Defining The Dao (for Left-Brained People)

Defining the Dao (for Left-Brained People)

Literally translated, “dao” means something like path or road. But in the philosophical sense, it gets much more complicated. Technically, the Dao is something that shouldn’t be able to be defined, and Laozi is deliberately vague when describing what it is and what it means. This is just my own interpretation of how to explain the concept, based on my reading of the Dao De Jing and my own meandering experience.

For more left-brain oriented people, those that interpret things based on logic and reasoning, I think it’s helpful to think of the Dao as a sort of natural progression of things in the universe. Like leaving an ice cube on a hot sidewalk or the natural decaying of a radioactive element, it has a definite order of procession that continues on and on. The first objection then, would be that the Dao is not nearly as predictable or constant as the melting of frozen water. But what if it was? One of the central tenants to Daoism is to find your place within the Dao, to follow your own path as naturally as a river flows down the path of least resistance.

I suppose a better analogy would be to compare the Dao to the force of gravity. It’s always there, constantly tugging at our soles to remind us that it’s there, and is more or less inescapable. But we still can (and do) fight against its influence, like the first birds looking to take to the skies. Plenty of us manage to go quite far fighting off their natural inclinations, gaining wealth or power or other rewards. But isn’t it so tiring to stay airborne for so long, constantly struggling against the insistent pull towards the ground? The Dao is within your own thoughts, your subconscious pulls towards your natural desires. You can fight against them all you like, but that doesn’t make them go away. In fact, I would say the more we struggle against what is natural to us, the more those thoughts will make themselves known.

The ultimate goal of Daoism is for everyone to follow their own desires, for everyone to live naturally within the world. Hippy-sounding sentiments aside, we humans are social creatures that generally try to avoid conflict with others. Should we all live openly and honestly about our desires and relationships to others, perhaps a world without conflict might begin to emerge. I’m not so naïve as to say we can be fully free of all kinds of conflict, but I’m simply providing an ideal, a picture of “How Things Should Be.” After all, if everyone did the job they wanted to do instead of the job they felt forced into, a happier and more productive society seems only natural.

And idealized utopias aside, on the personal level this should be the happiest and most fulfilling way to live our lives. The old saying goes “If you do what you love, then you’ll never work a day in your life.” People are more productive doing jobs they enjoy, and are more innovative pursuing jobs they’re passionate about. To find your place in the Dao, I think the best place to start is with your career and the path that you want to define you for the majority of your life.

I won’t deny the fact that I’ve read/listened to poetry and cried tears at the end. Yep I’m male and I said it. I think you have to be a certain kind of individual to not connect spiritually with art that lives on such a tender frequency. It’s odd how the West equate emotion as a feminine trait and violence as a masculine one. Isn’t violence a total submission to emotion too? See as men we are encouraged by the culture to boast about who we beat up or who we slept with but never who we helped or who we loved.

Anthony Anaxagorou: Poet & Writer: I Won't Deny 

Never assume that sitting still is the same as doing nothing.

Students will often come to a teacher and complain that their meditation practice is going poorly, they are bored or easily distracted. When asked about their practice it becomes clear that they are not meditating at all. They are sitting quietly in a room staring at a candle. Sitting quietly is a...

How did you get into Daoism?

In my first post on this blog, I explain how I first started reading the Dao De Jing and getting serious about the Path. I was young and impressionable, and the book made me feel like a more cool and serene person. At the time, however, I didn't really grasp what the words were saying, and for a while I harbored a little bit of reservation about it. It took a few years of exploring the world and learning about myself before I started to put the pieces together, to revise my understanding of the Dao and how it really worked. And then, when I finally decided to crack open the book again, understanding Daoism was a natural as breathing. I had already been living the Path for some time, only now I could look at it with a more "official" perspective. I still have a long way to go to fully understand everything that's there, but at least now I've gotten started.

Thoughts on Opposites

In regards to bomjumaku's article on the cross, here are my musings on duality and unity.

From a purely Daoist perspective, there aren't really any opposites or duality. Such things are just convenient labels for us humans, but have no meaning in respect to the actual Path. Everything just is as it exists within the Dao, thus eliminating the imperfect descriptions of whether things are Good or Evil, Light or Dark, Yin or Yang. Yes, even the infamous Daoist symbol of the Yin-Yang is simply the best attempt of our ancestors to define the state of Being Unified. To follow their own analogy, it should really be simply one plain circle of gray, or maybe purple, something completely different from Black and White. This is known as the Wuji, the ultimate or empty circle. But because just a plain circle looks really dumb and doesn't explain anything, the originators did the best they could to teach the concept better without actually teaching it (but of course, by doing that, they are still teaching it after all).

So we come to the Yin-Yang. I get the feeling from television and the internet that a lot of people use it without actually knowing what it means. So if you get it or already understood it, congratulations! For everyone else, here's the basic rundown. Do you see how there's a black dot and a white dot in the opposite-colored field? This isn't just for aesthetics, it means that nothing is pure on either side. Nothing is totally dark, and nothing is totally light. A lot of people like to deal in absolutes, especially in popular media, but nothing is actually that simple or clear. To try and talk about history or politics this way is to invite disaster and often prevents us from discussing things honestly or fairly. Rorschach was wrong (and yet somehow still right), and we're all supposed to understand that by the end of Watchmen. This is part of what makes him such an interesting character, and I think a big reason why he's the fan favorite. For someone who sees things completely in Right and Wrong, he himself is all mixed up and conflicted, lost in his own gray area that drives him crazy. If we really want to be able to exist in peace and have conversations about Big Important Things, we must accept that things simply are as they are, and will never be wholly good or wholly bad.

Now, let's take another look at the Yin-Yang. Do you notice how those two fields of black and white aren't actually rigid against each other? There isn't just a straight line separating the two halves; the curve represents the two sides flowing into each other, one after the other in a constant flow. This, to me, indicates the illusion of thinking of the two as separate entities or concepts. They are both part of the greater whole, unified as a single entity. This is what the Wuji represents, a single essence that simply is. Contained within it, of course, is the system of Yin and Yang, but the main point is to recognize that it's not a dual duel between the two, but a partnership. People like to talk about how Yin represents the Feminine and how Yang represents to Masculine, but to me this is missing the point. The two simply exist in harmony with each other, and you cannot have one without the other, as they are a single unit.

Of course, this won't stop people from using it as a convenient Chinese cure-all for symbolism, and it certainly won't stop people from using it as a label for any given two-part analogy. And that's okay, because duality labels are still convenient and useful for us. But we do all need to recognize that the duality is an illusion. The concept of opposites is only true in strictest of languages, where something is either Good or Ungood. But for everything else, it's better to think of things in terms of different (and often completely non-polarized) qualities. Like Pathik says, separations are illusions.

Submitted Posts

Just a quick update. There seems to have been some issues with people submitting posts as of late, where I've only received a title without an entry. I'm typing this entry through the submitter to test this function. If you have submitted a post to the blog, please try it again and make sure the body is attached.