God Is Not One

by Prothero, Stephen

  Jewish Renewal

  Judaism is often thought of as a closed community, and there are some for whom separation from the rest of the world is essential to Jewish life. A new movement, however, is eagerly adopting all sorts of outside influences into the Jewish family and giving them Jewish life. Jewish Renewal draws heavily on Kabbalah and Hasidism, but it was born with the counterculture in the 1960s, so from the start it was culturally and spiritually promiscuous, picking up this from feminism and environmentalism and that from Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. One early inspiration was Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (b. 1924), a Polish-born Orthodox rabbi and Holocaust survivor who taught for a time at the Buddhist-based Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and whose journey to India to meet the Dalai Lama was chronicled in Rodger Kamenetz’s The Jew in the Lotus (1994). A key early expression was The Jewish Catalog (1973), a “do-it-yourself kit” for creative Jewish spirituality modeled after The Whole Earth Catalog (1968). This man and this book both aimed to launch Judaism from insularity to openness—to a more experimental and embodied spirituality that would embrace not only the outside world but also other religious traditions.

  Rather than founding new synagogues and positioning themselves as a new denomination, advocates of Jewish Renewal organize themselves into havurot (“fellowships”), small communities of equals gathered for prayer, Torah study, and meditation. Jews have long seen study as worship; in Jewish renewal, study is meditation too. The term havurah carries the connotation of “friend,” so these are fellowships of friends that actually share certain features with meetings of the Society of Friends (Quakers), including informal worship, casual dress, and an egalitarian spirit uncomfortable with hierarchy of any sort.

  Practitioners of Jewish Renewal have been organized since 1993 into the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, but the spirit of this movement is better expressed in books such as Schachter-Shalomi’s Jewish with Feeling (2005) and Michael Lerner’s Jewish Renewal (1994). Many American synagogues today have havurot inside them, providing a place for Jews with inclinations toward yoga or Sufism or Kabbalah under the sacred canopy of the synagogue itself. Although many advocates of Jewish Renewal speak easily of the Shekhina, the marriage they believe will renew the world is between Judaism and other spiritualities.

  To critics, Jewish Renewal is “New Age Judaism,” which is to say it isn’t really Jewish at all. Just as Humanistic Judaism has gone over the deep end into agnosticism and even atheism, Jewish Renewal is missing the re-. Did not God Himself say, “[I] have set you apart from the peoples, that ye should be Mine” (Leviticus 20:26)? If so, who are we to transgress the boundaries of religions? Such criticisms neglect to remember how malleable the Jewish tradition has been over the millennia and how central this malleability has been to its survival. The notion of an unadulterated Judaism is as elusive as the notion of an unchanging Buddhism. Hasidism, for example, makes all sorts of claims to tradition, but it is a product of the eighteenth century, older than Protestant fundamentalism, no doubt, but no less a modern invention. The same is true of Orthodoxy, which was born in nineteenth-century Germany in response to Reform Judaism. The Jewish tradition has always been a dance, or perhaps a wrestle, between the old and the new. And it is this give and take that keeps it vital.

  While Judaism is a tradition of story and law, what has kept it alive is conversation and controversy—the inquisitive spirit of the boys (and, nowadays, girls) in the yeshiva. How to tell the story? How to interpret the law? How to end the exile? Almost all religions provide opportunities for human beings to convince themselves of their own righteousness, to speak in the name of God, and even to go to war on God’s behalf. This “blasphemy of certainty” is also rife among secularists who in their case have not God but science or the proletariat on their side.41 Jews, both religious and secular, have done all these things, of course. Yet their tradition warns them repeatedly that their thoughts are not God’s thoughts, reminding Hillel that Shammai might be right about this and reminding Shammai that Hillel might be right about that. Because only God really knows, the rest of us are free to wrestle, without fear, with how to read a text or how to observe a commandment—to turn learning into recreation and debate into play. If religion without controversy is dead, Judaism may well be the liveliest of the great religions.

  Chapter Eight

  Daoism

  The Way of Flourishing

  Modern life is purpose-driven. Though much of it is conducted in an office chair, it is nonetheless about speed and efficiency—“galloping by sitting.”1 Wandering, by contrast, is slow, unproductive, and open to surprises. If you have a destination, or even a plan, you aren’t on a wander. Purposeless by design, wandering is closer to play than to work. It lets circumstance and desire take you where they will, and it doesn’t sweat the outcome.

  The Western monotheisms portray wandering as punishment—something you get after you bite the apple (Adam and Eve) or kill your brother (Cain). In Daoism (or Taoism2), however, wandering is opportunity rather than punishment. The Daoist hero Lu Dongbin was working his way toward marriage, employment, and success when, during a nap, he caught a glimpse of the future prison he was making for himself. He dreamed he was a rich and respected government official with many children and grandchildren until a scandal stole everything from him, scattering his family and leaving him a broken man. When he woke up, Lu decided to climb out of his hamster cage. After flunking China’s imperial examinations, he made for the mountains instead. Eventually this dropout became one of Daoism’s beloved Eight Immortals.

  Whereas Christians and Muslims tend to view this world as a dress rehearsal for the world to come, “This is it!” is the Daoist mantra. Socially, Daoism represents a revolt of the land against the city, of China’s rural south against its urban north. We are at home on earth, and in our bodies. We are least ourselves when those bodies are stuck in the concrete of a city sidewalk. We are most ourselves when walking through the mountains. So it should not be surprising that Daoist scriptures portray wandering as freedom. To be lost in the maze of social conventions and ritual propriety, led around by the noose of norms and “the normal,” is to be alienated from yourself, from other people, and from the environment. To lose yourself in mountains or valleys is to return to the origin of things, including your own nature. To “roam in company with the Dao,” led only by intuition and desire and the innate curiosity of the child, is to discover who you really are—your natural spontaneity, vitality, and freedom.3

  The first chapter of the Daoist classic the Zhuangzi (or Chuang-Tzu) is called “Free and Easy Wandering.” It speaks of a sage who “could ride upon the wind wherever he pleased, drifting marvelously” for days at a time; another who could “go wandering in infinity”; another who “rides on the clouds, drives a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas”; and yet another who “can roam in nonaction.” Later chapters describe the sage as someone who “wanders beyond the dust of the mundane world” and speak of the wanders of emperors and even Confucius himself. According to Sinologist Victor Mair, who titled his Zhuangzi translation Wandering on the Way, wandering is “probably the single most important and quintessential concept” in this text. Mair adds that yu, which is usually translated as “wandering” but also means “playing,” is a “term for that transcendental sort of free movement which is the mark of an enlightened being.” This movement can be of the mind as well as the body. “Just ride along with things as you let your mind wander,” writes Zhuangzi. “That is the ultimate course.”4

  The Zhuangzi itself is a ramble into the unexpected, the unpredictable, and the unknown—a piñata of paradox and parody and parable and wit, just waiting to be cracked open by childlike joy. Its lines tramp whimsically from this story to that without a care in the world about continuity, organization, or narrative arc. Having no way, it seems to chuckle, may take you to the Way itself.

  This may seem impossible, irrelevant, and silly. How can a wander be purposeless on purpose? How can the arch
er hit her target without taking aim? Yet we know that too much aiming of a baseball, say, leads a pitcher to throw balls rather than strikes. As any Little League coach can tell you, a pitcher needs to throw without aiming. He needs to let go.

  The Dao of Everything

  Daoism is the least known in the West of Asia’s great religions, yet in some respects it is the most widespread. Daoism is popular not only in its homeland of China, where it stands alongside Confucianism and Buddhism as one of the Three Teachings, but also across East and Southeast Asia—in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam. It has also made its way via immigration and popular culture to Australia, Europe, and the United States. In times of global warming and environmental degradation, Westerners are particularly attracted to the Daoist value of naturalness, which urges human beings to act in harmony with the natural world. The Daoist love of nature, and of mountains, is reflected in Chinese landscape painting, and its themes of simplicity, change, and nonconformity echo throughout Chinese poetry. Daoism has also had a profound impact on acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and Taiji (Tai Chi).

  The Daoist classic the Daodejing (or Tao Te Ching)—also known as the Laozi (Lao-Tzu) after its reputed author—is the most widely translated book after the Bible and the second most influential book in Chinese history after the Analects of Confucius. Given the complexity of this text, it is hard to account for its popularity, though the fact that it is both brief and ambiguous means, as Mair writes, that “everybody can not only find in it what they want, they can find what they’re looking for quickly.”5

  More than any of the other great religions, Daoism has benefited from a recent renaissance of scholarship by Chinese, Europeans, and Americans alike. But Daoist immortals have ridden to the West on the wings of popular rather than academic culture. The Buddhist Bible (1932) that the Beat icon Jack Kerouac—the Lu Dongbin of 1950s America (Lu, too, had a weakness for women and alcohol)—carried around in his back pocket as he went “on the road” contained not only Buddhist but also Daoist texts. And Kerouac’s Beat friends and the hippies that traipsed after them were influenced at least as much by Daoist commitments to naturalness, simplicity, spontaneity, and freedom as they were by Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. So while his fellow travelers were, in Kerouac’s phrase, “Dharma Bums” they were also Daoist wanderers who through various techniques mimicked the ecstasies of ancient Chinese shamans, traveling to other worlds and coming back with wisdom (and stories) from spirits and gods.

  Getting your fill of Daoism is even easier in your living room and at the movies than it is at your local bookstore. On the animated television comedy The Simpsons, Lisa helps her brother Bart compete in a miniature golf tournament by hopping him up with a cocktail of Daoist and Zen wisdom and wit. This same combination is on display in the Kung Fu television series (1972–75) and in popular films such as The Karate Kid (1984), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Daoism also informs feng shui (literally “wind and water”) and the “biospiritual” breathing exercises known as qigong.6 Feng shui, which was originally used to position graves in keeping with the yin (“shady”) and yang (“sunny”) sides of cemetery hills, is now used in architecture and interior decoration in both East Asia and the West. The best known of Daoist qigong practices, Falun Gong, was banned in China in 1999.

  The most important vehicles for the diffusion of Daoism worldwide are the thousands upon thousands of martial arts schools scattered throughout Asia and almost every town and city in Europe and the United States. In classes on Taiji, for example, children, adults, and senior citizens alike learn of key Daoist concepts such as qi (chi) and the complementarity of the feminine yin and the masculine yang. More important, they come to embody them.

  The West’s infatuation with Daoism is most visible in the titles of hundreds of books, including many bestsellers, that begin with the magic words “Tao of” and cover almost every aspect of human life. There are “Tao of” books on cooking, eating, dishwashing, teaching, coaching, dating, dreaming, computing, writing, bathing, being, dying, and letting go. Sports-related books include Tao of Surfing, The Tao of Golf, The Tao of the Jump Shot, Tao of Baseball, The Tao of Poker, and The Tao of Chess. For academics, there are “Tao of” books on anthropology, psychology, politics, and statistics, as well as Fritjof Capra’s hit, The Tao of Physics. For the spiritual or religious (or both), there is The Tao of Islam, The Tao of Zen, The Tao of Jesus, The Tao of Christ, and even a book (on Jewish mystic Martin Buber) called I and Tao. On such perennial subjects as sex and money and love and business, “Tao of” books abound. Elvis, Emerson, Muhammad Ali, Warren Buffet, Bruce Lee, and Willie Nelson all have “Tao of” books devoted to them. For animal lovers, there is The Tao of Bow Wow, The Tao of Meow, and even The Tao of Cow.

  Of all the “Tao of” books, the one with the most jolting (and revolting) title is The Tao of Poop, though it may be of some comfort to know that this book’s subtitle is Keeping Your Sanity (and Your Soul) While Raising a Baby. The most famous is Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh (1982), which puts Daoist truths on the lips of Winnie the Pooh and his friends. While introducing China’s Three Teachings, Hoff tells his readers about a scroll depicting Confucius, the Buddha, and Laozi, all tasting vinegar. Confucius has a sour face, the Buddha has a bitter one, but Laozi is smiling, because life to him is as sweet as Pooh’s beloved honey.7 Much of this is silliness, of course. The movie Tao of Steve includes the immoral line, “I’m not looking for enlightenment, I’m just looking for a girlfriend.” But the silliness is fitting, since Daoist sages seem to laugh far more often, and more lustily, than, say, Jesus or Paul did.

  One reason Daoism is popular in the West is that Westerners know so little about it. This ignorance allows us to make it over in our own image, and because there are few card-carrying Daoists in Europe and the United States, these makeovers are hardly ever corrected by Daoists themselves. To be fair, Daoists have never really tried to systematize their thought. They have never banished their heretics or even identified them. Their canon of scriptures is both encyclopedic (well in excess of a thousand volumes) and contradictory. And they have never frozen their fluid teachings into dogma—fitting for a tradition that stands by change and creativity. Again like Hindus, Daoists are forever absorbing rather than repelling new influences. Their tradition is an endlessly elusive grab bag of philosophical observations, moral guidelines, body exercises, medicinal theories, supernatural stories, funerary rites, and longevity techniques that, more than any of the other great religions, defies definition. Daoism is, to be sure, a tradition of books, both holy and humorous. But it is also a tradition of sacred mountains and pilgrimages and festivals and wine and incense and hymns and sexual practices and alternative medicine and martial arts and meandering conversations and immortals who “wander in the mists” and “dance in the Infinite.”8

  Just how many of these wanderers and dancers there are is as elusive as Daoism itself. Because Daoism is one of China’s Three Teachings, most Chinese feel free to do Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian things without aligning themselves exclusively with any one tradition. Those who identify largely with Daoism typically refer only to priests and sages as “Daoists.” Moreover, Daoist practitioners do not usually gather in congregations in which they can line up and be counted. So the accounting here is about as impossible as the defining. (The World Religion Database, which keeps tabs on adherents of other major religions, does not even try in this case.) Taiwan, which since the 1960s has seen a Daoist renaissance, has about ten thousand Daoist temples and perhaps six million Daoist practitioners.9 The number of Daoists in China, where Daoism is also staging a comeback, is anyone’s guess, since official government statistics count only clerics. Though Daoism is often associated with hermits and rebels, the tradition’s folkways have long attracted all social classes, including government officials, so most Chinese are influenced in some way by its teachings. This tradition is stronger, however, in China
’s rural south than in its urban north. A plausible estimate is 50 million in mainland China alone, though that figure could rise to well over 100 million if you count people who climb Daoist mountains, patronize Daoist temples, or light incense to Daoist immortals in their homes.10

  Still, it must be said that Daoism’s contemporary impact lies less in its numbers than in the power and diffusion of its ideas. Daoist influence can be found outside of Daoism per se in Neo-Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, but Daoism has not exerted the influence over East Asian civilization that Confucianism and Buddhism have. Its power has almost always been countercultural, and its influence today continues to be more in literature and the arts than in politics and economics. For this reason, it ranks well below both Confucianism and Buddhism in terms of contemporary impact.

  Nurturing Life

  Daoists have always been more attracted to the fluid than to the fixed, so Daoists disagree about almost everything, including the goal of their tradition. Some Daoists accept death as part of the natural order of things, while others seek to defy death by questing after immortality. Nonetheless, most Daoists agree that the highest value is life, so the highest practice is the art of nurturing life. The problem is that we let life slip away, either by not living it fully or by not living it for long. We wear ourselves down by selling ourselves into the servitude of customary ways of thinking and acting. The Daoist solution is to live life to the fullest—to enjoy good health in a vital body for a long life. So there are echoes here of the thisworldly orientation of Israelite religion, in which patriarchs such as Abraham and Moses sought not heaven but to live a long life, die of natural causes, and be buried by their kin.