Here is another excerpt from the Questioning Way adopted for posting here on the blog…..
Between 2500 and 2600 years ago, there lived a man in China who later came to be called Lao Tsu, meaning “old master.” He wrote a book called the Tao Te Ching, about a concept called ‘Tao.” Tao is often translated as “The Way.” In his book, Lao Tsu talked of an all pervasive way of existence and described how to conduct oneself in accordance with this way. An idea similar to the concept of Tao is also expressed in western philosophy. A Greek contemporary of Lao Tsu named Heraclitus spoke of an idea he called “logos.” Logos, as Heraclitus used it, can be translated as “formula.” He maintained that this formula was prevalent in everything and steered all existence. Very little of what Heraclitus had to say has made it to modern times, however, the Tao Te Ching has survived and has been translated many times into many languages. The work of Lao Tsu and later Chinese philosophers form the basis of both a religion and a philosophy called Taoism. For our purposes, we aren’t concerned with religious Taoism. There are aspects of philosophical Taoism that parallel certain aspects of the questioning way, and we will visit these in later chapters. In this chapter, we are concerned only with the concept of Tao itself.
What is Tao? Well, imagine everything that exists, both animate and inanimate. Every animal, plant, bug, mountain, and pebble, every grain of sand, drop of water and ocean, all together, all at once. Imagine the Earth, the moon, all the planets, and every star in every galaxy throughout the universe, as well as the universe itself as a whole. Now imagine this all together, all at once. Think of everything all this does. Every action, every purpose, every manner, every path, every behavior, every thought, everything anything ever does throughout its existence. Imagine that all at once. Now think of everything that exists as individual players in an orchestra. Think of everything anything ever does as notes in a song that the orchestra is playing. Tao is the orchestra and the song all together, all at once. It is all existence as a harmonized whole while simultaneously remaining a collection of trillions of discrete parts and actions. Tao is the who, the what, the why, and the where of all existence. Tao is the notion of the entire universe as a single system- in- action. Tao is an orchestra playing a song.
Taken separately, each player and the notes he makes might be mistaken for random musings. Together, the musicians and their music make something more than the sum of their parts. Together, they make something tangible in itself. At the same time, for the song to be what it is, each separate player, and the music he plays is necessary. Since all that exists continually creates the song by its actions, we can see that it is a process, not a thing. Although the fact that the players and the song exist and continually play are constants, the music itself is never static and finished, but instead is always in motion, changing, and evolving. It is a work forever in the making. We all are rather like an immense group of musicians playing music while dancing to the melody. Tao is us doing what we do day after day.
Think of the song. Some hear it, but most players concentrate only on the part of the song that they’re playing. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the whole symphony because you have to pay too much attention to what you’re doing. Like the music we play, sometimes it’s hard to apprehend Tao. Like the music we play, it is often easier to concentrate and understand everyday matters than it is to see ourselves as part of a larger way of life, part of a giant system composed of trillions of parts.
Tao is an important idea for everyone from the average person to physicists and scientists to understand because it brings into sharp focus the idea that everything on earth including man is part of a single biosphere. Much can be learned about natural systems in general and mans place in the natural system that is earths biosphere when this idea is kept central to our outlook.