CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change

The University of Hong Kong
David A. Palmer

LECTURE 3: MEANING IN THE WORLD

Objectives for week 3:

1. To reflect on the implications and consequences of materialism and
instrumental rationality;
2. To reflect on how our perception of the world is mediated by our objects of
consciousness;
3. To reflect on a world without meaning or objects of consciousness, by
comparing the ideas of the Daoists (Laozi and Zhuangzi) and the
existentialists (Sartre and Camus);

Baraka and the modern spiritual imagination

In this week’s class, we will watch the film Baraka, which can take you on an
imaginative journey, as a way to think about the outer expression of different
mindscapes. Baraka is a non-narrative film directed by Ron Fricke in 1992. The
title Baraka is a word that means “a blessing, the breath, or the essence of life from
which the evolutionary process unfolds” in Arabic and in the Sufi tradition of Islam.1
The film has no plot, no storyline, no actors, no dialogue nor voice-over. The film
uses footage of landscapes, religious ceremonies, teeming urban life and the
desolation of war to evoke a reflection on the meaning of life, beauty, nature,
humanity and spirituality.

Materialism

1
“Spirit of Baraka.”
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

So, what does the film tell us about our mindscape? What is the modern
mindscape; and what kind of world are we building based on that mindscape? In past
years, one student, reflecting on this film, noted that life appears to be “filled with
conflicts between humans and nature, wars against different races, as well as
coldness and strangeness between individuals. “Even more heartless,” students
noted, “was the killing of millions of people in Cambodia in the concentration
camps.”

These scenes and images are powerful illustrations of the consequences

of materialism. Materialism is a pervasive ideology in modern societies – a belief
system which underpins both capitalism and socialism, and, consciously or
unconsciously, often orients the choices we make in our lives, both individually and
collectively. There are many refined philosophies of materialism, but, in practice,
they boil down to a simple set of beliefs. The core belief of materialism is that the
only true existence is material existence – the only thing that matters is the reality
“out there” – not what is in your mind. What is in your mind is a mere reflection –
whether accurate or distorted – of the material reality out there. In fact, since our
mind, our body and our life are completely dependent on that material reality out
there, that’s what our minds should be focused on. Anything else is mere fantasy.
Many people have not thought much about this ideology and don’t consciously
“believe” in it – but much of modern life, and the rules according to which our society
and economy operate, are based on materialist assumptions – we operate as if the
only existence is material existence, whether or not we believe that. The rules of the
social and economic game, and the roles we act out in it, are based on the following
propositions derived from the core materialist assumptions:

• In this game, the purpose of life is material survival. Since material reality
is what is most important in the world, then what we value the most in
order to win in this game is the accumulation of material wealth and
power;
• In this game, the measure of social progress or development is rising
levels of consumption, production, efficiency, productivity and
profitability. Everything else is secondary in order to progress in this
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

game and, if necessary, it needs to be sacrificed to the goals of material

development;
• In this game, the essence of human beings is material, and the basic
human drive is to compete for survival and power. All human relations
boil down to competition and struggle.

Associated with materialism is the concept of instrumental rationality. This is a

type of rationality that focuses on the most efficient or cost-effective material means
to achieve a specific end, but without reflecting on the value of that end. Industrial
efficiency is a product of instrumental rationality. 2 Even living beings such as
chickens and humans are turned into instruments for efficient processes of material
productivity, in order to win in the economic game. Instrumental rationality focuses
human reason on the “how”, which can be materially observed and measured,
without asking the question of the ultimate purpose or value of this the game: what
is the purpose of this game? Why have we set this as the objective to win? -- which
are immaterial, moral or spiritual questions.

One student wrote: “It stimulated me to think of our purpose in living in the
world. Are we just growing, eating, sleeping, earning money, playing until we die?
Maybe most people haven’t thought of why they are alive, living in the world. But I
think all of us have a dream. Although we don’t know what are we living for, I
suppose all of us have a dream and a purpose that we are fighting for, that will be the
reason that I live.” This dream is an expression of our imagination, a what if that can
fill our mindscape, become the object of our desire, and motivate us to create a
different self and a different world. To the extent that this dream is about something
beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, it is an expression of our soul or of our spirituality.

Baraka is a window into the complexities and contradictions of human nature.

We all know that our bodies are the product of millions of years of evolution, and
that our nature is thus in many ways the same as other animals: the drive for material
survival and security is deeply engrained into our genetic code, and, with the

2
Weber, Economy and Society, 24, 25.
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

technological fruits of our intelligence at our disposal, we are able to compete,

struggle, extract and exploit to reach the maximum of our selfish advantage, in the
most bloody and destructive fashion if necessary. But humans have a unique
capacity: we can empathise with others, we can feel for others – not only for other
humans, but even for baby animals! We can put ourselves in their shoes, imagine
ourselves being them, and feel for them, as if we were them. We can try to live with
greater sensitivity and love for others, because the pain and suffering of others
becomes our own pain, and the joy of others becomes our own joy.

Because even though they are physically separate from us, we can imagine them;
they become objects of consciousness in our mindscape – in a sense, they become
part of us. So, we can feel their feelings, imagine a relationship between ourselves
and them, and imagine ourselves seeing the world from their perspective. When we
do that, we begin to break out of the boundaries of our own body and ego. We can
even imagine beings and dimensions without a material existence, and try to see the
world from those perspectives, and live as if those beings and dimensions exist. And
we can imagine ourselves projected in the future, in an ideal state, and strive to
become that ideal projection. Humans are capable, in their mindscape, of projecting
themselves into the perspective of other persons and beings, be they real or
imaginary. It is partly out of this capacity that human spiritual life grows. We do not
always use this capacity, and we are perfectly capable of living only from the
perspective of our own bodily comfort, security and material reproduction. But an
unexpected experience, an insight, the sight of the cry of suffering or injustice, or of
moving self-sacrifice, may jolt us into spiritual questions and reflections.

In Baraka, the images of modern society were contrasted with scenes of natural
and spiritual serenity. As students wrote, people engaged in meditative acts, rituals,
and worship, evinced a sense of “love, inner silence, peace, social union and self-
respect,” with unity between people, and even harmony between humans and
nature. Some of the practices appear to “symbolize purification and a pathway to
paradise”. These images portray a spiritual ideal of oneness and transcendence.
They reflect a beautiful spiritual mindscape.

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Another student, Victor Leung, however, offered a different perspective.

Perhaps there is no difference after all, between the scenes of modern mass folly and
those of religious ritual?

The art of the film presents the opposite argument: that modern society is in fact a kind
of religion. By doing away with narration, and using a technique which speeds up
certain frames of the movie (in the city segment), the film actually takes the view of a
detached spectator, one that observes the regularity of an indigenous religious ritual the
same way it does with the bustling and constant vibe of the modern city with its coming
and going of traffic. Similarly, the depersonalized factory worker that repetitively does
his/her job resembles a kind of performative reality or ritual in the context of modern
society. Would the filmmakers be suggesting that that mass culture, consumerism, and
production are the new rituals and religions of our postmodern society?”

In this sense, even though there is a great contrast between our modern society and the
one of indigenous cultures, there is also a great similarity in that anthropologically, we
both exist as societies of some type with a kind of basic social practice. In a way, what
we often perceive as "backward" and/or "religious" in other societies also exists in ours,
but only in a different form that we do not recognize.

These contrasting images and feelings lead to another set of questions: what is,
or should be, the relationship between spirituality and modern life? Are they
incompatible? Is spirituality simply an imaginary escape from the busy pressures of
life, that helps us to relax, to become more efficient productive animals? “Can
religion really save us from the modern spiritual disease?” “How can religion exist in
such an immoral society where life is not celebrated and the dear things around us
are killed. Ironically, doesn't religion tell us how to live righteously?” Can a beautiful
spiritual imagination be converted into creating a more beautiful, loving and just
world? Does it exist only in our mindscape, or can we translate it into reality?

Things and meanings

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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

In the materialist worldview and instrumental rationality described above,

beings in the world have no intrinsic value or meaning. The chicks have no value or
meaning in and of themselves; they are simply a material resource, whose value and
meaning is ascribed to them by us humans who see them as food; and more
specifically, by the agricultural corporation, which sees them as profit and tries to
maximise the efficiency of chicken production. Other than this instrumental goal,
chickens have no value or meaning. If we think they have value as living beings, as
being cute, or beautiful, we are free to think so, but those are only our own emotional
sentiments – we can enjoy the chicks in our mindscape, but they themselves have no
such intrinsic value or meaning. And the same could be said of humans too – they
have instrumental value, which should be maximised through more efficient
production and more abundant consumption. Anything else is mere subjective
feeling.

Materialism and instrumental rationality are based on making a division

between material existence, which is considered to be “real”, and our mindscape of
thoughts, imagination, and feelings, which is considered to be less “real”.

Since the mindscape is a "subjective" world, is it less "real" than the objective
world "out there"? Can something "unreal" be more powerful than "objective reality"?
Perhaps the world of meanings and significances -- the world of intangible objects of
consciousness, which fills our mindscape -- is just as "real" as the world "out there".
In our perception, experience and action in the world, the two are united into one.
Our perception of material objects is always immediately connected in our minds to
intangible concepts, words, ideas and meanings. At the same time, for intangible
mental objects to have meaning, they always need to be linked to a memory or
association with some tangible reality.

A good illustration is my first visit to China. I was an English teacher in an oil

school. In 1993, there were hardly any foreigners in Sichuan. Because foreign faces
were rare, wherever I went, there would be crowds of people looking at me, pulling
at the hair on my arms, and calling “laowai, laowai ( 老 外 ， 老 外 ！ foreigner,
foreigner!)” I attracted a lot of attention. One day, the newspaper China Oil News
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

decided to write an article about this foreign teacher at the oil college. A journalist
came to interview me. We spent the entire evening having delicious Sichuan hotpot
together. We had a great time chatting together. I saw his face for three hours. He
also saw my face for three hours.

The next day, I read his article about me in the newspaper. This journalist
described me as having blonde (“yellow”) hair, a “tall nose” and blue eyes. I couldn't
believe it. This person had spent the whole evening with me, but, in his mind, all
foreigners have blonde hair and blue eyes. So even though he had looked at my
brown eyes for three hours, the next day, in his mind, my eyes were blue. In those
days, I was shocked that somebody would call my hair blonde. I consider my hair to
be reddish-brown, or auburn. It’s certainly not called blonde or “yellow” in Western
countries. Now, I have been living in China for so long so that it doesn’t shock me
anymore when somebody says I have blonde hair. My Chinese wife says that
actually, if someone's hair is not dark brown or black, it can be called “yellow”. And
20 years ago, in Sichuan, if your eyes were not black or deep dark brown, they were
“blue”. And never mind the standard for a “tall” nose…
The point is that we perceive what we see through categories in our minds. Ideas
and concepts – objects of consciousness, as James said – in our mindscape “colour”
the way we look at the world. More than 25 years ago, in that place, there were
basically two eye colours in peoples’ minds. The world was divided into two types of
people: those with black eyes and those with blue eyes. That was all they saw. To give
another example: when I grew up in Canada -- before global warming -- we had a lot
of snow in winter. But I only know four words related to snow in English: “snow”,
“ice”, “slush”, “sleet”. The Inuit (Eskimo) people who live in the Arctic, it has been
claimed, have dozens of different words for different kinds of snow. Similarly, the
Sami people in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia have been speculated to know over
180 different words to designate types and conditions of snow. As soon as they see it,
they can instantly name very detailed qualities and subtle differences in types of
snow. But for me, all I see is white snowflakes.
An example closer to home might be our sensory perception, such as our sense
of smell. Most people can distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells, and
further between fresh, stale, organic, metallic, fruity, earthy scents, etc. But with
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training, we can learn to distinguish finer and finer notes, and with time enter a
whole new world of scent. Experts working in the perfume industry in France
traditionally learned to refine their sense of smell – to become a “nose” – by using a
set of small bottles containing contrasting scents: so-called “odour kits”, or “malettes
à odeurs” in French. With practice, the aspiring perfumist learned to distinguish
between ever finer contrasts in the kit– a process that could take years to master.
Through such “attunement” to the external world we come to see things as literally
an expression of the categories by which scents are divided in the malettes à odeurs.3
We do not objectively see the world that is outside of ourselves, but always what we
have been attuned or “socialised” to perceive.
Even something that seems as obvious as “black” is also a concept in our minds.
It is a word. You cannot define “blackness”, because when you see this “black” phone
and you say it is black, you are actually connecting this thing to a concept of black in
your mind. You have a concept of black, which is not exactly the same as this phone
– that concept is in your mind. Your mind can connect different things together –
this phone, your hair, the frame of your glasses, using the same concept of “black”.
By making those connections, your mind sees something in common between these
different things. Even things that appear to be so obvious, such as “black”, are
actually concepts – objects of consciousness. They are ideas, something we can
imagine.
The meaning we give to things, whether we perceive them as good or bad, is not
inherent in the thing itself, but comes from our own consciousness. You may say
something is useful – obviously, “useful” is a judgment. But even blackness is a
judgement – you have judged this thing to be black. Even if we look very closely, the
blackness of your phone and of your hair may be not the same. So even the most
obvious things are actually ideas in our minds, objects of consciousness that we
attach and connect to the things that we perceive.
Thus, we perceive objects, but we attach qualities to them – such as names and
colours – based on our pre-existing objects of consciousness. These qualities are not
only tangible ones, such as colour; but also include moral and abstract qualities.

3 Latour, “How to Talk About the Body?,” 206.

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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

When he speaks of the power of abstract objects of consciousness, William James

notes that

The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims … in a wider and
higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance. As time, space, and the
ether soak through all things so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty,
strength, significance, justice, soak through all things good, strong, significant, and
just. Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the
fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its “nature,” as we call
it, to every special thing. Everything we know is “what” it is by sharing in the nature of
one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and
featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling
the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might
lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of
classification and conception.4

Thus, James suggests that whenever we are moved by something, it is the

intangible qualities of the thing that move us, and not the thing itself. Our intangible
ideas, the abstract objects in our mindscape, are more powerful than physical objects
-- and they do guide and affect our action in the outside, "objective" world.

Sartre's gnarly tree root

Now let's imagine – what if we remove all of those concepts from the things we
perceive? What if we were to completely clear out our mindscape? Let's imagine that
our minds are painting this phone black. Our minds put the word “black” onto that
phone, as well as the concept of blackness and all those qualities such as “useful”,
“high-tech”, “phone”; as if we were painting this object with different ideas. What if
we strip those ideas away – let’s take away all of those concepts, qualities and
characteristics until you see that thing in itself, without any qualities, in its absolute and

4 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, pt. 3.

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unmediated “thingness”. What would it be? What if we were to avoid escaping into an
“unreal” world of the imagination, and strip away all abstract objects of
consciousness, remove all “subjective” meaning and significance, in order to attain
direct consciousness of objects in their pure materiality?
The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) attempted
this in his first novel, Nausea, written in 1938. In the selected passage in the novel, the
protagonist, sitting on a bench in a park, gazing at the "knotty, inert, nameless" root
of a tree under his foot, experiences the pure, naked material existence of things,
stripped of all names, descriptions, relationships, concepts, meanings and
significances: “This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in
disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.” He is overwhelmed with a sense
of nausea, at the absurdity, the futility and pointlessness of all things, which all come
into existence and then vanish, ultimately leaving “not even a memory”. Looking at
the trees, he saw not life gushing upwards, but “Tired and old, they kept on existing,
against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die... Every existing thing is
born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”5 Here is
the full passage:

So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground
just under my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The words had
vanished and with them the significance of things, their methods of use, and the feeble
points of reference which men have traced on their surface. I was sitting, stooping
forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, which
frightened me. Then I had this vision. It left me breathless. Never, until these last few
days, had I understood the meaning of “existence”…

And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled
itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of
things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the
bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality,
were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous

5
Sartre, Nausea, 179–80.
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness… We were a heap of

living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn't the slightest reason to
be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to
the others. In the way: it was the only relationship I could establish between these trees,
these gates, these stones.

In vain I tried to count the chestnut trees, to locate them by their relationship to the
Velleda, to compare their height with the height of the plane trees: each of them
escaped the relationship in which I tried to enclose it, isolated itself, and overflowed.
Of these relations (which I insisted on maintaining in order to delay the crumbling of
the human world, measures, quantities, and directions) – I felt myself to be the
arbitrator; they no longer had their teeth into things. In the way, the chestnut tree there,
opposite me, a little to the left. In the way, the Velleda. And I – soft, weak, obscene,
digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts – I, too, was in the way. Fortunately, I didn't
feel it, although I realized it, but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it
(even now I am afraid—afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up
like a wave). I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these
superfluous lives. But even my death would have been in the way.

In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of
this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the
earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and
clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity… Absurdity
– the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not
absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its
extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such
a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes,
brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain to repeat: “This is a root” – it
didn't work anymore. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root,
as a breathing pump, to that, to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion, to this oily,
callous, headstrong look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand
generally that it was a root, but not that one at all. This root, with its colour, shape, its
congealed movement, was… below all explanation. …
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

And all these existents which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were
going nowhere. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence
is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing – not even a memory… The trees
floated. Gushing towards the sky? Or rather a collapse; at any instant I expected to
see the tree-trunks shrivel like weary wands, crumple up, fall on the ground in a soft,
folded, black heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help themselves…
Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too
weak to die, because death could only come to them from the outside: strains of music
alone can proudly carry their own death within themselves like an internal necessity:
only they don't exist.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by
chance… It was there on the trunk of the chestnut tree ... it was the chestnut tree. Things
– you might have called them thoughts – which stopped halfway, which were forgotten,
which forgot what they wanted to think and which stayed like that, hanging about with
an odd little sense which was beyond them. That little sense annoyed me: I could not
understand it, even if I could have stayed leaning against the gate for a century; I had
learned all I could know about existence. I left, I went back to the hotel and I wrote.6

Sartre described this experience as nausea. That was how he experienced the
world – pure existence without any concepts, ideas, characteristics, qualities, and
relationships. When he stripped away all these things that our minds have imagined,
he felt nausea – the utter senselessness, purposelessness, the absence of significance
and the absurdity of the world.
This connects to another French existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus (1913-
1960). Camus started from a different perspective, but reached a similar conclusion
about the absurdity of it all. He wrote about a Greek myth called the Myth of
Sisyphus.7 Sisyphus is a Greek hero who is punished by the gods. He has to take a
huge boulder and push it up to the top of the mountain. He has to push and push

6
Ibid., 170–82.
7
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
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with great effort all the way up to the top. But just when he is about to reach the top,
the boulder will roll and tumble down to the bottom of the mountain. Then, he has
to start the same process again, pushing the boulder so strenuously, so tiringly, so
painfully, again and again for eternity. That's all Sisyphus does: to push this boulder
to the top, but he never quite makes it, and the boulder will tumble down, again and
again, for eternity.
Camus stressed the “absurdity” of it all – the lack of intrinsic significance. As we
get up in the morning, get out of bed, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, go to
class, rush around to do this and that, come back home, have dinner, watch TV,
brush our teeth, go to bed, get up, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, again and
again and again, just like the Myth of Sisyphus. Intrinsically, in themselves, do these
things have any significance at all? What if we remove all significance from them?
When Sartre and Camus did that, they described the feeling of nausea and of the
absurd.
Sartre and Camus have argued that there is no inherent meaning in the material
world itself. The tree does not contain meaning; meaning does not spring out of the
tree. Nor does this paper, this ink, or this screen contain any meaning. Where does
the meaning come from, then? For Sartre and Camus, it comes from our own minds.
And when we experience angst in the face of absurdity, we should fully accept it;
knowing this, we become fully free. Camus wrote, “The struggle itself toward the
heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.8 For
Sartre, with that freedom, we build our own existence, without caring how others
would define us: "... man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the
world—and defines himself afterwards."9

Zhuangzi's useless tree and Laozi's uncarved block

Sartre's descriptions of a gnarly root and of an old, useless tree remind me of

Daoist images -- of Zhuangzi's “useless tree” and of Laozi's “uncarved block”. Both of
these images are part of a Daoist attitude of breaking through human ideas, concepts

8
Ibid., 123.
9
Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 349.
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and meanings, which to some extent seems to be similar to what Sartre described.
Coincidentally, they came to the same conclusion, but they somehow drew very
different implications from it. In the story of the useless tree, Huizi was talking about
this tree to Zhuangzi, the early Daoist philosopher. Huizi described the tree as
gnarled, similar to Sartre’s description. To him, it is a useless tree, no good for
anything.

The Useless Tree10

Hui Shi said to Zhuangzi, “I have a tree, of the sort people call a shu tree. Its trunk is
too gnarled for measuring lines to be applied to it, its branches are too twisted for use
with compasses or T-squares. If you stood it on the road, no carpenter would pay any
attention to it. Now your talk is similarly vast but useless, people are unanimous in
rejecting it.” Zhuangzi replied, “Haven't you ever seen a wildcat or a weasel? It crouches
down to wait for something to pass, ready to pounce east or west, high or low, only to
end by falling into a trap and dying in a net. But then there is the yak. It is as big as a
cloud hanging in the sky. It has an ability to be big, but hardly to catch mice. Now you
have a large tree but fret over its uselessness. Why not plant it in Nothing At All town
or Vast Nothing wilds? Then you could roam about doing nothing by its side or sleep
beneath it. Axes will never shorten its life and nothing will ever harm it. If you are of
no use at all, who will make trouble for you?”11

In the story of the useless tree, it is precisely the uselessness of the tree that is the
cause of the life of the tree, saving it from being felled down by people for their own
instrumental purposes. In another story in Zhuangzi, the useless tree is located at the
altar to the earth god (tudigong 土地公), which, traditionally, is the sacred centre of
Chinese villages or neighbourhoods. Not only does the ‘useless tree” live longer than
“useful” ones, it offers shade and protection to the sacred centre of social life.
One way to understand this story is that so-called "usefulness" refers to the ideas,
concepts and functions that we attribute to things, in relation to our own
instrumental needs and desires, and which ultimately destroy the things that we use

10 For the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this document.
11
Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 28.
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

for our own purposes. In its “uselessness”, the tree has its own, intrinsic value which
is independent of human concepts and needs. And yet, left to live according to its
own nature, it provides shelter and shade to the villagers who don't pay much
attention to it.
Zhuangzi's position is clear – just let the useless tree be. Naturally, people will
go under it for shelter, only because this tree is of no use. Now, is useless
meaningless? At some level, it is. This tree is meaningless to Huizi, because he
couldn't see what he could use this tree for. When we give meaning to something, we
often give it meaning in relation to ourselves, to our own personal needs and
preferences. This course is meaningful to me, because it will help me to get a grade,
because it will help me understand this, or because it will help me to make friends.
Something meaningful is something that has some use to me; likewise, something
useless is usually something that is meaningless to me. But it seems that Zhuangzi
was also inferring that the tree has its own intrinsic value and significance, which
goes beyond the self-centred meanings and usefulness that we want to ascribe to it.
In the story, Huizi uses his useless tree to criticize Zhuangzi himself: “Now your
talk is similarly vast but useless.” Indeed, Zhuangzi’s wisdom also has no
instrumental purpose. But is that not what he is awakening in us? To a knowledge
that cannot be used to turn us into chicks on a conveyor belt?
Now let’s consider the idea of “returning to the uncarved block” (fugui yu pu 復
歸於樸) in Laozi’s Daodejing (道德經). Here is a passage from chapter 28 of the
Daodejing (for the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this reading):

Know the strength of man,

But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.

Know the white,

But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

Being an example to the world,

Ever true and unwavering,
Return to the infinite.

Know honour,
Yet keep humility!
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

When the block is carved, it becomes useful.

When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler.
Thus, "A great tailor cuts little."12

The “uncarved block” can be understood as referring to the original nature of a

thing, prior to being “carved up” by peoples' ideas, concepts, desires and purposes,
which change the form of the thing and distort its original nature. For Laozi, we
should revert to the state of the uncarved block, a state of pure simplicity, like a baby
in its pure authenticity.
For Laozi, our concepts and ideas are constantly carving into the block. For
example, we “carve” a certain object into this or that quality, black or white, big or
small, useful or useless, new or old. By giving qualities, characteristics and attributes
to things, we always carve them up. And we carve ourselves up. I'm a professor here,
and a husband and father at home. I am always carving myself up into all these roles.
But Laozi says, this is not all that we really are. So, he says we should return to the
state of the uncarved block – a pure piece of wood without any of these meanings,
qualities and attributes. He also talked about being like a baby, which carries the
same message as being this uncarved block. As a baby grows up, the baby's brain is
literally carved up into different ideas and concepts, the body is moulded and
trained. For this reason, Laozi suggests people to go back to the state of the uncarved

12
Feng and English, Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching.
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

block, of the infant. The uncarved block is the natural spontaneity of who we truly
are before adding any concepts, ideas, characters, attributes and so on.
Both Zhuangzi and Laozi, in these and many other stories and metaphors,
advocate breaking “out of the box” of our webs of meanings and significances, and
to apprehend things in their original state, prior to the human-imagined “usefulness”
and “carving up.” Are they not, then, doing the same thing as Sartre in Nausea? But
the result was to give Sartre a horrible sense of sickness, and Camus said that we
should confront our existential angst in the face of the absurd. Sartre and Camus
argued that we should actively build our existence in the world, while the Daoists
advocated natural spontaneity, wuwei (无为). We know that Zhuangzi was always
happy and joking, and Laozi conveys a sense of wisdom and serenity. Why such
different outcomes for Sartre and the Daoists?
Sartre's hopeless "Nausea" and Laozi’s mysticism are both logical outcomes of
experiencing "matter" in its pure state, devoid of any mental ideas or meanings. Why
do these two groups of philosophers have such different responses and attitudes?
They have starkly different responses to the same thing – the fact that the thing in
itself seems to have no intrinsic use, meaning, qualities and attributes. But why did
Laozi and Zhuangzi feel joy and serenity? And why did Sartre and Camus experience
so much angst?
One explanation is that while Laozi and Zhuangzi cause us to break out of the
mundane meanings, categories and concepts that clutter and carve up our
mindscape, they point to an even greater, deeper meaning and significance. Both the
useless tree and the uncarved block reveal something about “Dao”. Behind our short-
sighted ideas, words and uses, there lies another, far greater significance. As we
awaken to this greater reality, a sense of wonder arises, and we laugh at our own
foolishness. But in Sartre, there is no deeper significance to discover in the world. All
he could do was to “stifle at the depths of this immense weariness”, considering that
“we are left alone, without excuse.”
For Sartre and Camus, underlying everything, there is nothing. If you take away
the meaning, the significance and the concept, nothing remains, except that brute,
naked and absurd thing in itself. Even you have no intrinsic meaning – the only
meaning of your life is the meaning you give it through what you make of yourself.
But for Laozi and Zhuangzi, there is something else. When you strip away all the
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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

meanings, significance, qualities, concepts and attributes, another source of meaning

emerges. If you strip away one level of superficial concepts and appearances, there
is another, spiritual reality – something that you cannot describe, what Laozi called
dao (道). The infant or the uncarved block is closest to that something else, to dao, to
that invisible spirit or power. That is your true self. That is who you truly are. And
who you truly are is deeply connected to everything else, because everything is
connected to something deeper – dao. If you connect to your true self, you will be in
harmony with everything else in the universe. But for Sartre and Camus, there is no
“something”. There is just that thing right in front of your eyes, without any meaning
or purpose whatsoever -- except the meaning you give to it.
In the Alcibiades, Socrates reminds Alcibiades that his true self is not the things
he owns, whether it’s his body or his possessions. Sartre, in addition, insisted that
none of the roles we play in life are who we truly are, and condemned the “bad faith”
of blindly following the role-plays of society. For Sartre, our true self is free. We need
to move beyond the “bad faith” of blind conformity, discover our freedom, make our
life, and take full responsibility for all of the choices we make in life. We need to
freely choose which games to play, and take responsibility for it. From Laozi and
Zhuangzi, as from Sartre, we learn that our true self is not the objects of
consciousness in our mindscape, the ideas and concepts by which we carve ourselves
up and make ourselves useful to others. Our true self is not the roles we play in the
games of our life. Socrates talked about the “divine” nature of our true self, while the
Daoists talked about how our true self is at one with “Dao”. And so, we need to know
and to take care of our soul, of our “uncarved block”.

References

“Baraka - a Nonverbal Film by Ron Fricke.” Accessed September 14, 2017.

http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/baraka.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. 1942. Reprint, Vintage Books,
1955.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed. Simon and
Schuster, 2009.
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Feng, Gia-Fu, and Jane English. Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books, a
division of Random House, 1972.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
Centenary edition. Routledge, 2002.
Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Revised and
Expanded Edition. New York: New American Library, 1975.
Latour, B. “How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science
Studies.” Body & Society 10, no. 2–3 (June 1, 2004): 205–29.
doi:10.1177/1357034X04042943.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated by Alexander Lloyd. 1938. Reprint, New
Directions Publishing, 1949.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 1922. Reprint,
University of California Press, 1978.

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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

Appendix: Chinese texts from Zhuangzi and Laozi

莊子原文

惠 子 謂 莊 子 曰：「 吾 有 大 樹，人 謂 之 樗。其 大 本 擁 腫 而 不 中 繩 墨，其

小枝卷曲而不中規矩，立之塗，匠者不顧。今子之言，大而無用，眾所同

去也。」

莊子曰：「子獨不見狸 狌乎？卑身而伏，以候敖者，東西跳梁，不辟高下，中

於機辟，死於罔罟。今夫斄牛，其大若垂天之雲，此能為大矣，而不能執鼠。今子有

大樹，患其無用，何不樹之於無何有之鄉，廣莫之野，彷徨乎無為其側，逍遙乎寢臥

其下？不夭斤斧，物無害者，無所可用，安所困苦哉！」

譯文

惠子對莊子說：「我有一棵大樹，人家都叫它臭椿樹。它的樹幹臃腫

而 不 合 墨 線，它 的 小 枝 彎 曲 而 不 合 規 矩，長 在 路 邊，木 匠 也 不 會 留 意。（ 這

樹就像）現在你的言論，大而無用，大家都會離棄啊。」

莊子說：「你難道沒見過野貓和黃鼠狼嗎？牠們卑伏身子，等待出遊的小動物；

東跳西躍，不避高低，往往踏中機關，死於網中。再看看那耗牛，身體大得像天邊的

雲，牠本領很大，但卻連捕鼠也不能。現在你有這麼一棵大樹，還愁它沒有用處，為

何不把它種在寬曠無人的鄉間、廣闊無邊的原野，寫意無憂地在樹旁閒逛，優游自得

地在樹下躺臥？它不會受斧頭砍伐，又沒有東西來毀害它，沒有用處，又有甚麼困苦

呢？」

Source: 王先謙：《莊子集解》卷一《逍遙遊第一》，收入《諸子集成》第三冊，
北京：中華書局，1954 年，第 5－6 頁。

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 CCHU 9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change – Lecture 3: Meaning in the World

老子原文(《道德經》第二十八章)

知其雄，守其雌，為天下谿。為天下谿，常德不離，復歸於嬰兒。

知其白，守其黑，為天下式。為天下式，常德不忒，復歸於無極。

知其榮，守其辱，為天下谷。為天下谷，常德乃足，復歸於樸。

樸散則為器，聖人用之，則為官長，故大制不割。

譯文

深知什么是雄强，却安守雌柔的地位，甘愿做天下的溪涧。甘愿作天下的溪涧，

永恒的德性就不会离失，回复到婴儿般单纯的状态。深知什么是明亮，却安于暗昧的

地位，甘愿做天下的模式。甘愿做天下的模式，永恒的德行不相差失，恢复到不可穷

极的真理。深知什么是荣耀，却安守卑辱的地位，甘愿做天下的川谷。甘愿做天下的

川谷，永恒的德性才得以充足，回复到自然本初的素朴纯真状态。朴素本初的东西经

制作而成器物，有道的人沿用真朴，则为百官之长，所以完善的政治是不可分割的。

Source: 王弼：《老子注》，收入《諸子集成》第三冊，北京：中華書局，1954 年，第 16 頁。

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