Is tao moral?

[silent thunder]

I had trouble with the straw dog analogy for a long time and resented its seeming implication that nothing had any value or inherent worth, but then while reading a description of the festivals which prompted their use and how the straw dogs are used I had a shift in perspective on it and it made more sense to me.

 

The straw dogs were constructed and carried around during the festival and were in that sense precious while they were in use and for the duration of the festival were revered.  But at the end of the festival, once the process was complete and their purpose spent, they were just dropped to the ground and disregarded going back to the bedding of the streets and horse stalls, their temporary form and use being fulfilled they returned to the source they came from without much fanfare and no grief.  It was never the shape that was of value, but the connection to what they represented, to their connection with the process.

 

To me it's not so much a view that nothing has any value and that we are all inherently worthless, but that form is not the end of all value and that once fulfilled, there is no need for great attachment to, nor grief at the loss of form and substance.

[dust]

To me it's not so much a view that nothing has any value and that we are all inherently worthless, but that form is not the end of all value and that once fulfilled, there is no need for great attachment to, nor grief at the loss of form and substance.

 

Your original interpretation involving 'worthlessness', as I see it, perhaps says something about your tendency to need to attach value to things more than the chapter itself. I certainly agree much more with your latest interpretation.

 

The DDJ is rarely about 'worth' or 'worthlessness', or 'morality' vs 'immorality', or any other dualistic human concepts. Even if we (just for a moment) say that your latest revelation about the straw dogs is wrong, we still have no need to think of the chapter in terms of words like 'value', 'worthless', 'moral' etc. It is not saying we have no worth, nor that we have worth.

 

To say that the ten thousand things are as straw dogs to Heaven and Earth can simply be to say that Heaven and Earth have no 'feeling' one way or the other. The Infinite River creates all, contains all, is all, and is beyond all, especially all abstract human notions like 'value'.

 

Going back to your original thought, about resenting the possible implication that nothing has any inherent value... Well, what is inherent value?

 

'Value' and 'worth' and 'usefulness' are meaningless to anything but a human. They are concepts, and only exist in relation to us as sentient beings capable of conceiving such concepts. Nothing but something used or designed by a human can possibly have intrinsic value because nothing was created, nothing serves a purpose, except that which the designer/user intends.

 

Some claim that 'life has value'. For whom? If a human life has value, so a pig's life does, so a worm's, and so a blade of grass has value, and a rock, and a carbon atom, and a proton, and a quark... so, everything has value. And value becomes meaningless.

[3bob]

Solomon went beyond his "Vanity of vanities" hopefully we can to...

[opendao]

 

We've discussed this in the DDJ sub-area... but I finally came to the opinion to take the words very literally:

 

Bu Ren:  Not Ren... thus, leaving Ren untranslated but which is a hallmark of Confucian thought as humanness or benevolence.

 

Thus:  Not [Enter anything you can conjure]

 

Bu Ren here means that higher virtue is not based on Ren-Humaness principle. 

 

Humanness-Ren is how people (should) understand moral and treat each other. So it's a human level. It's a custom. It's a ritual in its core.

 

In contrast, Bu Ren doesn't mean that there is no morality (=amorality), it means that the highest virtue is based on other principles then Ren.

[leth]

Moral is a word, and a mental construct. It is something we use to understand our experiences. Ultimately there is no such thing as Moral. But that which we experience is, and whether Moral as we understand it is part of that depends a lot on how we conceptualise things. We use moral to make describe what we consider a correct conduct, but conduct ontologically there is no such thing as correct nor is there such a thing as conduct. But we interprete our experiences and sort them together using these mental constructs. And thus moral is a rather usefull word, because we do think about right and wrong, and we have opinions about behaviour.

 

Dao is aslo a word, and also a mental construct, we use it to describe something which is beyond words however, something that is beyond our own experiences, something we can only grasp at using our innermost of expereinces.

 

Dao has De, De is the modus operandi of Dao. In our limited way of thinking we can make a parabel to behaviour and to moral if we wish, but such a parabel will alwasy be flawed by our limitations of the mental constructs we use.

 

In fact our minds are always limited by the mental constructs that we use, and this is true whenever we use language of any sort. But Alas, language is the only way to communicate, so we must accept these flaws and we must do our best to understand them and go beyond them.

 

With such an understanding of the limitations of our lagnuage, and the way the words are used it should be possible to say and agree with both the idea that Dao has a moral and the idea that Dao does not have a moral. Because esentially it is only about how we percieve the mental constructs and how we apply them, but we should also realise that both of the statements are not really true, from an ontological standpoint the question itslef does not really make sense.

[spiraltao]

I will go out on a limb and say just as deviance, morality is relative. 

[Marblehead]

I will go out on a limb and say just as deviance, morality is relative. 

You didn't go out on the limb.  You are still at the roots.

[Aaron]

Actually the Tao Te Ching teaches that morality is relative to society. It also tells us how we should live our lives. It is very much a moral text, in the same way Zazen is the compass for Zen. Someone who reads the Tao Te Ching probably doesn't understand how they can achieve Te (or Virtue with a capital v). That's one of the goals of the book, to start us on a course of "right" action that will allow us to understand what Te actually is. We all know te, or the virtue of man, because we're taught it in school, church, and all the social institutions, but we can't know Te unless we allow Te to happen. That begins by behaving in a way that cultivates, Tao in our lives. When we achieve Te we can see the folly of te, but we can't explain it or express it, but it changes our perception of ourselves, even if but a second, into a person of Tao. 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Aaron

[Wu Ming Jen]

When we discover or remember we are apart of the Tao, good, great, true, divine which makes us connected and related to all things we discover nobility of character this is what morals are based on,Morals are not the real deal, Morals are more like some dandruff falling from the Tao.

[CummingsJD]

I believe morals are a subject to the individual, and therefore some see something as moral, and others see other things as moral. Some people do not even claim to  The Tao, however is there whether we think it is or not. And our perceptions may change of what it is, but this does not mean the Tao changes. The Tao may encompass everything that everyone thinks, but it does not change from person to person like morality does. 

 

I hope this makes sense, because sometimes I barley make sense to me. 

[Taoist Texts]

The answer is rather simple.

To the moral people Tao is moral.

To the amoral people Tao is amoral.

[Kongming]

The Dao itself is beyond distinctions of good and evil, moral and immoral, etc. since it is, at the Absolute level, transcendent and nondual. That said Daoism certainly has a moral or ethical dimension, which can be read about in titles such as Livia Kohn's "Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism":

 

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-4211-9781931483025.aspx

[Marblehead]

That said Daoism certainly has a moral or ethical dimension, which can be read about in titles such as Livia Kohn's "Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism":

And this is very, very important to keep in mind.

 

There really is a difference between the De of Dao and the de of man.

[Taoist Texts]

The Dao itself is beyond distinctions of good and evil, moral and immoral, etc. since it is, at the Absolute level, transcendent and nondual.  

Says who?

[Kongming]

Says who?

 

Since the Dao is the source of all reality, it precedes and transcends all relative categories, and is prior to the "Two" or differentiation into various polarities such as male/female, etc. Furthermore the Dao at the Absolute level is often described as wu or empty and pu or primordial simplicity, i.e. without differentiation and nondual.

[Taoist Texts]

Kongming, your reasoning is logical and clever, but it is your own. It is not what the chinese canonical sources  say.

[Kongming]

Kongming, your reasoning is logical and clever, but it is your own. It is not what the chinese canonical sources  say.

 

The Daodejing is the source of the view of the Dao preceding the One, which produced the Two, etc. I am pretty sure the sources for wu and pu also are to be found in the DDJ, Zhuangzi, Huainanzi, etc. 

 

And while I can't recall exactly which texts and masters I've read state it, I know I've read the Dao described as nondual in my readings in the past; I'll have to see if I can find where.

[dawei]

The Daodejing is the source of the view of the Dao preceding the One, which produced the Two, etc. I am pretty sure the sources for wu and pu also are to be found in the DDJ, Zhuangzi, Huainanzi, etc. 

 

And while I can't recall exactly which texts and masters I've read state it, I know I've read the Dao described as nondual in my readings in the past; I'll have to see if I can find where.

 

"nondual" is still a mind comparative based on reasoning and reading.

 

How do you directly experience Dao?

[Marblehead]

"nondual" is still a mind comparative based on reasoning and reading.

This is true.  And it can't be prevented because we have a thinking mind.  Were I a honey bee the statement would be false for me.

[silent thunder]

That makes me wonder... is honey moral?

[Kongming]

"nondual" is still a mind comparative based on reasoning and reading.

 

How do you directly experience Dao?

 

Of course, words fall short of being able to describe that which precedes all words and conceptual categories. Words such as nondual are, like the famous Chan saying, "fingers pointing to the moon" and will not allow one to directly apprehend anything, or as the DDJ has it "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao, The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."

 

That said, certain words are more suitable than others in attempting to describe the indescribable, and nondual fits better than duality since, again, the Dao at the Absolute level is the source of all things and prior to differentiation.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Kongming

[Marblehead]

That makes me wonder... is honey moral?

Yes!  And it tastes good too.  And it is the only natural food that will never spoil.  (Yes, it will solidify over time if exposed to air a couple times.  But then, honey sugar cubes are good too.)

[silent thunder]

When I moved to Southern California 17 years ago, I developed for the first time in my life allergies.  Rather intense allergies to a variety of the plants in the deserts to the East of us.  As I really despise the majority of pharmaceutical trash that is foisted on our culture by the medical trade, I refused to turn to any of the big club remedies. 

 

A very savvy woman recommended to me, that I go to my local farmer's market and get local organic honey and eat it often.  As the bees are gathering and processing from all the local plants, it's a great way to develop antigens.  It took a few years, but I no longer have any allergies when the Santa Ana's blow.  Thank you Bees!

[Marblehead]

What if you realized that there need be no difference between the de of Dao and the de of man?

 

Perhaps that is what Lao Tzu achieved?

Well, Duh!

 

But regardless, I'm not going to go riding off into the desert on my ass.

 

We humans need more order in our life than nature provides us naturally.  Therefore the need for the Dao of man.

[Brian]

With patience, we may become aware of the still, small voice. Few do, of course, because few know either patience or stillness.