The Dao of Daoism

There are basically threee main parts to Taoism; ?Dao? which is the way, De which is the unnamed charachteristic or virtue , and lastly ?Wu Wei? which is non-action- flowing... In my report I will focus on the ?Dao?. Bits of the other two concepts will be scattered throughout.

In order to go into Taoism at all, we must begin by being in the frame of mind in which it can be understood. You cannot force yourself into this frame of mind, anymore than you can smooth disturbed water with your hand. But let's say that our starting point is that we forget what we know, or think we know, and that we suspend judgment about practically everything, returning to what we were when we were babies when we had not yet learned the names or the language. And in this state, although we have extremely sensitive bodies and very alive senses, we have no means of making an intellectual or verbal commentary on what is going on.

You are just plain ignorant, but still very much alive, and in this state you just feel what is without calling it anything at all. You know nothing at all about anything called an external world in relation to an internal world. You don't know who you are, you haven't even the idea of the word you or I-- it is before all that. Nobody has taught you self control, so you don't know the difference between the noise of a car outside and a wandering thought that enters your mind- they are both something that happens. You don't identify the presence of a thought that may be just an image of a passing cloud in your mind's eye or the passing automobile; they happen. Your breath happens. Light, all around you, happens. Your response to it by blinking happens. So, on one hand you are simply unable to do anything, and on the other there is nothing you are supposed to do. Nobody has told you anything to do. You are completely unable to do anything but

be aware of the buzz. The visual buzz, the audible buzz, the tangible buzz, the smellable buzz--all around the buzz is going on. Watch it. Don't ask who is watching it; you have no information about that yet. You don't know that it requires a watcher for something to be watched. That is somebody?s idea; but you don't know that.

Lao-tzu says, "The scholar learns something every day, the man of Tao unlearns something everyday, until he gets back to non-doing." Just simply, without comment, without an idea in your head, be aware. What else can you do? You don't try to be aware; you are. You will find, of course, that you can not stop the commentary going on inside your head, but at least you can regard it as interior noise. Listen to your chattering thoughts as you would listen to the singing of a kettle.

We don't know what it is we are aware of, especially when we take it altogether, and there's this sense of something going on. I can't even really say 'this,' although I said 'something going on. ?But that is an idea, a form of words. Obviously I couldn't say something is going on unless I could say something else isn't. I know motion by contrast with rest, and while I am aware of motion I am also aware of at rest. So maybe what's at rest isn't going and what's in motion is going, but I won't use that concept then because in order for it to make sense I have to include both. If I say here it is, that excludes what isn't, like space. If I say this, it excludes that, and I am reduced to silence.

But you can feel what I am talking about. That's what is called Tao, in Chinese. That's what I mean.. Tao means basically "way", and so "course"; the course of nature. Lao-tzu said the way of the functioning of the Tao is "so of itself"; that is to say it is spontaneous. Watch again what is going on. If you approach it with this wise ignorance, you will see that you are witnessing a happening. In other words, in this primal way of looking at things there is no difference between what you do, on the one hand, and what happens to you on the other. It is all the same process. Just as your thought happens, the car happens outside, and so the clouds and the stars.

That is the world of Tao, but perhaps that makes us feel afraid. We may ask, "If all that is happening spontaneously, who's in charge? I am not in charge, that is pretty obvious, but I hope there is God or somebody looking after all this." But why should there be someone looking after it, because then there is a new worry that you may not of thought of, which is, "Who takes care of the caretaker's daughter while the caretaker is busy taking care?" Who guards the guards? Who supervises the police? Who looks after God? You may say "God doesn't need looking after" Oh? Well, nor does this.

Because Tao is the course, we can also call li the watercourse, and the patterns of it are also the patterns of flowing water. We see those patterns of flow memorialized, as it were, as sculpture in the grain in wood, which is the flow of sap, in marble, in bones, in muscles. All these things are patterned according to the basic principles of flow. In the patterns of flowing water you will all kind of motifs from Chinese art, immediately recognizable, including the S-curve in the circle of yang-yin.

So it means then the order of flow, the wonderful dancing pattern of liquid, because Lao-tzu likens Tao to water:

?The great Tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right, It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them. (Quote from Tao de Ching)

For as he comments elsewhere, water always seeks the lowest level, which men abhor, because we are always trying to play games of one-upmanship, and be on top of each other. But Lao-tzu explains that the top position is the most insecure. Everybody wants to get to the top of the tree, but then if they do the tree will collapse. That is the fallacy of American society.

Lao-tzu says the basic position is the most powerful, and this we can see at once in Judo, or in Aikido. These are self-defensive arts where you always get underneath the opponent, so he falls over you if he attacks you. The moment he moves to be aggressive you go either lower than he is, or in a smaller circle than he is moving. And you have spin, if you know Aikido. You are always spinning, and you know how something spinning exercises centrifugal force, and if someone comes into your field of centrifugal force he the gets flung out, but by his own bounce. It is very curious.

So, therefore, the watercourse way is the way of Tao. I thought at one point that people who would follow this would be extremely passive. Well, from a superficial point of view I would suggest that a certain amount of passivity would be an excellent corrective for our kind of culture because we are always creating trouble by doing good to other people. We wage wars for other peoples benefit, and attempt to help those living in "underdeveloped" counties, not realizing that in the process we may destroy their way of life.

?DE?

The unnamed charachteristic or virtue. A

bowl is a container that holds food and anything

one decides to put inside.The important unnamed

charachteristic or ?DE? of a bowl is the empty space inside!

This charachteristic makes this item important.

?Wu Wei?

Non-action or flowing.

The story of the Clinger. In a river there were these creatures clinging to the river bed. day in and day out they would feel the current of the water pulling on them . They were born clinging and all thought that that was waht they were suppose to do. One day one clinger decided to just let go and go with the flow. as he did that they current ripped him into the rocks on the bottom of the river bed. He made it through all the roughness and finally everything was clam. All the other clingers watched him and thought he was god. from then on he never had to do anything he just went with the flow. Without trying he became happy and more at peace than ever before in his life. the process of letting go and flowing is ?Wu Wei? . The path that the clinger took was the ?Dao?