Ten Thousand Things

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Eliade on The Tao & The Ten Thousand Things

Posted by Jean Miyake Downey on April 27, 2006

I have been looking at the writings of Mircea Eliade, and just re-discovered some more about the concept of "Ten Thousand Things," a Mahayana Buddhist concept that has Taoist roots.

According to Eliade, Taoism itself is an amalgamation of hidden diverse sources, including the shamanism and "techniques of ecstasy" of the Ch'u people whose culture became assimilated into dominant Han culture, but not without changing the Han culture, which already had multicultural origins.

Reading Eliade sheds light on many such "hidden" influences of ancient cultures, seemingly "dead," however still living on throughout our planet. Many cultures have only seemed to have vanished. But they remain alive, assimilated, still lending inspiration, in the psychological depths of cultures that have continued.

Our world has been "post-modern" since it became "modern," with ancient, medieval, etc. leitmotifs embedded throughout the psychological and physical landscapes of "modernity." But we didn't start waking up to this until the 1990's.

On pages 13-21 of Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas: Volume Two, From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity –

The Chinese historiographers were conscious of the distance that separated their classical civilization from the beliefs and practices of the "barbarians." But among these "barbarians" we frequently find ethnic stocks that were partly or wholly assimilated and whose culture ended by becoming an integral part of Chinese civilization. We will give only one example: that of the Chu'u. Their kingdom was already established about 1100 BCE. Yet the Ch'u, who had assimilated the Chang culture, were of Mongol origin, and their religion was characterized by shamanism and techniques of ectasy. The unification of China under the Han, though it brought the destruction of Ch'u culture, faciliated the dissemination of their religious beliefs and practices throughout China. It is probable that a number of their cosmological myths and religious practices were adopted by Chinese culture; as for their ecstatic techniques, they reappear in certain Taoist circles...

In chapter 42 of the "Tao Te Ching" we read: "The tao gave birth to One. One gave birth to Two. Two gave birth to Three. Three gave birth to the ten thousand beings. The ten thousand beings carry the Yin on their back and encircle the Yang...

The "One" is equivalent to the "whole"; it refers to the primordial totality, a theme familiar to many mythologies..we can consider it the Mother of this world, but I do not know its name; I will call it Tao...

That which is nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth. That which has a name is the Mother of the ten thousand beings..

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