In a previous blog post PPP
II: Intrinsic Nature in Europe, the question was asked “How did we forget
our relations with nature?” and an answer was provided with regard to Europe.
In this post, we want to put together an answer to the same question but one
that contrasts European and Chinese attitudes.
In Europe, Saint George is famous for slaying a dragon. Saint
George was born in Palestine towards the end of the third century AD. Before he
became one of the most venerated saints in western Christendom, George was a
soldier in the Roman army.
On a human level, the hagiography of Saint George is one of
inspiring self-sacrifice in the name of faith. Diocletian was George’s Roman
emperor and he favoured George. He promoted George to the rank of “Tribunus”
and made him a member of the imperial guard. In AD 302, Diocletian saw the rise of Christianity in his armed forces as a
threat to his own pagan sources of power and he commanded that every Christian
soldier in the army should be arrested and every other soldier should offer a
sacrifice to the Roman
gods of the time.
George objected to this command. Indeed George made an issue of this attempt to extirpate Christianity from the Roman Empire. In front of the army, George affirmed his Christianity and declared his worship of Jesus Christ. Diocletian actually liked and admired George but he was an emperor and such an affront to his command could not go unpunished. Even so, Diocletian offered George land, money and slaves if he would only make a sacrifice to the Roman gods. George refused to back down and he was decapitated on April 23, 303.
Christianity could have been content with the human Saint George
who assumed, after all, a super-human stance in staying true to his faith. But
it seemed as if this remarkable human story was in itself not persuasive enough.
So early Christianity borrowed, as it so frequently did, from pagan mythology: Perseus for example had saved the fair Andromeda from the clutches of a dragon long before
Saint George ever took up a lance.
The variations of the theme of Saint George slaying the dragon are
several and various. However the allegorical meaning of Saint George and the
dragon is about the triumph of Christianity over pagan beliefs. Furthermore
since the recognition of the divine in nature is at the heart of Pagan belief,
Saint George is effectively slaying not only a dragon but a deep human
awareness of the natural world. The dragon is the power of the divine that
pagans recognise in the ongoing cycles of life and death and the natural world.
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| The Chinese Dragon at the source of Primal power. By courtesy of bfc-creations.com |
In contrast in China to his day, the dragon is a metaphor for
worthy and admirable people; in Modern China they say “Hoping one's son will
become a dragon" (望子成龍).
The Chinese Dragon breathes the essence of life and power in the form of the seasons, bringing water from rain, warmth from the sunshine, wind from the seas and soil from the earth. The Chinese Dragon is the ultimate representation of the forces of Mother Nature. The greatest divine force on Earth.
With all of this power, it is not surprising that the Emperor
of China used the dragon as a symbol of imperial power and strength. In
other words, Chinese history had no George to slay the dragon or indeed to
overcome pagan beliefs. Unlike the dreadful Western Dragons, Chinese Dragons
are beautiful, friendly, and wise. They are the angels of the Orient. Instead
of being hated, they are loved and once worshiped.
So at least in ancient times, nature was intrinsic for the Chinese. They placed faith in nature, not just as the symbolic dragon but more substantially in the Taoist religion.
For a Taoist, naturalness or being true to nature is a central
concern. It describes the "Primal" condition of people and the
world. It is a dynamic, restless concept associated with spontaneity and
creativity.
Taoism is a study of the Tao or the Way of All Things. Whilst
in Taoism a precise definition of Tao is regarded as infeasible we
may think of it loosely as the ultimate creative principle of the universe. All
things are unified and connected in the Tao.
Today there are around
25,000 Taoists priests and nuns in China and over 1,500 temples.
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