting The Nature 繕性"
[16.1.1] "Once they have mended original nature with conventional wisdom, people now seek to recover its initial state."
This is to mean that when we take in accord with the vulgar "wisdom" of the world and try to use it to alter our innate nature's, we become ever estranged from the Dao.
For most of the Zhuangzi, we see a very anti-epistemological approach. A doing away with the conventional and human distinctions on "what is" and "what isn't," [Zhuangzi 2.14.11-14]. We are told to abandon the pursuit of knowledge [Dao dejing 3]. This is what Master Lao Dan (Laozi) would have Confucius do in chapter 14 天運 "The Revolving of Heaven." Master Zhuang presents us with another dialogue between the illustrious characters where Confucius had been searching high and low for the Dao for 51 years. Yet, he has not yet attained It [14.22]. Lao Dan inquires where Confucius had been seeking The Dao. Confucius says for 5 years he had sought the Dao in astronomical/astrological calculations for 5 years, yet he has still failed to acquire the inarticulate Dao. For 12 years, Confucius sought the Yin and Yang, yet he still has not attained it [14.23-27]. Lao Dan responds wonderfully to Confucius's journey, saying that,
[14.28.1] "Exactly! If the Dao could be presented, who would not present it to his sovereign! If the Dao could be offered, who would not offer it to his parents! If the Dao could be conveyed, who would not convey it to his brothers! If the Dao could be bestowed, who would not bestow it on his sons and grandsons! However, all this is impossible for no other reason than because no master exists within, so it does not linger."
According to Guo Xiang, this means Lao Dan would have Confucius do away entirely with knowledge. Confucius, as he is being presented currently, is looking outward for The Dao, yet he has no master within himself to properly use this knowledge in accord with his natural principle.
Lao Dan says this in 14.28.3-4, "If that which may emerge from within is not received without, the sage does not let it go forth. If that which may enter from without finds no master within, sageness won't abide there." 14.28.3 gives validity to the teacher-student transmission of things. For if no one is there to hear your teaching that arrives spontaneously, in step with Dao and its principles, the teachings do not go forth. And likewise, if we are not present, living radically in the moment while we are (outwardly) learning, true sageness/Dao will not abide within or out of us.
The rest of Confucius and Lao Dan's dialogue concludes that he must do away with those "classics" that I mentioned in my last post. Guo Xiang expands on this, conveying that without us being in accord with our natural principles and finding tranquility from within, everything we learn and know is fodder. It does nothing but estrange us from the speechless Dao. Although the pursuit of knowledge is indeed fulfilling, without us being radically in the moment while we are being presented with "learning" or "knowledge," how can it abide within us and, ergo, fulfill our virtue?
So now we are jumping back to chapter 16. This is quite a curious chapter, meaning it slightly shifts its perspective on knowledge. 16.1.2 tells us, "Having confused their desires with conventional wisdom, they now seek to perfect their understanding through self-conscious thought." This is too mean that we have confused our innate principle with the literal desire to attain knowledge, for knowledge's sake, self-consciously self-reflecting on said knowledge, forever refining our thinking; forever causing us to err. Master Zhuang calls these people the obstructed and obscure [16.1.3]. Guo Xiang expounds on this by suggesting only if we abandon such conventional wisdom and rid ourselves of the desire to attain such wisdom we would be so close to this ineffable Dao.
We must find that "master" within us, as suggested in Chapter 14.28.1, for knowledge to truly benefit us and aid our arsenal to cultivate the Dao. Without it, our nature is lost, and knowledge is thus agitated. This is why in 16.2.1, we are told, "In antiquity those who governed with the Dao cultivated knowledge in tranquility." And again, in 16.2.2, "They knew how to live but were free of knowing how to act with self-conscious purpose, so it may be said of them that they used knowledge to cultivate tranquility." I take this to mean, with the help of Guo Xiang, we just must spontaneously know. Knowledge is something that we must cultivate, there is no question about it. Setting aside religion and philosophy for a second and just using logic, we know that learning and knowledge are fundamental parts of the human experience. We constantly learn daily, whether we are fully aware of it or not. And that, right there, is the point, our awareness of the mass cultivation of knowledge we experience in an ever-globalized world. We are more connected and can access knowledge at the click of a button or a few strokes on a keyboard. Without us being presently aware, living radically in the moment of the knowledge we absorb, the knowledge is agitated, and our natures are obstructed.
Knowledge must nourish our souls and our innate principles. The same is said in reverse, our "master within" or our innate principle must be acted in accordance with the knowledge we receive. This knowledge "used to cultivate tranquility" sounds awfully like gnosis as described in more Western schools of thought, such as Hermeticism. But before we get into that, I must say how important it is to first become tranquil, meaning mastering our inner selves, which could mean becoming more disciplined, doing away with our self-preconceived notions of "this is" and "this is not" and thus, having a complete disregard for knowledge before we embark on any kind of "knowledge" or gnosis. Our tranquility must nourish the knowledge we receive outwardly; likewise, the knowledge we take in must nourish our inner selves.
Okay, enough redundancy. How does this "knowledge used to cultivate tranquility" compare to gnosis? Let's look at Corpus Hermeticum book IV.9: "Thus knowledge is not a beginning of the Good, but it furnishes us the beginning of the Good that will be known... For the Good has neither shape nor outline." Now, Hermeticism is big on "knowledge" or gnosis, which can be defined as the "highest" form of knowledge there is. This knowledge pertains to the Good who is God (The One) and other incorporeal entities such as the gods. It is not something that can be necessarily be "cultivated," in my opinion, but rather experienced. This is not all too different from chapter 16 from Zhuangzi's description of cultivating knowledge to nourish our tranquility and vice-versa [16.2.2]. Gnosis, knowledge, or whatever kind of "learning" is never the beginning of the Good, or of the Dao, but it does indeed furnish us to begin to know the road that leads to the Good, or the Dao.
CH IV.11 then tells us, "If your vision of it (The Good) is sharp and you understand it with the eyes of the heart, believe me, child, you shall discover the road that leads above, or rather, the image itself will show you the way. This sentiment rings back in chapter 14 of the Zhuangzi when we discussed finding "the master within" [14.28.3-4]. To "understand it with the eyes of the heart" sounds similar to having a "master exist within."
So to wrap this up, knowledge is okay to cultivate. Knowledge is okay to pursue. Knowledge is something we should strive for. If and only if, we use said knowledge to cultivate our virtue, our tranquility, and our innate principles. We must be in step with our inner selves first and foremost before any pursuit of knowledge or gnosis can have any real, practical effect in our lives. In Hermetic terms, we must use gnosis to furnish our road to The Good which belongs only to the Godhead. Any other knowledge that employs the use of logos, or speech (the conventional wisdom as mentioned above in Zhuangzi 16.1.1), will be fodder in comparison to the gnosis that is experienced and used to furnish our road and the ineffable Good, that is God.
**DISCLAIMER** Any philosophical parallels I draw between Eastern and Western schools of thought are for my own understanding. These parallels, as vague as they might seem, are not to suggest that there is any metaphysical or historical connection or of any historical transmission of ideas between said Eastern (Daoism) and Western schools (Hermeticism). I draw these parallels to remind myself that ideas and philosophical concepts can have similar sentiments, even though the cultivation of each thing (the Dao, and the Good) are gone about in different ways, practice-wise.
Image Courtesy: link: http://duncantrussell.com/forum/discussion/16677/the-works-of-lao-tzu-tao-teh-ching-hua-hu-ching/p1 author: duncantrussell.com description: image C O N T E N T S: KEY TOPICS The founder of Taoism is believed by many to be Lao-Tse (604-531 BCE), a contemporary of Confucius. (Alternate spellings: Lao Tze, Lao Tsu, Lao Tzu, Laozi, Laotze, etc.).(More…) POSSIBLY USEFUL The name…
