To the Bill Mahr scientistic atheist types such an idea is sheer stupidity, born of primitive magical thinking. However, when avowed by the finest scientific minds of the modern era it opens the door to something beyond science.

I agree with you that something IS gained by our attempts to express the ineffable. Lao-tse begins the Dao De Jing by telling us that the “Dao that can be named is not the abiding Dao,” then goes on to write a whole bunch about just that.

Thank you for your thoughts.

The phenomenal world IS ‘empty’ of self-nature and self-existence. It is a story about “What Is” (Dao), which we can never know, but we can engage and resonate with.

Then we step back and tell our story.

According to this viewpoint, substantial and unsubstantial are dependently co-rising and constantly changing (sounds Daoist, doesn’t it?). Yet, the backdrop of all this is the observer…without the observer, none of this makes sense.

Don’t we know the mystical by recognizing that we have gone out beyond where our language can follow? No strength without softness, yang without yin, or suchness without symbol? As you quote, ” one will always carry the other already within it, as the seed of its opposite…” and so from the ground of suchness grows form, and from form there is suchness.

We cannot know the territory from the map, yet in a strange way, by asking not what the map says but what it is, it seems we do…

I found this book highly insightful in it’s analysis of labels, categories, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Jnana-yoga-Way-Life-Ramakrishna-Puligandla/dp/0875730914

I’ve interacted with Dr. Puligandla via email (and have published a few of his papers on my website). Reading the book opened my eyes to the whole concept of what we consider “real”. To summarize, everything that our intellect processes (based on our sensory perceptions) is a result of a certain framework being in place (he calls it a categorical framework)…which in classical indian philosophy is called Nama-Rupa (Name-Form). We assign label to a phenomenon we observe and then the label becomes the phenomenon (even though it isn’t). The importance of this revelation to me was in the fact that everything we deal with with Tai Chi and internal cultivation cannot be labeled in “a way”. There are many ways to label, but there is only one way to experience. The description of the experience will vary based on which cultural background we come from, what language we think in, etc, but the experience itself will remain intact. Maybe that’s why Lao Tzu warned us about naming the Dao?

Thanks for your inspiring blogs.

Best,

Dwai

My teacher too says that there are 3 levels of Tai Chi…Physical, Mental and then spiritual. I think the Hindu and Daoist concept of sheaths (or bodies) is very apt (and make further distinctions) — The physical sheath, the energetic sheath, the mental sheath, the intellectual sheath and the blissful sheath (called Koshas in Yogic parlance). Per these traditions, the sheaths each have their patterns and blockages (and a blockage in one can affect the others) to be worked through and only by resolving each sheath (or a combination of these) can we progress further up the spiritual ladder.

thanks for all that you give……….
Bob