Contextualising Postmodernity in Daoist Symbolism: Toward a mindful education embracing eastern wisdom

Abstract

In cultivating a Western inclination toward Eastern wisdom, it is important to seek the foundations that sustain traditional practices toward such end. In a secularised and modern world view, the tendency has been to extract and abstract foundational practices such as mindfulness meditation and contemplation within an objectivist or scientistic prejudice. While leading to interesting results, it cannot ascertain a wisdom that is quantified and decontextualised. In response, contextual effort in postmodern pedagogical literature—while well placed—is often marred with confusions concerning Eastern and metaphysical foundations. As a result, one is led away from the very wisdom being qualified; furthermore, conceptual and theoretical paradoxes arise and consequently elude those that formulate them. Thus, in feeling secure in response to a particular ‘yáng’ world view of modernity, many postmodern criticisms suffer an exclusively ‘yīn’ character. For us, imbalance in any direction forfeits the path Eastern education approaches wisdom. In our conceptual analysis, we contextualise that modernity was never too yáng, but too yáng-in-yīn. Therefore, what is missing in pedagogical theory is not the yīn element, as presumed by postmodern critique, but the yáng element, in continual balance with the yīn, and vice versa.

Keywords:

• mindfulness
• wisdom
• metaphysics
• education
• Daoism
• hierarchy

Notes

1. In a Qigong context, we note Yang’s (1997) use of the word yì (意) meaning the mind related to clear thinking, judgment, and wisdom.

2. Following Wilber (2000), we leave Nature (environment) capitalised to distinguish between human nature and metaphysical NATURE (Figure 1).

3. To Shiva (1989), subject-less knowledge creates a dichotomy; the ‘fact-value dichotomy is a creation of modern reductionist science, while being an epistemic response to a particular set of values, posits itself as independent of values [emphasis added]’ (pp. 26, 27): a paradox of relativism.

4. A Latin, theological phrase meaning ‘in the aspect of eternity.’

5. c.f. On metaphysics and the possibility of integration; we denote what is fixed (as permanence) as too yáng-in-yīn and its metaphysical counterpart, stasis, as yáng. See also Appendix A.

6. A term in contrast to dialogical and trans-logical. Monological investigation implies theorising on what we observe through our senses and subsequent extensions.

7. An analysis of the manifold application of the tool vs. the machine is beyond the scope of our paper. However, we wish to expound that uniformity is in no way too yáng in contrast to diversity or yīn; rather, it results from a worldview with too yáng-in-yīn (Figure 3).

8. More qualifiers exist, but disciple in particular is of two forms: outward, often associated with a religious West, and inward, often associated with a meditative East.

9. This would imply that science taught in education is unreliable at worst, and generally oversimplified at best; and any systemisation leads to exclusion: a topic beyond the scope of our paper.

10. The Daoist scholar would have little issue with this paradox as yīn is within yáng and yáng within yīn.

11. It is prudent to note that horizontally, agency relates to the masculine (yáng) and communion relates to the feminine (yīn). However, in the vertical context (Figure 2), these earthly yīn and yáng movements are yīn in relation to the vertical yáng archetype of Spirit or shén.

12. An inversion where yáng is now situated in yīn, hence too yáng-in-yīn.

13. Also known as vitalistic intuition.

14. The exception being esoteric currents of pre-Pauline Christianity.

15. In Buddhist China. avidyā (无知, ignorance, suffering; Tibetan: ma rigpa) is the first of twelve chains or causes (nidānas) applicable to pratītyasamutpāda (‘dependent origination’ or ‘interdependent co-arising’) and connects with suffering (duḥkha) or unsatisfactoriness (Tibetan: sdug bsngal).

16. The ‘double truth’ in Buddhism: one relative and conventional, the other absolute and certain (Coomaraswamy, 1947).

17. Or substance in Scholastic terminology, from sub-stare, ‘that which stands beneath.’

18. Or essence in Scholastic terminology.

19. Rather than ‘dualism’ which is necessarily a ‘naturalism’ if conceived as being irreducible.

20. Unfortunately, such symbolism has historically manifested as patriarchal systems. We are certainly not against these many critical, feminist, and deep ecological criticisms. We simply allude to the fact that these two tendencies are found within all manifested reality to such and such a degree.

21. Like mindfulness, Qigong as a hierarchical practice is extracted and abstracted from the sequence Wàigōng 外功 (External Work), Nèigōng 内功 (Internal Work), Qìgōng 气功 (Energy Work), and Shéngōng 神功 (Spirit Work).

22. To his credit, Davis himself is a strong advocate for the hermeneutic circle where one places their intersubjectivity at face value to contextualise and transcend. Without his formulations on educational complexity and deep ecology, we would not have had the opportunity to write and present our own thesis.

23. While we cannot address the intricacies of Meno, we assume the spiritual process Plato described was exosomatosis.

24. If we remain strictly with Daoist teachings, we note that the masculine principle is active and the feminine principle passive. Here activity as a noun should be replaced with action which has its proper correlation with contemplation which is truly active. A better descriptor would be movement.

25. In a similar vein, the subjugated subjects (biopower) of Michel Foucault and dehumanising humanism of Jürgen Habermas concerned a collapse of dialogical subjects into monological objects: a pseudo-science based on ‘self-aggrandizing power’ (Wilber, 2000, p. 464).

26. If the mental faculty was not limited, what need would anyone have in transcending it?

27. This is why mindfulness can be measured as brain waves.

28. As seen in Western mindfulness deriving from Western psychology.