Tai chi without tao is no longer tai chi, but Chinese exercise.
(John Lash)
What is tao?
Lao Tzu
wrote a
book concerning tao; he explained that the word 'tao'
(pronounced 'dow') was just a label.
The tao he was
referring to could not be expressed in words and thoughts.
This may seem confusing until you consider wind.
Can you see wind?
Can you feel wind?
Are you sure you are not just feeling air moved by wind?
Can you hold onto wind?
Can you taste wind?
Our senses cannot apprehend wind yet we have a
word for it and we consider
it to exist.
The tao is as elusive as wind.
People can
intuit what Lao Tzu was referring to but never
express it.
Tao is like a thought at the back of your mind; you have only a vaguely sense of
what it is.
Yet, with observation and contemplation, it becomes gradually clearer.
Tao Te Ching
The title of Lao
Tzu's book 'Tao Te Ching' is often translated to mean
the way and its power.
This can be misleading, as many people assume that tao means
way/road/route and suggests a path of some sort.
The book
is an
investigation
of reality itself.
Lao Tzu studied nature and existence in order to better understand the way in
which the world operated.
Modern physics does the same thing but works on the basis of hypothesis;
which means starting from the known in order to understand the unknown.
Whilst both
taoism and physics study the physical world,
they differ quite radically in approach.
Taoism recognises that a person must lose knowledge - in the form of
comparison, conditioning, education, measurement, opinions, preconceptions -
in order to see reality without bias.
There is a folly in applying the characteristics of the known to the unknown.
Tao
The word 'way' is intended to mean 'nature', for example - an animal acts according to
its own nature.
Nature in this context means how it is, the way it is, its essence.
What makes a dog a dog?
Tao can be seen in things but what tao is cannot be expressed using words or
thoughts.
Te
The Tao Te Ching depicts the sages of old...
It explains that the essence of the sages cannot be known; their inner thoughts
and nature are a mystery.
Yet we can learn a lot by how they behaved.
Their characteristics or behaviour are an outward
manifestation of their innermost nature.
A dog acts like a dog, a tree like a tree.
Everything has a substance that is reflected outwardly in some way through
specific characteristics.
These qualities are called virtues because they the uncontrived
demonstration of the essence.
Te
(pronounced 'day') means virtue.
Ching
The word 'ching' (pronounced 'jing') just means book of wisdom or insight.
Accord
Lao Tzu saw tao as permeating everything.
He thought that if a person could
accord themselves with the nature of
existence then resistance would be removed.
Without resistance there cannot be conflict.
The reality of his observations can be seen by studying
wind or water.
This accord is also known as 'wu wei'.
Organic
Taoists recognised that the natural world was not made, but grew instead.
Things which are made - such as houses, furniture, and machines - are an
assemblage of parts put together, or shaped, like sculpture from the outside
inwards.
Things that grow shape themselves from within.
Consider your own body...
Cells divided to grow your body - you were not constructed.
You are a universe of complexity in your own right, just as the earth is,
just as the galaxy is and existence itself.
We are not separate from anything; a fish cannot exist without water and
water is part of the sea and sea is part of the planet and so on...
More...
Page created 13 December 1998