The Hundred Remedies of the Tao: Spiritual Wisdom for Interesting Times

By Gregory Ripley

A new translation of the 6th-century Taoist text Bai Yao Lu (Statutes of the Hundred Remedies), with practical commentary

• Explains how the Hundred Remedies of the Bai Yao Lu offer a practical guide to what enlightened or sagely behavior looks like

• Shows how each short verse of the Hundred Remedies presents a spiritual precept as a solution to the problems encountered in daily life and on the spiritual path

• Provides insightful commentary for each of the Hundred Remedies, showing how they relate to meditation practice and can help us navigate emotional and social challenges

In modern Taoist practice, the emphasis is often on “going with the flow” (wu-wei) and not following any fixed rules of any kind. This may work well for an already enlightened Taoist Sage, but for the rest of us, following a spiritual path involves ethical, moral, and practical guidelines. As author and translator Gregory Ripley (Li Guan, 理觀) explains, the little-known 6th-century Taoist text called the Bai Yao Lu (Statutes of the Hundred Remedies) was created as a practical guide to what enlightened or sagely behavior looks like—and each of the 100 spiritual remedies are just as relevant today as they were when written more than 1,500 years ago.

Presenting a new translation of the Bai Yao Lu for the contemporary world, Ripley provides insightful commentary for each of the Hundred Remedies, showing how they relate to Taoist meditation practice and how they can help us navigate the emotional and social challenges we all experience. He explains how each short verse of the Hundred Remedies presents a spiritual precept in a positive way, not as a restriction or commandment that must not be broken but as a solution to the problems encountered in daily life as well as on the spiritual path.

This guidebook to Taoist spiritual living will help you learn to effortlessly go with the flow, deepen your meditation practice, and find the natural balance in all things.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inner Traditions
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781644119006

Gregory Ripley

Gregory Ripley (Li Guan, 理觀) is a Taoist priest in the 22nd generation of the Quanzhen Longmen tradition as well as a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Asian studies from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree in acupuncture from Northwestern Health Sciences University. The author of Tao of Sustainability and Voice of the Elders, he lives in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

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INTRODUCTION

Many spiritual traditions use the metaphor of walking a path for our journey through life. Buddhism and Hinduism speak of marga, the path toward spiritual awakening. The Bible uses many different words for a path or a way such as magalah or hodos. One might think of the famous passage, I am the Way in the Gospel of John. Philosophers in ancient China all spoke of the various ways or paths (dao) to follow in order to live a good life. Those who sought to follow the Way of the Universe eventually came to call themselves Daoists, followers of the Way.

Another metaphor for spiritual teachings is that of a medicine or a spiritual salve. One might think of the idea of the Buddha as a spiritual physician represented by the Medicine Buddha, for example. As the introduction to the Hundred Remedies says, Virtue is the physician; practice is the remedy. If people don’t cultivate their virtuous conduct and widely seek the medicinal remedies, they will have numerous faults. Those who seek only to beseech the heavens, but don’t attempt to transform themselves, their faults grow even worse. (德為醫也, 行為藥也. 人不修其德行而廣求醫藥, 藏罪而多求章表, 上而所行不改, 其罪更凶.)

We can see a similar idea expressed in the early Chan Buddhist text, the Xinxin Ming, which says, The Supreme Dao is not difficult, simply have no preferences. . . . If you wish to attain its presence, then hold no opinion for or against. To set up what one likes against what one dislikes is the disease of the mind. Fortunately for us, we have medicine for these diseases of the mind in the form of the Hundred Remedies. These ethical prescriptions also represent an aspect of Daoist practice that has largely been ignored by most mainstream books on Daoism in English. The emphasis usually seems to be on going with the flow and not having any fixed rules or morals of any kind—it’s all relative, man. While this might be true from the perspective of a Daoist sage, I’m going to go out on a limb and say there aren’t very many Daoist sages walking among us. For most of us, practice involves some guidelines and parameters. In fact, one way in which precepts and ethical guidelines are viewed in Daoism is that they are formulations of what enlightened or sagely behavior looks like. We emulate the behavior of the sages until the behavior becomes our own. We can see this idea expressed in other traditions as well such as the Stoic maxims, the Buddhist mindfulness gathas popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh, or the Lojang slogans of Tibetan Buddhism.

Much of Daoist scholarship is understandably focused on the differences between the various movements and schools of Daoism throughout its long history. As a practitioner, I am much more interested in the similarities and continuities, the threads that connect. The commentary on the remedies draws from sources ranging from the ancient classics such as the Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi to writings from the Neidan or internal alchemy tradition, as well as writings from the later Quanzhen tradition, which developed almost a millennium after the earliest Daoist communities and is one of the dominant forms of Daoism as it exists in China today. I hope it becomes clear in the commentary that despite the artificial and outdated distinction between so-called philosophical Daoism and so-called religious Daoism, they are really just different aspects of the same thing. There was a coherent worldview that was present in early Daoism that still remains today. Whether people embrace the tradition as practitioners or take a more philosophical approach to the teachings, the Dao can be approached in endless ways.

In Daoism, especially in the Neidan tradition, there is a saying that it takes one hundred days to lay the foundation. One way this book can be read is to take one remedy a day for one hundred days as a way of laying the foundation and grounding oneself in Daoist thought and practice. Of course, if you feel like diving right in and reading straight through, by all means do so, but I would recommend a slower, more contemplative reading. You may also find that multiple readings of the book provide deeper insights. These insights will not come from the text or my commentary but from your own innate wisdom. The best I can hope to do is to point you to it. Now, as the introduction to the Hundred Remedies says, let us Be gentle and yielding and reduce your desires, be generous, harmonious, respectful, and humble, taking the remedies of the Dao and Virtue. (柔弱去欲, 寬和恭遜, 藥之道德府.)

ABOUT THE TEXT

The bulk of this book consists of a commentary on the Daoist text, Statutes of the Hundred Remedies. These spiritual remedies form part of a larger collection called the Xuandu Luwen: The Statutes of Mystery Metropolis. A later version also appeared as The Scripture on the Hundred Diseases and Hundred Remedies Spoken by Taishang Laojun (太上老君說百病崇百藥經).

When I first read the Hundred Remedies, I was struck by how well they represented the continuity from the earliest roots of Daoism, represented by the Daode Jing, through the various Daoist movements of the medieval period, up to the present. Following Dan Reid, I’ll call this continuity the thread of the Dao.¹ The Xuandu Luwen represents statutes and spiritual precepts as they were understood by the Tianshi Dao or Celestial Masters Daoists of the time, but they are, by and large, just as applicable to our own modern lives.

One of the unique features of the Hundred Remedies is that it presents spiritual precepts in a positive way, not as restrictions or commandments that must not be broken, but as solutions to problems encountered in daily life as well as on the path of Daoist cultivation (or really any spiritual path). Along with the remedies, there are other Daoist formulations of ethical behavior that have been presented in a positive way as practices or meritorious actions that benefit each of us in our spiritual cultivation as well as having a positive influence on our relationships, families, communities, and ultimately the world as they radiate out from our lives, like ripples in a pond. One of the most well-known is the Nine Practices drawn from the Xiang Er commentary to the Daode Jing. The scholar-practitioner Louis Komjathy has written extensively about these.² Another that comes to mind is a summary of Daoist practice in twelve characters by the early Quanzhen master, Ma Danyang.³ We’ll return to both of these later as we discuss the remedies. For the most exhaustive collection of the various ways in which Daoist moral and ethical behavior has been envisioned in both positive and negative ways, Livia Kohn’s Cosmos and Community is unparalleled and also contains translations from the Xuandu Luwen.⁴

I’ve also included another set of thirteen virtues or principles that appear as part of the Xuandu Luwen along with the Hundred Remedies. Called Statutes of Emptiness, Nonbeing, Good, and Evil, I’ll refer to them hereafter as the Thirteen Principles. After we’ve read the remedies, we’ll find that these Thirteen Principles summarize the contents of the Hundred Remedies quite well and have much in common with both the Nine Practices and Ma Danyang’s Twelve Characters. As the Nine Practices appeared much earlier, and the Twelve Characters appeared much later, the Thirteen Principles demonstrate another thread, another continuity in theory and practice that connects the early origins of Daoism to later developments and the present.

1

HEAVEN AND EARTH

尊天敬地為一藥

Venerating Heaven and Respecting Earth Is a Remedy

When we venerate Heaven and respect Earth, we show gratitude for the very foundation of our lives. The Earth, and by extension the entire universe, supports us. The Earth provides all. There is nothing in our lives that hasn’t come from the Earth. Every breath we inhale connects us to every other living thing on the planet. We join in a symbiotic relationship with all plant life, receiving oxygen and giving our carbon dioxide in return.

When we venerate Heaven, we pay respect to the mysterious source of the Daoist scriptures, the teachings of the Dao, and the laws of Nature. With respect for Earth, we see that our actions have consequences. Our consumption has repercussions far beyond what we ordinarily may consider. When we take this into account the actions of our daily lives can become more harmonious, more in tune with what sustains life on Earth.

When we venerate Heaven, we also realize that the great mystery of life is ultimately beyond our understanding and that words can only point toward reality, they are not reality itself. As the opening lines of the Daode Jing say, The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. (道可道, 非常道. 名可名, 非常名.) Heaven is formless. Earth is substantial. Heaven is Nonbeing. Earth is Being. They are inseparable. When we forget about Heaven, we can get lost in forms and apparent separation. When we forget about Earth, we ignore the beings around us, Life in its many guises. The Daode Jing continues, These two arise together but are named differently. Together they are called mysterious. The mystery within the mystery, the gateway to all wonders. (同出而异名, 同謂之玄. 玄之又玄, 衆妙之門.)

This twofold mystery is called chongxuan (重玄). A Daoist philosophical school arose under this name in the fifth century influenced by Buddhist Madhyamaka thought, and yet we can see how the core of the philosophy—that there are two levels of reality, the relative and the absolute—is already described in the opening chapter of the Daode Jing.¹ One is Nonduality, beyond naming and description; one is our everyday dualistic experience of the world and how we navigate our daily lives. Yet they cannot be separated. This is the Great Mystery.

2

HEAVENLY BODIES

欽奉三光為一藥

Respecting and Revering the Three Luminaries Is a Remedy

The Three Luminaries (sanguang, 三光) are the sun, moon, and stars. Though we seldom do, it’s hard not to appreciate the wonder of these heavenly bodies when we consider them. After all, without the sun our planet would be a lifeless rock in space. Without the moon, the tides wouldn’t come in and out. Without the balance of these two forces in our lives, the seasons wouldn’t come and go in the relative balance that they do. The moon stabilizes the Earth’s axial tilt. Without the moon, our ice caps wouldn’t always be at the poles and the equator wouldn’t always be warm. The Earth’s ecosystems would be chaotic. Without the stars, our night sky would be an inky blackness. Imagining what the night sky would look like without them brings a new appreciation of those shimmering gems scattered across the night sky.

Daoism also views the stars and the Three Luminaries together as sources of power in the universe that we can connect to through various practices such as qigong, meditation, or through ritual. For example, in some traditions of Daoism, each of the stars of the Big Dipper is envisioned as a star lord (xingjun, 星君) who guides or oversees our fate. When we connect with the Dipper stars and our own xingjun, especially on our birthday, we will avoid potential harm or disasters that may befall us. This might sound as though Daoists believe that our fate is out of our hands, that everything is preordained, and yet the ancient Daoist Ge Hong once said in the Baopuzi, My fate lies with me, not with heaven.(我命在我, 不在天.)

We might think of this seeming contradiction like the old question of nature versus nurture. We are all born with certain attributes and dispositions. We are all born with different personalities and physical traits. We may have even inherited challenging health conditions, but how we live our lives always makes a difference. We don’t control the circumstances of our birth. We don’t control where we were born or what family we are born into, but we do control our choices and actions. Events of the past are out of our control, but we are in control of our decisions in the present and therefore have at least some degree of control over our future. We should look at our lives and contemplate what is within our control and what is beyond our control. If something is within our control, then we should do our best to take care of it. If it is beyond our control, then there is no point worrying about it.

In Daoism a system was developed that views each of us as having ten souls, or perhaps we could say ten parts or aspects of our souls. Together these are called the Three Hun and Seven Po (san hun qi po, 三魂七魄). The Three Hun are considered yang, and immaterial. They are a person’s spirit, consciousness, and intelligence. The Seven Po are yin and govern the more substantial parts of a person such as different bodily functions. They represent our physical needs and survival instincts. They also sometimes correspond to the seven emotions as articulated in Chinese medicine—joy, anger, worry, fear, love, hatred, and desire. This maps with the mind/body connection of how our emotions can affect our physical health and vice versa. We might also think of these two divisions as analogous to the different parts of our brain and nervous system as they have developed through evolution, with our higher faculties represented by the hun and the baser instincts of our lizard brains represented by our po.

There is a saying, Three parts are destined by Heaven, seven parts depend on one’s own effort. (三分天注定七分靠打拼.) Perhaps these parts correspond to the Three Hun and Seven Po. Whatever our circumstances in life, let us not forget what is in our control, our own effort.

3

SERENITY NOW

恬淡無欲爲一藥

Being Serene, Calm, and Without Desires Is a Remedy

This remedy might seem self-evident, and yet how often do we struggle to remain calm in times of stress in our daily lives? How often do we find ourselves miserable because we don’t have what we want or don’t want what we have? As it says in the Scripture on Clarity and Stillness (Qingjing Jing, 清靜經), "The spirit prefers clarity, yet the mind disturbs it. The mind prefers stillness, yet desires pull it astray¹." (夫人神好清, 而心擾之. 人心好靜. 而慾牽之.) When we become calm, we find clarity in our lives. Reality becomes clearer to us. We find untapped wisdom and intuition within ourselves and everything becomes easier. We return to our original nature, the person we were before the dictates of society and the ups and downs of life took their toll on us. When we spend enough time in touch with our original nature (benxing, 本性), or true nature (zhenxing, 真性), we realize our identity with the true nature of the Dao.

As Laozi says in chapter 1 of the Daode Jing, Desireless, one can behold the wondrous. Desiring, one can only see limitations. (故常無欲, 以觀其妙; 常有欲, 以觀其僥.) When our thoughts and actions are spent seeking after what we desire, we miss out on much of life. We develop a sort of tunnel vision, only seeing what we’re chasing after. The rich tapestry that makes up our lives becomes a blurry backdrop to the object of our desire. We may also focus too heavily on what is superficial in life, ignoring true depth. This is not to say we shouldn’t have desires. Desires are natural. But if we want to maintain an awareness of the richness of life, we can’t let ourselves become shallow or myopic. When we are free from our desires, we realize the mystery of mysteries, the Dao.

The opening characters of the remedy tiandan (恬淡) carry another connotation. Tiandan also means indifferent to fame or gain. We might think about this as having a nonchalant attitude toward things like fame or fortune. If they come, let them come. If they go, let them go. There is nothing inherently wrong with fame or fortune, but they can hold power over us if we are constantly grasping at them. If we are consumed by their pursuit, or cling too tightly to them once we have them, they can become impediments to our spiritual equilibrium.

Buddhism calls these types of preoccupations the Eight Worldly Concerns. We pursue pleasure, fame, gain, and praise while avoiding pain, insignificance, loss, and blame. In China these became known as the Eight Winds (bafeng, 八風), eight influences that can stir up the passions like a breeze can stir up dust in the world around us.

We see these same concerns addressed in chapter 44 of the Daode Jing. Your name or your body, which is dearer to you? Your body or your possessions, which means more to you? Gain or loss, which is the worse illness? There is a reason extreme affection necessarily comes with great pain. The more you hoard, the more you focus on loss. Knowing when you have enough, you won’t suffer humiliation. Knowing when to stop, you won’t endanger yourself, you will be able to endure.(名與身孰親? 身與貨孰多? 得與亡孰病? 是故甚愛必大費; 多藏必厚亡. 知足不辱, 知止不殆, 可以長久.)

4

BENEVOLENCE

仁恕謙讓為一藥

Being Benevolent, Forgiving, Modest, and Yielding Is a Remedy

How often do we find ourselves affected by the actions of others? How often do we blame others for how we feel and how we act? How often do we think, They made me do it? But is this really true? Of course not. If we are being honest with ourselves, we must admit that ultimately, we are in control of our own actions. At least, we are when we remain mindful, conscious of our thoughts, conscious of what is happening in the present moment. No matter what happens in our lives, we don’t have to react reflexively.

An automatic reaction will be dictated by our past conditioning. A response, on the other hand, is a choice. When we meditate and spend time in mindfulness, our sense of time often slows down. We sense the gap between thoughts, the space that occurs in the present moment. In this gap between thoughts, we find time for consideration instead of an unconscious knee-jerk reaction. We leave room for our innate wisdom to shine forth and reveal the best course of action. We may well realize that no action at all is the best course. This is one part of the meaning of the Daoist concept of wuwei (無為), non-action, non-contrived action, or non-striving action.

In this spacious freedom we may also consider the nature of the supposed injustice that has been done to us. Is it really that bad? Is it a big deal or is it just a petty slight that we can simply brush off? It may well be a big deal. It may be something that deserves our indignation or even anger. If something needs to be done about it, we should address it. We shouldn’t be a doormat or allow ourselves to be victimized, but even if it is a serious harm that’s been done to us, do we really want to carry the weight of it with us? If so, for how long? Forgiveness liberates the one who forgives. The one forgiven must also forgive themselves. If they can’t accept forgiveness, they remain trapped in a mental prison of their own making until they are ready to simply step through the door that was never locked. There is no set period for how long it takes us to forgive someone. It will depend on what they have done and how big an impact it has made on our lives. There is no need to feel rushed or shamed into forgiveness. It takes as long as it needs to take.

When we are too full of ourselves, when our ego is inflated, this all becomes more difficult. We may feel a sense of entitlement that prevents us from being forgiving or feeling empathy for others. How dare they! we might think, Don’t they know who I am? Are we really so special? Aren’t we just like everyone else, beneath whatever superficial trappings of our lives we have become so identified with? When we lose the ability to step outside of our own circumstances in life and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we can become callous and cruel.