17 Comments

Wow. Tao.

Hi Curt,

OK, now I'm just taoing in the taoness of tao.

With a brain wrap of "It's like..."

It's like inwardly exploring my stream of consciousness to find the path I'm on, then free-willing myself to my wonderous dream path of future possibilities.

My path, with my highest, most meaningful future possibilities toward truth, goodness, and beauty, whatever they might be, is not "yet" possible.

I shall make a habit of prayer. It will be a prayer of adoration and thanksgiving, pondering that sacred "yet."

Ahoy fellow space traveling specks. I love you. It's a dark horizon, I confess. Look. Some of it sparkles.

mark spark

.

Expand full comment

. Hmm

Maybe we can't adequately think our way through paths of beauty, goodness, and truth with brainy words.

Maybe instead of thinking our way through the complex unfolding flux with brainy words we have to feel our way through with hearty feelings.

What if a loving intuition and an imagination guided our reasoning and sciencing?

Hmm. Pondering principles.

Spark that, sparklers.

.

Expand full comment

Yin and yang have been inaccurately interpreted as well; it's not light and dark, but rather light and shadow. The more we change the more we stay the same because I'm always becoming myself :)

Expand full comment

Hello Curt, your question “Okay, but if the Tao is truly ineffable, why does the Daodejing then spend such a considerable time talking about it?” is often asked, and all too often with a tinge of intellectual superiority for having caught someone in a fail.

The simple answer is that a writer or speaker must meet people as they are, and the audience for the Dao te ching is lost in abstract concepts and plurality. It’s not written for people who have developed the ability to empty their minds of all that, when they want, so to stop overlaying every moment with conceptual, nominal, relational, historical, and theoretical decorations. Or to put it in more modern terms, to turn away from the 10 bits/s of thought and focus on the 10^9 bits/s of direct perception.

The author was writing for those who would ask that question, because it’s all pointers to help the reader break out of all the abstract decorations, and the ones who ask that question are the ones who can accomplish it, if they can overcome their feeling of superiority.

For those who do not see a problem with a text that starts by saying the subject is ineffable and then goes on to talk about it, it’s just an inspirational poem. The Dao te Ching is not mystical, it’s technical.

Expand full comment

go on a walk

Expand full comment

Heya Curt,

It is interesting how many physicists became/become mystics and retain the dichotomy. So you are on as good a path as exists. (Ken Wilbur wrote a book on that).

And maybe try this: There is nothing that is not the Tao; Nothing!

And so “The Tao which can be spoken is not the Tao.”.

However, everything about a person futilely attempting such, the person, the setting, the speaking, is the Tao.

Zen is a very nice companion to the Tao as is Advaita.

Peace, Tom

Expand full comment

The chinese language is fascinating and more associative than western language. There is this idea I read somewhere about philosophy that germanic languages are extremely precise , and able to capture precise meaning. this is why you have so many philosophers like kant, heidegger, schopenhauer, wittgenstein. But when they try to describe something cyclical, or holistic or non causal like wu-wei «action by non-action» ( mentioned in acomment above) the preciseness of the language isn’t helping. A shorter more succinct but seemingly ambiguous statement can, for a mind accustomed to indirect interpretation decode a concrete but multi faceted meaning clearly.

I think this very very cool about the Chinese.

Another example isbthe I ching. It’s not magical, i think, but it has something that resists explanation.

Expand full comment

I like to think of the Tao as being, the ether, or dark matter, or the waters that god walked on at the beginning of time.

In my mind these are all the same thing.

Expand full comment

YHWH, in Genesis 3:14, presents the meaning of its name, that also has to do with the Nature of Time.

It highlights the dynamic aspect of God's nature where He is always in the process of being.

The idea of "I will be what I will be" (:YHWH) hints at an ongoing, unfolding nature of God's interactions with the world.

I also heard Dr. Peterson highlighting this in few occasions.

Expand full comment

Do you know the work on Consciousness of prof. Federico Faggin?

There we see our conscious experiences presented as Points of View of the Universe (: the “1”) on Itself, and us being Whole Parts of 1.

1 is dynamic, holistic, and wants to know itself.

And 1 is gifted with free will for what concerns the path it takes to discover itself.

Expand full comment

I think you've gone astray with chang (English "often" "ordinary" or "common") which when combined with fei means special or not ordinary it's actually a tsz (expression) instead of two zi (chracters) to be read separately. "ke" serves to support the specialness of the first occurence of Tao as something beyond and more profound than any discursive/literal understanding.

Expand full comment

The famous saying from Daoists runs like this (Wu Wei): it is often translated as "action in non action". These two words summarizes well the philosophy of the Tao: it is a constant flow and infinite embedding of Yin and Yang, Yin into Yang, etc... unfolding and enfolding from a vast sea of an "apparent static potential". This might sounds esoteric but may be we can intuit what this wants to tell us instead of trying to put logic and reason into it.

Expand full comment

It is always a tricky exercise to read books from ancient cultures. Their texts and languages were often made of metaphors, stories and heavily rely on the context of the time. Vedas, Persian poems, Chinese Taoists texts are extremely hard and, we as westerners of the 21st century, must read these with this in mind. And overall, we might get it totally wrong anyway...

Expand full comment

La ‘’fluctuance’’ fluctue (holoflux?), les chiens de paille, comme des luciolles passent (et brûlent), autant de petits segment arbitraires 🤷🏻‍♂️(that’s french for,,,whatever🙄,🦋☯️

Expand full comment

It is the space between the parts. Quantum Intelligence. Understand this and you understand the nature of everything.

Expand full comment

Could you expand, sir?

Expand full comment