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Write an essay on the following topic:
In an influential essay on divergent tendencies within the Daoist tradition, Herrlee G. Creel concluded:
On the one hand we have philosophic Taoism, a philosophy saying much that is still pertinent even in this day of great sophistication and scientific complexity. This philosophy has not always been studied with the seriousness it deserves, in part because it has often been regarded as a system of mystical incomprehensibilities. Another part of the reason is that it has sometimes been confused with the other kind of Taoism, which I suggest should be known as Hsien Taoism [a.k.a. ?Religious Taoism?]. The doctrines that fall under this heading, aiming at the achievement of immortality by a variety of means, have their roots in ancient Chinese magical practices and an immortality cult. Hsien Taoism also incorporates elements from Confucianism, Moism, and Buddhism. But there is one element that we might expect to find which is completely absent from Hsien Taoism. That is the central insight of philosophical Taoism [i.e. ?do nothing (wu-wei) and nothing will be left undone?].1
Although this view is still quite pervasive, a new perspective has more recently come to the fore. According to Russell Kirkland, for example:
[T]he Taoist goal?from the Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu throughout most later forms of Taoism?was to attain an exalted state of existence through diligent cultivation of the world?s deeper realities. Such attainments were generally predicated upon a process of personal purification and an enhanced awareness of reality?i.e., a process of moral, spiritual, and cognitive growth. Once one has fully completed that process, one is believed to have somehow reached a state that will not be extinguished, even when the physical body ceases to be one?s form.2
Does Kirdkland?s chapter on ?The Cultivated Life,? as well as our exploration of the growth and development of the Daoist tradition, provide sufficient support for the view that ?Philosophical? and ?Religious? Daoism should be understood as a single religious tradition, or was Creel correct in regarding them as fundamentally distinct traditions?
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1. Herrlee G. Creel, What is Taoism? and Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 24.
2. Russell Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2004), 189.
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