道道 Tao Dao #9
© Tao Dao - bone structure of Daodejing #36 (English commas added).
Pattern: 8 Days Zen Guqin.
Copyright ©2019 March 31, 2019
道 (dtao, tao, dao), means many different things to different people... English dictionaries say, 'method, path, principle, road, way' and many other English synonyms, but no known English resource actually speaks of what the word implies...
辶 (chuò) is said to imply 'step, pause', or, 'step, stop', depending on one's own self-pattern...
自 (zì) is said to imply 'oneself, personally, self', some references say it means 'face'... several other possibles also...
Above the 'oneself', is 一 (yī), which usually implies the number 'one'... sometimes might imply 'under surface', or 'concealed', depending on which reference guide is to be believed...
Above the 'one' is 八 (bā), which is shown as 丷 in traditional characters, and today usually implies the number '8', but historically implied 'divide', although, some references suggest that it might could simply imply 'hair' on one's head, and also, older scripts of the symbol might have implied 'river', or 'streams joining', but, nevertheless, 'divide' is the favored choice for the moment.
Reading left to right... and choosing the meanings that are best useful for the moment... 道 'walk, pause, divide, one, oneself'...
Dao... without use of memorized numbers, without use of memorized words, without use of memorized mathematics, without use of measure words, without help from anyone else, divide one oneself.
Self-observation, combined with self-thinking... might sound easy... but the acts of self-observation and self-thinking, are not possible for most people.
Observe, find, and learn from one's self, what 'divide one oneself' means... to self-observe how the mental division occurs... to self-observe one's own thoughts... to self-observe how the division of 'one' was reasoned... then, the useful next step... to vocally describe the mental process itself... to describe, with fine details, without using measure words, and without using numbers.
Fewer than one person in 10,000 is able to meaningfully describe even a tiny portion of their own thoughts... only a few rare individuals are known to be able to describe a single drop of water... only a few rare individuals are known to be able to describe a single thought... most people are fully not able to self-think at all.
And here, when the mental self-thinking is done, of having divided one oneself, what English word can then be given as a name, while also being relative to a way of life, as well as being relative to a principle of life? There is none, because, English possesses no such word... no English word relates to what is real within Reality...
Laozi's writings within Daodejing agree... names are mere inventions of one's own mind... names are given to things that an individual's mind can imagine... the Source has no name, because, unable to imagine... description of water has no name, because, unable to imagine... dividing one oneself has no name, because, unable to imagine...
Many individuals continue to discuss what the word 'dao' means within Daodejing... but, the word 'dao' will always mean whatever a person wants it to mean, and, the meaning will never share an equal, same, nor identical meaning as anyone else's.
When an individual can 'divide one oneself' with deeply, verbosely, detailed descriptions, then, mentally 'divide oneself'...
It is not a game, not a philosophy, not a 'mysterious woman's door', not magic, not supernatural newage powers, not a 'nothingness nothingness of nothingness', not mumbo-jumbo science, but, rather, it is simply an act of conscious self-thinking... very common and perpetual for some people since long before birth, but never done by most people...
When an individual can mentally divide one oneself, and then mentally divide one's self, then, change the 丷 symbol meaning to imply 'streams entering'... then, mentally divide all sensory inputs as the sensory inputs occur... continuously... never ceasing, never pausing, always dividing one oneself, always mentally self-thinking of all of one's own experiences of life...
When able to self-observe while self-divide, then better able to understand what is right, and what is wrong, with the words 'happy anger, sorrow joy, it have-not expressed, call it middle...' (中庸 Zhong Yong draft translation).
To be able, to self-think while one's self is living each moment, the individual is close to having made a very tiny, little, baby step, towards being capable of reading, and walking, Daodejing's first word... 道.
Only, maybe, about, another thousand words, within Daodejing, to self-learn... each requiring similar self-thinking, but each requiring a different angle of conscious attention... requires self-effort, requires self-participation in one's own life... not easy and unthinking like memorizing words of schools and books...
If an individual, cannot divide one oneself, then, cannot grasp meaning within Daodejing... countless hundreds of academic translations of Daodejing... none firsthand-understood meaning of 道... all academic translations, none excepted, incoherent...
Zhong Yong spoke of it, Da Xue gave an example of it, and 'Laozi's' Daodejing relies upon it... self-thinking...