Good? Not Good!
Chapter 2, part 2.
Good? Not Good!
Chapter 7:
Picture: Ban Xian 半仙, or Half Immortals are the bad guys of Daoism, they preach the Dao and practice fake magic and divination arts to obtain payments from desperate people. Even though this kind of person may wear Daoist robes, they are not worthy of special reverence and may in fact not even be real Daoists. Why not take some time to consider if there are any Ban Xian in the Western Daoism and Qigong discourse?
This week we will look at the concept of Shan 善, a pictograph which means benevolence and righteousness.
Shan doesn't only mean benevolence and righteousness, it is a profound concept in Daoist and Confucian philosophy and its application in chapter two of the Dao De Jing is a useful concept to help us understand how to avoid being tricked by others and avoid becoming tricky ourselves.
This week's chapter will bring us to the end of the first of the three sections of Chapter two, then we will move on to discuss how the Dao De Jing defines all things in phenomenological reality as binary opposites which allow for the existence of categories of knowledge.
Now let's have a look at what it means to be benevolent, not benevolent, and what other options may be available to us in relation to doing good and bad.
The next passage of chapter two is:
皆知善之為善，
jie zhi shan zhi wei shan:
“everyone knows benevolence and affects benevolence.”
斯不善已。
Si bu shan yi.
“this is already not benevolent.”
In order to understand a bit more about precisely what benevolence means in ancient Chinese script, let's have a look at a few historical sources describing it:
善 Shan: Good, benevolent, to like to do sth.
Shan is a pictograph which first appeared in the Bronze Engraving period of Chinese text and refers to a person who is gentle and kind.
The ancient etymology text Shuo Wen Jie Zi said:
吉也。从誩从羊。此與義美同意。
“lucky. It is derived from the characters jing 誩 and yang羊. Its meaning is synonymous with righteousness and beauty.”
Shuo Wen hypothesizes that Shan comes from the terms Jing 誩 and Yang 羊 meaning to contend and sheep respectively. It is fascinating that the idea of two sheep competing might produce a good outcome, although a more complete explanation is actually that the term Jing 誩 is used in the character to denote speech and Yang 羊 is used to denote the likeness in continence to a sheep, so it is commonly held that Shan 善 means to speak softly and gently as though having the continence of a sheep.
Confucius frequently used the term Shan, here is an example:
“德之不修，学之不讲，闻义不能徙，不善不能改，是吾忧也。”
“I did not cultivate virtue, I did not teach what I have studied, I heard what was righteous but did not follow it, I was not benevolent and could not change, this is my worry.”
We can see that the idea of benevolence is something Confucius felt was important to cultivate, but he also said “benevolent is something we call others, excessive is something we call ourselves. This will make it so the people do not fight.”
Confucius felt it was important that people should not refer to themselves as good people, but instead look for the myriad of ways that they have been excessive in their action and make sincere attempts to change.
With this context, let us again review the second passage of chapter two of the Dao De Jing:
皆知善之為善，
jie zhi shan zhi wei shan:
“everyone knows benevolence and affects benevolence.”
斯不善已。
Si bu shan yi.
“this is already not benevolent.”
Many people in the West have considered the Dao De Jing to represent the polar opposite of Confucian philosophy, but when carefully inspected we can see that ideas about benevolence in this text and in the writings of Confucius have some important similarities.
For instance:
善则称人，过则称己
Shan ze cheng ren, guo ze cheng ji:
“Benevolent is what we call others, excessive is what we call ourselves.”
seems to line up with the idea of:
皆知善之為善，
jie zhi shan zhi wei shan:
“everyone knows benevolence and affects benevolence.”
斯不善已。
Si bu shan yi.
“this is already not benevolent.”
If it is the case that trying to affect benevolence is actually not a benevolent action, then there must be a countervailing reality that in order to be benevolent people must first understand that benevolence through affect does not provide the result of making one a good person.
If we wish to understand this from the North American perspective, we can use the example of hypocritical evangelical ministers who preach the message of Christ, but live lavish lifestyles and cheat their parishioners of their life savings.
This is not only a North American phenomenon, it is also quite common in Chinese Buddhism and Daoism where many lesser monks (and even fake monks) preach what their parishioners wish to hear while charging them excessively for good luck talisman and amulets which have no benefit other than of the psychological kind.
This is one reason why Daoists and Buddhists must apply for licenses to be officially recognized and why there is a demanding grading system used to judge whether a monk is ready to advance in their study.
Actually, in China the term Ban Xian 半仙, which means half immortal refers to fake Daoist immortals who wander the countryside tricking people by using enchantments and fake magic to perform miracle healing and other spiritual favours.
In China, for a Daoist or self cultivation practitioner to be called a Half Immortal is a serious insult and no one wishes to be called by this moniker, although in the modern Qigong industry this is actually a common phenomenon and it may not be excessive to say that up to half of the famous teachers in the industry can be defined as Ban Xian, since they advocate weird spiritual positions with no epistemic justification, and often fill in for their lack of theoretical knowledge with cludged together components of multiple schools such as Daoism, Tibetan Yoga, Chinese Medicine and perhaps a little Western Mysticism thrown in for good measure.
Another type of the Ban Xian phenomenon in modern Qigong are the advocates of the theory that it is possible to use the power of the mind to do things like seal injuries, harmonize the energy of fruits and vegetables, and perform distance healing on the bodies of relatives of their students by chanting together with the student while their sick family member is not present (inferring healing by transmission through psychic powers).
When we consider what is good and not good, beautiful and not beautiful, benevolent and not benevolent, we should not only hold the ideas of obvious examples of good and bad, we should also consider that many people who advertise themselves as good are actually taking advantage of the desire of their followers to commune with beings who have achieved special spiritual powers.
These people are a perfect example of:
皆知善之為善，
jie zhi shan zhi wei shan:
“everyone knows benevolence and affects benevolence.”
斯不善已。
Si bu shan yi.
“this is already not benevolent.”
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