SOAS World Philosophies Lecture Series: Contemplative Transformation in Early Daoism
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2022-05-03

Speaker:
Ronnie Littlejohn, Chaney Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies, Belmont University

Summary:
The foundations of classical Daoism rest upon a distinctive set of contemplative practices that we may call “inner training” or “inner cultivation.”  The traces of these lived practices of Daoist adepts are evident textually in records making use of a recurring family of concepts including wuwei (無為, effortless action), wuxing (無形, formlessness), jimo (寂漠, silent stillness), jing (靜, tranquility, calm), and xu (虛, emptiness). In this talk, I offer a correction to bimodal readings of these experiences according to which some profound introvertive and mystical “knowing that” yields an extrovertive “knowing how” expressed in Daoism as “doing nothing, yet leaving nothing undone (wuwei er wu buwei 無為而無不為).” I argue for a reading that emphasizes a unity of consciousness such that the practitioner does not come to know something and then act, but is rather changed himself/herself. I take note of such reports in the hagiographies of the founders of various Daoist lineages up to and through the 12th Century.  I show how there are close analogies between reports of Daoist transformative contemplative practice and those of other ancients, for example as in the practice of incubation (enkoimesis) among the Presocratic iatromantoi.  Accordingly, language about “oneness with Dao,” should not be taken as referential in use, but rather as a report of an altered consciousness that has emerged as a result of contemplative practice. I conclude that there is nothing that is merged with as a result of this inner cultivation. There is only the transformation that comes by means of the practice itself. So, Dao is not something to believe in. It is not something to have a relationship with. It is not something to use.  It is something to become.

About the Speaker:
Ronnie Littlejohn is Chaney Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of Asian Studies at Belmont University. He is one of a group of philosophers focusing on what is now being called the paradigm of constructivist philosophy. Among his works are Chinese Philosophy and Philosophers (Bloomsbury 2022); 《儒学导论》 (Introduction to Confucianism, trans. Qian Jiancheng and Xiao Ya. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press of China, 2020); Historical Dictionary of Daoism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Daoism: An Introduction (I.B. Tauris, 2009).  He is Co-Editor of Riding the Wind with Liezi: New Perspectives on the Daoist Classic (SUNY, 2011; forthcoming also in Chinese from Central China Land Media Co., 2022) and Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosement, Jr. (Global Scholarly Publications, 2008. In 2016-17, he received the Foreign Scholar Award from the Henan Province Ministry of Education and he was one of only three foreign scholars asked to speak at the dedication of the Laozi and Daoist Culture Center in Luyi county, Zhoukou, PRC in 2009. His digital documentary, “Daoism’s Perfected Persons,” is forthcoming in 2023 from Amazon Video Direct.