Kapiolani Community College
Horizons 2001

Confucianism/Taoism
by Ryan Koo

It was late one Sunday afternoon that I ran into the boy. As always, I was returning from the lake near my house, a routine that my father had instilled in me in early childhood. He said that it would help me clear my mind if I went and meditated down near the lake everyday. I did not realize the truths of his words for sometime, but I guess that is true for all things. My mother agreed with him for she thought that my closeness to nature was a positive thing. On this particular day I noticed a young boy sitting on the side of the path near one of my favorite willow trees. The sun cast a beautiful haze around the lad, and I was suddenly reminded of my youth so very long ago. His arms were folded across his head and I could hear his muffled sobs through the cover of his limbs.

“What is the matter, young boy?” I asked him.

Startled, the boy looked up to see my smiling face. “My parents are driving me crazy!” he said. “One of them is a Confucian and the other is a Taoist and they can never seem to agree on anything, much less how to raise me. I feel like I am never going to turn out right and there is nothing that I can do.”

I looked down at the poor boy and smiled. “The way of the universe is always a strange one. I knew that I had to stop and talk to you and now I know why. For many people, the thought of such a pair together in marriage seems like lunacy. But you are looking at the proof that it can work out. You see my mother was a Taoist master and my father was a Confucian master. Come, sit and listen to my story of how my parents worked everything out. Maybe it will help your parents to work out their problems.

My father, being a Confucian philosopher, had many great ideas for me. Because of his beliefs, he knew that schooling was very important and that wisdom would come through the study and mastery of my scholastic subjects. He knew life would be different here in America than in China, but he felt confident that my raising would go as to plan. He wanted to instill all the beautiful ideas of Li and the way life should be lived. He wanted to teach me all the ancient traditions that had kept him and his ancestors so wise and prosperous. In accord with the idea of Hsiao, he had made his parents very proud by honoring them and continuing their wishes, and he wanted me to do the same. Throughout his upbringing, he was introduced to the idea of Jen, or human heartedness. He believed our values, virtues, and goodness came from inside each and every one of us and that it manifested itself through Jen and the practice of Li. He had accomplished Yi or righteousness in everything he did. By the time he was old, he was so in tune with Li that Jen was produced without having to think about what to do. He had reached what so many had worked so hard for in this life: enlightenment or being one with the Tao. He did all these things and he wanted nothing more than to pass this knowledge on to me, his son.

My mother was a beautiful and extremely wise woman as well as a master of the Tao. Of course, she held a different view about how I should be raised. She also knew that moving to America would cause much tension in the way she wanted to raise me, but in different ways. She had studied back in China the Tao Te Ching, or the Treatise on the Way and its power. She had mastered the very essence of what the Tao was. She saw the world in a much different way than the way my father saw it. At the very root of the disagreement, she believed that there was no such thing as Jen or human heartedness. She did not believe that there was a distinct goodness that lay within each of us. She did not buy into the notion that each of us had to practice a certain way of life to bring out this Jen. Instead, she believed in nature. She believed that the way someone should lead one’s life should be whatever nature dictates. She believed that there was a certain way, or Tao, of the universe that everything came from and that every person on Earth should try to listen to. She believed in simplicity rather than structure. One would not have to study and master scholastic fields to become wise. To live a simple and harmonious life is the ideal way to live. To rid one of desires and wants was the only way to get rid of competition and conflict. She believed there did not need to be a moral code for people to follow because the true way of life came straight from nature. She believed that moral codes and visions of what is right and wrong were contrived by human beings, and that this is where the fault lies with Western beliefs. She believed that inaction, or Wu Wei is the true way to reach happiness and to be one with the Tao. Only do what is natural to you, nothing else. She saw not the lines nor the objects nor the people. Rather, she looked at the spaces in between these things as what is truly important in this universe. She practiced Te, or the function of Tao. Later in life she reached enlightenment, something she wanted to pass on to her lovely son.

The boy looked up at me with wide, wondering eyes. I had touched something inside of him that was all too familiar. “Please sir, tell me what they did when they raised you, Tell me so that my parents can do the same.”

I smiled at the boy for his eagerness to learn. I began my story once again. “When my parents met, they knew that they were meant for each other. They saw in each other great wisdom and understanding for the world around them. They were immediately married soon after my mother was pregnant with me. They realized that I would be their biggest problem, specifically in the area of raising me. But because they were both masters of their philosophies, they came up with this solution. To begin, even though they came from completely different theologies, they realized that their goal in this venture was the same: to raise their child to be a righteous, well rounded being who eventually would be in touch with the people and universe around them. They realized that even though they disagreed about ways to get there, that the ultimate destination was the same place. They saw that in the end they both ended up as wonderful human beings that embraced all that was right in the world, one following the way of Li and producing Jen, the other practicing the Te of Tao, but both acting exactly the same. A wonderful feeling arose in both of them along with the comfort that the universe has more than one way to reach enlightenment. They saw that there was nothing that should go wrong as long as they taught the child, me, whatever came naturally to them. For my father, the natural way would be the same as the Li that he cherished so much. He had reached a point that the Li that my father knew totally coincided with the natural, simplistic way that my mother felt life should be lived.

Over school, they agreed that some schooling would be necessary. My father, because it was the way of the Li, and my mother, because it seemed that it was the natural thing to do, or that it must be in tune with the Tao for her husband to turn out the way he did. Nevertheless, my mother would remind me always that not everything I learned in school would be totally right, and to always look in between things to see the true importance. In the interests of rituals at home, I would practice some of what my father held to be true, but would listen to my mother to why this is important and what simple reasons lay behind them. She explained that the Li was just the best natural action to take, given their personal situation.

The boy was smiling now, and I could see that my words were making him feel better. The sun was starting to set and I could hear his parents calling him from across the lake. I said to him, “Finally, they gave me this lake as a kind of token of their agreement. In this lake I found the ritual that my father installed in me, the ritual of meditation on its shores. In the same lake I found the simplicity of nature that my mother gave to me, and all at once I was at peace.

 

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