Vernacular man follows the Way

"Tao is like Dike, the Way, the way of nature; and man's whole religion, his whole moral effort is to bring himself into accordance with Tao."
   Jane Harrison

"When the world has the Way,
ambling horses are retired to fertilize fields.
When the world lacks the Way,
war horses are reared in the suburbs."
   Lao Tzu

"Man follows the Earth
The Earth follows Heaven
Heaven follows the Tao
The Tao follows what is natural.
   Lao Tzu

Like the developing embryo in the womb, each life process must follow an appointed constellation of chreods, or path, if it is to achieve its end-state and thereby contribute to maintaining the critical order of the cosmos. Thus one can talk - as does Rupert Sheldrake - of "behavioural chreods" and also of "cultural chreods", in that a society, by means of its specific cultural pattern, is capable of maintaining itself on its path by correcting any diversions from it - so long as they occur within its tolerance range and hence its field. [1]

The Way a society must follow is that which conforms to its traditional law, which the ancient Greeks referred to as the 'Nomos'. The Way was also referred to by them as 'Dike', which meant 'justice', 'righteousness' or 'morality'. Jane Harrison tells us that 'Dike' was also "the Way of the world, the way things happen". [2]

The Way was also referred to as 'Themis', which Jane Harrison regards as "that specialised way for human beings which is sanctioned by the collective conscience." [3] Themis was also taken to be 'the Way of the Earth', and sometimes the Way of the cosmos itself, that which governed the behaviour of the gods. Later, when these concepts were personalised, Themis became the goddess of law and of justice, and hence of morality.

The Way was also seen to coincide with Moira, the path of destiny or fate. The chthonic gods were subordinated to Moira, as they were to Dike, the two actually coinciding with each other. Thus for Anaximander, all basic things are attributed to different provinces that provide the basis of the critical order of the natural world "according to what is ordained", [4] a concept in which, according to Cornford, "necessity and right are united". [5]

In Homer, the gods are seen as subordinate to Moira, and indeed to Dike - cosmic forces that are older than the gods themselves and that are moral. Against fate, and hence against the moral law, the gods can do nothing. As Homer tells us in the Odyssey, the gods cannot even save a man whom they love, if the "dread fate of death" is upon him. Herodotus tells us that "it is impossible even for a god to avoid the fate that is ordained". [6]

The Way to be followed by all human beings was the same as that which must be followed by society as a whole; by the natural world; by the cosmos and therefore by the gods themselves. There is thus a single law which governs the behaviour of the whole cosmic hierarchy. As Pythagoras writes,

"Themis in the world of Zeus, and Dike in the world below, hold the same place and rank as Nomos in the cities of men; so that he who does not justly perform his appointed duty may appear as a violator of the whole order of the universe." [7]

The higher the status of an individual, and hence the greater the vital force with which he was endowed, the more important it was that he should rigorously follow the Way. Thus Odysseus tells us that when a blameless King maintains the Dike,

"The black Earth bears wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish and all out of his good guidance, and the people prosper under him." [8]

The concept of the Way was probably entertained, explicitly or implicitly, by all vernacular societies. Thus in ancient China the Tao refers at once to the order and to the Way of the cosmos. The term is applied to the daily and yearly 'revolution of the heavens' and of the two powers of light and darkness, day and night, summer and winter, heat and cold. [9] J. J. M. de Groot tells us that

It represents all that is correct, normal or right (ching or twan) in the universe; it does, indeed, never deviate from its course. It consequently includes all correct and righteous dealings of men and spirits, which alone promote universal happiness and life. [10]

Tao represents the natural course of things. It was considered, Joseph Needham writes, "not only as vaguely informing all things, but as being the naturalness, the very structure of particular and individual things" .[11] Feng Yu-Lan sees the Tao as "the all-embracing first-principle of things". [12]

All living things, including humans, are part of this all-embracing natural order, subject to the Tao which is its governing principle. "Tao, as the order of nature", Feng Yu-Lan writes, "governs their very action". [13] Humans follow the Tao, or Way, by behaving naturally. In Taoist terms, this means abiding by Lao Tzu's principle of Wu Wei, for, as Wing-Tsit Chan writes,

"when all things obey the laws of the Tao they will form a harmonious whole, and the universe will become an integrated organism." [14]

In ancient Egypt, we learn from Siegfried Morenz that the concept of Maat fulfilled a similar role. Maat meant "the right order in nature and society as established by the act of creation ... what is right, what is correct, law, order, justice and trust" - not only in society but in the cosmos as a whole. Significantly, Re was at once Lord of the cosmos, Lord of the judgement of the dead and Lord of Maat. Later, when Osiris came into his own, he also became the Lord of Maat. Though Maat came into being with creation, nevertheless it had to be renewed and preserved. It follows that

"Maat is ... not only right order but also the object of human activity. Maat is both the task which man sets himself and also, as righteousness, the promise and reward which awaits him on fulfilling it." [15]

Because ancient Egypt was a centralised kingdom, run by a divine king, it was his role in particular to maintain Maat and hence the order of the cosmos. Thus we read in contemporary texts edited by Morenz that

"the sky is at peace, the Earth is in joy, for they have heard that (the deceased king) will set right (Maat) in the place of disorder (Isft)." [16]

And again, Tut-ankh-amun

"drove out disorder (Isft) from the two lands and Maat is firmly established in its place: he made lying (Grg) an abomination and the land is as it was at the first time."

It was the king's close association with Maat that gave authority to his edicts. What he ordered was necessarily part of the Maat that his subjects must follow. A similar concept existed in Vedic India where, writes Maurice Bloomfield, it was referred to as 'R'ta':

"The processes whose perpetual sameness or regular recurrence give rise to the representation of order, obey R'ta or their occurrence is R'ta." [17]

We read in the Vedas that

"The rivers flow R'ta. According to R'ta the light of the heavenborn morning has come... The year is the path of R'ta. The Gods themselves are born of the R'ta or in the R'ta; they show by the acts that they know, observe and love the R'ta. In man's activity, the R'ta manifests itself as the moral law."

R'ta also stands for the truth, though in a philosophical context truth is usually Satya. Untruth, though it is sometimes Asatya, is usually expressed as An-R'ta, hence as a divergence from R'ta or the Way.

The Vedic poet, as Krishna Chaitanya notes, fully realises that to obtain nature's bounty, man must obey R'ta:

"for one who lives according to eternal law, the winds are full of sweetness, the rivers pour sweets. So may the plants be full of sweetness for us." [18]

The great Vedic Hymn to Earth clearly expresses the belief in man's dependence on the order of the cosmos and in man's role in maintaining it, by observing the ancient law. In it the poet expresses his faith in the eternal order and in man's duty to preserve it. It is this order that has bound "rock, soil, stone and dust" in such a way that "trees, lords of the forest, stand very firm".

It is this order that maintains in "unfailing flow, day and night, the waters that are common to all" and nurtures "cornfields that nourish quadrupeds and bipeds". In all this the poet displays a respect that unites the spiritual and the practical:

"Whatever I dig from thee, Earth, may it have quick growth again. 0 purifier, may we not injure thy vitals or thy heart." [19]

Later, the concept of Dharma was also used by the Hindus in the same way. As A. M. Hocart writes,

"That regularity, that normality of the universe, which produces good crops, fat cattle, peace and contentment, is expressed by the word Dharma which means etymologically 'support,' 'upholding'." [20]

It describes the way in which animals, men or things are expected to behave; it is natural law. The sun is sometimes identified with Dharma because it regulates the seasons; sometimes it is considered to be regulated by it. Among the Gods, Varuna is the 'Lord of Right', who lays down ordinances for the universe. The king on his accession is seen to have become to his people what Varuna is to the gods. For that reason, he too is known as the 'Lord of Right'. In Balinese Hinduism, Eiseman writes, Dharma is seen as

"the organising force that maintains order, the organisation that governs the universe as a whole, the relationships between various parts of the universe and actions within the various parts of the universe." [21]

The concept of Dharma was also taken up by the Buddhists who took it to China, where the Dharma of Mahayana Buddhism was identified with the Tao. De Groot describes the Buddhist Dharma as the universal law that embraces the world in its entirety.

"It exists for the benefit of all beings, for does not its chief manifestation, the light of the world, shine its blessing on all men and all things?" [22]

When a Buddhist Lama sets his prayer-wheel turning, he is performing a ritual that has deep meaning both in terms of the Dharma and the R'ta. Not only are the prayers printed on it repeated by his audience, but as Jane Harrison notes,

"He finds himself in sympathetic touch with the Wheel of the Universe; he performs the act, 'Justice-Wheel-Setting in motion'. He dare not turn the wheel contrariwise; lest that were to upset the whole order of nature." [23]

In the Persian Avestas, the Way is referred to as 'Asha', the celestial representative of justice on Earth. According to Chantepie de la Saussaye,

"Justice is the rule of the world's life, as Asha is the principle of all well-ordered existence and the establishment or accomplishment of justice is the end of the evolution of the universe." [24]

In ancient Judaism the terms used are 'Mishpat', which means 'justice' or 'right judgement', and 'Sedeq' which also means 'righteousness'. These virtues are attributed to God, but in the words of Robert Murray, "the overarching vision is of human society in harmony with heaven". [25]

This harmony is Shalom which means 'peace' but is in reality, a wider term standing for harmony between Earth and Heaven, also cosmic or moral order or "the right functioning of all nature as God created it". [26] As in other ancient societies, the king had a big role to play in the maintenance of Shalom. As Murray writes,

"if the king acted according to the divine gift of Sedeq, his Kingdom would be blessed with it in the senses of social justice, victory over enemies and the fruitfulness of the land, and would enjoy Shalom." [27]

Traces of this key aspect of ancient Jewish religion are to be found in some of the Psalms, in Isaiah and more explicitly in the first book of Enoch.

Significantly enough, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Sedeq words such as 'Sedaqah' were translated as the Greek 'Dike' and its derivatives such as 'Dikaios' and 'Dikaiosyne'. The same concept was taken up by the early Christians for whom the term 'Dikaios' or 'justice' was, through the relationship to Jesus, still imbued with a cosmic dimension. Needless to say the term gradually lost this cosmic dimension, especially with the Reformation.

If to follow the Way is to maintain the critical order of the cosmos - then a society can be seen as doing so when its behaviour pattern is homeotelic. When, on the contrary, it is heterotelic, then a society must be seen as following the anti-way, that which threatens the order of the cosmos and must thereby give rise to the worst possible discontinuities.

Thus in the Vedas, as Chaitanya notes, we read that R'ta, though benign, can also be "stern and fierce" when it comes to transgressions. "Brihaspati rides a fearsome chariot of R'ta for destroying the wicked", meaning those who violate the eternal laws and so threaten the critical order of the cosmos. [28] The latter are best seen as following the anti-Way, or in Vedic India, the An-R'ta, the opposite to the R'ta, and later, among the Buddhists, the adharma, the opposite to the Dharma.

Among the ancient Egyptians, the anti-way was referred to as 'Isft'. Among the Greeks, it was often called 'ou Themis', the opposite to Themis (which occasionally was used to mean 'social order' and occasionally the order of the pantheon as well as the path to be followed to achieve such order).

To follow the ou Themis could not be done with impunity. Among the Greeks, Themis (or Dike) was seen on such occasions as taking on the form of Nemesis, which is seen by Cornford, as related to Nomos - in turn related to Nemos, the sacred grove that was almost certainly the original place of worship of the Ancient Greeks, as it was of the Celts.

Nemos, or Nemesis, inhabited such a grove. She may originally have been the woodland goddess, identified with Artemis, or Diana of the woods. She was also a goddess of fertility, closely allied with Fortuna, "the Lady who brings forth the fruits of the Earth". However, as Cornford notes,

"She who dispenses good things can withhold them or dispense blights instead of blessings, the awful power which haunts the Nemos may blast the profane invader of her sanctuary." [29]

In the earliest times, when Nemos was a sacred grove, Nemesis, as Donald Hughes notes, would have wrought vengeance on those who trespassed. [30] Eventually, once the sacred groves fell into disuse, Nemesis would have become the guardian of the law, that is of Nomos and hence of Dike.

Classical mythology abounds in stories of the Earth taking her revenge on those who destroy the natural world. Thus Erysichthon, whose name means 'Tearer of Earth', cut down a tree inhabited by a dryad in spite of the tree-spirit's protests. She complained to Mother Earth, who afflicted him with insatiable hunger. Orion boasted that he would kill all the animals in the world. This too was reported to Mother Earth, who sent a monstrous scorpion to sting him to death. Today they are constellations opposite one another in the sky. [31]

Our modern society has quite clearly set out systematically to diverge from the Way. Its overriding goal is economic development or progress, the supreme heterotelic enterprise, which can only be achieved by methodically disrupting the critical order of the ecosphere, so as to replace it with a totally different organization - the technosphere that derives its resources from the ecosphere and consigns to it its ever more voluminous and more toxic wastes.

Technospheric expansion is thereby but another way of looking at ecospheric disintegration and contraction and the pattern of behaviour that must be adopted to achieve this fatal goal is the anti-Way.

References