Last spring semester I was in a class on Daoism and Chinese Medicine and became intimately familiar with certain concepts within the philosophical system of Daoism (as intimate one can get in a mere sixteen weeks). The two concepts that were returned to again and again were dao and it’s relation to de, or the other way around. Some may be familiar with the popular text of Daoism, the Daodeching. Ching is a word that can be translated as “classics;” the title is simply stating that this book is about these two other terms, dao and de.
I won’t go in depth here of all the possible ways that dao can be translated, but will suffice to say that this text emphasizes that if one can define the dao, then they are not defining the dao at all. I will offer up one of my favorite attempts at translating a word that cannot be defined in its own language. In English, dao can be described as way-making, the simultaneous movement of all the world forward in this moment, and it is indeed the most verby any noun could possibly ever be.
This is where de comes in. De is pronounced as our aspiration of another's ignorance, “Duh,” and it was a challenge getting used to a professor that would say this expression sometimes several times during lectures. De is a particular manifestation of the dao, a focalized unit of this way-making process. It is us. It is this computer, it is the sunrise, it is what I will eat for dinner, it is every individual thing and yet each are still completely the dao. I find it appropriate to reference the scene from the film, I Heart Huckabees (a fabulous philosophical comedy that I dream of teaching a course on someday) where Dustin Hoffman is explaining the idea of the blanket. He holds up a blanket and says to Jason Schwartzman’s character that the blanket represents everything, but various parts of the blanket are the individual manifestations in the world. (Not familiar? Check out the clip at the bottom of this post) De is each individual parts of the blanket representing any and everything in this world, and even with their differences as manifestations they are all still the blanket, the dao.
De is never distinct or separate from dao, it is the dao in this particular time and place interacting with many other de in this movement, this moment. There is something magical that happens when we live our life with this truth in mind. We are all separate parts of this conclusive whole, though we may be apart from each other we are still a part of each other. I will return to and expand on this idea in further posts, including how the practice of seeing oneself as de immersed in dao (or as dao localized as de) creates highly effective actions even in our most mundane routines.
I will say here that the translators of my copy of the Daodeching, Roger Ames and David Hall, sum up the overall message of this text as “making this life significant.”
I won’t go in depth here of all the possible ways that dao can be translated, but will suffice to say that this text emphasizes that if one can define the dao, then they are not defining the dao at all. I will offer up one of my favorite attempts at translating a word that cannot be defined in its own language. In English, dao can be described as way-making, the simultaneous movement of all the world forward in this moment, and it is indeed the most verby any noun could possibly ever be.
This is where de comes in. De is pronounced as our aspiration of another's ignorance, “Duh,” and it was a challenge getting used to a professor that would say this expression sometimes several times during lectures. De is a particular manifestation of the dao, a focalized unit of this way-making process. It is us. It is this computer, it is the sunrise, it is what I will eat for dinner, it is every individual thing and yet each are still completely the dao. I find it appropriate to reference the scene from the film, I Heart Huckabees (a fabulous philosophical comedy that I dream of teaching a course on someday) where Dustin Hoffman is explaining the idea of the blanket. He holds up a blanket and says to Jason Schwartzman’s character that the blanket represents everything, but various parts of the blanket are the individual manifestations in the world. (Not familiar? Check out the clip at the bottom of this post) De is each individual parts of the blanket representing any and everything in this world, and even with their differences as manifestations they are all still the blanket, the dao.
De is never distinct or separate from dao, it is the dao in this particular time and place interacting with many other de in this movement, this moment. There is something magical that happens when we live our life with this truth in mind. We are all separate parts of this conclusive whole, though we may be apart from each other we are still a part of each other. I will return to and expand on this idea in further posts, including how the practice of seeing oneself as de immersed in dao (or as dao localized as de) creates highly effective actions even in our most mundane routines.
I will say here that the translators of my copy of the Daodeching, Roger Ames and David Hall, sum up the overall message of this text as “making this life significant.”
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