Apech

Give it up - this is called a conversation.

Hey I didn't know they had TaoBums threads in those days! Ha ha. Excellent as ever - thanks for the wisdom.

Do you mean singularity as in black-hole? I would only ask what 'before' would mean when there is no time or at least no time as we experience/understand it.? I don't think there is any origin - just ... process or something ... think of a word ... I don't know its name so I call it Tao (sort of thing).

Well ... I had to look that up ... but no ... I do not think Tao=Spanda ... and I don't get why you think that.

LOL Mr. Cow your life seems very stimulating ... make sure you get enough rest .... scattered near toaster... can't believe its not butter double negative.

Well for a start the Ch 25 of LZ quoted by Stig at the beginning. Reading this and looking at the sequence at the end it is easy to think: Tao >>> Heaven >>>Earth >>>Man as a sequential list of causation. This would make Tao an original cause or 'prime mover' ... like God (or a God). This is an easy target for the critique of dependent origination. However I think this is all a misunderstanding brought about by our natural tendency to look for origins. We abstract the origin, like looking back to the Big Bang as if its something that happened once and now isn't happening - while in actuality the Big Bang is still happening as in the cosmic background radiation. Ch. 25 is not talking about any kind of sequential causal relationship but is talking about a hierarchy of profundity if you like. The most profound understanding of what is being Tao. Where the text says: "Standing alone and unchanging, Ever present and in motion." You get the sense of the kind of inner dynamic tension of Tao. It stands but is in motion, it is alone but 'ever present' i.e. here and now in what is happening in this very moment. It is absolute in that it does not depend on anything else, no outer cause and yet it is not abstracted from our immediate experience. It is a 'real absolute' if you like. That's what I meant.

heralded the day... waited through noon till sunset in bed sleeping now. in bed sleeping now with dreams of another day my exciting life.

Yes ... but some of the texts do suggest this interpretation which makes the refutation difficult. As I think I put somewhere above dependent origination is an anti-dote to thinking about primary causes etc. ... if you don't have those ideas you don't need the anti-dote.

Vaji, If the Tao had a will of movement, how would it ever stop? If it has no will of movement how would it ever start? Or something like that. You seem to want the Tao to be a primary cause, like God. Perhaps you need to deconstruct the idea of an origin.(?) Cheers John

Stig, Beautiful really. No not you! The pattern and your explanation. (lol). Nature is like this I think. It has simple mathematical relationships (like fibbonacci (sp?) and the laws of harmonics) and yet we experience it as a chaotic and full of unique things (e.g. every snow drop or grain of sand). Is this Heaven and Earth in evidence? In any case it is all evidence of Tao, the way following its own nature (or Nature). PS. Everyone else (nearly) will you please stop bickering about Buddhism (for or against) - I've read some really dumb posts above - its a real turn off. Cheers John

Hi Stig, I think the Chladni (sp? I didn't google it !) figures (the sand patterns caused by sound vibrations) are interesting but I would interpret this way. Sound as being vibrational energy is insubstantial but energetic and can fill space. When it interacts with the sand it creates structure in matter - this is an example of how simple vibrational energy can create structures. I would say that this is Earth (sand) conforming to Heaven (sound). Both these conform to Tao (which conforms to Nature ... or its own nature). If we said that Heaven is free energy (filling space) and Earth is structured energy compacted into forms then all this would be about the interaction of the two. But although Heaven conforms to Tao you cannot make the equation of Tao=Heaven as this would be similar to the error of equating it to God (or perhaps by trying to say that the Godhead (Absolute) = God the Father ... in Christian Mysticism ... BTW I have no idea why I wondered into this way of thinking ha ha). Regardless of this theological stuff .. you can see my point maybe. This is the same as my problem with the Ontological Essence of Life - which could be said to be perhaps evidence of Tao but not that it is the Tao itself.

Heck, I wanted to rejoin this conversation but so many posts have flown by I don't know where to start. So just a couple of quick points: Marblehead : feel free to respond to anything said to me by the way. The thing about the Big Bang - and I think this is worth saying because its important about origins - people think of empty space and then a big explosion like a billion supernovas or something similar - this is completely wrong. There was no space or time before the Big Bang - both space and sequential time as we experience it came into being with the Big Bang. This is difficult to think about because it runs counter to our experience of the everyday world - but love it or hate it that is the theory (a theory I might add which is supported by all empirical observations so its not just some mad scientists dream. The consequence of this is that when you think of the origin ... then you have to think f the beginning of time itself and not just a very large number of years. The same goes with space ... space itself is expanding as a result of the Big Bang not just things expanding in space. When we talk about beginingless time then perhaps we could say all the time there ever has been since there was time at all (if you see what I mean). Vaj, Can I call you Vaj? or perhaps the diminutive Vajinho (but that starts to sound vaguely anatomical LOL) - I don't think I am confusing Tao with my Buddhist influenced mind (whatever that is) - I think that people write and speak about the Tao in a lot of ways because that is possible. Sometimes this may sound like some kind of irreducible underlying cause or whatever - but sometimes it doesn't. What Taoism or certainly philosophical Taoism brings (to me) is a great and profound wisdom about the world and ourselves what I might call a sagacity. This wisdom is not fooled into thinking it is something it is not. If you try to pin it down to something like an ontological essence then you will get very quickly confused. That is because while such an idea might be encompassed by the Tao it is not the Tao (or an adequate definition of it).

Can we go back to the original question (if it was one)? Is Tao an ontological essence of life? I recognize the quotes that Stig has given to back up this idea but my reaction to any statement which starts with 'the Tao is ....' is to put on my hat of skepticism and say well maybe it is and maybe it isn't. LZ made it clear that the Tao cannot be named or spoken and so any statement of this kind is open to challenge. I don't say this from an anti-intellectual POV (just in case GiH is lurking) but simply to say the human tendency to want to nail a concept with a hard definition every time doesn't work with the Tao. Ontology is about the study of the nature of 'being' and as such is concerned with what 'is', 'essence' is to do with some irreducible inner form; and life as they say, is life. So is the Tao some kind of irreducible core of life? Well maybe, kind of, but no not exactly. The Tao 'placed' (again careful with use of words) before Heaven and Earth or beyond the named and the nameless encompasses the mysterious which itself may be beyond anything that could be said to 'be' (depending on how we are defining existence). So we might say that beings or things only arise because of Tao - and say this because we perceive them to exist and as they are 'real' they arise in conformity with what is stated man (+things) conform to Earth, Earth conforms to Heaven and Heaven conforms to Tao (Tao conforms to Nature). But this does not make Tao an essence or indeed an origin. For me (and I may be only speaking for myself here) the problem with the word origin ... (I have no idea about the Chinese terms) ... is that it implies a cause which is somehow separate from the result. So like with the Big Bang everyone tends to think that this is like some enormous explosion that 'happened' 13.7 billion years ago. That is the origin of the universe, it happened then and what we have now is the universe itself (the result). So when did the Big Bang stop and the Universe start? The question is daft. The Universe is the Big Bang now. So even with basic mechanical cause and effect there are no gaps between cause, process and effect except those that we make mentally. They are all a continuity. The universe is a continuum of energy with evolving processes within it. Even this is a way of speaking and we are tending to think of the universe as a finite zone of activity and not an infinite realm of possibility. The philosophy of dependent origination is a kind of antidote to our habitual tendency to separate out things and treat them as if they exist in their own little bubbles. As such it is useful, I think. On the other hand the Tao is talking about how ungraspable the essential nature of things is. This is why the texts often tells stories which turn everything we suppose to be true on its head and allow us to see everything in a new light - expressing Tao conforming to its own Nature. I would suggest that if you do that well enough you don't need dependent origination as an antidote or perhaps you will get it anyway without even trying too hard. So while I can see where you are coming from Stig I can't really agree with your interpretation. Much as I would like to.

it's unnecessary.

That's the idea

Thanks as ever Marblehead. This makes me feel better having been fairly useless all my life.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=5OLP4nbAVA4

That's true but its still impressive I think.

This is a stunning view by the Planck telescope of the light emitted by cosmic interstellar dust and the big bang background radiation. Planck ... add also dark matter and dark energy ... indeed space is not empty.

do we come to that? or like a sudden cool breeze does it come for us?

Its a great chat up line ... "you're ugly but you know you're ugly ... so I like you" I think I'll try that .... errr maybe not ... you have to be enlightened or very quick on your feer to get away with that one.

Today? Tomorrow? It's so inevitable There's no request stop. A haiku about missing the bus.

Universal life A specific time and place For me to die in. A haiku about the fragility of existence.

We live to have sex? Hours and hours of waiting, Rare moments of joy. A haiku about long term relationships