Let us reestablish our political context. The Jurchen, a Manchurian forest-dwelling tribe, controls northern China, calling their dynasty the Chin. The Tibetan Tangut tribe controls the northwest silk route, calling their dynasty the Hsi Hsia. The Chinese Sung, who seemed more interested in culture than in fighting, only control southern China.
Then early in the 13th century the northern Mongolian tribes consolidated under Genghis Khan. Feeling themselves under divine influence the Mongol rise was meteoric.
“In early Sung times the Mongolian-speaking peoples were scattered across the eastern Siberian plain in separate tribes or nations.” p 125
One of these tribes was called the Mongols and another was called the Tatars. The Mongol tribe arose to prominence giving its name to the collection of tribes.
In 1210 they attacked the Jurchen Chin dynasty, capturing Peking in 1215. They established control of the strategic Ordos plain above the north China plain. By 1227 they had destroyed the Tangut Hsi Hsia in the northwest. The Chinese imperial government was happy with these events. Their traditional enemies were being beaten. Seeing an opportunity, they allied with the Mongols against the Jurchen Chin, conquering them by 1234. The Chinese were celebrating, moving across the Yangtze into the north China plain.
Their celebration, however, was short lived. Under the battle lust of Genghis Khan the Mongols attacked the imperial army of the Sung in 1235. The Chinese imperial army, while reluctant to fight, put up a stubborn, yet ultimately futile, resistance to the Mongol advance. Finally in 1273, with the help of siege specialists from the conquered Moslem empire of the Middle East, the Mongols finally broke through the Sung defenses, moving into the fertile Yangtze valley. By 1279 the Mongols had finished conquering of the Sung. (Note: although they conquered the Sung, the peasantry was just exchanging one military aristocracy for another.) The Mongols set up their own Chinese dynasty called the Yuan under Genghis’ grandson Kublai.
Tying up some loose ends. Let us talk a little about the nature of these nomadic groups that were ravaging China during this period.
“The Ch’i-tan, Jurchen, and Mongol tribesmen who successively threatened China from the north after the collapse of T’ang did not significantly differ in their patterns of origin and evolution from their counterparts of the early imperial age, the Hsiung-nu, Hsien-pu and Turks. First appearing as forest hunters in eastern Siberia north of Korea, they moved down onto the steppes of northern Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, and there they gradually adopted the life-style of horse nomadism that was best suited to the terrain. Their tribal organization, herding economy, and battle tactics seem to have been essentially the same as those of the Hsiung-nu of Ch’in and Han times. The nomadic groups never numbered more than a minute few compared with the sedentary, agrarian Chinese masses to the south; but to the extent that they could confederate under strong leaders and effectively exploit their nomadic life-style, they were able to harass China and keep it on the defensive.” p.122
Thus these nomadic tribes find their roots in the Siberian forests of northeast Asia. This corresponds with both the Longshan migrations of Neolithic times, and the Xia and Shang dynasties of semi and historical times. The vitality of the warrior culture of the forest dwelling Beringians of the last Ice Age continued to fuel these aggressive militaristic cultures of the north, which have ravaged China for thousands of years. While sometimes, as in the case of the Tangut tribes, the aggression came from the northwest, or even in a minor level from the forests of the southwest, primarily these hunters came from the forests of Siberia. This is the cycle. Their ferocity allows them to conquer. Then they are tamed by Chinese culture. Finally they are conquered by the next military culture emerging from the remains of ancient Beringia.
In many ways the success of these tribes in conquering and maintaining control of China had a lot to do with their willingness to assimilate. The T’o-pa were almost entirely assimilated because they decided to give up nomadic life for the agri-cultural imperial existence. The Liao were never able to permanently conquer northern China because they were not willing to use Chinese institutions to govern and instead held onto to their nomadic culture. Basically the nomadic culture had no means for controlling and administering millions of agricultural peasants. They had to rely on the Chinese institutions to accomplish this task. If they refused to listen or use Chinese administrators then they were ultimately doomed to marginal influence and control.
The relative success of the Jurchen in conquering and controlling all of Northern China was partially based upon their admiration for the Chinese way of life and their willingness to assimilate. While the Mongols under Genghis Khan kept their distance from the Chinese institutions, Kublai was thoroughly sinofied – becoming a somewhat classic Chinese Emperor. His willingness to listen to Chinese counsel, to maintain Chinese institutions, and live like a Chinese Emperor, was what allowed him to conquer all of China and to establish an authentic dynasty. While these Mongol tribes didn’t ultimately influence the Chinese experience, except as conquerors, at least they were able to maintain an effective political control over all of China for almost a century.
Each of us is the center of our own universe, which of course is the only universe. Similarly the Taoists are the center of their own universe. The Taoists suggest the following alternate scenario, not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The encroachment by the northern barbarians followed its inexorable military course, and the Mongolian nomad, Genghis Khan, invaded and threatened to devastate China. To defend the Chinese peasant agri-culture, a Taoist master pleaded with Genghis Khan to respect Taoism and China would be his. Genghis Khan followed his advice and China was spared the widespread devastation that the Mongols were renowned for.
“In 1222 the master Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un defended Taoism before Genghis Khan as the national religion and put himself forth as the representative of the Chinese people: “If the conqueror respects Taoism, the Chinese will submit.” Ch’iu won this daring bet and was installed by Genghis as head of the religious Chinese, including the Buddhists.”[1]
The Taoists were put in charge of the religious Chinese to their detriment. This religious peasant uprising was soon quashed with a Taoist book burning in 1282. This backlash permanently broke the back of institutional Taoism. Never again was the Taoist church a strong political force.
“This success, which conferred on Taoism a power unknown to it before, soon became detrimental. The encroachment upon Buddhist and Confucian domains provoke their vengeance and resulted in the first serious proscription of Taoism. In 1282 Taoist books, except for the Tao Te Ching, were burned. The loss was irremediable and even Taoism’s spirit seemed broken.”[2]
This does not mean that the Taoist ideas were not important. It just means that the political power of the religious structure of Taoism was broken. In China after this book burning, the organization of Taoism supported the religion of the people, nothing more. Taoism had never been the philosophy of the government, because its intent was personal power, not social power. It had always been the philosophy of those excluded from social power. The moral philosophy of the literati and aristocracy was Confucianism.
Public Taoism became less active politically also. They yielded to the violence. Where before it had been the Taoist organization, which had provided leadership in resisting foreign regimes, now they took a back seat to the “Secret Societies”. It was as if the Taoist organization had become tainted by its cooperation with the Mongols.
“National resistance was led henceforth by the sects (the “Secret Societies”) which often shared the theology and practices of Taoism, but which now became separate organizations. They worked hard for national restoration against the Mongols and eventually brought Chu Yuan-chang, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), to power.”[3]
It is important to emphasize at this point that the secret societies ‘shared the theology and practices of Taoism.’ The secret societies were revolutionary in nature and as such could not be associated with the established Church. However just because the established organization of Taoism didn’t lead these revolutionary organizations doesn’t mean that its members weren’t Taoist.
These secret societies were military and hence martial. The Taoist focus upon bodywork is intimately connected with the warrior, not the pacifist. The pacifistic side of Taoism comes in when one becomes such a great warrior that no one will attack.
During the Mongol occupation of China, called the Yuan dynasty, for the first time the Chinese, themselves, were discriminated against. During the T’ang, the conquering tribes were so sinofied that most histories don’t even think of them as invaders from the north. The rise of the Mongols was so rapid that the Chinese royalty didn’t have time to intermarry significantly enough to bind these nomadic tribes to their culture. Indeed the Mongols separated the Chinese from them legally. The Mongols were ranked first in privilege. The non-Chinese foreigners were second; the northern Chinese were third and southern Chinese were lowest. The southern Chinese had been servants of the Sung dynasty. Now they were the slaves of the Mongols.
As we will see this opened up China to the world in wondrous ways, but for the Chinese aristocracy it was degrading and humiliating. While in prior times they had been able to cooperate and intermarry to establish some control, now it was against the law for Mongols to even marry Chinese.
The old Mongol chieftains under Genghis Khan realized the threat of assimilation to their culture. They kept their capital in traditional Mongol territory and elected leaders in a semi-democratic fashion. When Kublai Khan moved his capital into China, the Mongols rejected him. While Kublai was able to control all of China, he didn’t control the rest of the Mongol empire, which had been split in four parts.
Anyway this was the first time that the Chinese were forbidden by law from having but in minor role in government. This forced the warriors of the military aristocracy out of the government and into the agricultural countryside of Taoism.
It was during this period that Chang Sen Fang, set himself up on Wu Tang Mountain and developed the internal style of martial arts based upon Taoist principles. However according to legend he first studied with the Buddhist monks of Shaolin Temple. It was these Buddhist monks who had taken the Chinese warrior training and turned it into a spiritual discipline. Of course the Chinese warrior discipline had its roots in the military aristocracy of the shih class of the Shang and maybe before. Remember that the military training was institutionalized in the cultured ju class of which Confucius was part. Thus the Buddhists spiritualized this Confucian warrior training and now the Taoists were internalizing it. Thus with the suppression of the Chinese military aristocracy by the Mongols, they turned to secret military groups founded upon Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian principles, but all manifested through the body.
In some ways the suppression of the Chinese military aristocracy led to these underground societies, which developed the Chinese martial arts based upon Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian thought. These secret martial societies have constantly fought the patriarchy of foreign invaders. Now it was the Mongols; later it became the Moguls, and finally the Europeans in the Boxer rebellions. While these military organizations are separate from institutional Taoism, they are still based upon Taoist thought and so must be considered Taoist in a larger context.
Under the Mongols, two of the main parts of Taoism were differentiated. The one was the traditional organization of the Heavenly Masters; the others were followers of Genghis Khan’s teacher. It was called Ch’uan-chen Taoism. It is the branch linked to alchemical Taoism.
“Henceforth, Taoism was comprised of two main schools which complemented each other without rivalry: that of the Heavenly Masters, passed on hereditarily since the Han, and that of Ch’iu Ch’ang-ch’un, Genghis Khan’s teacher. The latter school was called the school of Total Perfection (Ch’uan-chen). It was based on the Buddhist model, in monastic communities.”[4]
Ch’uan-chen Taoism was Taoism’s reaction to Zen Buddhism. A major difference between it and previous forms of Taoism is contained in the idea of dual cultivation. Briefly speaking the Taoists had previously emphasized the body at the expense of the mind. As Lao Tzu said in the 3rd song-poem of the Tao Te Ching,
“The Sage rules by emptying the hearts of the people and filling their bellies, weakening their wills and strengthening their bones, so that they remain without knowledge or desire.”
The Buddhists had stressed the mind at the expense of the body. They were exhorted to kill their senses. Simply speaking, the idea behind dual cultivation was to cultivate both the body and the mind. Thus Taoism, instead of being rigidly fixed in their Way, was open to influence, evolution and growth.
Ch’uan-chen Taoism was linked heavily with the alchemical tradition. As such they looked upon the Triplex Unity as one their books. Let it be remembered that it is unlikely that the author of the Triplex Unity considered himself a Taoist anymore than a modern American considers himself a materialist. Although begun in the 11th century, it matured during the Yuan dynasty. Although Ch’uan-chen was a continuation of the alchemical tradition as well as similar to Ch’an (or Zen) Buddhism, it had important differences. Unlike Buddhism their writings contained both male and female writers. Further Ch’uan-chen was written in explicit language rather than concealed like the alchemical tradition.
Chang Po-tuan, known as the founder of the southern sect, wrote Understanding Reality to clarify the enormous confusion created by misinterpretation of the original symbolic alchemical texts. Understanding Reality became an alchemical classic on the level with Triplex Unity. Additionally he wrote a condensed version, Four Hundred Words on the Gold Elixir, now called The Inner Teachings of Taoism. Nowhere in this work does he refer to the popularizers – Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, or the Tao Te Ching. The thrust of Alchemical Taoism is practice, not theory.
“[Chang Po-tuan] is said to have been ‘punished by heaven’ three times for passing on secrets of alchemy to unworthy people.”[5]
We mention this to reemphasize that the secrets of personal power are not for everyone, only for the worthy. But just as Taoist alchemy wasn’t for everybody, there was a branch of Taoism that was for everyone, which did include Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and the Tao Te Ching, the organization of the Heavenly Masters.
The Heavenly Masters remained at the head of the Taoist liturgical organization. The spiritual leaders participated in the rituals, acknowledged the power of these ceremonies on the common folk, and attempted to channel this power. Remember that there is no set tao, no set way. Whatever works.
“As to the Heavenly Masters, they remained at the head of the liturgical organization. Installed on the Mountain of the Dragon and the Tiger … since the T’ang period (8th century), they became the “Taoist popes” - a derisive term bestowed on them by Western missionaries.”[6]
The common folk were mostly farmers, not warriors or rulers. Even today in China, 80% of their billion people are still involved in agriculture.[7] Let it be remembered that the agricultural rites and customs of China and Europe are very individualized, probably harking back to the Neolithic fertility rites. These rites of sympathetic magic are called superstitious by the rational academics of China and Europe. While superstitious, the ceremonies and rites had, until the 20th century, been retained. The rites had the function of breaking up the year and focusing the agricultural community upon the seasonal tasks at hand. In Europe the Catholic Church was the umbrella organization that presided over or at least blessed these ceremonies. In China the Heavenly Masters performed this function. While in Europe, the Catholic Church was intimately connected with political power on large and small levels, after the book burning, the organization of the Heavenly Masters, primarily wielded power locally but not nationally. They participated fully in all the Neolithic agricultural festivals.
The later Taoists, especially the Ch’uan-chen Taoists, stressed the cultivation of both body and mind, thus they stressed both practices and study. As such the physical practices, such as meditation and Tai Chi, came to be complemented by the mental practices based upon the study of Taoist classics. Let it be stressed that one without the other is incomplete. One is yin, the other yang – two sides of the same hand.
“Taoist thought perpetuated this notion of autonomy and liberty. It is thus legitimate to link the classic works (the book of Chuang Tzu and the Tao-te ching) as do the Taoists themselves, to the search for immortality (“To nourish the vital principle”) and to liturgy (the social body.).”[8]
While the Taoist classics have great importance in stimulating the mind to seek emptiness, we cannot forget the inspirational shamanistic practices that led to development of Taoism. Of all the major religions of the world Taoism is the only one that is directly connected to the fertility cults that preceded the patriarchal religions of the Age of Domination.
“The works of the mystics are among the most ancient documents to have come down to us, but they also, in fact, represent the culmination of the Taoist system. … Conversely, shamanism, which we know fully only thanks to the data of contemporary ethnography, actually correspond to an archaic level which, from an objective view, is be placed among the antecedents of Taoism.”[9]
The Mongols of Genghis Khan. The Mongols were a classic pastoral culture with their war gods, ancestor worship, and warrior mentality.
Their domination of Eurasia was the classic political mechanism in historical times of a warrior culture dominating the agricultural cultures surrounding them. The warrior tribes hone their skills fighting amongst themselves over land that they’ve destroyed by their pastoral methods. One ruler assumes ascendancy leading the other tribes on a conquering mission throughout the world. They set themselves and their heirs up as the military aristocracy to rule forever. A few examples come to mind: Alexander the Great in the Middle East, the Romans in the Mediterranean, the Normans of Europe, the Shang of pre-historic China, the Ch’in of historic China, the Angles and Saxons of England, and now the Mongols of Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan, a great warrior and brilliant commander, united the diversity of Mongol tribes by battle and by destroying traditional tribal boundaries in vicious ways. In a similar way to the Ch’in First Emperor, he assimilated by executing competing rulers or khans. He did not permit dissent.
“His overall aim was to destroy traditional divisions and unite the Mongol world under his supreme control, and he sought to achieve it by eliminating all rivals capable of challenging his authority.” p 12
After unifying the Mongols, the stage was set for the conquering of Eurasia. The ecological disaster of the pastoral lifestyle gave an inherent impetus to expansion that was lacking in the agricultural societies. Additionally, being a warrior culture they glorified war and battle. Having honed their battle skills with infighting they were ready to move onto the global arena.
“That year [1207 CE] driven to expansion by the inadequate pastures of their homelands and by their inbred love for war, the newly organized Mongol hordes burst out of the steppes.” p14
Besides the battle practice they had from fighting amongst themselves, the pastoral cultures have other advantages as well. First because of the nomadic nature of their lifestyle, they are unencumbered by location. They don’t need to go home to harvest crops because they can live anywhere. Agricultural societies must perform certain tasks seasonally in order to ensure a bountiful harvest, while the nomadic cultures are unbound by season for survival. On location the agricultural societies even if they go a conquering, must still maintain contact with the supply lines from home while the nomadic cultures bring their homes with them. Home is where their horse and tent are.
“Warriors by nature, these people [the Mongols] were unencumbered by material possessions and never needed to allow time for the planting and harvesting of crops. And a history of constant feuding made warfare an integral part of their lives.” p14
A second, and more primary, advantage was that these Mongols and many other pastoral cultures glorify war. Like the Vikings, Normans, Plains Indians, and many others, war was considered the perfect arena to test a man’s virtues. The goal of the warrior culture is not to possess as much as it is to battle. If in the process of battle one conquers, all the better, but the primary focus is the battle itself. This explains why many of the great armies keep conquering rather than stopping, assimilating and enjoying their conquests. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler, could have all stopped after their initial successes, but consumed by battle lust, they continued until they and their armies were destroyed.
The wars of materialism are much different. When the object is possession, then that possession must be protected. Hence in materialist wars, the populace is enslaved, the land is occupied, or the conquered culture is required to pay tribute.
Because the object of the warrior cultures is battle not possession, war is plunder, rape and destruction. The blood lust is addicting, leading Genghis Khan to say:
“The greatest joy a man can have is victory: to conquer one’s enemy’s armies, to pursue them, to deprive them of their possessions, to reduce their families to tears, to ride on their horses, and to make love to their wives and daughters.” p13
Hence the Mongols bent on warfare, thought nothing of destroying cities of a million or more inhabitants. If a city offered resistance they would destroy all the inhabitants and level the town, leaving nothing there but rubble.
“The Mongols, steeped in nomadic tradition, gave no thought to the advantages of occupying such a bountiful land [China]. Life in permanent settlements was alien to them. They conquered for conquest’s sake, for the harvest of immediate booty.” p14
A third military advantage of these nomadic cultures is that ability is rewarded over family connections. Because the warrior is glorified, the ability in battle is everything and self-limiting. If the warrior is no good, he perishes. In civilian life, mistakes are not fatal. Furthermore good and bad are somewhat subjective. In military life good and bad are determined by the objective standards of victory and survival.
“Beyond the immediate royal family, promotion was by merit alone, and that merit judged by martial ability.” p 14
Sounds like Confucius, doesn’t it. Merit over privilege. Remember that Northern China the birthplace of Confucian ideals has always been a more militarily based culture, which gives an insight into this emphasis.
The Mongols, a deeply religious people, worshipped a god called “Eternal Blue Sky”. Upon being elected to supreme leadership, Genghis Khan was proclaimed the representative of the ‘Eternal Blue Sky’ on the earth. Thus this military deity was associated with the sky, as they always are, including Jehovah.
Like the Chinese, the Mongols were tolerant religiously. However also like the Chinese, they demanded that all peoples under their sway had to recognize their leader, in this case Genghis Khan, as the supreme leader of the earth.
One decree of the Mongols stated: “no man was to be persecuted for his religion, provided that he acknowledge the ultimate authority of the great khan.” p14
This concept is identical with the Chinese Imperial philosophy. It allowed Genghis Khan to easily substitute himself for the Emperor of China, taking on Chinese advisors to assist in the management of the country.
The Mongols also worshipped idols, most commonly an earth goddess, which we, in our subjective way, will say was a remnant of the great Goddess cults that used to be spread through Eurasia.
The Mongols also in classic fashion worshipped the spirits of their ancestors. They were made to memorize the names and were exhorted to honor them by achieving great things. Genghis Khan’s great grandfather had united the Mongols a century before and Genghis was driven to repeat this accomplishment and then extend it to the whole world. Again the idea of ancestor worship blends easily with Chinese values. Again this reflects the common patriarchal roots of both cultures. While the nomads were not agricultural of necessity, they still had a cultural link with China from centuries of military interaction. Further it might be said that ancestor worship was culturally transmitted from the steppes rather than vice versa. Remember that patriarchal ancestor worship was probably an import from the west overlaid upon the matriarchal succession of the prior fertility cultures of prehistoric times.
This idea of ancestor worship eventually leads to the formation of the military aristocracy because an individual’s worth is ranked more upon his family than upon his ability. As long as the warrior mentality rules because of constant battle, merit reigns supreme, automatically, for without merit the warrior and his army perish. AS the materialism of power rises to ascendancy with the military aristocracy overlaid upon the agricultural peasantry, battle becomes secondary while possession becomes primary. As possession becomes primary, these privileges of ancestry become primary while the merit of performance becomes secondary. Who cares about ability as long as we’re rich with possessions and power?
Another mechanism of this cultural transformation is that the warrior cult of the first generation is softened in the generations to come. It is transformed from a warrior cult into a cult of materialism. Typically, the first wave of conquerors consists of raiders. They loot, destroy, and leave. The subsequent generations of warriors become the rulers. As such they begin to enjoy the advantages of wealth and possession. Their military love of war is replaced by the enjoyment of the pleasures of civilization.
This same mechanism was at work with the Mongols. With Genghis in command, the center of their empire remained in Mongolia. By the time of his death, his Empire had spread into China in the east and into Persia in the west. After his death, the unwieldy empire split up into independent states, which were hostile to one another.
The traditional Mongols favored the time honored nomadic warrior traditions, while the newer generation favored assimilation. This was especially true in the Persian and Chinese parts of the empire. Kublai Khan, Genghis’ grandson, while not controlling the vast empire that Genghis did, was able to conquer all of China 70 years after Genghis’ initial invasion. He cared little for Mongolia or the rest of the Mongolian empire, although he was voted great Khan of the Empire. He focused his energies upon China and ruled as a Chinese emperor. He had been educated in China as nobility rather than in Mongolia as a nomadic warrior. Hence the Mongols had been assimilated in but three generations. This is the classic mechanism that has been repeated countless times throughout world history.
In some ways, the mechanism of barbarian invasion is a major reason behind maintaining a strong military in peacetime.
The tendency of peoples of peace is to glorify philosophies and cultures of peace. Such is our bias. However we must acknowledge Nature’s Way in as an objective way as possible. We might like to think of these violent nomadic cultures as religiously inferior, when in actuality they seem to serving a divine purpose.
At least in the case of Genghis Khan, and in many others, including The Religion of the West, we have documentation that the military conqueror felt compelled by a divine mission.
“I am the flail of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” said Genghis Khan to the refugees of a Middle Eastern city conquered by his hordes.
The harsh conquering cultures consider themselves God’s weapon or tool. “Why would I be in this position if the supreme God had not willed it?” is the thought expressed. Again this meshes neatly with the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven. He who is in charge has the Mandate of Heaven because they are in charge. Again the common cultural background of the Mongols and the Imperial government explains these similarities.
We people of peace tend to glorify cooperation and creation and tend to vilify domination and destruction. Thus it is easy to view Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes as the ultimate villains, destroying cultured Persian and Russian cities of a million or more, razing the cities to the ground. For any ‘civilized’ person these seem to be incredible moral atrocities. We might even be tempted to say that ‘by any civilized standard these are terribly evil events which have occurred.’ Indeed we might even believe that this is evidence that Satan rules this system of things. Obviously a good god would not let these incredibly unjust things happen. Therefore God must rule the spiritual world while the Lord of Evil, the Devil, rules the material world. Although Genghis considers himself as fulfilling his divine destiny, most ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ people would rationalize his self-perception as deluded. He thinks that he is an agent of god while he is actually the agent of the Devil.
However from another perspective, a divine mission is perceived. Song-poem # 5 of the Tao Te Ching states; “Heaven and Earth are not humane.” The basic meaning is that while God might be all good, that what is good for God might not be good for humans, not humane. Or that Heaven and Earth, the primary forces in the I Ching, do not operate under the usual standards of human morality. Thus the Tao of Heaven and Earth operate at a higher level than human morality.
And why not indeed? Perhaps worked into the Divine Plan, the Tao of Heaven is Mixture. Perhaps agricultural societies tend to be so sedentary that mixture is minimized. The Chinese particularly tend to be overly self-absorbed. As a culture they tend to cloister themselves. Before and after the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, the Chinese secluded themselves inside their borders.
Indeed during the early Chou dynasty, an emperor received a dog from a conquered kingdom, which he took an immediate liking to. His prime minister counseled him not to become attached to foreign things because then they would have control over him. Traditionally Chinese economic isolation began at this point. Indeed even unto the 20th century, the Chinese have resisted foreign goods. As we will see the only foreign product that ever gained widespread acceptance was opium. And opium fulfilled the prophecy of foreign dependence to a greater degree than ever imagined.
The heirs of Genghis Khan ruled the Mongolian Yuan dynasty. During their reign China was opened to outside influence because of the Mongol’s far-flung empire. This window of opportunity changed European history in a major way. Marco Polo journeyed to China with his uncles while the trade routes open due to the Mongols. Kublai Khan took a liking for the boy and sent him around the Empire for 17 years. Marco Polo wrote of his adventures; his relatives brought back spice. The European nobility acquired a taste for the opulence of the Orient. Trade brought spices. Spices brought status.
The feudal countries of Europe had first been introduced to a more refined civilization through the Crusades, the Near and Middle East, and the Moslem Empire. But the taste for the exotic was enhanced with this opening of trade with the Far East, the Orient, and China, through the Mongols. One’s status became determined by the ability to afford the fabulous luxuries of the Orient. Spice was the major import. The royalty would serve spices as a course to flaunt their wealth.
When the Chinese under the Ming dynasty reassumed control, the foreigners were once again excluded. The trade routes closed. The European nobility were in danger of losing their status symbols. They either had to pay exorbitant prices or find new trade routes. Hence the great Age of Exploration began in Europe with the inevitable discovery of the New World. Therefore the brutal devastation of eastern Eurasia by the Mongols in the 1200s exposed Chinese civilization to the Western world. The door was closed again by the Ming dynasty, but the European status addict was hooked and needed his fix. The drive for status powered a movement of exploration, which eventually transformed global politics completely.
Thus viewed from one angle, Genghis Khan is a divine manifestation. Genghis Khan could be thought of as consummate example of a man who had self-actualized his divine potentials. He belongs under the same category as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and the First Emperor. They were all military autocrats who transformed the world in their destructive frenzy. If Nature likes intermixture then these barbaric conquerors must be considered as part of the Plan.
Similarly with Mao of the 20th century. If Mao hadn’t taken over China, then Master Ni would not have come to the United States and I would not be writing this paper. While major ‘moral’, ‘inhumane’, atrocities have been committed by the Chinese Communists under Mao, while civil liberties have been limited, while peaceful Tibet was crushed culturally by the Chinese, while Taoist temples were desecrated at the highest level ever, while all of these things and more, it initiated the spread of Chinese spirituality throughout the world. Without his aggression, many of these Taiji Masters would have stayed home in beautiful China. Why leave? Master Ni would not have left; Cheng Man-ching would not have left. We are sorry and compassionate for the pain that was caused, but bless the Tao of Heaven and Earth, that we in the rest of the world could benefit from the Chinese interaction. The Chinese experience has certainly added incredible dimensionality and meaning to my existence.
[1]Schipper, p14
[2]Schipper, p15
[3]Schipper, p15
[4]Schipper, p15
[5]The Inner Teachings, p. xv
[6]Schipper, p15
[7]China to 1850, p 12
[8]Schipper, p15
[9]Schipper, p15
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