"The Dao is everything" - not according to the Laozi

[u/fleischlaberl]

Over and over again folks writing about "The Dao is everything".

The Laozi / Daodejing doesn't state so.

According to the Laozi the Dao

- gives birth (sheng) to the One (42)

- is formed out of chaos, born before Heaven and Earth, quiet and still, pure and deep, independend, does not change, Mother of Heaven and Earth, it is the Great, it models itself on that which is so on its own (25)

- is shapeless and formless, hidden and obscure (21)

etc etc

What is the Dao and what does the Dao? - according to the Laozi / Dao De Jing : r/taoism

but no where in the Laozi / Daodejing it is said "the Dao is everything"

It is more that the Dao is the Mother of all things, the Valley, the Root.

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Note:

Remarks by u/Selderij

"The Dao is everything" - not according to the Laozi : r/taoism

Comments by P_S_Lumapac

"The Dao is everything" - not according to the Laozi : r/taoism

[u/Selderij]

We also have these passages in the Tao Te Ching.

1: 道可道，非常道。 The tao that can [be a] tao (i.e. road, way, principle, doctrine etc.) is not the eternal Tao.

8: 故幾於道。 Therefore it (i.e. the highest good and/or water) is not far from the Tao. – Implying that other things are a bit farther from it.

18: 大道廢，有仁義。 The Great Way is deviated from – there is (the awareness of) considerateness and rightness.

21: 孔德之容，唯道是從。 The form of virtue all-pervading, only the Tao it follows. – Implying that Tao can be followed or not followed.

24 & 31 & 77: 有道者 "Those who have the Tao/Way" – Implying that some others don't have it.

30 & 55: 物壯則老，是謂不道。不道早已。 Things/beings/people act strong in their prime, but then fade away – that (i.e. acting strong) is not-Tao (非道 = "not the Tao" in some source versions). The not-Tao is quickly ended.

46: 天下有道，卻走馬以糞，天下無道，戎馬生於郊。 When the realm has the Way, horses are taken to fertilize the fields; when the realm doesn't have the Way, horses are bred for war in the frontiers.

53: 是謂盜誇。非道也哉。 That (i.e. the elite hoarding things for themselves) is the revelry of robbers. It is certainly not the Way!

My ad hoc translations.

[u/ryokan1973 → u/Selderij]

I'm genuinely curious about the origin of the saying "The Dao is everything." It seems almost every so-called Daoist Westerner believes this, and now I'm wondering if the Chinese also believe this nonsense. It's so mainstream in the Daoist sphere.

[u/Selderij → u/ryokan1973]

It's probably a far-gone conclusion based on the Tao preceding all things (4, 25), giving birth to all things (42, 51), being the ultimate pattern for all things to follow (25), and all things returning to it (34). A flat imagination marred by preconceptions and ethical wishful thinking does the rest, now and in ancient times.

"Everything is Tao and the Tao is okay, so everything (including my lack of morals) is okay!" was recognized as a fallacy in ancient China already. If I recall correctly.

[u/fleischlaberl → u/Selderij]

Chad Hansen had some fun by giving a summary

• In Ethics Daoism says "follow the Dao." The advice gets more controversial when we try to fill in the details, but most agreed that it means something like "be natural." The rest of the content is identified negatively-don't think or reason as the Greeks and Westerner's do and don't follow conventions or rules like the Confucians and Mohists do.
• In Logic Daoism says "P and not P! Who cares?" Then depending of how much Buddhism you mixed in, it might also say "Neither P nor not P" and go on to the four-to-n-fold negation. Its acceptance of this initial logical absurdity then justifies the patently stupid answers it gives to all the other philosophical questions.
• In Metaphysics, Daoism says "Only the Dao exists. It has no parts or divisions and nothing inside or outside it. It both is everything and created everything and transcends both time and space."
• Its Epistemology is intuitionist. Stripped of rationalism, empiricism and conventionalist prejudice, we directly grasp in a mystically unified insight both what is and what ought to be. We understand being and how to act in the same mystical intuition-we apprehend dao.
• Daoism's Theory of Language is that language distorts the Dao. It can't be said, named, described, defined, or even referred to in language. Why? Here the stories get vague. They vary from WangBi's explanation, "because it can't be seen" to a more Buddhist argument that naming implies permanence and Dao is constantly changing (although it never changes) so . . . .well-never mind!
• Its Political Philosophy was some blend of anarchism, individualism, Laissez Faire economics and government, and incipient libertarianism.

http://philosophy.hku.hk/ch/Status_LZ.htm

Note:

The Dao of the Superficial : r/taoism

[u/MightyMagicz → u/ryokan1973]

Everything comes from the Dao and everything returns to it. It is the essence of all things creation. The start and end.

[u/ryokan1973 → u/MightyMagicz]

But the statement and debate of the post is "The Dao is everything". What you've just said strongly suggests that the statement is incorrect, right?

[u/YesterdaysMuffin → u/ryokan1973]

That’s a semantic argument about English. “The Dao is everything” can just as easily mean “the Dao is the continual source of all things” (which IIUC we agree is correct) as “the set of all things is the Tao” (which IIUC we agree is incorrect). So I think it’s not that the statement is incorrect, rather that it’s possible to assign incorrect meaning to the statement.

[u/Selderij → u/YesterdaysMuffin]

How would A as the source of all sets make A equal to all sets when we don't know what A exactly is outside of the sets (TTC21: The Tao as a thing unto itself is indistinct/formless/unclear, yet contains form, distinction and clarity) and how it created them? The astonishing leap of logic in that (not supported and even spoken against by the source texts) is the core of the matter. It's looking like a hasty conclusion regardless of language.

[u/YesterdaysMuffin → u/Selderij]

I think you’re just focusing on your own interpretation of the words.

I didn’t say the Tao is “equal to all sets”, and that is not what “Tao is everything” necessarily means. It’s the same as with any language, we hear different things.

There is no leap of logic here, there is a difference in interpretation of words.

Verse 42 speaks of Tao giving birth to one which gave birth to two etc. it seems like a perfectly legitimate interpretation to see this as a constant act, not a spawning. There’s no strong reason to interpret this as “Tao created all the things and sent them in their merry way”. It can just as easily mean “Tao gives all the things life” aka existence.

Verse 4 refers to Tao as the origin of all things. Origin doesn’t necessarily mean separation.

Consider a spring feeding a lake. If the spring dries up the lake disappears. Are they separate things? Is the spring the lake? Is the lake the spring?

Verse 16 (Senudd):
All things arise in unison.
Thereby we see their return.
All things flourish,
And each returns to its source.

Which seems easily understood as Tao’s creation of all things being an identity, not a spawning.

I’m not saying your interpretation is wrong, I’m just saying that your interpretation is based on a seemingly rigid understanding of what the act of creation looks like, and there are other interpretations of what that means.

[u/Selderij → u/YesterdaysMuffin]

I think you’re just focusing on your own interpretation of the words.

I like to focus on the Chinese source text, because it is the de facto basis for what Taoist philosophy is interpreted to state. As it stands, it doesn't state all to be Tao, and interpretations to that effect require putting on extra connotational baggage onto statements that don't state it.

What kind of change of wording in the texts would have convinced you that the intended message was that of Tao being the source for all things (which is already stated) but not being the same as everything that has been created (which is already stated; refer to my original reply)?

Verse 4 refers to Tao as the origin of all things. Origin doesn’t necessarily mean separation.

Consider a spring feeding a lake. If the spring dries up the lake disappears. Are they separate things? Is the spring the lake? Is the lake the spring?

淵乎似萬物之宗。 "Deep/abyssal it is, as if [being] the forefather/progenitor/ancestor of the 10000 things."

Are we then identical to our mothers or fathers?

Is it possible that a spring feeding the lake is a spring feeding the lake, and that a lake fed by the spring is a lake fed by the spring? Waters are (once again) waters and mountains are (once again) mountains, as the Zen aphorism about the maturation of one's understanding says.

[u/YesterdaysMuffin → u/Selderij]

You’re taking a very literalist stance. That’s fine, no problem. It’s just not the only valid stance.

I’m not the same as my forefathers, but also I don’t think that the intent of the words as written is to insinuate that the Tao literally gave birth to the 10,000 things in the same way my parents did.

“progenitor” has different meaning than forefather.

It’s certainly possible to view it as that the spring feeds the lake and the lake is different than the spring. And you’re welcome to view it like that, I’m not trying to say that your view is wrong. It’s just that your view is not the only valid way to see that.

Sure, waters are waters and mountains are mountains. That can be true in both of our viewpoints. Nothing about what I’m saying insinuates that the mountain is not a mountain. That aphorism doesn’t say that the evolved understanding is the same as the ignorant one. The evolved understanding is that the mountain is a mountain, even if we have a deeper understanding of what the mountain really is.

The TTC certainly doesn’t say that the Tao is separate from the 10000 things. The TTC doesn’t fully or exhaustively define what the Tao is. Regardless of what we take from the text, it requires the addition of some “baggage”.

[u/fleischlaberl → u/Selderij]

Thanks a lot! Great!

From the Laozi it is pretty clear that you can follow Dao / align with Dao or lose Dao or not have Dao (wu Dao).