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G’day everyone. This is my current understanding of the first parts of the first chapter of the Dao De Jing. The Dao just is and always has been and always will be. It’s infinitely bigger and smaller than we can ever know or experience. It is beyond description by mere words. I equate it with whatever caused the Universe (or my limited concept and experience of the Universe) to come into being. I don’t consider the Dao to be a deity as I believe that ‘In the beginning, Man created gods’. Nor do I believe the Dao is supernatural as I consider it is wholly natural. As for the naming, I see Laozi saying something like, “Because the Dao has always been, it has always ‘existed’. As it is the first thing to have existed and the only thing to have always existed, it has not required a name. A name is something you give to something else to describe and identify that something else. The Dao doesn’t need to identify itself, even if it is capable of needing to indentify anything. It is only after it had started the process of creation that it required a name, and it was not the Dao that required it be given a name, but the Dao’s creation that required the Dao be given a name, and it was the Dao’s creation that named the Dao. Because it was the Dao’s creation that named it and because what exists now will not eternally exist, any name that is given to the Dao can not eternally exist and any name given to the Dao is not the Dao’s name but only a name given to the Dao.” Of course, all of the above is only my opinion and understanding. It’s great finding a site like this where so many other opinions and understandings can be found and mulled over.

G'day everyone. I am interested in the Dao De Jing as a philosophical work. I love the simple, though profound, logic found in the book. Laozi wrote with such economy of words but expressed so much! I am currently working on my own translation of the book. I can't really read Chinese but I have a couple of Chinese/English glossaries that I am using, plus there are over a hundred English translations to compare what I am getting from the text with what others have found, and of course the internet is an almost inexhaustible source of resources. I find it is a great book to read and meditate over. The more you read it and then take time to think about what you've just read, the more you get out of it. If you ask me what my favourite chapter is, the answer will change every week!