I pay no attention to people who speak about achieving self-mastery through meditation because I find them impractical. In real life, it takes an enormous amount of practice to learn any valuable skill. Do you think that we can achieve self-mastery just by sitting on the floor, lighting candles, and meditating?
Taoism is an extremely practical philosophy. Lao-Tzu was not a theoretician speculating about the nature of the universe. The same can be said about the other ancient Taoists: Chuang-Tzu and Yang-Tzu.
Lao-Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching to address tangible, major problems. His philosophy revolves around the key issues of man’s existence: how to live well, and how to achieve serenity and happiness, especially in a hostile environment.
Chapter 22 of the Tao Te Ching establishes the principles of self-mastery, but does it rather poetically. From reading it, we come to the conclusion that, in order to win, we shouldn’t fight; and that in order to succeed, we should not strive excessively.
Taoist self-mastery requires as much doing the right thing as not doing the wrong thing. The ethical insights of Aristotle (384-322 BC) focused mainly on the former, that is, on doing.
When it comes to learning which goals to pursue and what to do, I can only praise Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Eudemian Ethics,” but when it comes to avoiding problems in life, I do not think that Aristotle had given much thought to the matter.
Self-mastery compared to hunting
For Taoists, self-mastery consists of advancing on the path of happiness, and letting go of dead weight. I mean letting go of wrong ideas, wrong projects and wrong friends in particular.
Dead weight makes us slow and vulnerable. It will consume our energy and time to no avail, while we let opportunities pass by. It will destroy our serenity, and prevent us from achieving emotional balance and harmony.
Chuang-Tzu compared self-mastery to hunting. The skilled archer knows how to hunt silently and patiently; he has learned to shoot arrows quickly and accurately, without any emotional tension. He has also learned to avoid dangerous predators (for instance, tigers) by means of hiding.
Chapter 76 of the Tao Te Ching prophetises that adaptable, soft, gentle people will prevail over rigid, harsh personalities. I regard this statement from Lao-Tzu as the key to self-mastery. The problem is that the full meaning of flexibility is difficult to grasp. Why did Lao-Tzu mean exactly?
Let me provide the answer by giving an example, the artist Titian (1487-1576). In his lifetime, Titian had never heard of Lao-Tzu and the non-action principle, but somehow, he arrived at the same philosophy all by himself.
Titian and Taoist flexibility
As a young man, Titian was confronted with various career options. When he was still a teenager in Venice, he had worked as an apprentice for Sebastiano Zuccato (a mosaicist), Gentile Bellini, Giovanni Bellini, and Giorgione (painters).
Titian could have chosen to follow in their footsteps, which might have delivered him an easy success, but instead, he went away to acquire his own clients as soon as humanly possible.
I regard Titian’s refusal to slavishly imitate his teachers as an example of Wu Wei, the non-action principle. In the ensuing decades, Titian continued to apply Wu Wei in every area of his life, achieving one breakthrough after another.
Chapter 58 of the Tao Te Ching teaches us that misfortune often hides good fortune. It means that we have to learn to look beyond the obvious and detect emerging opportunities. Titian became a master at this game, eclipsing his predecessors.
While prior artists had concentrated on a specific area (such as religious painting) and a specific type of customers (such as churches and monasteries), Titian was the first artist in history to address different markets with totally different products.
Like an accomplished Taoist master, Titian was flexible and gentle with everyone. He painted Bible scenes for monasteries, portraits for aristocrats, decorative motives for living rooms, and mythological erotic scenes for collectors.
Chuang-Tzu is reputed for having refused a highly paid job at the royal court because he feared losing his freedom. Titian did even better than Chuang-Tzu in this respect. Instead of one customer or employer, Titian developed a wide array of buyers for his work.
To expand his client network, Titian travelled to pursue new commissions. He had clients in Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Rome, Bologna and Augsburg. Also in this respect, he did better than his teachers. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and Giorgione had mostly worked for patrons in Venice.
Titian and Taoist humility
Taoist self-mastery requires humility, as indicated in chapter 66 of the Tao Te Ching, so that we can acknowledge our errors, change course, and do better in the future. Titian was perfectly conscious of his strong and weak aspects as an artist, and came up with a method to enhance the former and remedy the latter.
If Titian had read Chapter 66 of the Tao Te Ching, he would have learned the advantages of winning without competing. It’s exhausting and pointless to pursue perfection in all areas. Our competitors will wipe us out rather soon because we will never succeed at becoming great at every skill.
Titian knew that other painters possessed drawing abilities that he could barely equal; he was humble enough to recognize his weak spot, but motivated enough to find a solution. He was not capable of drawing as perfectly as Giovanni Bellini, but he was better at conception and composition.
Instead of lamenting that he was not the best in the world at drawing, Titian simply opted for building on his strong points. He made daring conceptions and compositions, painted them at a fast pace, let them dry for a few weeks, and retouched them as necessary.
Titian kept retouching his paintings until he had removed all drawing and colouring issues. If it took him longer to deliver a painting, so be it. He had no problem with working at the same time on several paintings, one new, another still drying up, and a third one ready for retouching.
I consider Titian’s biography as a great source of inspiration for achieving Taoist self-mastery. I do not know of any painter that so perfectly embodies Lao-Tzu’s prescription for “being empty and reborn” in Chapter 12 of the Tao Te Ching.
Without missing a beat, Titian went from producing Bible scenes for a church altar to portraits for aristocrats in Ferrara to erotic mythological scenes for the Spanish king Philip II. In the history of painting, Titian’s flexibility remains mind-blowing.
Taoist mastery requires aligning ourselves with the Tao and relinquishing our prejudices, as Lao-Tzu implied in Chapter 49 of the Tao Te Ching. Titian did so up to the last minute, when he bartered a large painting for the honour of being buried after his death in the Freri Church in Venice.
Titian’s tomb is still there, but few tourists will connect his remarkable career and lifestyle with Taoist self-mastery. I find it a pity because few individuals in history embody so well the Taoist ideals of flexibility, softness and versatility.
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