I finished rereading Excerpts from Chuang Tzu, which talks about Daoism. I am thoroughly confused about what i just read. To my knowledge, the idea of Daoism/Taoism is simply being (is that it, because i hope it is). There is nothing else to it; it just seems like everything is just being.
“Do you know what all things agree in calling right?”
“How would I know that?” said Wang Ni.
“Do you know that you don’t know it?”
“How would I know that?”
“Then do things know nothing?”
This was one of many confusing parts to this reading. Here is how I understand this part (feel free to correct me if my interpretation isn’t right). Say for example, there is a mountain. I call it a mountain, and someone else calls a different thing. We all understand that a mountain is a mountain is a mountain, but that someone else and me both understand that the mountain is in fact a mountain.
Another general bigger picture idea that I may or may not have been able to garner from the reading is that Dao kinda has to do with something like a never ending journey in a sense; always learning about the world around us. Because if you stop learning, you stop understanding how the world functions and is.
One reply on “EKS China Post 4: The One About Me Still Not Understanding Daoism”
Thanks for your honest and thoughtful comments about this. I truly believe that there are places where the Daodejing and other mystical texts are intended to be confusing, puzzling, and paradoxical, precisely as a way of trying to get us to think unconventionally, and to recognize shortcomings in our understanding and other ways of looking at the familiar.