Search the Community

In a less astute place (not on this site) I encountered once again the reaction of those who appear to to deride any words at all about the Dao on the simplistic pretext that anyone who says anything about the Dao is mistaken because it cannot be described. In answer I posted the following. My second post, to simply share amongst new friends. Others may well have encountered this. Greetings to all. _/\_ "Looking and yet not seeing it we thus call it "elusive." Listening and yet not hearing it we thus call it "inaudible" Groping and yet not getting it We thus call it "intangible" Because in sight, sound and touch it is beyond determination We construe it as inseparably one. As for this "one" - it's surface is not dazzling nor is it underside dark. Ever so entangled, it defies discrimination And reverts again to indeterminacy. This is what is called the form of the formless And the image of indeterminacy This is called the vague and the indefinite. Following behind you will not see its rear; Encountering it you will not see its head. Hold tightly onto way-making in the present To mange what is happening right now And to understand where it began in the distant past. This is what is called the drawstring of way-making" Chapter 14, "Dao De Jing, A Philosophical Translation" by Roger T Ames and David L. Hall. From the commentary of the translators; "...Unlike the things we think we know, cosmic way-making will not yield itself up to our most basic categories of location and determination; bright and dark, inside and outside, and subject and object, one and many. And when we know this cosmic way-making better, we come to understand that we don't really know "things" at all." My further note was: I understand this to mean that saying something is or isn't the Dao is problematical. I would be as unsure to say the Dao is not in this or that, as much as to say it is in this or that. _/\_ "We know it by this." This phrase unqualified and without referral to anything. is found in a few places in the Dao De Jing. What is "this"? Honor the Dao.