opendao

What is Tao?

If we take away the question and the "what" meaning as soon as we say what Tao is Tao also includes everything else the "what" is not.

Then if we read the same question backwards we get the most incredible answer.      Tao is.....

By this we have removed the original error of the OP. Now having nothing to attach our thoughts to we just have peace of mind.

And what's a point to attach our thoughts to the idea of non-attachment and peace of mind?

Btw, Lao Zi says clearly what Dao is. Maybe he was attached to the idea of Dao... But he attained Dao, that's why I think it's better to not attach to something he didn't mean to say 

another translation, with more clear sense:

The five colors blind a person's eyes;
The five musical notes deafen a person's ears;
The five flavors ruin a person's taste buds.
Horse-racing, hunting and chasing,
Drive a person's mind (hsin) to madness.
Hard-to-get goods,
Hinder a person's actions.
Therefore the sage is for the belly, not for the eyes.
Therefore he leaves this and chooses that.

The meaning is that 5 sensations destroy people's Qi, while sage leaves usual entertainments and practice Dao to fill his belly.

Actually, great food can be found in garbage bins.

it's your choice what to eat. But understanding it brings very little:

Sounds like the fire phase being exalted above the water phase. Don't the texts tend to emphasize the water phase?

Certainly fire is important, when used with a furnace and cauldron. But if one is just attacking things in the world, like jumping up and down on a bottle of glass, it is easy to just create more shapings to the false while the true remains just as hidden.

The key is to recognize when there is an obfuscation and work on discovering the truth it is hiding. Oddly enough, attacking what is false tends to create even more of a mess, further obscuring the true. Pointing at the true from within the false is easy enough, but there aren't always students willing to look.

Hiding truth is not a false view... Good food is not in garbage bins.

Attacking what is false is the only way to keep the truth. And it's not a philosophy, it's a practical requirement for the inner work. 

"Lao Zi with a sword dispels cheaters and tricksters":

Thank you Walker for the time spent to answer fallacies made by this blind pseudo-chinese samurai. 

Obviously Taoist Texts's confusions don't have any excuses, and just are results of a clear intention to fool people. Recently this hero and "myths destroyer" even accused DaoBums moderators who work here for free in all sins. They ask for donations, destroy the forum and don't make millions on ads just because his fucking adequately majesty is not in the directors board:

 

(sigh). This site sells ads, asks for donations, and its worth increases with the number of its members.

 

therefore

 

 

This here is a company, members are customers, and the moderators are customer service reps.

 

 But because  it is a mismanaged company, the inadequate  mods are killing it, that s all.

So I have a strong feeling of a paid trolling campaign or some strong mental diseases... Or even both. Who paid him thirty pieces of silver? I really don't care. But obviously this trickster has no any respect to Daoism and Daoist community, spreads misinformation to fool people, and has no any knowledge about Daoist tradition, so there is no good answer what he is doing here... 

It's good to remember that we are not our mind.  Thoughts, words, while helpful in certain situations, are not inherently real, true, or even important. 

What is True and Real from Daoist point of view?

Actually few words about reality and words: while European thinkers twisted own and readers brains by various sophisticate mental constructs, Daoist teachers just directed students to see the reality without words.

This basically says ' i was wrong every time before therefore i am right now'.

sick logic only for those who can't learn by own mistakes.

It is my opinion that studying Daoist works without an understanding of polysemy is bound to lead to misconceptions.

These 2 texts are waidan, external alchemy texts. These 2 excerpts show that the authors of these 2 texts regarded all other practices , such as neidan as false and/or  inferior. There is an irony somewhere in there.

I donno about that;)

so true. But irony of that is not what you can grasp.

知不知上；不知知病。夫唯病病，是以不病。聖人不病，以其病病，是以不病。

To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.

It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it. (DDJ 71, Legge)

I would like to hear from people who have done these exercises for the 5 elements that are taught online from the Dao De group in Russia. Interesting how everyone claims that the qigong or neidan that they do is the most authentic or most beneficial. Reminds me of the different religions claiming they are the only real lineage, such as the Catholic Church. So much ego involved in this. 

I doubt with such altruistic attitude you will hear anything.

Whatever Wang's flaws, at least he has not gone insane with greed  to threaten the children of the competition.

About children our malice faceless devil don't know how generations are having misfortune because of the deeds of his ancestors. Well, no surprise. De is not his strong side.

"Competition"? Maybe in somebody's wet fantasies only.

Continuing line with frogs and Dao...

 

My take is that frogs have the same relation to Dao as scrambled eggs have to the eggs being sat on by a hen. Once you have scrambled the eggs, you've done fission and this is an irreversible process.

it's a good analogy. The internal "substance" of Dao and things is the same, but transformed many times, so the qualities are very different. Also, Dao is transcendent, while things are immanent, theologically speaking.

Or could it be reversed? Because what neidan people say about attaining the Dao could mean that at least to some extent the process could be reversed - is this right?

Yes, it's the basis of Daoism and Neidan, which is just a later name for the same teaching of Huang Di and Lao Zi. The process could be reversed and it is the only way to "attain Dao".

No idea if interest is on the rise or if new books, websites, and teachers are popping up to satisfy a long-unsatisfied thirst in the West. Maybe both.

 

Regardless of what is prompting the new availability of purported teachers and teachings, at the end of the day, I think the best advice I got early in my attraction to Daoism remains the best possible advice I could give any enthusiast today: learn classical Chinese. Even though the Dao, obviously, is not limited by national boundaries or human language, it is damn hard to understand Daoism if one is divorced from its cultural context by not being able to live around Chinese lineage holders. The older generation's role is to explain the teachings; fill in blanks and resolve the confusion left by reading and talking to others; transmit methods; and lead by example. If you don't have access to such teachers, and you don't take the time to learn Chinese (you say you don't have time to learn a language, and yet you think you have time to seek Dao? Which do you think will take more time and effort? Will the smaller task not improve the chances of success at the greater?), how can you hope to tell if these English books and websites are genuine or downright fraudulent, or perhaps a mix of wheat and chaff? On what can you rely other than your "intuition" and luck?

A few years ago, when I've started reading English forums and books about Daoism, I thought the same way: people are fooled by misinformation, they need to learn classics in the original language, and then they will be able to sort out truth on their own...

After that I've seen a lot of professors, researchers, life-long practitioners, lineage holders and gurus of all calibres, who read Classic Chinese, speak Mandarin, write long books about Dao, but who know absolutely nothing about real tradition, as it's still taught "from heart to heart" in China. And then I realized that such people are really those who make 99.9% of information about Daoism in the West today (and last 100 years as well). So I'm not so sure any more if knowledge of Classic language can change anything in general, but I agree that for serious seekers it's the must. But there are a lot of other things...

To give an example of what I mean:

 

Mr. Brine, on the front page of your website, in big letters, we see, "Taoist Master Wang Liping, head of the Dragon Gate Tradition." Deeper in your page, we see the claim, "Wang Liping was chosen by three masters of the Dragon Gate Tradition to become the 18th heir and holder of the lineage."

 

Your biography says you are fluent in Chinese, so how do you not realize that there is no "head of the Dragon Gate Tradition"? There is no Dragon Gate "pope," most certainly not a layman-pope, and there are/were probably hundreds of monks and nuns in the 18th generation, some of whom are/were quite highly achieved. There are also plenty of Dragon Gate monks and nuns who have not even heard of Wang, and others who only have a vague impression of having heard the name of this fellow! I am speaking on the basis of conversations I've had with monks and nuns at many monasteries--people who've devoted their entire lives to Daoism, some living in such penury that they don't know when they'll get their next chance to take a shower and sleep literally on bunk beds in closets with a piece of cloth for a door! If he's the "head" of the Dragon Gate sect, then for these devotees to not even know who Wang is like a Jesuit priest never even having heard of the pope or a Gelug lama never having heard of the Dalai Lama... patently ridiculous!

This fact is well known even in the West, but you see, nothing changes: people don't care about truth, they buy books a la Castaneda and they are happy, they don't want to check Wang's credentials at all, because it would destroy their "peace of mind". Their De is low, they can't understand classics even knowing the language, and find differences between texts and real results of fake teachings is also a big challenge for them.

It's not new in Chinese history though. However Daoism and its core, Neidan, are still taught in traditional schools as millenniums ago. So who have a destiny, those will find. Others, as many times before, are doomed to follow charlatans and spread false teachings, destroying not only own future, but the future of their children and their students, who are unfortunate to trust them.

Will it be different in 21 century? Daoists look at things positive, but understand that we live in the age of decline of all celestial teachings. It explains why Neidan looks more available and wide spread, though the real number of students (and teachers) is going down.

But yes, the frog lives spontaneously.  That's Dao.

That's Froggy Dao, not spontaneous one 

To sum up some hints about Dao that were covered so far:

Dao is an unknown source of life for all things.

Dao is everywhere.

It determines all possible laws of existence.

Dao is eternal and its freedom is total.

Everything has some aspect of Dao inside.

More to think about:

Dao can be obtained inside human body, that's how humans can return to Dao.

There are 3 possible relations between Dao and humans.

The frogs are currently hibernating but let's talk about them.

 

Dao gave birth to One,

One gave birth to Two,

Two gave birth to Three,

Three gave birth to the Ten Thousand Things.

 

So the frog is a great-great-great-grandchild of Dao.

No, the frog is not Dao.  But it is a child of Dao; an aspect of Dao. 

they are not even relatives ))) 

Does a frog share any quality with Dao? No, then it's not a child.

But all things have an aspect of Dao. However they are not aspects of Dao.

The difference is simple: if we are Dao, then we have qualities of Dao (no form, everywhere, perfect, unlimited, eternal and so on).

If we just have an aspect of Dao, then we have a life inside, that we can use somehow and we have options how to live it. We can even lost it. (if we ARE Dao, how it could be possible?)

Subtle word difference (IS and HAS) but it's totally different teaching, philosophy, practice. But I hope you can see that people are very far away from Dao, and are not Dao at all by their qualities.

Dao is within the frog. 

Sort of. At least it's possible to find it there.

But if frog is inside me, it doesn't mean I'm a frog and can hibernate, right? 

All things, even you and me, are born out of Dao and we will one day return to Dao.  That is, we return to the Mystery (wu) to be reused or just float around for millions of years.

According the tradition, we won't return to Dao after death (sorry for bad news). After death, body dies, Po souls are destroyed, Hung souls go to a new attempt to return to Dao. it's important to understand. That's the boundary of human existence.

One had to give birth to Two before things really started happening.

that's true, thanks

Not necessarily, as I probably won't have time and leisure to look up suitable references in the Daoist literature, even though they may be there. I have collected some knowledge on Daoism, and generally, I do value factual knowledge, however, my approach is to let my mind process what I have gathered and draw my conclusions based on my own philosophical thinking and intuition. If you are interested in the kind of living Dao that I talk about, I will be happy to share my insights, but if you are only open to discussing Dao as far as it is described in decaying scrolls, I am afraid that my dust allergy keeps me from going there.

I'm only open to discuss living Dao as it is understood by those who attained such Dao. Various rumours and home made theories I'm not really so interesting in, and I see no positive impact on readers, who need to go through long discourses about somebody's illusions and get nothing at the end. It's like listening about sex from 6 years old boy   What's a point if there is alive Daoist tradition? But I got your attitude, thanks and good bye.

I beg to differ. But seeing how you tend to react to people who don't agree with you, I am perfectly content to leave it at that.

If you can discuss in a normal way, with support from the Daoist texts and traditional teaching, without personal insults and trolling, without making up concepts out of "common sense", then I'd really love to hear your opinion. The questions about Dao are the most difficult ones... So what text or opinion of a Daoist master can you bring against the simple idea that frogs are not Dao? To help you out, maybe it's good to open Lao Zi and look what is a relationship between Dao and 10000 things?

Should I argue this?  I would likely only end up contradicting myself if I did.

Take it as one possible answer and apply to the ideas you expressed in your previous posts. Then maybe you'll have more clarity and less contradictions

I think you know what I was referring to.

yes, but your intention was different then your words.

Spoken by 'Confucius' in the story, but not 'attributed' to Confucius.

It's attributed to Confucius in the text by the author of the text.

Mr Zhuang uses these ideas to make another point, not specifically about filial piety or duty to ruler, but about his usual shtick: don't fight too much. Or, as you say, be "content with ming".

I know that Ming practice is a source of "don't fight too much".

But I also know that "accepting fate" or "be content with fate" has no relation to Daoism.

Whatever one's desired definition of ming, ZZ's point again remains the same: be content with ming.

 

Whatever the meaning of an, the meaning of that sentence remains fundamentally the same. And no, there is (in this case) no difference/contradiction between the 'Confucian' and Daoist De.

I explained you the meaning, but you skipped it. That's fine.

De can be understood through practice, then texts will be clear.

"The ten thousand things are quantized aspects of Dao each performing actions with a vector leading to or from Dao.."

 

Perhaps we shall just agree that we're talking of very different definitions of right and wrong.

 

'Morality' and your 'vector of actions leading into or out of Dao' are quite different.

yes, absolutely. But you're talking about modern meaning, while I'm about the traditional distinction between "good" and "bad". Sages of the past understood things directly, so they left a lot of wisdom modern people cannot know.

東郭子問於莊子曰：「所謂道，惡乎在？」莊子曰：「無所不在。」東郭子曰：「期而後可。」莊子曰：「在螻蟻。」曰：「何其下邪？」曰：「在稊稗。」曰：「何其愈下邪？」曰：「在瓦甓。」曰：「何其愈甚邪？」曰：「在屎溺。」東郭子不應。

Knowledge Rambling in the...:

Dong-guo Zi asked Zhuangzi, saying, 'Where is what you call the Dao to be found?' Zhuangzi replied, 'Everywhere.'

The other said, 'Specify an instance of it. That will be more satisfactory.' '

It is here in this ant.'

'Give a lower instance.'

'It is in this panic grass.'

'Give me a still lower instance.'

'It is in this earthenware tile.' 

 

(shrug) these people are ignorant.

I agree, you're very ignorant, you proved it countless times, so let's just ignore your arrogant opinion made up just for arguing something you have no idea about.

Dao is a source of everything, it can be found everywhere. But what was born out of Dao is not Dao anymore. Humans are not Dao, but they have Dao. If humans are already Dao, then there is no need in Dao as a practice. They have Dao, but they have to "cutivate Dao" and "attain Dao". If they lost Dao, they "don't live long". How it can be possible to cover all such meanings if we understand Dao only as a "way" or principle? Obviously there is something more. Much more.

I rarely comment anymore simply because it is rarely productive. In this case, I feel the need to make an observation without giving any further communication on the topic.

 

In our spiritual and cultivation minded world, it is very common for discussions to become arguments. Defending views, proving others wrong, stabilizing superiority, etc. This thread originally peaked my interest as it started off talking about a topic I find worthy of deeper contemplation.

 

Shortly after its creation it became consumed by a feud of opinion and lineage. Now seven pages later, it is just filled with pointless insults on character and knowledge.

 

This is petty. It is pointless. If I was a newcomer interested in these arts, I would be led astray by posts and threads such as these. Reading this, I feel ashamed for the cultivation world. That this is the current state, of one of the only forums on the internet where people actively involved gather, is depressing.

 

No wonder these arts are being lost. We are throwing them away. Spending our days fighting over who is right, instead of having actual discussions and deepening our knowledge. I use to enjoy reading this forum because there were intelligent conversations, sharing of knowledge and wisdom. Now.......This and masturbation.

I agree with you about the nature of this forum and its discussions. Maybe moderators will hear you one day.... Strange though, that I see no your posts here. "If you want to make it good, do it yourself", right? So maybe write something you suggest others to do?

Harsh discussions and personal insults are not the worse parts of any "spiritual forums", but the real issue is an unlimited flow of dangerous, wrong and misleading methods out of incompetent seekers, who "just want to share their experience". 

What isn't Dao?

there are many of them. De, for example, is not Dao any more (or yet). Humans, things, creatures, stars... Dao is everywhere, but it has no form. It is nowhere, but give birth to everything.

But what was born out of Dao is not Dao anymore.

 

I can't help it

anybody with a sincere heart can help to reduce confusions about Dao   Especially when relying on classic texts and traditional Daoist practice.

知其不可奈何而安之若命，德之至也

 

To understand what you can do nothing about and to be content with it as with fate - this is the perfection of virtue.

 

(ZZ)

there is no surprise that Confucius could have opinions, different from Daoist understanding. You quote words attributed to Confucius, skipping the context about filial piety, royal loyalty and other things usual for Confucius's teaching. This is one reason to not accept such words as valuable in understanding of the Daoist tradition.

From another side, 命 is not really a fate as something given by Heavens. In Daoist tradition, especially in Neidan texts, Ming is defined as "vitality". Vitality is a real source of fate, that's why "fate" is the usual translation. Few famous quotes: "Ming is Yuan Qi in Kidneys", "My Ming is not in Heaven, but inside of me". Keeping this in mind, the phrase can be read the way, that High De is a result of "being content with Ming". Sure 安 have meanings like "be content with", but also "arrange", "settle" and so on. Then there is no contradiction between the words of Confucius and Daoist understanding of High De, as a results of the practice (Ming Gong - work with Ming) when Ming is full and settled.

You see, dustybeijing, how sincere intention can help? Thank you, you helped a lot.

Not sure about your pseudo-mathematical terminology (function, vector).

 

'Right' and 'wrong' are the result of human perception.

 

Without human perception, there is no right or wrong. To a cloud, there is no right or wrong.

 

Just like how God can't be 'evil'? All the bad things are the work of the devil? The anti-Dao?

almost. Loss of Dao it's called in Daoism.

"It is clear that if the present-day coarse and rustic practitioners do not obtain the great methods of the Golden Elixir, they will not obtain a long life. They may be able to heal illnesses and bring a dead person to life again, to abstain from cereals and be free from hunger for many years, to summon gods and demons, to be sitting at one moment and then rise up and disappear, to see one thousand miles away, to reveal the rise and fall of what is obscure and hidden, and to know the fortunes and calamities awaiting what has not yet sprouted. All this, however, will be of no advantage to increase the length of their life." (Baopu zi, chapter 14. Translated by Fabrizio Pregadio)

So why Daoists were so insisted in searching for methods to prolong life? Why it is so important?

Nice trolling. Continue, please. 

yeah, he will never stop. He is so pissed off with every true word about Dao just because if he accepts it, it will mean that this self proclaimed "Quanzhen master" is nothing. Zero. All his absurd theories, wrong translations, rubbish concepts will become just dust in his own blind eyes. It's much easier to continue to spread shit and scum.