Christ the Eternal Tao

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If someone has a copy of the master thesis “Emptiness and Fullness in the Lao Tzu” by Eugene Rose. Please post it.

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“While studying under Boodberg, Eugene made a more thorough study of the language of the Tao Teh Ching. For his master’s degree thesis he wrote an essay entitled “‘Emptiness’ and ‘Fullness’ in the Lao-Tzu.” One of the Berkeley professors who reviewed this paper, Cyril Birch, noted how closely Eugene had followed Boodberg’s approach to linguistic analysis. For the philosophical aspect of the essay, Eugene received help from the wisdom of Gi-ming Shien, as is clear from a comparison of the thesis with notes he had taken during Gi- ming’s lectures at the Academy.
In the introduction to his thesis, Eugene indicated that his approach had been “‘philologico-philosophical,’ an alternative examination of words and ideas.” Lao-Tzu, he stated, “is not concerned with abstract concepts, but rather with what one might call poetic ideas: ideas highly charged with dynamic associations.” Although Eugene’s paper was necessarily limited in scope, it did help to bring these poetic ideas out of what Eugene regarded as the needless obscurity characteristic of many translations and interpretations of the Tao Teh Ching. He wrote: “Our examination of the language of the book — always in conjunction with the ideas bound up in it — will serve, it is hoped, as a partial antidote to the too-often careless, even cavalier, approach to Lao-Tzu the ‘mystic’ and fount of ‘esoteric wisdom’ that has marked many of the popular works on him. Lao-Tzu’s thought is often elusive and paradoxical, but it is rarely if ever as fantastic and contradictory as it has sometimes been made to seem.”6 The interpretations of the Tao Teh Ching that Eugene offered not only made the book’s meaning more clear and understandable, but they also brought out deeper and subtler aspects of it”— Fr. Seraphim Rose: (Life and Works) Page 161-162

[SavaBeljovic]

Absolute great find brother. Glory to God and good job!

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Found another copy.

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Lao Tzu said: “The Sage, in order to be above the people, must speak as though he were lower than the people. In order to guide them he must put himself behind them.” This brings to mind Christ’s words: “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matt. 20:26-27).

“The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness.”—Lao Tzu

Eugene was attracted to Chinese culture: The Tao Teh Ching of Lao Tzu. This classic work of Chinese philosophy from the 6th century B.C. impressed him so much that he desired to read it in its original language and tap its meaning. “It is so profound that one can get lost in it,” he said. As he explained in later years, according to Lao Tzu’s philosophy “the center of the universe is Tao – the Path of life.” This “Path,” “Way” or “ordering principle” of nature – like Him Who fashioned nature – is characterized by simplicity and humility. In this – as well as in its precepts which closely approximate those of Christ,** and in its reticence in speaking of that which is not yet known – the Tao Teh Ching is a foreshadowing of what would later be revealed through Christ. Since the Tao Teh Ching contains in itself no supernatural revelation, it cannot really be called “mystical.” “Some people think it’s very mystical,” Eugene later said. “I think it’s more on a natural elvel.” It may, however, be said to represent the epitome of what a human being can know without direct revelation, that is, through the apprehension of universal principles as manifested in nature, in the divinely created order. For Eugene, who like Kirilov did not yet “know that he believed” in Christian revelation, the Tao Teh Ching was thus the best possibility open to him, and he endeavored to take full advantage of it.

Lao Tzu, he believed, would have followed Jesus Christ if he had known Him, for he would have seen in Him the Tao or Way of Heaven. “I was thinking that if I ever got my doctor’s degree in Chinese literature,” Eugene recalled in later years, “I was going to write a paper comparing the Byzantine emperor with the Chinese emperor. There are many similarities. In both Byzantine and Chinese society, the emperor is to be the guardian of orthodoxy.”

Lao Tzu realized that the Tao was not just a source of illumination, but he intuited that it was the ordering principle behind all of creation.31 He also recognized the inward principles of created things – “the ideas of things which must exist prior to the things themselves.”32 This is what the Realist philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle recognized as universals. Plato called them “forms” and said that they were “out there somewhere,” whereas Aristotle stated that these universals were inherent to the created things.

the Greeks recognized the same thing and called it logos. They viewed the logos as the basis for all order, proportion, and symmetry, of which they were obsessed. The following quote from Taoist scholar Gi-ming Shien illustrates the exact same principles:

“Order is natural and necessarily requires a directing principle, for it is unimaginable that order is produced by the ordered individuals themselves. If there were no directing principle, how could there be proportion, symmetry, and the adaptation of one thing to another? There must, therefore, be an organizing power which orders – as, for example, in the seasons. The principle of the seasons, from which the seasons proceed in an orderly and never-failing fashion, must exist before the seasons themselves. The ultimate principle is, therefore, of prime importance, and it is this that Lao Tzu calls the Tao….”33
Lao Tzu and the Tao of Christ

St. John’s Gospel begins with, “In the beginning was the Word.” The original Greek is, “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος.” The Greek word for “Word” is λόγος which is translated “logos” in English. In the Chinese Bible, this same phrase is translated as, “太 初 有 道” (tai chu you Tao).34 The fourth character 道 is the Chinese character for Tao.

There is no better translation for the word “logos” in the Gospel of John than Tao.35 Like “logos” for the Greeks, “tao” for the Chinese has a very profound meaning: that of the ordering principle of the universe.


In fact, these words have far more significance to Greek and Chinese readers than the English translation of logos, “word,” means to an English speaker. For the English reader of the Bible, Jesus as the Word really carries little depth of meaning. It is rather abstract and devoid of meaning.

The point is that the words “logos” and “tao” are synonymous; they mean the exact same thing. It was no stretch, therefore, for translators of the Chinese Bible to translate John’s Logos to Tao. There’s no disparity between the two concepts. Chinese translators may argue over other fine points, but they do not argue over this one. This is why, in reality, what Lao Tzu was encountering through his thoughts and mystical experiences was none other than Christ the eternal Tao. He experienced and explained him better than any other person aside from special revelation.

That Which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist.”— St. Augustine

There exists a Being undifferentiated and complete, Born before heaven and earth.
Tranquil, boundless,
Abiding alone and changing not, Encircling everything without exhaustion.
Fathomless, it seems to be the Source of all things. I do not know its name,
But characterize it as the Tao.
Arbitrarily forcing a name upon it, I call it Great....
TAO TEH CHING, CHAPTERS 25 AND 4 (Translated by Gi-ming Shien and Eugene Rose).

In the beginning was the Tao, And the Tao was with God, And the Tao was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him;
And without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in darkness,
And the darkness comprehended it not.
He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, And the world knew Him not.
And the Tao became flesh,
And dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory ...
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, CHAPTER I
(Translated from a Canton edition of the New Testament, published in China in 1911 by the American Bible Society.)

“A pagan philosopher in China named Lao Tzu,” Fr. Seraphim told the brothers and sisters, “taught that the weakest things conquer the strongest things. There is an example of this here at our monastery. The oak trees, which are very hard and unbending, are always falling down, and their limbs are always breaking off and falling; while the pine trees, which are more supple, fall down much less often before they are actually dead.

“That is, if you bend, it is a sign of strength. We can see the same thing in human life. The person who believes in something to such an extent that he’s going to stand up and ‘cut your head off’ if you don’t agree with him—he shows his weakness, because he’s so unsure of himself that he has to convert you to make sure that he himself believes.”

Fr. Seraphim said that in order for us to “bend” like the pine trees, our hearts must be transformed. “The way,” he said, “is to soften the heart, to make the heart more supple.”

-Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, Ch. 87

Born under the name Eugene Rose, he was an education linguist, studying Chinese at Pomona College with the unique and fascinating Taoist philosopher Gi-Ming Shien.  In his masters' thesis, Emptiness and Fullness in the Lao-Tzu, Rose argued against a nihilistic interpretation of the concept of emptiness in the Tao Te Ching (or, as he idiosyncratically calls it, the Lao-Tzu, after the purported author), in favor of an interpretation governed by the concepts of the "opposite" and "return".  This interpretation is surprisingly fruitful in hinting at a solution to the seeming impasse between the essentialist and ontotheological metaphysics of the Socratic/Western world and the "emptiness" experientialism of the Buddhist Orient.  An examination of Rose's thesis is a worthwhile exercise for the purpose of re-grounding and recasting the problematic ontotheological tradition in Buddhist terms, as well as for freeing our understanding of Buddhist thought from Western categories.

The Taoist syzygy of "emptiness" and "fullness" corresponds to an analogous conceptual duality in Buddhism, "emptiness" and "form", where "emptiness is form and form emptiness", an idea that resonates closely with modern physics.  As superficially interpreted through a European lens, talk of emptiness can appear to be a nihilistic denial of being, but Rose argued that for Lao Tzu emptiness is a golden mean between unbalanced affirmation and apathetic negligence.  "Emptiness" and "fullness" are not nouns in Lao Tzu's Chinese idiom, but rather verbs (which may be better translated as "waning" and "waxing"); however, the concept he elucidates corresponds remarkably to the Aristotelian concept of the "golden mean", also appropriated by Christian theology.

As Rose explained, the nihilistic concept of "emptiness" is referred to by Lao Tzu by a word best translated "exhaustion".  "Exhaustion" or "finality" means death, "reaching the end of the breath, total expiration" (Rose, Emptiness and Fullness, 33).  This is not the word Lao Tzu uses many many times to explain the "good" sort of emptiness, however:  "In the usual understanding of the word, both in English and Chinese, "emptiness" has a contrary, "fullness"; but if this kind of emptiness, and extreme, is what Lao-Tzu has in mind when he speaks of it, all that we have said on the "mid-point" as the ultimate goal of his thought is set at nought.  But in fact this is not what he had in mind.  To be "emptied" is not the same as to be "exhausted". "  (Emptiness and Fullness, 29)

Lest we mistake "emptiness" and "fullness" for metaphysical concepts, Rose reminds us that Lao Tzu's language is oriented around verbs, not reified nouns, and that "emptiness" and "fullness" are translations of words literally meaning the "waning" and "waxing" of the moon.  The comfortable Western concepts of “substance” and “person” are simply absent from Lao Tzu's vocabulary.  By contrast to Aristotelian essentialism, for the East a static or permanent plenitude of being or "nature" or "essence" is not what constitutes form, but rather emptiness, becoming, or sunyata.  The Hindu language of maya and illusion is avoided by the Taoists, but a somewhat more Heraclitean ontology of becoming and doing still eclipses any possibility of ontotheology.

This lack of substantive ontology has ramifications for Lao Tzu's quietism.  Since he did not reject appearances or phenomena or things as illusions, Lao Tzu did not embrace the violent rejection of being seen in certain strands of ascetic Hinduism, and since he did not regard "things" as real (lacking the vocabulary to place "things" as ontological categories at all), he did not embrace the worldly attachment to them.  Instead, he preaches the quietistic and apparently (though misleadingly so) complacent acceptance of the Tao, by exhorting us to be supple and fluent with the Tao - it is through suppleness that is found power (the famous "wu wei" paradigm).  "Wu wei" should not be viewed as cynical, nihilistic, or pessimistic resignation - it is through suppleness that is found power; it is through the Tao that we flower into who we are, that we find our "true potential", as humanistic psychology might see it.  As Lao Tzu said, “If one uses it [the Tao], it is inexhaustible” – for while the Tao is emptiness, all form is emptiness, so there is no contradiction in saying that this emptiness is inexhaustible.

The challenge for cross-cultural philosophy remains reconciling the Western categories of personhood and substance, so essential to Christian theology, with the common Oriental tradition of emptiness and fullness; Lao Tzu's placement of the "golden mean" within the context of sunyata provides a possible clue to its solution.

Eugene makes a good case for the idea that the “emptiness” which Lao Tzu values is not “an extreme, an exhaustion, a lack,” but rather a “point of convergence,” a “midpoint” where the “minimum” has been attained and from which there is a “turning back” towards fullness. This, states Eugene by way of analogy, is “that momentary point of balance, when expiration is completed and inspiration is not yet begun, when there is no breath at all.” It is only in keeping with this interpretation of “emptiness” in the Tao Teh Ching that such phrases of Lao Tzu as “the ridgepole [i.e., the ‘point of convergence’ in a roof] of faint expiration” become understandable. Where other translators interpreted Lao Tzu as saying “it is in the empty part of the wheel that its utility depends,” Eugene made this passage much more clear with his translation: “Thirty spokes join in a single hub, and it is just in this its minim point that the use of the carriage lies.” “Here,” writes Eugene, “mjwo[‘emptiness’] is the single, smallest point, the point of convergence of the spokes, which is the ‘axis’ upon which the wheel turns and the carriage moves.”

(St.Ambrose (1812-1891) was the pinnacle of the long line of clairvoyant elders at Optina Monastery in Russia. Because he had attained the depths of self-emptying, he was granted the gift of healing suffering souls. He could read human hearts, know the past and future of people, and speak to them the direct, revealed word of God. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was among those who came to him for counsel, and later used him as the model for the well-known character of Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov.)

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Lecture Transcript of Christ the Eternal Tao.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220510031 ... o_-_part_1

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By displaying key sayings of Jesus and Lao Tzu side by side, this unique spiritual guide reveals remarkable similarities.