When an evolved person hears about the Way, he practices it with no delay.
When an ordinary person hears about the Way, it may stay with him or he may lose it.
When an unevolved person hears about the Way, he laughs out, loudly.
If he didn’t laugh, it could hardly be viewed as the Way.
—Daodejing, chapter 41
It is striking in the above quote that the attitude of the “evolved person” (shangshi 上士) toward the Way is focused entirely on practice, whereas the question concerning the “ordinary person” (zhongshi 中士) seems to refer rather to the knowledge that may or may not be retained by this person. The quotation is an excellent example of the fundamental attitude that many believe is characteristic of Daoism and Chinese religion in general. The important thing is not whether you acquire and retain knowledge of the contents of the classic but whether you put it into practice and begin
Some have suggested that the focus on practice in Chinese religion—though akin to Judaism and Catholicism as well as to most traditional religions (whether considered “pagan” or not)—forms a stark contrast to Protestant Christianity with its alleged focus on doctrine and belief. And some will take it a step further and claim that the entire focus of Chinese religions is on “orthopraxy” as opposed to the focus on orthodoxy in Western religions. In addition, it has been proposed that in this regard, Protestant Christianity harks back to the Greek, from whom the whole Western tradition of metaphysics is thought to derive. Along these lines, the Greek tradition is further contrasted with the Hebrew tradition, which—with its focus on rules of behavior and the concrete aspects of religion—appears closer to Chinese religion than the more doctrinal forms of Christianky.1
There is of course some truth to all that. It should be noticed, however, that the forms of Protestant Christianity, referred to in this book as exemplified by Kierkegaard, do not entirely bear out this distinction. The same holds true for modern European existentialism, which in important ways has taken its cues from Kierkegaard. We have seen that in Badiou’s philosophy, the focus on choice and the decision is explained with reference to Kierkegaard and Sartre. And Badiou does not shy away from declaring that “philosophy is a form of action,” as indeed thought in general may be considered to be a form of action.2 What stands out in the Daoism described in this book is that Daoist practice is first of all inner practice, just like the existential choice of an ethical mode of being and the experience of faith (equal to truth) as the “transformation of the subject in itself “ are clearly not only forms of practice but indeed in many ways reminiscent of the Daoist path to immortality. Despite appearances, the focus on subjectivity in both religions is also a focus on practice as opposed to metaphysics and doctrine. Oneness is a result of personal inner practice, and it does not necessarily lead to speculation about the universe as separate from human existence.
We have seen that Wang Qizhen, in his discussion of the relationship between inner and outer, emphasizes that the two exist in parallel and that the one may be engaged through the other in such a way that they are experienced as one and the same reality. The gods exist not only in the inner universe of a human being but also in the external world,