Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Chapter 1
Thanks for the welcome Carl. 
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
The name that can be named is not the constant name.
To me, this verse addresses the basic unknowability of the Tao, the concept we are seeking to understand on our spiritual journey. To be able to understand and talk about the Tao or any concept, we need to name and define it, but the very act of defining it (describing its limits) distorts the Tao, which is infinite, limitless, timeless. But realizing that the Tao is unknowable should not make us despair, throw up our hands, give up our futile search for ?the Truth.? Because the journey, the seeking, brings us closer to an understanding of the Tao, the World, the Universe. The journey brings us flashes of insight into the nature of the Tao. By analogy, I will never be able to reach our grand, wonderful, but limited Sun. I will never be able to absorb all of its energy, but standing in its light can warm me on a winter day and opening my eyes to its light can allow me to find my way in a dark world.
Even the name ?Tao? or ?Way? is incomplete. Maybe ?God? or ?Ultimate Reality? would work just as well. But all of these names are provisional, just landmarks along the way. In the same vein, any philosophy, any belief system, any way of life we follow, is provisional, our best guess at a particular point in time. We error when we say (as followers of a religion or philosophy or way of life are tempted to say), ?This is the definitive way, the right way, the only way.?
I concur with your comments, though I can't help but point out the irony we encounter when speaking about this.
For example,
The irony here is that we end up defining the Tao when we say it's un-definable, infinite, limitless and so on... :? To get around this sticky situation, I like to think of the Tao (or God or whatever name we want to use) as being both finite and infinite as well as... good/bad, right/wrong, beautifull/ugly... and so on.
And now to go off on a tangent...
Names are co-generating (:yy:). [chref=2]Thus Something and Nothing produce each other[/chref]. And we are advised: [chref=32]As soon as there are names, One ought to know that it is time to stop.[/chref]
Does that mean I should cease to speak? Not in my view. Speech is simply a social tool and little more. The chimps pick nits off each other, dogs smell each other, I talk with others. The value of the numerous Taoist putdowns of speech lies in how it helps me discount language as a conveyor of truth. I take what I think and say far too seriously and suffer as a consequence, one way or the other. In the end, all I can do is
Steve's right, of course, about trying to "define" the Tao (or whatever you call "it"). Carl calls the first verse a "disclaimer." That is, there's a fundimental problem in talking about these things which is . . . the more you talk, the farther you stray from the "simple truth", whatever that is. (So to speak . . . paraphrasing here). Some folks who don't really like this idea (and by extension, the whole Taoist viewpoint) counter with something Steve mentioned, to the effect of "if, by the nature of Taoism, you can't define the 'truth' with precision (as is theoretically much more feasible in other religions), how lame is that?!?" Of course, the whole point of Taoism is not to nail down the "truth" -- looking at the tree despite the forest, or whatever the saying is. OK, I think I've said enough.
Oh, I should also point out that I agree with what Carl said regarding defining something as infinite, although that's an odd thing to think about . . . saying something is un-definable is defining it. Huh! Strange stuff. :?
Welcome to CenterTao.org, Steve!
So are suggesting that by naming something, the virtue of the names locks in certain attributes and then we start assigning a reality that might not be exactly correct or right?
Or am I overthinking this?
Welcome to the site. Your comment sounds fair enough to me. I'll just toss out a few thoughts as to how I see emotion playing a big role in all this. Emotion and mind are a dynamite
This co-generating aspect of words is especially apparent with adjectives and verbs. These are the words which are anchored in the emotion. Each emotion we feel has a counterpart, e.g. full/empty, love/hate, beauty/ugly. Associating a word with an emotion 'brings to life' its counterpart. Driving this process is need, i.e., attractions and aversions.
Words allow us to emotionally dwell and get 'hung up', unlike the rest of earth's life who just feel what they feel, and need what they need, in the moment of stimulation and then as soon as the stimulation passes, the emotion and need dissipates. They have no words to 'make mountains out of mole hills', nor to haunt them as they live out their days. Thus, they flow with nature more smoothly than we who impose our emotion based and word generated (and sustained) idealistic version of how reality should be, e.g., more 'beautiful', more 'peaceful', more 'love', more 'money', more 'education'... blah blah blah.
Now, this must all surely rest on our emotional sense of reality, of what we experience via our senses. Whether our emotions reflect true reality, or just what is needed for a life form to survive is the question. I assume that emotions must reflect reality on one hand, but they also distort it, i.e., they are what cause us to bias our view of 'what is' (reality) this way or that.
It is a curious irony... it would appear that in order to know, we must step outside of what we know, to know... 'think outside the box', but then 'outside' only seems to [chref=4]image the forefather of [/chref] what's 'outside'. The neat thing about all this is that words are inadequate. We are all on a level playing field when it comes to knowing... or rather, [chref=10]not knowing anything?[/chref] :?
St Thomas Aquinas dicusses this when he talks about the use of language in describing God. There are 3 ways that language can be used: univocally e.g. the word bird always describes the same thing (has feathers, and generally speaking, flies with wings); equivocally e.g. the same word has more than one meaning e.g. ring - a piece of jewelry, the sound a bell/telephone makes, a drawn circle on the ground and finally, analogy, where we use ordinary words to symbolise, to make links to, things that are beyond our full comprehension, but which we still want to describe and perhaps understand a little.
The problem arises, I believe, when we forget that the words we're using are merely an analogy, a pale imitation of what the thing actually is or might be, and start to believe that the words we have used are an actual description of the thing itself. This is one of the many, many reasons why those people who take the Bible literally give me the screaming heeby-jeebies! :shock:
Anyway, just my 2 pence worth!