The Immortal is a superstar. Uncommon ability, power, wealth, achievement, magic and the quest for super long life. Manipulates the elements, long sought by those who seek to manifest. This is their power. They transfuse the blood of children. Parabiosis, Peter Thiel, PayPal, you know the kind, where the ravage of fortune ravages the mind. The Immortals seek power like a sports event, but they are blood sports adrenalized, as shown in their pedophilia. At what cost do they avoid death? Simple, at the cost of life. If that seems contradictory, Taoism represents these poles for the Immortal as the Way of Powers (siddhi) vs. the Philosophical Way of Wisdom. Alan Watts says: [Hsien Taoism is] "a quest for immortality and supernormal powers through the gymnosophic and "yogic" practices which seem to have arisen among Taoists in the -2nd and -1st centuries. A hsien is an immortal--one who has purified his flesh from decay by special forms of breathing, diet, drugs, and exercises for preserving the semen comparable to those of Tantric Yoga" (The Watercourse Way, xxv). How well this works you can see for yourself in the sanity and well being of its practitioners along with all the marital, meditative arts, alchemists and occultists, for they are all utterly full of themselves, both sick and crazy. This practice of immortality is a psychopathy. If you get in the way they will kill you.
As opposed to this H. G. Creel says that the Huai Nan Tzu Contemplative Taoism (which became Zen), "insists repeatedly that death and life are just the same, and neither should be sought or feared. It ridicules breath control and gymnastics, which are designed to perpetuate the body but in fact confuse the mind" (What is Taoism, xxvi). Watts says, "the indefinite enlargement of our powers and techniques seems in the end to be the pursuit of a mirage."
It is important not to miss the humor of this response which is more gentle than its condemnation by Lieh Tzŭ, who called it "not merely foolish and futile, but even immoral" (Creel, 22). Facetiously assuming the mirage, these "immortals" live in the desert of their own making. They deny themselves. Watts teases "one who is immortal and who has control of everything that happens to him strikes me as self-condemned to eternal boredom, since he lives in a world without mystery or surprise."
But people are highly vested in immortality. Russell Kirkland calls Creel's nicely reasoned What is Taoism? a "diatribe". The diatribe is the critic's.
Beyond aspersions, Creel believes, as opposed to Watts, that Lao Tzu is not the work of one author, that the unity of voice however proves how good the editor is: "the editor was excellent and gives, on the whole, a remarkable appearance of homogeneity." It is called fiction if I demythologize Borges and argue he was never born, but fact if I find that of Homer, Sappho, Moses, David, Plato, Moses, Beowulf. The odd fellows of fiction that reads like journalism meet criticism that reads like fantasy. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu editors and scholars believe in the editorial class more than in authors. The qualities Creel cites, repetitions in the text, terse and aphoristic style, are primary facets of writers, along with contradiction and fine expression. To imagine these qualities of mind from the hand of editors is a nineteenth century fantasy. A greater myth than Borges! As Watts says and Wouk (This Is My God), these "interpretatio europeica moderna" (European desk scholar) demo primary sources as their livelihood because it buys promotion and tenure. Wendell Berry calls them the luxury politics of an academic islander. This is true of academics among the Pennsylvania Dutch as well as among Taoists.
Chuang Tzu was asked whether he would rather drag up the useless tree that was spared or the unsinging goose that was not (Legge, II, 27). Some editor thought that? 'There is a man over there with a long body and short legs, round shoulders and drooping ears. He looks as though he were sorrowing over mankind. I know not who he can be.' 'It is Confucius!' 'Bid him come hither.' #26
If you want to live long, be useless is his counsel. Otherwise you get eaten. The invitation to usefulness, perfection, immortality is an invitation to consumption and death. This Mystic quest is tainted with the furtherment of personal ambitions and political purposes. Science and art are marketed as business. If you are a migrant you may be kidnapped, but if you are rich you might be too. Hunchbacks are not conscripted for war, the straight and strong are, therefore hunchbacks live.The straight tree is the first cut; the well of sweet water is the first exhausted (Legge, Chuang Tzu, II, 33). But if a man can empty himself of himself during his time in the world who can harm him (II, 31)? We sure see a lot of that! The close-furred fox and the elegantly-spotted leopard...it is their skins which occasion their calamity (II, 29).
Watts feels it is Confucian if you do certain things to live forever. Before the age of resveratrol and HA, but not yet C60 to lengthen the telemeres, Taoist alchemy said all you had to do was sublimate up the spine. Breathe right, eat right, sit right, stop the wandering mind. Who knows how old you can be, providing of course that you stop eating soft food so your whole face doesn't fall forward and down. Grow Your Face (Mike Mew). It brings into question life itself if to be immortal you have to not live at all. Cut down to perfection, life free of mistake loses the thing Taoists seek most, spontaneity.
Stopped Minds
Smooth the ocean by hitting it with a board? The mind anxious for its own anxiety feels the same compulsion as the body hit by the same flat board in zazen. Stopped minders can be petty. After all, they are building their ki to take it to the next world to control you. This immortality is like a pinched nerve in regard to stopped minds.
Beauty conflicts with immortality. It wants to be known. The gnarled pine, thorn and crag, hellebore bushes up the path of weasels (Legge, II, 93) get to be immortal because nobody wants to know them. They live cut off, alone. In this way their imperfection outlasts the straight and strong. Only the spared singing goose is an exception. To be mortal Chuang-tzu says, "though seventy years of age, I am still making wheels," or as Andrew S. Mack traveled to Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota at the age of 71 in 1908, two years after his last letter, and Amasa Clark fathered four children after the age of 70, though he lived to 101, the chance of survival is best when there is no anxiety to survive. But there is no greater anxiety than the effort to be immortal, to "exhale and inhale, to puff out old breath and draw new, stretch and crane to live long, it is an induced tao." Do not let the thoughts keep working anxiously (James Legge, Chuang Tzu, II, 77). When Van de Wetering saw through the sham of immortality he called it Afterzen. If you want nose, ear, eye and mind to wander like Chaung Tzu who invented Zen, then err and live.
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| Two corns dried: At the top, Safeway corn, beautiful in the husk from the store, dried in several days looked like this. Bottom: Indian corn grown in garden, unchanged after being dried and will it remain so forever! |
The difference between mortal and immortal is like the difference between enhanced supermarket foods and natural foods, the unimproved, or if you like, the life and death herbs. Improved "immortal" minds are desiccate, ragged, empty of nutrition when dried. The unimproved are full, well formed, nutritious. This analogy between two corns resembles people who cut their own lawns, do their own dishes, repair themselves by themselves, weed their gardens, do their own books, clean their house, teach their children. Those who hire maintenance so they can seek pleasure and fortune are like the immortals.
Unimproved roads! Narrow is the way! What are improved roads for but more traffic? Why more traffic, but for more development? Why more development, but for more trade? Travel as easy as you can. Thoroughfare, freeway, inflation, consumption for its own sake pave a way to the empty fritterless corn. How mortal happy we, could we find this cure this immortality: here
