The Universe Emerging from and Returning To Dao

[Daeluin]

To me dao is everywhere, just out of sight. I can look in its direction anywhere I go, it can never be lost. It is right there, yet in its mysteriousness and subtlety it is ever out of reach. We emerged from it, yet how do we return to it?

 

Like and inhale and an exhale, all things come to completion. Yet they say the universe is still expanding - not from one place but from everywhere, simultaneously. Perhaps the other side of this universal breath will at some point unfold to return. But where did it come from? Where is it going?

 

They says the concept of hundun is somewhat like a primordial soup preceding the creation of the universe, where the energies pour out into expression and creation. From this central realm perhaps it then unfolds into the interstellar medium and into nebulae and so on.

 

 

Along the way things become more and more separated, even as they become more unique. Many extremes are explored where there is little change or exchange for long periods of time. Sometime there are collisions, explosions, implosions - more extremes. We have our massive starts that end their life as a supernova emitting massive amounts of light and outward waves and then becoming black holes to suck it all back in again. And we have our smaller star cycles that do something of an in between, becoming dense internally and creating nebulae externally.

 

All is a dance of balance. When one extreme culminates the seed of the other extreme is born and grows, back and forth. We come from the center, how do we return to that center? It must take much refinement and harmonization of these energies to create these conditions.

 

Many might think we are only talking about atoms and matter and mass here. But spirit is vital to this equation and follows these principles as well, on the lighter end of things.

 

And then there is the manifest, and the mysterious, the obvious and the subtle. The dao is hidden within the mysterious, so if we only study the manifestations, we do not return to it. And if we  only return to the dao alone, we abandon the manifestations.

 

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

 

From our perspective here on earth, we can easily learn to see into either side. How did this come to be? Life.

 

Along with our heavy and light, we have that balanced place that is in between. This is qi. It is energy. It exists everywhere and is like the friction between all things as they change, something like a glue connecting things to the center. Nothing can go too far to one extreme without dying and transforming into the other.

 

Life is what happens when there is enough balance between enough of the extremes. Ballance between heavy and light, hot and cold, wet and dry, stable and unstable, movement and stillness, light and dark, etc, etc.

 

 

At first it is very delicate, but over time, as long as the conditions are stable, it grows. As conditions change, it changes. When these conditions are found on a large, receptive body, it grows to cover that body. Over the aeons, all of these life forms that emerge over the changes come to interact with each other, press upon each other, vie for the resources that sustains their life and continued growth.

 

That's the thing though... there isn't enough for them all to grow indefinitely - they become each others checks and balances, allowing each to find ways to slowly attempt to overcome each other. In old growth forests these checks and balances are so established and refined that a refined energy emerges. This is where the medicinal plants that are more sensitive to conditions emerge, like ginseng.

 

Then, in this environment, the qi that is between things has become increasingly refined to the point where a new foundation is formed for even more subtle life to emerge. The energetic flow within the forest, and between the forests, through the mountains and valleys becomes established and stabilized, allowing energy centers to build and grow, connecting deeply to within the earth, connecting to far off lands, recycling, refining, communicating.

 

Each new layer of refinement that emerges is constrained to this environment and its cycles. The more it tries to grow in a linear way, the more it is shaped by and forced to adapt to the circularity of its container, which leads to increased refinement, which leads to increased diversity and potential for even more refinement. The finer things become, the finer the energy becomes and the more we begin to merge the manifest back into the mystery, allowing the mystery to nurture the manifest in deeper ways, unfolding into more refined and balanced life that merges deeper with the mystery.

 

The more this pattern continues, the more it connects the universe back to the central realms, and to dao.

 

 

It is said that thousands of years and decades ago these central realms were within reach. That the energy was so potent that sickness was hard to find. That qi today isn't what it used to be. And so on. What happened?

 

With the increasing refinement, the human species emerges. It is able to become a predator like no other predator. Previously a predator would only kill for food, not for sport, would take the sick and already dying, not the healthiest and strongest. Would only live in the moment, taking as they needed. Previously predators who reached the top of the food chain still had other checks and balances to prevent their total domination of the food chain.

 

The human species was able to learn to do these things. The stronger it became, the more it learned to buffer itself from living in the moment. Preservation of food meant it could stay healthy and full of energy longer and with greater certainty, but also allowed it to kill more than it needed to, whenever it wanted to. Building of fences, roofs, walls, floors, allowed it to protect itself from checks and balances from other predators, giving yet more certainty to survival. Agriculture allowed it to cut down the forest and wall off its own large section of earth to grow food according to it's own desires and for its own consumption, completely removing it from the natural cycle of the food chain.

 

 

This continued to snowball as the human species refined its tools and ability to destroy nature and use those resources to further its race against other humans for power. At first this wasn't noticeable, but today it should be easily noted by everyone. We have covered the earth with fields for growing artificially altered crops, have turned large portions of the earth into desert where qi cannot flow like it does in the forests. We have turned much of the ocean into a giant repository for trash and sewage, have mined much of the earth's precious crystals and minerals responsible for energy refinement, turned trees into sheets to encode countless words to be read by minds that scare away the spiritual energy that likes stillness, have sensationalized violence and sexuality in ways that may be encoded into us over and over again, continuously rebroadcasting these energetic messages that encourage the lustful consumption of resources within and without in the name of winning the battle to get ahead of one's neighbors. It's a dog eat dog world, even though an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Well blind we are, and our habituated momentum has charted a course for extreme stagnation and separation of energy.

 

 

And of course this is fine, and perfectly natural.

 

But can we see how we have left behind the refined and highly harmonized place that once, not too long ago, allowed our planetary energies to connect back so deeply into the mysterious?

 

Today, even if one steps out of the way of all that, can one live a human life that does not contribute to this continue momentum in some way?

 

Can one cultivate one's own refined energy in such a way that is not immediately exploited by the greed of society?

 

How does one heal others without simply enabling some people to succeed over others in the rat race that continues to feed upon nature?

 

How does one encourage discussion of these matters without contributing to the mentalization of spiritual energy that is chased away when there is not mental openness and stillness?

 

The discussions tend to be endless and lead more toward fighting against the worst offenders. Fighting can create checks and balances, but opposition creates a polarization that maintains the current paradigm when it is evenly matched, but often simply entrenches the stronger side of an imbalanced equation, arming it and giving it further protection from future attacks.

 

How does one be a part of the system without feeding it?

 

How does one participate in the manifestations without losing connection to the mysterious?

 

I think the universe can return to itself through places that support the potential of high refinement, like here on earth. I see how immortal daoists have used the potential here to return their soul to the central realms, but they abandon their shells and ultimately disconnect, abandoning their potential to nurture that connection that so few are able to make. Walking in ziran for eternity, rooted in dao, ever flowing in harmonious dance between heaven and earth, perhaps in time humanity too might come to return to dao.

 

So perhaps the answer to all of this is rooted in de (power/virtue):

 

An ancient scripture says:

 

Superior virtue has no doing: there is nothing whereby it does.

Inferior virtue does: there is something whereby it does.

 

dao de jing ch 1

 

Another scripture says:

 

Superior virtue keeps one's form intact by means of the Tao.

Inferior virtue extends one's existence by means of a technique.

 

Huanghe fu

Cultivating the Tao, Liu Yiming, tl Fabrizio Pregaio

 

The overall concept here is related to the separation of heavy and light. It is natural for one to sink and the other to rise, leading to separation. When we bring the awareness of the light down to the heavy, they return to each other. Over time they heal one another and become more pure. In this purity, there is naturally external influence that invites others to follow one's example, without saying a word.

 

 

 

 

[Daeluin]

Haha... so I was asked to make this thread by copying over a post I made here, as is. Guess I missed the as-is part. To me they are both the same. Anyway, here is the original:

 

To me dao is everywhere, just out of sight. I can look in its direction anywhere I go, it can never be lost.

I think from birth I've recognized that the rest of society doesn't get it.... that the trajectory of this 15,000 year stretch of human momentum has left behind the refined cycles of balance that connect to dao. The life on this planet had grown so refined, so refined and harmonious as to be ripe with manifestations of the mysterious, the point where our species comes around and has some say in the matter. Only instead of continuing to flow with the harmony and refinement and allowing the natural potential to continue to unfold, we get in the way.

This is fine for a while, until eventually we got in the way so much that we broke the natural systems of refinement and the whole thing is changed in a way that required large lengths of time to fully recover from. Only in the mean time the seed has been planted and the self-serving-decisions-at-the-expence-of-others continues on and on, and over time little things break here and there, and the refinement becomes coarse in some places, stagnant or dead in some places, sick in others. This momentum continues, and while the conditions are still ripe for allowing the mystery to unfold into manifestation and connecting manifestation back into the mystery, while the dao is still right there, we've come to often exploit this potential while we still follow the momentum of self-serving behavior.

So there are many ways of cultivating that can heal, both internally and externally, but often I sense it is easy to fall into the timing of that other momentum of self-serving behavior. So much is simply timing that leads to synchronicity. What is it synchronizing with, and does this momentum lead to dao, or does it support exploiting the refined environment we were born to?

ZhuangZi has an interesting exploration of this with Robber Zhi, who kills people, eats them, steals, and in general hacks away at the established kingdom of humanity. And yet from his perspective, the kingdom of humanity is doing the same to the surrounding web of life, so what he leads is virtuous. ZhuangZi calls both sides perverted, and generally asks why we participate in these games of scope and leverage rather than simply resting upon one's own natural flow between heaven and earth.

Perhaps it is OK to start with the deliberate cultivation, but one still needs to avoid the traps of deliberate cultivation that aligns with self-serving momentum. There are so many ways the established human momentum drains the balanced refinement of our environment. Just look at our food sources and waste practices. Most of us who are on the internet are contributing more to this than not, whether they cultivate or not. Though it seems like rene just uses a phone, haha! In any case, there are too many questions to really answer them all correctly, not when doing so means being a lot more mental than is healthy either! Spirit likes stillness, not thinking. So all just back to simply resting on the harmonious flow between heaven and earth. If we trust the dao and flow with it in our intention, we will find the way.

[rene]

Ten thousand thanks, Daeluin! Now I can more easily find the roots of your flowers, and promise not to yank on them too hard. (-:

[Silent Answers]

I wonder, do you see the message hidden in that last painting (and many others like it)?

[dwai]

The Human intellect/mind is a double-edged sword. When used just right, it cuts through ignorance and illuminates the True Self, which doesn't cling to anything, is pure love and wisdom. When used too much, it creates an artificial construct that it moves heaven and earth to maintain - that is the state of our modern society - also leading to ignorance.

When used too little, well, we stay mired in the muck of ignorance. 

 

It's best to drop the mind...and stop the clinging.

[Brian]

The intellect is a chisel which imagines itself the artist.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"To me dao is everywhere, just out of sight. I can look in its direction anywhere I go, it can never be lost. It is right there, yet in its mysteriousness and subtlety it is ever out of reach. We emerged from it, yet how do we return to it?"

-----

 

Tao is "Way".

 

Like "The way the cookie crumbles".

 

Or the Way to make a sandwich.

 

We could not have emerged from a Tao, or "the" Tao.

 

How could we return to what was never a destination?

 

How can we "attain" the Way to make a sandwich?

 

Because, that "Way" is not a thing.

 

However, we could "lose our/the Way".

 

And "find our/the Way".

 

The sandwich does not actually "emerge" from the Way of making it.

 

Nor will the sandwich "return" to "it".

 

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[blue eyed snake]

- - - - - - - 

 

So perhaps the answer to all of this is rooted in de (power/virtue):

 

 

The overall concept here is related to the separation of heavy and light. It is natural for one to sink and the other to rise, leading to separation. When we bring the awareness of the light down to the heavy, they return to each other. Over time they heal one another and become more pure. In this purity, there is naturally external influence that invites others to follow one's example, without saying a word.

 

thank you Daeluin, just hitting the button was not enough for this post

[Karl]

"This continued to snowball as the human species refined its tools and ability to destroy nature and use those resources to further its race against other humans for power. At first this wasn't noticeable, but today it should be easily noted by everyone. We have covered the earth with fields for growing artificially altered crops, have turned large portions of the earth into desert where qi cannot flow like it does in the forests. We have turned much of the ocean into a giant repository for trash and sewage, have mined much of the earth's precious crystals and minerals responsible for energy refinement, turned trees into sheets to encode countless words to be read by minds that scare away the spiritual energy that likes stillness, have sensationalized violence and sexuality in ways that may be encoded into us over and over again, continuously rebroadcasting these energetic messages that encourage the lustful consumption of resources within and without in the name of winning the battle to get ahead of one's neighbors. It's a dog eat dog world, even though an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Well blind we are, and our habituated momentum has charted a course for extreme stagnation and separation of energy."

 

Humans don't destroy nature, it cannot be destroyed, humans transform nature and unlike any other animal they must do so. It is irrational to 'race against other humans for power'; This comes from our early savage past in which we could only conceive of looting and conquest, but laissez faire capitalism solved that problem-if we let it, instead of continually resorting to savage barbarism.Humanity is not a collective with a hive nature, every human is capable of individual moral action and has that choice. Our transformation of raw nature requires our minds and production is a creative act not a destructive one-neither are we immune from nature as we must first obey nature in order to transform it.

 

We have sunk to a new low barbarism at this time because of philosophy. A philosophy that denied reason effectively blinded men. It told men they could not know reality, that there was no good and evil, that man was a pragmatist and his only need was pleasure for pleasures sake-hedonism. It stated that man was nothing more than a sacrificial animal with a duty to the state, or to his fellow man, that his aim was to be an altruist, to be selfless and that he should snatch his pleasure wherever he could at any cost. It has denied the value of capitalism and substituted state controlled cronyism, denied people property, freedom and the right to their own lives. It has killed hope and true ambition and replaced it with political graft in which the real producer/businessman has been vilified as 'robber barons' and 'greedy capitalist' intent on nothing but exploitation of men and materials. It is those who produce nothing, who choose who should produce and what their profit should be.

[3bob]

the Earth soul and great mother wins in the end for the hungry evil is cast out where all that is left for it to feed upon is its own abomination in the abyss...a place (so to speak) where there is no root and any sort of balance of elemental forces related to Tao can not be struck. 

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

Hun Dun is always occurring, but we dont notice it.

The Dao is always beginning, but we live in the yin world of karma, illness, and desire so we don't see it.

Things don't have a start and an end, they just have transitions between phases.   Your consciousness is a transitional phase of reality occurring.   Going back to the root is to to let the human heart die and the dao heart be born  :) :)

[dust]

I wonder, do you see the message hidden in that last painting (and many others like it)?

 

Well I'm curious

[Silent Answers]

Well I'm curious

This is a (middle ages?) Western rendition of a very old theme; a theme that I've seen examples of in ancient Sumerian and Egyptian culture. You may have come across similar meaning in ancient TCM paintings that depict the human body/psyche as the scenery or goings on of society.

 

I'll let you work out the rest. Feel free to shoot me a message if you'd rather I just lay it out. Not because it's secret, but because it spoils the fun.

 

It's quite fitting for the post.

[Gerard]

Reach the end of the journey and you'll feel the entire reality in YOU. You and the rest, won't matter anymore since you realised there is no division. The mountains, the trees, wildlife, the people, the sun, the moon, the stars, the constant flow of reality into the ONE as one single event that flows within everything and is manifested outside.

 

It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again. (Parmenides)

 

 

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen
The seed of everything is in everything else
The descent to Hades is the same from every place. (Anaxagoras)

 

 

The traveler has reached the end of the journey! In the freedom of the infinite he is free from all sorrows, the fetters that bound him are thrown away, and the burning fever of life is no more. (Dhammapada)

 

The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, Being freed from all sense desires, Is not born again into this world.  (Karaniya Metta Sutta)

 

Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away. (Tao Teh Ching, 16)

 

 

 

 

All spiritual traditions are like rivers that flow into ONE ocean.

 

Edited September 22, 2016 by Gerard

[Daeluin]

Thank you for the replies.

 

I'm a fan of Steven Erikson's writing. Think Tolkien crossed with Martin.

 

Reading through his latest, Fall of Light, I discover he explores this theme quite thoroughly. The concepts of the cosmological expansion of source into dark and light and shadow are explored through the unfolding of an industrial society. The setting is one of fantasy, and yet the implications run deep into all-encompassing profundity, particularly as related to the intentional shapings of civilizations that mark a choice to diverge from the pre-existing paradigms of Nature.

 

Here's a seed from the book:

 

Flakes of snow drifted down from laden branches, carpeting the stone-lined track ahead, like the petals of fallen blossoms. Spring, however, seemed far away. The sound of his horse's hoofs was sharp and solid, and yet Captain Kellaras hear little echo, as the snow-shrouded forest made for a muted world. This was one of the few remaining stretches of true wilderness left in the realm, spared the axe only by an ancient royal mandate, granted toe an ancestor of House Tulla.

 

The night before, he had heard wolves, and their voices, rising so mournfully into the night, had stirred something primal within the captain, something he had not known existed. He pondered that experience now, as he let his horse choose its own pace on the slippery cobbles, and it seemed that his thoughts well matches his surroundings. Cloaked in strange isolation, where the only sounds he heard belonged to himself, his mount, and their journey.

 

Wilderness offered a curious solitude. The comforts of society were gone, and in their place, indifferent nature - but that indifference set forth a challenge to the spirit. It would be easy to choose to see it as cruel, and to then fear it, flee it, or destroy it. Even easier, perhaps, to surrender to animal instincts, to live or die by its own rules.

 

Long before villages, or towns, or cities, the wild forests were home to modest huddles of makeshift huts, to clans of family. Each camp no doubt commanded a vast range, since such forests were miserly in what they yielded. But by the hearth-fires along, the wild was kept at bay, and in those flames, a war had begun.

 

It was not difficult to see the path of devastation made by that still ongoing war, and from the perspective of where he now rode, in this silent forest, it was a challenge to find virtue in the many monuments to victory with which his kind now surrounded itself. Keeps of stone and timer laid claim to the simplest needs, of shelter and warmth and security. Villages, towns and indeed cities gave purpose and protection to the gathered denizens, and the pursuit of convenience was a powerful motivator in all things. All of these creations were fashioned from the bones of nature, the slain corpses in this eternal war. In this manner, the victors did enclose themselves in what they had killed, be it tree or wild stone.

 

Surrounded by death, it was little wonder that they would sense virtually nothing of what lay beyond it. And yet, from nature's bones the artists among the people would find and make things of great beauty, things that pleased the eye, with poetry of form and the peace of those forms rearranged in seeming balance. More to the point, dKellaras realized, so much of what was deemed  pleasing, or satisfying, or indeed edifying, was but a simulacrum, a reinventing of what nature already possessed, far beyond the lifeless walls and tamed fields.

 

Was art, then, nothing more than a stumbling, half-blind journey back into the wilderness, with each path selected in groping isolation, endlessly rediscovering what should have been already known, reinventing what already existed, recreating the beauty of what had already been slain?

 

It would be a shock indeed, should an artist reach this revelation: comprehending the relationship of their art with murder, with generations of destruction, and with this long, long journey away from those first hearth-fires, in that first forest, when the enemy at hand was first glimpsed, like a spark in the mind, and from it was born the first fear. The first unknown.

 

If imagination's birth had come from something as ignoble as fear, then, at last, Kellaras understood this eternal war. By a wilful twist of the mind, he could of course choose to be selective in what he saw, and what he felt, and, from those two forces in combination, in what he believed. A brightly gaze, then, to paint the world with the bliss of optimism, and every wonder crafted by the hand, whether mundane tool of glorious edifice, as symbols of the triumphant sp irit. But each such pronouncement, no matter how bold the assertion, or how adamant the claim to virtue, was but a cry in the face of a deeper silence, a silence in which lurked a vague unease, a yearning from something else, something more.

 

Lift high the gods and goddesses, if you will. Dream of exaltation, in what the altar bleeds, in what the fires burn, in what art we raise, in what industry we occupy our lives. Each is lifted into view from an ineffable need, a yearning, a hunger to fill some empty space inside.

 

Our spirits are not whole. Some crucial piece has been carved from them. If we go back, and back, to a forest such as this one, and make for ourselves an entire world of the same, we come to the silence, and the isolation, and the seed-ground of our every thought, beaten down. unlit and awaiting the season's turn. We come to our beginning, before the walls, before the keeps and towers, with nothing but living wood encircling our precious glade.

 

In such a place, the gods and goddesses must step down from the high heavens, and kneel, with us, in humility.

 

But Kellaras was not so naive as to imagine such a return. The rush and the conflagration of progress were demonic in their intensity. And we stake our lives in this fight for our place in things we ourselves invented. And in our new world, nature is indeed very far away.

 

 

In my mulling upon the five phase relationships, it took some time to comprehend the nature of fire-to-earth-to-metal. From one perspective each of these are laid out as part of the circle, each creating the next. From another earth is held as the center within the four directions.

 

I came to understand how the whole cycle is simply a rise and fall, expansion and return. Here our central earth never changes, for our fire simply marks the peak of the expansion. However, when fire becomes its own creation, it does not return to its original center, rather, it creates a new center. We can see this as the spark of life within the container of any living entity at the inception of its life. The so-called "ego" is created when this spark presumes to do more than serve its internal role in maintaining the circulation around its own center and projects that fire externally.

 

It is one thing for us to project fire externally, from our individual centers. It is quite another to create a new external fire, which now creates yet a new center, one that serves to separate human nature from the rest of nature.

 

Chop wood, carry water.... and yet what does this fire-wood feed?

 

This thread arose from what might have been curiosity related to the morals surrounding cultivation work. Cultivation work is said to improve health and, before too long, generate heat from within. If we are going to presume to do something, and we need to generate heat to survive cold weather, I ponder at the difference between creating an external fire, and cultivating one's internal fire. Personally I am rather drawn to the idea and potential for leaving behind the need to fan the flames of humanity's decision to separate from its original home.