Lose Yourself
Working Toward Overcoming Oneself Is a Remedy
Self-cultivation in Daoism carries a built-in paradox: are we returning to something we already are, or refining ourselves into something we're not yet? The Daode Jing suggests both, but leans towards return, yet the entire tradition of inner alchemy is premised on patient, daily refinement. This essay holds those two models together rather than resolving them, tracing the paradox through the Daoist language of xiantian and houtian (pre-heaven and post-heaven), the Three Poisons and their antidote in Laozi's Three Treasures, and a surprising kinship with the Greek distinction between chronos and kairos. What emerges is less a contradiction than a shift in vantage point—the same journey seen from the timeless perspective of the Dao and from the sequential, effortful perspective of a life still being lived.
This post is an excerpt from my book, The Hundred Rememdies of the Tao (Inner Traditions, 2023)
進勝己者爲一藥
Working Toward Overcoming Oneself Is a Remedy
At first glance this might sound like we should be at war with ourselves, but we don’t have to take such an adversarial stance. We might think of this as making steady progress in cultivating our virtue and freeing ourselves from self-centeredness. Self-cultivation in the Daoist tradition is always a bit of a paradox. On the one hand, the journey is often presented as a return to our true nature, which is the true nature of the Dao. As the Daode Jing says, “Returning is the motion of the Dao” ( fan zhe dao zhi dong, 反者道之動).
On the other hand, our project of working toward this requires refining ourselves. This is the model of internal alchemy, of refining the various constituents of our lives into the golden elixir or the philosopher’s stone. Or, to put it more simply, refining one’s character with a heavy dose of meditation in the mix. While these two models might seem contradictory, in Dao as in life, there is always paradox. It might help to see them as operating simultaneously from different perspectives.
From the perspective of Dao, we are returning to our origin. From our own perspective, we are working every day, refining our own awareness and behavior toward alignment with the Dao. Eventually these two will meet and the apparent paradox will resolve itself. The paradox involves a difference of perception. We could think of this in terms of there being two levels of awareness or perception. One that we might think of in terms of time and space, in other words our everyday awareness, and one beyond concepts such as time and space. In other words, a relative and absolute awareness of reality. On the level of relativity, we work on refining the self, overcoming self-centeredness or egotism. This is sometimes expressed as overcoming the Three Poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance, a concept shared with Buddhism.
We might contrast these with the sanbao, or Three Treasures from chapter 67 of the Daode Jing, of compassion, frugality, and humility. It’s easy to see how these Three Poisons originally formulated in Buddhism would have so readily made their way into Daoist thinking as these Three Treasures can be seen as the antidote or remedy to the Three Poisons. Compassion is a remedy for hatred. Frugality allows for generosity, the remedy for greed. Humility can be a remedy for ignorance as it implies the wisdom of truly knowing oneself as well as others.
If we consider the Dao as the totality of all that is (and perhaps all that isn’t) then it’s apparent that our minds cannot take it all in. As individual beings we operate in the relative sphere. In Daoism this distinction between the relative and absolute can be expressed as xiantian and houtian. These are often translated as pre-heaven and post-heaven, or prenatal and postnatal respectively. They express what we were born with as opposed to what happens in our lives after we are born. We might think of it like the old ideas of nature versus nurture. Of course, we now know that things are much more complicated due to advances in our understanding of genetics and epigenetics, but the distinction is useful in understanding these concepts.
Time is another aspect of these terms of relative and absolute. Xiantian would express the timeless dimension of reality, while houtian would express sequential or linear time, the relative dimension of time and space we experience in our everyday lives. This might be analogous to the concepts of kairos and chronos in Greek philosophy. In chronos, we find the roots for “chronological time.” In kairos, we see the absolute, timeless dimension expressed.We could think of this as the eternal present or all time and spaceat once. (Or perhaps Everything Everywhere All at Once?)
We can also see further shades of meaning in these terms thatjibe with concepts from the Daode Jing. Kairos literally means theright, critical, or opportune moment. In chapter 8 Laozi tells us, “The highest good is moving at the right time.” In other words, in the Dao, as in a well-told joke, it’s all in the timing. This of course also holds true for movement. Think of a well-timed cut in football, a well-timed run in soccer, or a head fake in basketball. Those who are best at these often aren’t the youngest and fastest, but those with the best timing. When we are able to string together moments like these, we might find ourselves in a flow state where our awareness of time slows down or even fades away. We might feel like it’s all happening effortlessly (wuwei). We might even feel like things are happening spontaneously or of themselves (ziran). As though we are no longer doing anything, but things are just happening of themselves. This is an experience of the timeless dimension of the Dao in which our “self ” has been, at least temporarily, overcome.