A Taoist analogue to a Christian insight into the nature of humility and confidence

I’ve just read an interesting post with a Christian insight into the nature of humility and confidence from mustardsong. It struck me that many of the insights could be easily drawn from Taoist sources.

Mustardsong highlights that humility and confidence are intimately entwined, and that you can’t have one with out the other:

True humility and true confidence always and must go together, like two sides of a coin. We only run into problems when one or the other is false–or if both are!

False Confidence

He attributes false confidence to basing that confidence on your self. The problem, he says, is that with your self as a base for your confidence, you risk pride (by thinking less of others whose selves aren’t as good as yours) or insecurity (because things inevitably will go wrong, and you know it).

False Humility

He then attributes false humility to a base of perceived low self-worth. Even if you speak humbly, “I’m so worthless”, you’re really thinking, “Even God can’t save me.” An infinitely powerful being can’t help you? Not very humble, are we?

The Christian Solution

Now, he says the Christian solution to this is to instead base your confidence on faith in God, and the perfection of his son. Through God, you can accomplish anything.

So again, the Christian solution is to base your humility in God. You need to recognize that as a finite being you have faults, but that through recognition of an infinite God, you admit that you aren’t so worthless as to be beyond salvation.

By basing your confidence and humility on God, you have the true confidence of knowing that through God all things are possible, and the true humility of knowing your faults, but that God can save you.

Taoist Confidence

For Taoists, we find similar insights, though their solution is to use the Tao as a base. From chapter 40 of the Taoist text Tao Te Ching:

Reversion is the action of Tao.

This means that the universe constantly refolds on itself, that life will forever oscillate from good to bad. From another key Taoist text, Zhuangzi, this reversion is explained thus:

The life of things passes by like a rushing galloping horse, changing at every turn, at every hour. What should one do, or what should one not do? Let the (cycle of) changes go on by themselves!

By using the Tao as a base, we become confident because we understand that regardless of our abilities, life will always jump around, so when life is down, be confident that it’ll be back up soon!

Taoist Humility

Again, Taoists use the Tao as a base for their humility. The 7th chapter of the Tao Te Ching says:

The universe is everlasting.
The reason the universe is everlasting
Is that it does not live for Self.
Therefore it can long endure.

Therefore the Sage puts himself last,
And finds himself in the foremost place;
Regards his body as accidental,
And his body is thereby preserved.
Is is not because he does not live for Self
That his Self is realized?

A Sage is humble because he knows that he isn’t the end all source of everything. He knows that he is just a manifestation of the Tao, that according to Zhuangzi:

Your life is not possessed by you; it is a harmony lent to you by the universe.

Zhunagzi further writes that against pride, that the badges of rank and honor a man receive:

… have nothing to do with his original self. They are things that are accidentally loaned to him for a period.

By using Tao as a base, we are humble because the things of pride are only loaned to us, and can be easily taken back by the universe.

The Taoist Solution

Through the Tao, we can be confident that life will always have it’s ups and downs, and that even if I’m down now, I can be confident that I’ll be up eventually. The Tao never stops bouncing.

On the flip side of the confidence/humility coin, the Sage is humble because all things come from the Tao, and how can he have pride for something he’s only borrowed? As things may be good now, they will go down eventually: the Tao will take back what it loans out.

The General Insight

Though they differ in secondary terms (see primary vs. secondary things), their primary insight is the same:

Don’t base confidence and humility on your self. To preserve, to succeed, to have true humility and confidence, you must base those traits on something beyond your finite self, something that encompasses all eternity.

For Christians, it’s God, for Taoist’s, it’s the Tao.

I only stumbled on mustardsong’s post by accident, but I find the analogue amazing.

Check out Taoist texts online.