Hi,

My first post.

I came to this forum because of my interest in Daoism. I would say that the primary concept of Daoism is that fundamental nature of the universe is movement (flow). This is embodied in the three basic concepts of yin/yang and qi which essentially describes a moving wave.. From my studies, I would analogize the Dao to the Universal Mind which set everything in motion and began the creation of all things as described in Chapter 42 of the Dao Fe Jing and imaged in the Taiji symbol.

Well, the people who introduced the Tao talked a lot about how difficult it was to talk about. What was that all about?

Laozi quotes that struck a chord in me:

Those who speak don't know. Those who know don't speak — Laozi

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth — Laozi

The meanings of the two quotes above gibe with each other quite well in my opinion. The Nameless is what I take to be the indescribable i.e. that which can't be put into words and, quite evidently, those who know something that's indescribable wouldn't be able to speak, comment, on that which is that they know.

What is the essence of being Nameable, the opposite of the Nameless? Let's start easy. Take a chair for instance. We've named it "chair". The word "chair" has a definition. A simple definition of chairs is "an object made of wood, plastic, or metal, used for sitting". You'll notice that there are other words like "wood", "metal", "plastic", "sitting", etc. which are, in essence, categories of materials or actions. In other words, a critical aspect of being describable is falling into one or more known categories. The same logic applies to everything describable.

Two things that need to be made clear.

At the cateogory level, we look for similarities i.e. to develop a category the technique is to look for common, shared properties e.g. the category human is based on similar DNA, physical appearance, behavior, abilities, etc.

At the individual level, we single out things by looking at differences e.g. If I want to talk about the late Kobe Bryant, I'd have to find differences between Kobe Bryant and other humans.

So, something describable means that it has properties that include it one or more categories and it also has properties that exclude other members of these categories from its personal space, its individual identity.


That's that!

Returning to the Nameless, I suppose Laozi, being a sage, would have set the bar quite high for himself and his followers which, in my book, means Laozi was after the big fish, the so-called Ultimate Reality. However, my reconstruction of Laozi's attempt to describe Ultimate Reality, reveals that he encountered, like any of us will, what I call the categorization problem.

The categorization problem is the difficulty with describing Ultimate Reality for it consists of all conceivable properties and that being the case, it would belong to all categories. No category would be sufficient for describing Ultimate Reality.

The issue of isolating Ultimate Reality, finding a unique identity for it, is moot since we couldn't get past the first step, categorization.

Can't we say that Ultimate Reality is all categories combined? The answer to that question is "yes" but when we search for an essence, as we must to create a category, all we get is thingness. The end result is that the only reasonable statement we can make about Ultimate Reality is that it's a thing.

Google Definition of Thing: an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to.

It appears that the correct translation of Taoism's The Nameless is The Thing. Watch the movie (2011) starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (gorgeous :love: )

My two cents worth.

I think you have to be fluent in Chinese to read the Tao. Whatever us foreign ghosts make of it, it is filtered through our own linguistic and conceptual categories, and learning Chinese - something I’ll never do - would be the minimal first step in really understanding it. Just sayin.

Great post and very detailed, two thumbs up. I was just reading C.S. Lewis' abolition of man in which he speaks of the Tao which I find interesting as he is a famous Christian writer.

the so-called Ultimate Reality — TheMadFool

You lost me there,

No category would be sufficient for describing Ultimate Reality. — TheMadFool

Except the category "ultimate reality" apparently no?

You lost me there — khaled

Why? What's there to be lost about?

Except the category "ultimate reality" apparently no? — khaled

I didn't say that there's no category. All I said was that the category of ultimate reality can only be described in terms of thingness, the nameless

Can't we say that Ultimate Reality is all categories combined? The answer to that question is "yes" but when we search for an essence, as we must to create a category, all we get is thingness. — TheMadFool

Thanks for the input.

Why? What's there to be lost about? — TheMadFool

What does "ultimate reality" mean?

What does "ultimate reality" mean? — khaled

I was afraid you might ask. :smile: It seems to have a specific meaning in the Abrahamic religions but in the context of my post it simply means reality taken as a whole, the universe itself as it were,

It's like a taking everything that's part of the universe and trying to make sense of it all with one word, the objective being to discover the underlying essence of it all. That essence, as far as I can tell, can't be named or described for it defies categorization as it includes "each and every" conceivable category. In short, no single or a combination of categories is adequate to describe the whole.

It might seem that the whole, Ultimate Reality itself, can be viewed as a category but the problem is it lacks an unifying essence. There's no property that runs as a common thread through each and everything in the universe - every attempt to find a common motif that completely permeates the all, the whole, the totality of the universe, will fall short of the mark.

What do we do now?

We can't just throw up our hands and give up, right? We're the kind that seek closure - everything we do must have an end and that end has to be satisfactory. So, one of the cleverer ones among our illustrious ancestry came up with a bright idea. Why not just name the god damn "thing"? And so he did - when they had no idea what they were dealing with, he decided they should use the word "thing", a word whose definition reports that it refers to objects we cannot....give a specific name to.

Mind you, from what I gather, it's not just an issue of naming in the sense of coming up with a set of sounds to refer to something like we do when we name our children for example. The name in Taoism means a good definition i.e. the name must make sense (in terms of categories and properties) and is there any other way a definition can make sense?

So, the point of Taoism's The Nameless appears to be that the whole, the totality, the universe, all, can't be defined. A problem in attempting to define the universe is that we'll encounter ontradictions - the universe is, for instance, white (snow) and also not-white (sky) - throughout the process.

One way out of this conundrum would be to use the cateogry color - white and blue are mutually exclusive - but then each such category can be negated and for color we have not-color (invisible). What this means is that no category will be able to cover all the bases so to speak for every category's negation is both possible and actual. This, I suspect, is the Taoist yin-yang emerging, quite naturally and effortlessly, from the way reality is.

Thus, with no better alternative, we're left to assign a label, an empty name, for what is, at its core, The Nameless: Thing.

Come to think of it, thing doesn't quite do the trick for it can be negated - nothing - and leaving out nothing would amount to ignoring an (important) aspect of reality.

The Taoist phrase The Nameless can also be negated and when we do that we get The Named but notice there's an important difference compared to thing: The Named collectively, the grand total so to speak, (from everything to nothing), is precisely what The Nameless is.

I'm out. :up:

trying to make sense of it all with one word — TheMadFool

I still don't know what that means exactly. What is "it" and what is confusing about it? Is this something about the meaning of life? Anyways I'll just read on for now.

every attempt to find a common motif that completely permeates the all, the whole, the totality of the universe, will fall short of the mark. — TheMadFool

That is a motif that permeates all no? It's starting to sound like "There are no true statements" or other such sentences that seem to contradict themselves.

We can't just throw up our hands and give up, right — TheMadFool

We could, and that's what I'd argue some eastern traditions actually encourage in my limited understanding of them.

Thus, with no better alternative, we're left to assign a label, an empty name, for what is, at its core, The Nameless: Thing. — TheMadFool

Doesn't seem like a good option to me. If I was trying to find something similar between apples and oranges and utterly failed at doing so I'd take that as a sign that there is nothing similar not that there is something similar which I can't put my finger on which I shall dub "the nameless"

I still don't know what that means exactly. What is "it" and what is confusing about it? Is this something about the meaning of life? Anyways I'll just read on for now — khaled

No problem.

That is a motif that permeates all no? — khaled

You mean to basically say that which is common is that which is uncommon. In other words, the similarity, the essence, we're looking for is the dissimilarity, the absence of an essence. That would amount to a contradiction, no? It's interesting though that you mention it because everything about Taoism is an attempt to unify the totality, the whole, the universe itself and as you can see, we can't escape contradicting ourselves at some point along the way. Thus...The Nameless for that's just another way of saying that the universe, taken as a whole, defies definition - we can't avoid contradictions. Too, the negation of The Nameless is The Named but The Nameless is all of The Named taken as a whole. The Named exist only as parts of the whole, The Nameless.

I'm signing off now, adios amigo.

The essence of Daoism is the flow of the universe. What is that flow? What creates flow. It is the Universal Mind. What is Mind? No one can define it, yet we all feel it as existence. Understanding Daoism does not require reading Chinese texts. We experience life in exactly the same way as ancient people did. Daoism is understanding existence (the time one lives) as a flow and from this fundamental premise one can develop principles about how to exist a healthy life that one can look back upon with a smile. There is nothing mysterious about Daoism. It is simply principles about living a healthy and fruitful life.

I doubt the Dao De Jing was written by one person. It appears to me to be a compendium of proverbs and ideas, sometimes conflicting, stitched together over a rather long period of time.

What creates flow. It is the Universal Mind. What is Mind? No one can define it, yet we all feel it as existence. — MondoR

Isn't our own minds but a reflection of the capabilities of the Universal mind? if so then does that mean it can be understood by looking inside?

Yes, I very much agree with you. Our individual minds are looking into itself, the Universal Mind.

There isn't anything dark and mysterious about Daoism. It is simply about observing life.

There isn't anything dark and mysterious about Daoism. It is simply about observing life. — MondoR

And hopefully just living life.

There is no suppression of being, there is suppression of the image of the self as given in the presence self, the social self and the biographical self. In Hinduism, there is talk of peeling the various layers that make up the psyche — memory, language, emotions etc, — until remains something that constitutes the true substance, the brahma, which is eternal. However, this act is not only not possible, but it disregards an even more serious fact: it is only as a substantial irreducible self that you can experience divinity. This condition, rather than an obstacle, is your path to that experience.

Taoism is merely passive and reactive on the character of its ethics: it emphasize patience, resistance, abstinence, and less active sacrifice and struggle for the good. The taoist virtues would, in short, be “feminine” exclusively, without the manly mark of the Christ-King. A true salvation, to exist, would have to inject some histamine in the tired old Tao...

The problem with the metaphor of the drop of water in the ocean is that it represents no salvation. If I disappear, there is no salvation. What is the difference between saying that I am going to become a great God — and losing my personality — and saying that I am going to dilute myself in matter and turn to dust in the grave? There is not much difference, I disappeared anyway. In order to have salvation, on the contrary, it is necessary that I remain; that there is a human, stable core that can say 'I'. It is necessary that I enter into synergy with God and at the same time remain myself.

I view the Tao as obtainable somehow when you live your life in complete balance, and a union of opposites occur. As both you and the universe is comprised of a union of opposites. When you are increasingly out of balance in all the diverse parts of material living, you are actually increasingly more alienated from the natural order of the Universe until circumstances balance your being out.

I'll be honest, the Tao seemed underwhelming when I read it because so much of it had filtered into anime and manga, so I had already absorbed some of the cultural motifs.

Grade A level pseud coming through!

This is going to be about my interpretation of the Tao, and not necessarily what is or was meant with it traditionally…. and I’m coming at this from a predominately western physicalist/naturalist perspective, so be warned!

The Tao de Jing is meant to be a book about how to live life as a human being. Therefore I want to look what the concepts do for us humans, what they seeks to convey in terms of living our lives… their utility in short.

The book starts with the famous phrases about the Tao, translated as the way, that cannot be named. Far more than telling us something about the Tao, I think this seeks to tell us something about that human thing we do, namely about naming things.

We use language to conceptualize certain aspects of the world we experience all around us. The thing to note here about concepts is that they are necessarily partial, a-temporal and idealized. They are partial because they delignate some part about the world, as opposed to the whole. They are a-temporal because concepts don’t change with time, or at least don’t have to if we don’t want them to. And they are idealized or abstracted because we turn the particulars we experience into universals which we can use and re-use for thinking and communicating about the world.

The concept of Tao is there to offset it to the ‘mere’ ideas we have about the world, to put them into their proper perspective and valuation. You can think about the Tao, I think, as the whole physical universe past, present and future, which in cosmological terms flows from a orderly low entropy state to an ultimately disorderly high entropy state. With ideas we can at best hope to capture some tiny parts of that, and only in an idealized and a-temporal way. So, this is about recognizing the primacy of the physical universe over ideas we have about it.

In short, we should realize that the Tao is the source, and ideas only a clumsy tool we use to try to capture some of that. If you recognize this general principle of valuation, and see a general lack of recognition in other people, then you can sort of work out the ramifications this has for all sorts of things we try to do with ideas, like personal ambitions and plans, morality, law, religion and generally the societies we built.

One thing I want to try to tackle is the whole inward looking, ‘intuitive’ part of the Tao that is supposedly in us. At first glance this maybe seems hard to reconcile with the principle of primacy of the physical over the ideal. To me it makes sense if you think about it in terms of a re-evaluation of conscious thinking versus intuitions and instincts. From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved millions of years before conscious thinking finally became a thing. Somewhat blinded by an inflated sense of our monkey selves we came to see it, especially in the west, as the crowing jewel of evolution (or God’s creation) and our biggest asset. Although it certainly has it’s uses, especially for organizing into bigger groups, there’s a lot of work being done under the hood by our brain modeling the world unconsciously and generating instincts, emotions and intuitions. So again, this seems like a correction to the over-valuation of conscious thinking.

To tie this back to the Tao, in evolutionary terms the selecting principle for all of these unconscious processes was the environment. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are tuned to the world and give us something that is useful, if our goal is to to live in harmony with this world. We literally sprung out of and are still part of the world… of the Tao. So doubting is fine and all, it makes for good philosophers afterall… but also trust yourself a little.

Your post was very informative. It is a little long and brings about several points that would be worth discussing, but is difficult due to the length and information involved. Again I appreciate your post but keeping it concise and to a singular point would be preferable and I think many others would agree with me too so that we can discuss things one step at a time.

After bashing my head against The Tao for years, the only way I found to make sense of it was to read two different interpretations. That helped so much. Between the two, I could piece together what was being said. So, for me, it was an advantage not comprehending Chinese.

I don't think I could begin to describe what I learned. Very Tao of me.

As far as ultimate reality goes, maybe it has more to do with ultimate awareness. In other words, maybe life will reach a point at which it can comprehend everything. In another thread, I get into my fascination with the development of life on Earth. It has always moved toward a better awareness of what is going on. Though we have stumbled drastically in our comprehension of that which we have become aware since gaining sentience, still, we are on the next rung of the ladder of awareness. We just aren't very good (yet) at comprehending that which we perceive. So, for instance, ultimate reality would certainly have to comprehend all of time. That seems impossible to us. But, is it altogether impossible or is it just impossible for us?

delignate — ChatteringMonkey

Nice word.

One thing I want to try to tackle is the whole inward looking, ‘intuitive’ part of the Tao that is supposedly in us. — ChatteringMonkey

This makes me think of something that has always bothered me. We live by the rule that we have to learn something. I had an experience once that really made me question this. It was like the knowledge was tapped even though I had never had any learning in the area. An example of such would be piano play. One theory goes that it takes 10,000 hours to master any instrument. And, yet, there are savants that sit down at a piano and play like a master before they have ever learned anything about it. So, one way to interpret this from the point of view of The Tao is that we are hobbling ourselves by our own efforts to learn that which we should already know.

I don't want to get too far off into the woods, but some of the discoveries in physics, like quantum entanglement, Heisenberg principle and the double slit experiment seem to indicate that we create our own reality to an extent that goes far beyond anything we dare believe.

One theory goes that it takes 10,000 hours to master any instrument. And, yet, there are savants that sit down at a piano and play like a master before they have ever learned anything about it. So, one way to interpret this from the point of view of The Tao is that we are hobbling ourselves by our own efforts to learn that which we should already know. — Whickwithy

We may know many things from practice in past lives. Everyone has a different soulful history, each physical life being an accumulation of the complete history of the soul (individual accumulation of memories). Science calls this genetic inheritance.

I don't want to get too far off into the woods, but some of the discoveries in physics, like quantum entanglement, Heisenberg principle and the double slit experiment seem to indicate that we create our own reality to an extent that goes far beyond anything we dare believe. — Whickwithy

You've hit it right on the head with that statement, although not pertinent to the Tao directly I think that the knowledge of how we think shapes our experience is very empowering wisdom. Even if it wasn't true it would still empower us as human beings to make it true.

We may know many things from practice in past lives. — MondoR

Hey, I'm big into reincarnation but that's not what I'm talking about here. Briefly, on reincarnation, I think it is the only philosophy of life that makes you want to clean up your act. If you're coming back into this life, you'd damn well are going to try to tidy things up as best you can before this one is done. Also, I started learning piano at an advanced age only because of reincarnation. I might get a jump on the next life! In general, reincarnation makes living fully to the last drop make sense.

So, yeah, in this case, though, I was really referring the idea that, in some people at least, something just clicks regarding a certain aspect of life. Someone gets a passion for something and there's no stopping them. Or, you notice something that should be complex but it all just makes sense for no apparent reason.

You've hit it right on the head with that statement, although not pertinent to the Tao directly I think that the knowledge of how we think shapes our experience is very empowering wisdom. Even if it wasn't true it would still empower us as human beings to make it true. — Thinking

Paradigm-breakers. The worst thing in the world for me is paradigms. They blur our sentient perceptions. We get fed so many nonsensical paradigms as children before our critical thinking defenses kick in. Aaarrrggghhh!

Paradigm-breakers. The worst thing in the world for me is paradigms. They blur our sentient perceptions. We get fed so many nonsensical paradigms as children before our critical thinking defenses kick in. Aaarrrggghhh! — Whickwithy

So then it must be true for if it wasn't then it would be paradoxical and therefore it couldn't exist.

yeah, in this case, though, I was really referring the idea that, in some people at least, something just clicks regarding a certain aspect of life. Someone gets a passion for something and there's no stopping them. Or, you notice something that should be complex but it all just makes sense for no apparent reason. — Whickwithy

I was attempting to explain the nature of "child prodigies" and how they acquired their gifts. Memories from past lives.

yeah, in this case, though, I was really referring the idea that, in some people at least, something just clicks regarding a certain aspect of life. Someone gets a passion for something and there's no stopping them. Or, you notice something that should be complex but it all just makes sense for no apparent reason. — Whickwithy

It could be information from past lives or it could be thoughts themselves that already exist on another plane of being that is partially tapped into at a young age.

It could be information from past lives or it could be thoughts themselves that already exist on another plane of being that is partially tapped into at a young age. — Thinking

Exactly.

Whats wrong with the name "I_AM" or ""I_AM" is my help". Is that a generic enough name? We are anthropomorphic. Are some deities capable of being anthropomorphic? Are you familiar with the Jade Emperor or the Jade King? If the Tao influenced creation he would have created the Chinese as well as all the other ~tribes and tribes.

If 2 People have the same philosophy or ~philosophy are they seen as the same tribe? I think so. What is your definition of preaching? Have a great day my friend. Its been a long time. Have a wonderful week and if possible a wonderful year!