Tao Te Ching

Chapter 1

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."

As obvious as this may seem to students of Tao Te Ching, it was not so to me at first. I offer the following wordy paragraphs to those who may be behind me in the noble struggle.

We have been led to believe that words stand for something real, that they convey sense and meaning. But they are symbols, representing first the unique subjective meanings of the speaker, then the emotion charged reaction of the listeners perceptions, and lastly the creative assembly of personal associations into a meaning. How much is lost in the process of a single word, in a sentence? How much is lost when speaker and listener are separated by eons of time, by divergent cultures, by politically influenced translations?

"The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth" "The named is the mother of ten thousand things." "The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things."

A name is a shorthand reference, a condensation, its purpose is often to reduce the large and unmanageable to a convenient tag. The true essence of the Tao can not be so reduced. Everything is part of all things, all reflections of the Tao, and therefor diminished by its naming. Words empower our abstractions, but they also help create the illusion of separate things, particular things.

"Ever desireless, one can see the mystery" "Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations." "These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness."

We should not confused desire with passion, but understand it to mean longing. We can not long for ourselves or for what is real, that is already at hand. We can only desire that which we feel is distant and external, i.e. separate things, particular things. We long for the illusion of separate things that we have created.

All is a manifestation of the Tao, when we believe in separate things, we blind ourselves to the wholeness, and distance ourselves from the mystery.

These two, the manifestation and the mystery, come from the same source. They are aspects of the darkness, the unknowable.

It is human to think and scheme, to try to understand the mystery through our intellect which depend so heavily upon words and verbal constructs. The Tao Te Ching suggests that in a sense, our verbal ways take us in the wrong direction.

"Darkness within darkness." "The gate to all mystery."

Taoism makes no claim to special knowledge. It is through non-knowledge, darkness, that we experience the Tao.

E-mail Dave atThe_Tao@Grolen.com