Tuesday

dao ubiquity


ubiquity
Chinese for "ubiquity"



bronze artifact appearing as head of warrior

Chinese characters for " Bronze Humn like head"


Tao is everywhere.

It cannot be kept from the sincere.


Tao originated in China and was an expression of that culture. It was intimately tied to a poetically agrarian view of the world, and it forged mysticism and pragmatism together. But now, most of us, even those in China, do not understand ancient words. Our faming is mechanized. Our poetry is written on computers. Does this make Tao invalid? No, it does not. Tao is still here, and if we are to follow Tao, we must rely not on old standards but on direct experience. Contemporary minds need contemporary concepts to interest them.

If following Tao is as great as the masters claim, then it ought to be applicable to any situation and any race. Neither time, nor place, nor culture should be a barrier to the sincere seeker. Tao surrounds us; we need only guidance and understanding in order to connect with it.

Tao is not something esoteric. It is right here. The masters allude to this all the time. For them, anything—from reading scriptures to attending the theater, from meditating to sweeping dung from the ground—is Tao. They understand the ubiquitous nature of Tao and act accordingly. If masters still know Tao in this world of jet planes and electronic communication, then we can also absorb the essential message of Tao. Those who succeed might never talk of it, and yet everything they do will be spontaneously in tandem with Tao.



ubiquity
365 Tao
daily meditations
Deng Ming-Dao (author)
ISBN 0-06-250223-9





Chinese characters for "Bronze human like head"

Human-like head
Excavated in Sanxingdui, Guanghan county,
Sichuan Province, in 1986
Shang dynasty, ca. 16th — 11th BCE
Bronze
height 39.3 cm

In 1986, a sizable group of larger-than-life bronze figures and heads, some covered with gold, along with many jades and elephant tusks, were unearthed in sacrificial pits in Sanxingdui, in Sichuan province. No signs of human sacrifice were found. This discovery shed new light on the geographic range of bronze culture, which until then had been thought of as concentrated mainly in central China. At the same time, it raised many questions about this hitherto unknown civilization and these awesome bronze figures, which are unlike anything found before and on which no written documentation exists.

National Museum of Chinese History, Beijing




T A O I S M
hand drawn calligraphy of the word dao
tao is everywhere

o n e
詩歌一個

The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without abstraction is to sense the world;
To experience with abstraction is to know the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.


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