There are two types of truth, Relative truth and Absolute Truth. — synthesis

Is that the same as objective truth and subjective truth? It seems like it is. I'm not questioning your terminology, just clarifying for myself.

‘Objectivity’ is a modern idea. The word itself came into use around the time of Leibniz. It is associated with the emergence of the exact sciences. Taoism is not objective in that sense, but allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic. — Wayfarer

My intention was to hold up the concepts of "objective reality" and "Tao" and compare them. Contrast them. I think the ideas of the Tao and objective reality fill similar roles in their ontological systems. In many situations, I think the Tao is a more useful, less misleading way of seeing things.

Note the juxtaposition of 'without desire' (which is related to wu-wei, not acting, the detachment of the sage) and the 'observation of the essence', with those who are 'with desire', who 'observes it's manifestations (i.e. the 10,000 things). 'Differing in name' - the named being 'the conditioned', the domain of phenomena. — Wayfarer

In my experience, what Lao Tzu wrote about the process by which the 10,000 things grow out of the essence, the Tao, is contradictory and confusing. I don't think that's his fault. After all, these are the ideas of people from a very foreign culture written 2,500 years ago. Also, I think the ideas, to be put into words, have to seem contradictory. I also wonder if making things seem paradoxical is used intentionally to put us in the right state of mind to accept his insights. This process is the idea I have spent the most time on while reading the TTC.

.

I wonder if this means in choosing to think a thing good or bad, you create a reversal by this very thought action. — Tom Storm

I guess I don't see this as a choice, at least not a conscious one. Thinking in dualistic terms happens automatically, at least in our, and apparently Lao Tzu's, culture. It takes an effort to stop doing it. Effort is not the right word.

Maybe it means that the more you conceptualize life along these lines, the more you create its opposition. — Tom Storm

This brought another verse to mind. I think it's relevant, but I'm not sure that will be clear. From Stephen Mitchell's Verse 36:

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.

My reading - It's the resistance to something bad that leads to its growth. If you want to stop something, stop fighting it. This stanza really resonates with me personally.

I read the importance of wu wei as recognizing that there is a process underway that is generated by the play of opposites but does not consume the opposed elements that keep reproducing the things that are. — Valentinus

I've always thought that wu wei was action that took place, was motivated, without the interplay of opposites. Which makes me ask - are the interplay of opposites and consciousness the same thing? That brings me back to the confusion I discussed in relation to the first stanza of Verse 2.

I don't agree that "consciousness interferes with action." I think it is more like "talking about action" interferes with consciousness. — Valentinus

Isn't "talking about action" the same thing as consciousness? Even if it's just talking to ourselves.

The Tao Te Ching can be read as a conversation with the Analects of Confucius in this regard. There are agreements and disagreements between the two but they share a sensibility regarding the defects of Draconian approaches to order. — Valentinus

I have not read Confucius. I probably should. When I've discussed it with others who have read him they have claimed, as you and Muller indicate, that Lao Tzu is sometimes considered the "anti-Confucius." That the TTC was written specifically as a response to him.

Ok, Verse 2. Stephen Mitchell. Again – this is what it means to me, not what it means. Verse text – italics; My thoughts – normal text.

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

I am ambivalent about this stanza. Maybe I mean confused. You can’t have good without bad. Heaven needs a hell. All the value judgments we make in the world seem to depend on a choice between two opposites. Those opposites are… artificial…unnecessary…misleading? If we are seeing the Tao without words, there are no distinctions between good and bad, large and small, etc. I’ve wondered if the dualistic distinctions don’t reflect the structure of our brains and minds. A world of yes/no distinctions is simpler and easier to process than one of unbroken continuity. We’re digital.

How does this fit into the conceptual framework of the 10,000 things – the named multiplicity of reality? Identifying things as trees, roller skates, and electrons is not a dualistic distinction. Are the dualistic and non-dualistic distinctions the same or different in some fundamental way?

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

This really goes along with the previous stanza. I break it out because it’s the first time being and non-being are discussed. To me, being and non-being are very central. In oversimple terms – Non-being = Tao; Being = 10,000 Things. That opens the question – does the Tao exist? In any dictionary I looked in, “being” and “existence” are used in each other’s definitions. The question of what existence is is at the heart of the “mystery” of the Tao.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Acting without doing anything comes up a lot in the TTC. It’s at the heart of how the Tao connects to human action. It’s called "wu wei." Pronounced something like woo way. It’s not too hard to understand if you try to become aware of your own internal experience when you intend or do something. It definitely contradicts the prevalent view that our actions are consciously intended and planned. In the TTC, conscious action is seen as degraded from wu wei. I agree strongly. When I look inside, I find that very few of my actions grow out of consciousness. Consciousness interferes with action – stops it or modifies it – but doesn’t create it.

It is interesting to note that 2500 years later, his work is still the second most popularly read book in the world after the Christian bible. I know I have read it no less than 100 times! — synthesis

And, as I keep telling people - you can read it in an hour.

I sing this to my stonemason knees when they complain: — Valentinus

DC Lau's translation is one we used a lot in my reading group. I like it. This is a verse I haven't really thought about a lot, but I think it's an important one. I do plan to come back to it as I go through the verses.

If you have more to say about it, go ahead. You don't need to wait till I come to it.

There is nothing to understand. — synthesis

I don't think understanding is what's needed, but most people can't get where Lao Tzu is going without trying to understand. It's trying and failing to understand that leads to the mystery.

It always struck me how much of the writing is dedicated to statecraft. — Isaac

Yes, that's true. And, no. I don't think it's intended to be allegorical at all. I think maybe Lao Tzu considered those verses the most important. Some people think his political views are authoritarian. The TTC says things like:

• The Master leads by emptying people's minds
• Throw away holiness and wisdom and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice and people will do the right thing.
• If powerful men and women could remain centered in the Tao...all people would be at peace.
• If powerful men and women could center themselves in it...people would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire.
• The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know.

I don't think these are authoritarian, but they are definitely paternalistic. We're not talking about democracy here. I like this one in particular - Verse 80 from Mitchell:

If a country is governed wisely,
its inhabitants will be content.
They enjoy the labor of their hands
and don't waste time inventing
labor-saving machines.
Since they dearly love their homes,
they aren't interested in travel.
There may be a few wagons and boats,
but these don't go anywhere.
There may be an arsenal of weapons,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood.
And even though the next country is so close
that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.

I like that verse and it makes me think, but it also reminds me of "keep them barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen."

All in all, the political verses are not my favorites.

Secondly, that which can be named, again we see a linguistic slant here, is also NOT the Tao [ref: The name that can be named is not the eternal Name] — TheMadFool

I think the idea of naming is really important.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Naming is something people do. This has always meant to me that it is people who create "all particular things." In other discussions, a lot of people have disagreed with that. For me, it is central.

This sets up the paradox or disclaimer that underlies the entire book: all he can do here with these phrases is paint the shadows. They won’t directly tell us what the Tao is - even naming ‘the Tao’ is an approximation that implies we can imagine a point beyond, looking back. To entertain this illusion is to limit what it is we could possibly understand (by excluding ourselves), which then renders any depiction inaccurate as such. We could find some beautiful words, as Lao Tzu has, but that’s not the Tao. — Possibility

This is just the way I feel. When I talk about what Lao Tzu is trying to do, I say he is trying to take snapshots of the Tao. If we look at all the snapshots, we can get an overall understanding. Or I say he is cutting cross-sections through the Tao - maybe a cat scan. I like your metaphor of painting the shadows better.

There are various ways to interpret this, but I find it’s clearest when I simply experience what it says, without trying to describe what it means to me for your benefit. — Possibility

Yes, but this is true of all the verses. If we follow this, there's nothing to talk about. Hey.... wait a minute.

We are irretrievably bound by affect, by valence and arousal. It is the medium of our consciousness, what we use to render the world. This is all we see: the manifestations (concepts) or predictions in terms of how their uncertainty and inaccuracy affects us. This suffering from prediction error (‘darkness within darkness’) is the most effective and efficient method we have to understand the world. — Possibility

This is really well put. Now I'm thinking about whether "affect" means the same as what Lao Tzu is calling "desire." It reminds me of this edited excerpt from Stephen Mitchell's translation of Verse 13:

Hope is as hollow as fear...
What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

If you look, you'll see that no one else interprets this verse that way. Mitchell often takes liberties with the literal translation. Some people really don't like that.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
— T Clark

I believe the above is the crux of what Taoism is all about. Lao Tzu attempts to point at "something" that can't be pointed at. — TheMadFool

Yes, I agree.

Thoughts: this is one of my favourite quotes from Tao. I guess it is related to peace and order in the cities or villages. If you control the Principle and everything around you is under a composure state the “horses” will not be prepared to fight anyone but just being free in the green fields having a good life. — javi2541997

I like that verse from Verse 46 too. Ellen Marie Chen has a more earthy translation:

When the world practices Tao,
Fast horses are used for their dung.

Not all all.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2017.0792 — Isaac

I took a quick look. "Markov blanket" looks like an interesting concept, but I don't see how it is relevant. Let's not go down that path here. I'll take a look at the article.

I get from this that it is an immutable truism that the paragon teaches the scoundrel just through their presence or example. Anger and aggrieved advice or recriminations are without utility. What I also get from this is if I want to be of use and work towards a better 'way of being' remember that good and bad share the same space and need each other. Endless unhappy thoughts and interpersonal conflicts will be avoided if this is understood and acted out. And I will also avoid the path to being the very thing I think I hate. — Tom Storm

This is really good. I don't think I'd thought it through as well as this.

Another thought, which may not be in the text - Lao Tzu doesn't talk about judging people much, but he does talk about seeing things as they are without putting words on it. Patiently waiting to see what the Tao has to show us. This is an excerpt from Verse 38:

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone....

The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

I'm not sure if you see that connection.

In any case, don ‘t loose site of the point: ‘the unnameable’ - what does that mean? — Wayfarer

I took my best swing at it up in my second post.

The TTC is about reality before concepts. If it is put into words, it's no longer the Tao. The Tao is unspeakable. It's what was before there was anybody to think about it. It's also a joke. In this book, we're going to talk about what can't be talked about. — T Clark

Bedtime.

By way of footnote, a recent essay by a philosophical biographer, Ray Monk, on Collingwood's early death, his replacement by Glibert Ryle, and its consequences. How the untimely death of RG Collingwood changed the course of philosophy forever. Paints a very sympathetic portrait. — Wayfarer

In a post on another thread, @Olivier5 provided a link to a podcast on Collingwood on "The Philosophers Zone," which is a very good show with lots of interesting guests. Trigger warning - they all have Australian accents.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/voice-in-the-wilderness-rg-collingwood/3148288

I was struck by the following:

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret. — Tom Storm

One of the confusing aspects of the TTC is that it mixes cosmology, physical reality, morals, and politics all into one bowl. The idea that all of these grow out of the same source is alien to the way we think of it.

So, what does it mean to you?

I loaned out my copy of the TTC, and I’m missing having the little book at hand. — Possibility

What translation did you use?

“The old problem...if everything is metaphysics then nothing is metaphysics” I think fails to really understand the Tao. — Possibility

In a thread a couple of years ago, I put forth the idea that the Tao is analogous to objective reality. In my understanding of how things are, I've replaced objective reality with the Tao. That's what I mean when I say that Taoism is completely consistent with a scientific viewpoint.

Objective reality and the Tao are both metaphysical entities. They aren't true or false. They are useful or not useful in a particular situation.

Heaven and earth are ruthless,
and treat the myriad creatures
as straw dogs — Maw

I've struggled with "heaven and earth" and where they fit into the Taoist vision. They're somewhere on the ladder between the Tao and the 10,000 things. I can't figure if they are something outside of us or are inside us.

I don’t there is a conceptual niche for ‘the unmanifest, unmade, unnamed’ in modern thought. — Wayfarer

I don't read much western philosophy, but once I was reading some Kant. His idea of "noumenon" seemed similar to me, although very clunky and mixed up with a lot of convoluted ideas. I checked on the web and actually found a paper comparing the two. It wasn't a very good paper. I don't think anyone thinks Kant was in any way influenced by anything Asian.

To get started - the Tao. Here are some definitions and quotations about the Tao from various sources, including me:

[1] The ground of being
[2] The Tao that cannot be spoken
[3] Oneness is the Tao which is invisible and formless.
[4] Nature is Tao. Tao is everlasting.
[5] The absolute principle underlying the universe
[6] That in virtue of which all things happen or exist
[7] The intuitive knowing of life that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept

Verse 1 - Stephen Mitchell.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.

Stanza by stanza. Text in italics. My thoughts in normal font.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

This is the heart of it. The TTC is about reality before concepts. If it is put into words, it's no longer the Tao. The Tao is unspeakable. It's what was before there was anybody to think about it. It's also a joke. In this book, we're going to talk about what can't be talked about. I see the TTC as a bunch of snap shots of the Tao. Lao Tzu is trying to show it to us without letting the words get in the way. We're supposed to get our view of the Tao in our peripheral vision.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

This is one of the two or three ideas that are most important to me in the TTC. This theme comes up over and over. There is the Tao which is unspeakable, undivided, all one thing, and there is the world of particular, named things where we live our lives. Some translations use the phrase "the 10,000 things" to describe the world of particular things. I love that. It always makes me laugh. How does that transition take place? That's something I've thought about, and argued about in my reading group. My answer - it's a fundamentally human process. Humans and the Tao interact to create the 10,000 things. A lot of people disagree with that.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

It is possible to experience the Tao directly and not through the filter of our words and concepts. Lost in the illusions of everyday life, we can see only the 10,000 things. Lao Tzu doesn't talk about illusions and I've been in arguments about whether it is appropriate to bring this Buddhist concept into a discussion of Taoism. There is certainly a difference between "mystery" and "darkness," here, but I just think of them as another way to say Tao.

Keep in mind that the TTC is written in ancient Chinese. Apparently even Chinese speakers have trouble understanding it. Sometimes, often, it seems self-contradictory. Some of that is differences in culture and language, but I think some of it is intentional, maybe even unavoidable.

Did I mention I love the Tao Te Ching.

I'd be interested in how you find it supports you (if this is the correct term) in life. — Tom Storm

Talking about that here would really be shanghaiing the thread. I'm skeptical that a thread just about the Tao Te Ching would be of interest to enough people last very long. I'll try and see if it goes anywhere.

But what is the probability of any other particular result? They're exactly the same! People only think all heads is unlikely because it stands out. The probability of any particular exact sequence of heads and tails is exactly the same as any other: one out of a trillion. Yet some result must occur. — fishfry

Yes. I've made your argument many times. Usually I am ineffective in getting the point across. It comes up a lot in discussions about the multiverse.

That's one of my favorite verses and Mitchell is the translation I read first. It's probably the most accessible for modern English speakers.

The idea of being vs. non-being in the Tao Te Ching is the one that changed my view of reality the most. I used to participate in a Tao Te Ching reading group and we got in a big argument about what it means that being and non-being create each other. My position - Of course the TTC is poetic and not meant to be taken literally. Of course the moon is still there when it's on the other side of the Earth. Except...

The link you sent goes to an error page. Here's another link:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.187414

Suggest you limit the reading to Part 1 rather than the whole document. If my memory is correct, that's where the really interesting part is. I'll participate at least as far as rereading that. It may take me a few days to be able to get to even get to the first four chapters. Suggest you provide a list of the words for which:

the reader must adopt these uses — creativesoul

along with definitions.

I forgot to get back to you on this. I read your essay. I enjoyed it. You and I definitely see the world differently. But then, that's no surprise.

Do you believe that this is what the health care system would like me to do? — synthesis

I don't think the health care system would mind you doing that, they just won't pay you for it.

I don't begrudge you your principles or your life. It just seems like you would have a bit more understanding and sympathy for how hard it is to live your life outside the system as it is. Especially given that you work in health care, one of the professions most involving large institutions and bureaucracy.

Groups have seemingly perfected the manipulation of individuals to the point where there are those like yourself who simply cannot exist without their omnipresence/omnipotence. — synthesis

Can you describe how you live your life to minimize their omnipresence/omnipotence.

I also think pinning ourselves to the concept of an amino acid or nucleotide is presumptuous. They wouldn't have evolved from a solution containing only their basic building blocks, but rather in many increments. You might want to consider the existence of a partial amino acid or nucleotide, and that some may have evolved prior to cells, in protocells, and then in the complete cell. All the evolution doesn't have to happen within a single medium, in one fell swoop, and considering the process to be essentially determined by holistic function is fallacy unless some evolutionary principles exist that have not been discovered. We lack a record of the missing molecular links, but it hasn't been disproven that they existed, we just haven't found comparable combinations so far. — Enrique

This possible mechanism for abiogenesis has been proposed to Gary Enfield many times in this thread. He has no good response. He just goes on saying that, since we don't understand all the principles of how abiogenesis through self-organization actually works, that's proof that it's impossible. You're just beating your head against a wall.

BTW, this ABC podcast provides an interesting overview of Collingwood's life and thought. — Olivier5

Thank you very much for this. The Philosopher's Zone is a great show. And they all have those funny accents.

Group-people are the parasites that have nearly completely destroyed their hosts (individuals). — synthesis

So, do you live in the wilderness and obtain all your food by growing, hunting, and fishing? If no, where do you get your food? Your money - work, inheritance, government? Your home? Medical care? You live in a complex society. We are all group people. How are you any different? Could you live on your own without any other people? Without all the infrastructure that keeps things moving?

In my understanding it is philosophy that paved the way for science by undermining fixed religious beliefs. Do you agree? — TaySan

No, I don't see it that way. Religion, philosophy, and science are all ways of understanding the world. They developed out of each other and are all mixed up together. That's not a bad thing.

I just had a quick scan on line. It certainly is striking - it reads like poetry and the reader needs to have a particular personality or imagination (I suspect) to get the most from it. — Tom Storm

I think you're right. I'll will say one thing more - It may seem flowery, but it is every bit as down-home and hard-headed as any western philosophy. Its view of reality is poetic, but it's not romantic or dewy-eyed. No fluffy bunnies.

I was unable to get much out of the Tao Te Ching — Tom Storm

I wouldn't try too hard. If it doesn't grab you, it doesn't. I'm seems like it is the same for those who prefer western philosophy. It grabs them. They recognize it. It's something they didn't know they already knew.

I'm interested in your idea about philosophy being stony. Can you say more in concrete terms (no half-arsed pun intended) about why it doesn't work for you? — Tom Storm

This is my favorite philosophical quote. It's from Franz Kafka:

There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can’t do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.

The world is simple and clear. It's right here in front of us. It's not hidden. We just need to pay more attention. Become more aware. The book of philosophy that has meant the most to me is the Tao Te Ching. It covers everything, all of existence, physical and moral, in 81 verses. You can read it in an hour.

Much western philosophy takes the simple world we live in and complicates it with convoluted explanations and arguments, self-deceptive explanations, jargon, nitpicky distinctions, dogmatic certainty. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of pages to describe some miniscule unimportant corner of reality. Example - justified true belief. I tripped over a blog post about this a few years ago. I couldn't believe people were arguing about it. Then I got to the Gettier problem and I had to stop.

I remember the first philosophy class I took 50 years ago. It was called the Mind Brain Identity Problem. It was about, well, the mind brain identity problem. I figured, well this should be interesting. There must be something deep and complicated about this. Getting to understand it will be fun. Nope - it turns out there are people who believe that the brain is the mind. The mind is the brain. What does that even mean?

No, I don't want to argue about the Gettier problem or whether or not the mind is the brain.

And what is my way exactly? — CallMeDirac

Here's what you wrote in the OP.

We must not stay in the minority for any longer and must RISE UP AND TAKE POWER. — CallMeDirac

I see your point, however if we do it slowly, and don't force people into anything it wouldn't. — CallMeDirac

Your original post was clear that violence would be an acceptable method if more peaceful ones didn't work. I think it is very unlikely that a more peaceful attempt to change things will get you what you want. If you've given up on violence, what will you do then?

We don't have a chance to escape then. — javi2541997

I don't see religion as something we need to escape from. If we do need to escape from something, @CallMeDirac's way is not the right way. It won't work and it will lead to something worse. Just like communism, Nazism, fascism.