The Tao Is Silent: Raymond Smullyan’s Introduction to Lao Tzu
“At all costs, the Christian must convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists, in order to save his soul. At all costs, the atheist must convince the Christian that the belief in God is but a childish and primitive superstition, doing enormous harm to the cause of true social progress. And so they battle and storm and battle away at each other. Meanwhile the Taoist Sage sits quietly by the stream, perhaps with a book of poems, a cup of wine, and some painting materials, enjoying the Tao to his heart’s content, without ever worrying if the Tao exists. The Sage has no need to affirm the Tao; he is far busy enjoying it!”
The Tao Is Silent is a lovely little book which serves as a Western introduction to what we might call philosophical Taoism, because it dispenses with the esoteric rituals and alchemical processes of magical Taoism and the deity temple offerings of religious Taoism. You will find dialogues and ramblings about the nature of the Tao within these pages, if you came here to learn about blasting chi with your mind you’re barking up the wrong tree - Smullyan is a stage magician rather than a Dragon Gate sorcerer and his framework is based in logic and mathematics. There’s a whole chapter where he rags on astrology, showing potential influence from James Randi there in his skepticism of it, however he is somewhat sympathetic to mystics.
Raymond Smullyan presents a very good case for the Westernised version of Taoism that doesn’t involve any altars to your gods, he advocates for an abstract force called the Tao and living in harmony with it. He’s amusing and rather adept at metaphors, despite the heavy ideas he’s laying down on you. He quotes Zen masters a lot, so there’s a bit of crossover between faiths as he explains the nitty-gritty of Taoist thought to the guailo set. It was originally published in the seventies, which probably blew some minds in the wake of Star Wars, and much of his discourse about the Tao feels ahead of its time in that Alan Watts vein. The way I practice Taoism in my daily life is somewhere in the middle, rooted somewhat in magical Taoism with prayers to deities but with a belief that the Tao is everywhere and you don’t need to confine your faith to a building to experience its benefits. I of course want to visit a Taoist temple someday, but until COVID blows over such a dream is difficult to achieve. Raymond Smullyan’s Taoism is abstract and vague, also not confined to a sacred building, which seems to be the default guailo-fication of Taoism when it comes to the West when you only read the Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi texts. There’s a brilliant scholarly essay by Russell Kirkland about the bizarre gulf between how Westerners practice Taoism versus how it’s practiced in China, and I found it an interesting read because even Ursula K Le Guin gets called out for removing parts of the Tao Te Ching text which didn’t appeal to her as a rational sci-fi writer. This scholarly essay calls out The Tao Of Pooh as Western psuedo-Taoist fluff, I can only imagine what rage The Tao Is Silent must inspire from dedicated Taoist scholars who understand both the philosophical and religious components of Taoist tradition from a Chinese perspective. On the other hand I read a beautiful article on Western Taoism and the different forms it might take called Along The Way: A Western Taoist Manifesto which makes a case for the spread of Taoist thought to Western shores. The Tao Is Silent is a Westernised take on Taoism, yet it is entertaining and humorous to read, focusing on the Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi as sources for this philosophical tome’s wit. To Raymond Smullyan, the semantics of what counts as traditional Taoism is less interesting to him than the wisdom it offers, and it’s a better book for it. If you’re starting out with the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi in your hand and need some commentary to help interpret it from a Western lens, Smullyan has got you covered, and this slim volume is rather unpretentious for what it is.
There’s a chapter in this book called Worship of the Buddha which helps Westerners understand whether or not the Buddha himself is worshipped as a deity by Buddhists (some do, some don’t), and this chapter contains a number of passages which illuminate where Smullyan is coming from as a Western author commenting on both Buddhism and Taoism, like this one here:
“It is absolutely amazing how people need to “deify” things and to bring in the occult, telepathic and supernatural into situations where they simply don’t belong. It is remarkable how many extremely intelligent people I have known - many of them outstanding scientists and mathematicians - who credit telepathic powers to magicians who do mind reading tricks. Now, I have been a professional magician and mind-reader (sic!) for many years, and here I know whereof I speak! I know the modus operandi of almost all mind-reading demonstrations, and know they are nothing more than extremely clever tricks. The most remarkable thing of all is that people have sometimes sworn to me that I must be telepathic and have refused to believe me when I swore to them I am not! I told them over and over again, “This is really a trick! It has a perfectly simple mechanical explanation, and any of you could do it yourself, if you knew the explanation (which professional ethics forbids me to disclose).” But they refused to believe me!
And so I think the reason some people insist on Buddha as a deity is their simple need to deify someone or something. And so they take it out on poor Buddha!”
Raymond Smullyan is definitely taking on Taoism from the prism of Houdini stage magic skepticism applied to a living religion, drawing wisdom from the ancients yet only drawing from specific sources like the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi to the exclusion of other sacred texts which form the canon, when Taoism comes to the West it comes in translated form and certain religious aspects get muddled along the way to America or other Anglophone nations. Smullyan’s Taoism ignores deities like the Jade Emperor or Kuan Yin or Guan Yu and focuses on the basic philosophy as written down by Lao Tzu or Zhuangzi. This secularised aberration of Taoism is not rooted in the Chinese lineages but by Western interpretation of the translated text “as is”, a bare bones form of Taoism which isn’t focused on rituals or religious practices. This mutant form of Taoism certainly appealed to me coming from a Christian family where I was raised to fear God and accept Jesus into my heart, and it sure shook me a bit to learn that the Westernised abstract Tao which nurtures without seeking credit might not have as much theological standing as I thought. When it comes to Western texts reinterpreting the Tao, this is a definite example of the guailo-fication of the Taoist canon which focuses purely on what Lao Tzu or Zhuangzi say. A lot of the religious liturgy of Taoism came centuries later with the influence of Buddhism, so a stripped-down version of Taoism as taught by the New Age/Self Help section of the bookstore seems to be spreading under the impression that the abstract Tao is all there is to worry about, and disregards religious Taoism’s numerous hells which came with Buddhism’s influence in China as a package deal. The idea that you can abide in the Tao without having to perform rituals and such is very appealing to the Westerner who might not know any better, I even joined The Church of the Latter Day Dude which bases its teachings on The Big Lebowski and a stripped-down interpretation of Taoist dogma that gets rid of centuries of added baggage to the faith. Dudeism is a concrete example of Chinese living religion filtered through the needs and values of Westerners looking for a simpler way of life, and much of what Smullyan has to say is compatible with this Western lineage that cropped up through the New Age movement. I reckon at this stage of Western Taoism, the reform version of it that carves through all the complicated woo-woo in favour of the philosophical tenets themselves is just as valid as that reform synagogue I heard about from my Dad’s brother (Uncle John) which doesn’t believe in Moses’ teachings as a Jewish temple. Smullyan’s text embodies a specific moment in time (the seventies) in which the New Age movement experimented with different ideologies with mixed results, and one of those results was the secularised Tao which appeals to Western spiritual seekers who feel uncomfortable with a judgemental godhead deciding whether or not they deserve eternal torment in the afterlife.
Smullyan goes into great detail why he prefers the abstract, non-judgemental Tao (which is arguably supported by the text of the Tao Te Ching) in a chapter called The Tao Does Not Command:
“That is another thing so nice about the Tao; it is not bossy! It loves and nourishes all things but does not lord it over them. Thus the Tao is something purely helpful - never coercive!
In the Judeo-Christian notion of God, one thing that is so rigidly stressed is obedience to God! The great sins are “disobedience, rebellion against God, pride, self-will”, etc. The Christians are constantly stressing the infinite importance of “total surrender to God”. They say, “Let thy will, not mine, be done”.
How very different is the Taoist! He never speaks of “obedience” to the Tao but only of “being in harmony” with the Tao - which seems so much more attractive! And being in harmony with the Tao is not something “commanded”, nor something which is one’s “duty”, nor something demanded by “moral law”, nor something sought for future reward, but is something which is its own reward; it is in itself a state of spiritual tranquility. In this respect it does resemble the Judeo-Christian notion of “communion”.”
Smullyan rags on Christianity a fair bit in this book, and his preference for Taoism as a valid alternative to being blackmailed by God with eternal damnation is seductive to say the least, even though religious scholars and theologians with experience in Taoist teachings would bring up how you still need to get right with the Jade Emperor and not abuse your cattle in this life to avoid punishment in the Diyu. Depending on who you ask, you might be confronted with theology about the Diyu, but my preferred source on the matter Eva Wong states in her book Taoism: An Essential Guide about the Taoist afterlife:
“The realm of the underworld is administered by celestial beings. This is quite different from the system in Buddhism, whereby the underworld is administered by those who dwell there. In some sects of Taoism, the T’ai-i T’ien-tsun is the chief administrator of all matters in the underworld. These include keeping the records of those who have died, those who are destined to be reincarnated, and those who need to be rehabilitated before reincarnation. The Taoist notion of the underworld, despite the influence of popular devotional Buddhism, is not a hell. It is not a place of punishment but a place of learning and rehabilitation. Dead souls who begrudge their fate and still cling to the mortal world are taught to accept the cycle of life and death and cease haunting the mortal realm. The duty of the T’ai-i T’ien-tsun is to educate dead souls so that they receive a speedy reincarnation.”
I like to think of Taoism’s paranormal rehab like Bad-Anon from Wreck-It Ralph.
Alright, so Smullyan is a bit of a guailo when it comes to Taoist theology which came centuries later, we’ve established that, but what does he have in this book which speaks to the soul of the reader? I liked the chapter On Not Wanting To Amount To Anything, which serves as a hippie-era New Age fable which I won’t post excerpts from here because it’s quite dense and long, but it has a lovely irony to it when the hippie who doesn’t want to amount to anything writes down his teachings and becomes a millionaire. There’s also another chapter, one of the longest in the book, called Is God A Taoist? where a dialogue between God and a mortal who wants his free will revoked because he doesn’t want to sin takes place.
Chapter 34, called On Making An Effort, has a stab at reconciling Wu-Wei with Western thought:
“All my life I have been intensely repelled by the idea of “making an effort”. I hate this idea as much as I did as a child. I don’t know why I hate it so much; I just do. It is perfectly possible that I have “made an effort” in life, I would have accomplished more than I have. (Who knows, I might have even “amounted to something”!) As I say, this may be possible, though I am far from knowing it to be true. If this were true, it would pose a horrible dilemma! On the one hand, it is great fun to amount to something (despite what anybody, including myself, might say to the contrary). On the other hand, it is horrible to make an effort. At least I find it so; if you don’t, then the dilemma I am discussing does not apply to you. So the problem is, how does one amount to something without making an effort?”
Further along in the chapter, Smullyan cites the Taoist philosophers as an example to live up to:
“Take Laotse and Chuangtse for example. Surely, they amounted to something! Good heavens, to be avidly read through the ages - for twenty-six hundred years! If that is not amounting to something, what on earth is? Yes, they amounted to a great deal! In a way, they are like the hippie of my preceding tale. They philosophised about nonaction, nonassertiveness, the futility of seeking fame and of trying to amount to something, and they made great names for themselves in this very process! Their success delights me more than any other successes I know. Here is Taoism at its best! Their very success is a living proof of their philosophy.
The relevant question now is, Did they make an effort? This is a highly controversial and most subtle point. Indeed, to understand the answer correctly, is to penetrate to the very heart of the Tao itself! One of the main Taoistic principles is Wu-Wei - the doctrine of “action through inaction”. Did they merely preach this philosophy or did they actually live it? They must have lived it, or they couldn’t have written as they did.”
All in all, The Tao Is Silent is an interesting book filled with Taoist and Zen wisdom pared down from a complex framework to meet the needs of a contemporary (nineteen-seventies) Western audience, and I can recommend it to people starting out with Taoism with the caveat that it’s aiming for a Western readership with all the guailo-fication that implies. It’s a short but dense text which rewards re-visiting as the Eastern philosophy reveals its meaning to the devout student. I quite enjoyed The Tao Is Silent and while some aspects of it are dated, others remain relevant just as the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu has remained a constant companion in my life. Raymond Smullyan is an interesting figure and a talented writer, I’d like to know more about him given his book The Tao Is Silent made a great first impression, and his take on Taoism is a rational sane one.
