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Thursday, March 29, 2012

Something Like That

Trey Smith


When asked to provide my personal definition for the undefinable Tao, I have my good days and bad days. There are times when I can rip off two or three somewhat cogent paragraphs. At other times, when I'm feeling less articulate, I struggle to put together even a few cogent words, let alone a whole sentence! When that happens, people ask me how I can a subscribe to a philosophy if I can't muster a definition of the main concept.

In the future, if I ever find myself tongue-tied, I think I could easily fall back on the following description from Eva Wong's The Shambhala Guide to Taoism:
Although the Tao is the source of all life, it is not a deity or spirit...In the Tao-te ching, the sky, the earth, rivers, and mountains are part of a larger and unified power, known as Tao, which is an impersonal and unnamed force behind the workings of the universe.
About the only word in the foregoing description that I might change is force. In some ways, a force is still a specific something, a distinct entity of unknown size and parameters. The word I personally would replace it with is process. In my mind's eye, Tao is the name we give for the process of the workings of the universe.

2 comments:

  1. Some people, myself included, would call this force "qi" which is manifestation of Tao. It is the actual vital energy which moves the world.

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    Replies
    1. baroness,

      I recently finished a reading that referred to ideal person/sage (shang ren) & real/realized/true person (zhan ren) - is this what you meant by "realized teacher"?

      The reading went on to explain a reference by Zhuang zi to 'zheng' being 1) the corrections a 'sage' must make in body 2) pacification of heart/mind & 3) concentration & control of 'qi' [the force you mention above] so as to "hold onto/keep/obtain the One". Am I correct to understand this to mean the process that the 'sage' must follow? J

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