A review by akemi_666
Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu by Brian Walker
4.0
For the longest period of time, Taoism and Buddhism tripped me up because I confused desire with sensation. For me, their rejection of desire felt like a rejection of materiality. I was very much conflating Taoism and Buddhism with Nietzsche's understanding of Christianity and Liberalism. I believed all forms of spirituality were retreats into abstractions — an unmooring of oneself from facticity.
But I've come to understand Taoism and Buddhism's rejections of desire as the beginning of a movement back into sensation and facticity. Desire — as no-thing, as radical negativity — cannot be conflated with sensation, which is thingliness as consciousness. Rather, desire operates as an idealist otherwise, while sensation operates as a materialist becoming. Sensation is materiality's unfolding experience of itself.
This is the Tao.
If desire is that which generates the dualism of presence and absence, then sensation is that which collapse this dualism back into a polymorphous oneness — a processual infinity beyond symbolic totality.
The Tao is not an entreaty to passivity, but rather a fuller activity. It is the dynamic integration of all aspects of one's lifeworld. Henceforth, those who produce, perpetuate and enforce dualisms of class, race, gender and so on, are enemies of the Tao. Those who profess the naturalness of hierarchies, war, poverty, rape, ennui and anxiety, are enemies of the Tao.
The fear from patriarchy, the lack from capitalism, the shame from colonialism, the conceit from nationalism, the frustration from rationalisation — all these are antithetical to the Tao and all must, therefore, be dismantled.
To return back to our collective sensations, to the full sensorium of relations lived rather than owned — that is the Tao.
The biggest flaw of the text is that it calls for a turn inwards, and only inwards, through which one must dismantle desire. Whilst self-critique and self-compassion are necessary elements to any revolutionary change, I would argue that desire is socially, culturally and politically enforced. Our ways of desiring do not arise fully formed from within — they are molded, diverted, divested, and cathected through institutions such as the family, the police, the military, the workplace, schools, churches, community clubs, news sites, music, films, games, phone apps, and so on.
It is simply not enough, and also too much, to place all the responsibility of discovering the Tao on any one person alone. Rather, our entire environment must be understood, and this requires a necessary dialectic between desires and sensations. Through desires, we can come to understand how our sensations are blocked. Rather than rid ourselves of desires, we have to locate their site of construction. Turning away or inwards is a temporary holding, necessary at times, but inadequate. Only by turning outwards and dismantling the machines that drive our desires in the first place, will be be truly free.
But I've come to understand Taoism and Buddhism's rejections of desire as the beginning of a movement back into sensation and facticity. Desire — as no-thing, as radical negativity — cannot be conflated with sensation, which is thingliness as consciousness. Rather, desire operates as an idealist otherwise, while sensation operates as a materialist becoming. Sensation is materiality's unfolding experience of itself.
This is the Tao.
If desire is that which generates the dualism of presence and absence, then sensation is that which collapse this dualism back into a polymorphous oneness — a processual infinity beyond symbolic totality.
The Tao is not an entreaty to passivity, but rather a fuller activity. It is the dynamic integration of all aspects of one's lifeworld. Henceforth, those who produce, perpetuate and enforce dualisms of class, race, gender and so on, are enemies of the Tao. Those who profess the naturalness of hierarchies, war, poverty, rape, ennui and anxiety, are enemies of the Tao.
The fear from patriarchy, the lack from capitalism, the shame from colonialism, the conceit from nationalism, the frustration from rationalisation — all these are antithetical to the Tao and all must, therefore, be dismantled.
To return back to our collective sensations, to the full sensorium of relations lived rather than owned — that is the Tao.
The biggest flaw of the text is that it calls for a turn inwards, and only inwards, through which one must dismantle desire. Whilst self-critique and self-compassion are necessary elements to any revolutionary change, I would argue that desire is socially, culturally and politically enforced. Our ways of desiring do not arise fully formed from within — they are molded, diverted, divested, and cathected through institutions such as the family, the police, the military, the workplace, schools, churches, community clubs, news sites, music, films, games, phone apps, and so on.
It is simply not enough, and also too much, to place all the responsibility of discovering the Tao on any one person alone. Rather, our entire environment must be understood, and this requires a necessary dialectic between desires and sensations. Through desires, we can come to understand how our sensations are blocked. Rather than rid ourselves of desires, we have to locate their site of construction. Turning away or inwards is a temporary holding, necessary at times, but inadequate. Only by turning outwards and dismantling the machines that drive our desires in the first place, will be be truly free.