I interpret it as "flow". The flow of things. If you've ever meditated and got into a "flow state" where things simply flow, you know what I'm talking about. But I'm also including the flow of the universe.
>>25410620The Ineffable One.I will not (cannot) elaborate.Good luck, grasshopper.
I recently came across the true meaning of Tao, at least I think I did. The problem is that you cannot say what the true meaning of Tao is, you can't even explain it, not in a mystical way, but you literally just can't, The word and letters "Tao" are not Tao, the thought of Tao is not Tao, the explanation of Tao is not Tao. I wouldn't even know how to point you to it without giving you a false impression of it, it is probably impossible. Even this explanation I am giving you right now is just words and not the Tao.I don't fully understand it myself yet, I could attempt to point to it but I almost don't want to because it might give you a false impression and stop you from experiencing the Tao. But I love the Tao Te Ching, it's probably the closest I've gotten to knowing about the Tao intellectually, it even gave me a taste of what Tao is like, but somehow I feel it didn't give me the Tao, only on experiencing it for myself did I feel I knew what Tao is, it was quite disorienting at first but then quite peaceful and grounding.I'm realizing now that I am just giving you more false impressions of Tao by trying to explain what the Tao is and write about it, so I'll just stop. Enjoy your day.
>>25410620You answered your own question with your OP pic. What the Way is cannot be learned from the Tao Te Ching, and the Tao Te Ching cannot teach what it is.
>trying to explain tao
>>25410620instead of worrying about a pointless label you should focus on getting back in the 'flow'
>>25410620>you know what I'm talking aboutyou don't even know what you're talking about
Anyone read Hans Georg Moeller's Daoism Explained? I liked it, but it also seems slightly controversial.
>>25410679>>25410679It's much easier to be comfortable with the idea of the Tao once you've delved into Aristotle, the Presocratics, Kant, and Heidegger. Once you've studied first philosophy carefully and realize how difficult it is to name things, how tenuous the nature of explanation is, or to even get a sense of what thinghood is, suddenly the Tao doesn't seem so alien in its ineffability. You can sit at least more comfortably with its mystery, knowing the place of explanation and its limits.
>>25410666>>25410704>>25410757>>25410848Daoists are so fucking annoying. What is Dao? >NGMIIs this or that Dao? >NGMIShould I make this hard choice or that choice? >NGMI, but also if you take this as advice you shouldn't care, you're a retardWho am I supposed to be?>NGMIAm I actually understanding Daoism?>NGMI
>>25411206NGMI
>>25411206If you get annoyed you're not following the Dao. NGMI.
>>25411213Nah, the one who is GMI that knows they are GMI is NGMI.
>>25411187>It's much easier to be comfortable with the idea of the Tao once you've delved intoNothing is needed to understand the Dao but the Dao.
>>25411235Annoyance and nonannoyance create each other. You are NGMI.
>>25410620Being more sincere rather than just whining about Daoists claiming ineffability to be inarticulate and unhelpful, I think "flow" is definitely on the right track. There's a story in the Chuangzi of the butcher who learns to cut by finding the hollows in the meat. That is, by learning precisely where the knife glides easiest, encountering the least resistance possible, he eventually is capable of practicing his art of butchery to the utmost perfection. I think Dao is best captured as a sort of focus that is so intense, so present, that one almost has to forget themselves to maintain it. At the same time, however, it is very strictly not defined as imposing itself violently, but rather *working with all things*, indifferent to categorization of what things are. Like water, it is crucial to the world because it goes to all places without bias or even really interest. Water goes downhill because that is its nature, and it doesn't abhor whatever it comes across, but simply continues being what is, and that is why it remains water and why it nourishes all things. Likewise, the butcher's art is like water, it doesn't try to go uphill and cut through the meat's sinews, it simply goes through where it can, he follows the art of his nature, cutting with the least resistance possible, and does this with such a pure focus that he can even forget about concepts like "meat" "cut" "portion" all of it.
>>25410620>>25411251A correction: the reason when one experiences "flow" when acting in accordance with the Dao is, if you buy the metaphysics, you're literally finally *participating in the universe as it actually is*. Most people genuinely go through life like a shitty butcher: they take their blade, swing it through the toughest part of the flesh, and then get angry when their *arbitrary mental model* does not alter the structure of reality. The Dao is the entirety of all things, without any sort of arbitrary categorization or division, and flow is what happens when you're finally interacting with that, rather than playing this insane game of categorizing things and haphazardly sometimes being in alignment with all things when you forget them, and then being violently out of kilter with things once you impose yourself upon them.
>>25411206Thinking about the Dao can be annoying, the Dao itself is not annoying.
i spent the hours 3am to 7am in total darkness carefully peeling, removing the inner fruit, and rearranging the peel to mimic fruit. the satisfaction i felt at my confused girlfriend, who in the morning attempting to eat the fruit discovered with confusion only hollow peels. a bored crow, watches through a window, my bemused smile at her growing anger. the combined moment of curious inattention allows the perimeter to be breached by a team of small sparrows. the five bird unit seizes the opportunity to raid the aphids in the rose bushes below. this sends the ant farm into an alarmed panic, desperately moving the survivors to the underground passages beneath the mulch and ground bark cover. the signal smells triggers the queen guard in the lower chambers to move towards the granaries in anticipation of a raid. a neighboring colony choses this moment to breach her chamber, planning and digging for weeks towards this very purpose, the invaders grasp onto her swollen abdomen and head with their pincers and pile together to suffocate and boil her to death in a frenzied and brutal attack. inside the house, a jumping spider secures an inattentive fruit fly, feeling for a dried patch of an orange juice spill. i take off all my clothes and pee sitting down. my girlfriend throws a 2 pound bag of flour at my head and misses, it knocks a flower pot to the ground and breaks open in mid air, covering a third of the room in a thin misty coasting of grey dust. we roll around on the ground fumbling and grinding against each other. deep beneath us a war council is called, as millions of soldiers are prepare to avenge their fallen empire. we are as gods, our love is madness. the crow outside continues his patrol, checking every lightpost down the street for a stray spider or moth. the bright led sensors turning silent with the dawn turning our whole world blue again.this is not the tao.
>>25410620The way. Not your way, or my way, or god's way, or the universe's way, THE way. Nothing more. Think of it like this, if you grab a handful of sand, it inevitably sifts through your fingers as you try to grasp it, even if some is left behind. You can collect the sand in a bucket, but you can only do it because the bucket is filled with nothing, and therefore you can use the space within the bucket to carry something else, but you aren't quite there. It becomes this sand instead of that sand, namely the sand of the beach; a different category, based on the container. To hold the dao you need a bucket with a hole in the bottom, that way you can fit this sand and that sand, but also water from the ocean, as many shells as you want, and the rest of the universe simultaneously.
>>25411206>went to bookstore>looking at religion section>dao area >it’s emptyfor me it’s acceptance of what is now, observing what is happening, reflecting on this process, it may not provide an answer to the meaning of life or how the universe started but it brings peace to what is now, acceptance without answers, but in time the answers come through observation
>>25410620For me, it's when I rip a big old loud fart
this is basic stuff guys道可道,非常(恒)道(也)。《老子·1》the Dao that can be expressed with words, is not the everlasting Dao
>>25410620The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao, dumbass.
>>25412071>pickek
