The next core belief in Daoism is that the world works in cycles.
The motion of Dao is to return
Daodejing verse 40
During my lifetime, geology and astronomy have proved that the world as we know it is part of a cycle, just as the ancient Chinese believed. However, they did not think of a cycle as a circle or ring, i.e. as a length of wire joined at both ends that has no beginning and no end. Instead, they envisaged the cycle as a length of wire whose ends do not exactly meet. This is because nothing that happens – no event or process – ever repeats itself exactly. In other words, a cycle comes in the form of a spring or coil. This coil is the mechanism for moving everything forward in the inevitable process of change.
Our planet earth is on a cyclical path, just as is everything in our skies, including our sun. The longest cycle we know about began with the so called “big bang” when our galaxy burst out of the cosmos and created our sun and all the planets and stars we see in the Milky Way. One day our sun will disappear before eventually re-appearing in a different form so far into the future that we cannot count the trillions of years.
In the last fifty years I have watched as scientists validated the tectonic plate theory which states that the rocky mantle which surrounds the burning heart of our planet is constantly on the move, sliding one section under the other and bringing new rock to the surface. This too is a cycle.
It is now believed that over ninety percent of our planet originally consisted of water and contained only one large continent called Pangaea. This rocky area gradually broke up over a period of billions of years into the seven continents we know now, and which are constantly on the move through a process involving tectonic plates. An American geologist, Christopher Scotese, has published computer simulations which predict that in another 250 million years all those continents will have come together again to form another Pangaea (see Fig. 3).
Once they had accepted that the earth is billions of years old and that the earth itself is constantly on the move, scientists started to speculate on how long our planet will survive. At present they believe it is about halfway through its life cycle, so we have another five or so billion years to go. Cycles exist all around us – the most familiar are those connected to Time. The year comes around in twelve months, or twelve moons, all of which have a different name. Early peoples knew in which month to plant specific crops, and to do so at the rising of the moon, so the calendar came into being with the first agriculturists.
In the summer months when the sun warms the Northern hemisphere, trees and plants burst into life until the sun departs at the onset of winter when it will warm another area of our earth. Trees and plants that had been green and fertile now look dead. but, as the cycle continues and the sun starts to warm the earth, those same dead looking plants are rejuvenated.
Another year, another cycle, has been completed. Each day of the week has a different name. We know when the day ends and night begins with the cycle of the earth as it spins on its axis. We know that the tides turn four times a day with the action of the moon – an action that is independent of the sun. With the moon’s waxing and waning we can predict full tides when there will be a danger of flooding.
It has recently been discovered that the 5,000 year old Neolithic monument called Stonehenge in southern England may have been constructed not only to mark the summer solstice – which of course it can do – but more importantly to establish the shortest day of the year, the 21st December, which is when the darkest days cease and the New Year begins in the Northern hemisphere. In other words, when dark turns to light according to the sun. In China the New Year is celebrated when the moon finishes its cycle. The cycles of the sun and moon are not co-ordinated but each system has a complete cycle whose end is celebrated in lavish style.
We are told that no two snowflakes are the same. As it starts to snow with big individual snowflakes, I stand on a wet pavement and watch the flakes hit the ground. The flakes quickly dissolve to become water. That water will eventually dry up and return to the sky. Later, that same water will return to the earth as rain – just like our individual lives here on earth where we return to the earth. The Chinese have always believed in cycles (see Fig. 4). They have a cycle that names every year differently within a sixty year period. It is called The Sexagenary Cycle.
When a Chinese person has completed one cycle of these names, he or she has reached sixty years of age and there is a big celebration. This is why the elderly are so respected in the Far East. A baby’s nature is predicted by the year in which it is born. There is a cycle of twelve animals, the horse, the lion, the snake and so on, and it is believed that the person’s personality will be affected by the type of animal representing the year of their birth. Ask any Chinese and they will tell you that they were born in the year of the rat, for example, or the dragon. In the West astrologers believe that they can predict a person’s path through life as a result of whether they were born in the month of January (goat), for example, or July (Leo) and have the characteristics of a goat or lion. The twelve signs are different but the concept is the same.
In the West our whole lives are governed by cycles whether we are conscious of them or not – fashion being an obvious example. Women’s skirts are long, then they are short. Men wear ties for years, then suddenly the fashion changes and they wear open-necked shirts instead. Every year there is a change in the dominant colour of upholstery and so you can date the interiors of our houses fairly accurately. The stock market goes up and down in cycles – which is how our financial system works. But it is important to understand that these cycles do not start and end in the same place. Because everything in our world is constantly moving as Time proceeds, the cycles themselves move everything forward. Think of such a cycle, or coil, and what it can do. If you first compress it and then release it, the power it generates is huge – just as a compressed coil or spring ejects a solid object when the lid of the box in which it is contained is opened.