Lao Tse unleashed a simple little book of such profundity that it causes much consternation in but a few lines in the Tao Te Ching - Dao De Jing.
Simple verses of universal meaning.
Deep concepts in plain language but a mere glimpse of the meaning of the universe, and how said universe maintains a stasis, a dynamic cataclysm of good and evil, water and aridity, density and levity.
-Could be read, not just once, but as a devotional, appreciated(even the antique version in arcane English).
-Accessed in in numerous English translations.
Illusory, but self-evident conundra.
Such as this:
Silence being more instructive than words spoken or written.
The blunted instrument with the fine edge.
Indeed, Lao Tse only points towards the Tao, but hastens to explain that to express the Tao is an impossibility.
The Tao you read in detail is furthest from the true Tao; the Tao on Facebook, is the least of the real Tao. The Tao in a book review or blog post is not the Tao, by Lao Tse's ontology. Impossibility, conundrum, by the Lao Tse's own words. Such as the Tao in the Mirror Glass: it can only point at vagueries, aspects of the Tao, perhaps even brush the nearby air, but never truly broach the surface--such as of the Sun or Moon or very molten core of the Earth.
All of which are pieces of Tao, but not the Tao itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel at your liberty to speak your piece. "Democracy is the conundrum in which good peoples repair."