Laozi

Что такое Абсолют? Существует ли Бог?

The Dao that can be named is not the constant Dao

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The Daodejing, the text attributed to Laozi, opens with the warning that the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao, and the name that can be named is not the constant name. In chapter 25 it describes something formed in undifferentiation, prior to heaven and earth, silent and empty, that may be the mother of the world: the text declares it does not know its name and calls it Dao for want of another. In chapter 4 it suggests it seems to precede even the ancestral Lord (di). The Dao is not a personal God: chapter 5 states that heaven and earth are not benevolent and treat beings as straw dogs. Nor is it mere nothing: it begets, nourishes and does not possess. The ultimate here is what precedes every name, which language can only point to obliquely.

Кто я? Существует ли истинное «я»?

No theory of the self: it advises emptying it, putting it last, knowing oneself

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The Daodejing, attributed to Laozi, does not pose the question of a true self in terms of a soul or a Self. What it offers are practical indications about the self. Chapter 7 says that the sage puts his person last and is therefore first, and that precisely by having no private interests he fulfils them. Chapter 13 links great afflictions to having a body, understood as the self that protects itself. Chapter 19 recommends lessening the private and reducing desires, and chapter 33 distinguishes knowing others, which is intelligence, from knowing oneself, which is clarity. Its ideal is the simplicity of the uncarved block. From all this one can infer a distrust of the self-assertive self, but no doctrine of what the self is.

Почему мы страдаем?

Abandoning the Way brings desire, rivalry and disaster

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The Daodejing does not pose suffering as a metaphysical problem, but it does diagnose the causes of disorder. When the great Dao is abandoned, says chapter 18, humaneness and righteousness appear as belated remedies; when cleverness and cunning arise, great hypocrisy appears. Chapter 46 states that there is no greater misfortune than not knowing contentment and no greater fault than the desire to acquire; chapter 12, that the five colours blind the eyes and rare goods lead conduct astray. Anxiety, war and ruin arise from forced action, the urge to accumulate and estrangement from natural simplicity. The remedy is not a salvation but a return: acting without forcing (wuwei), knowing when enough is enough, and going back to the root, which chapter 16 calls stillness.

Что происходит после смерти?

Returning to the root: the text describes no personal beyond

Молчание или сдержанностьСледует из учения

The Daodejing does not describe what happens to the person after death. It speaks of death, but in another register. Chapter 16 presents the life of all beings as a return to the root, which it calls stillness and the fulfilment of destiny; chapter 50 contrasts those who cling to life and shorten it with the one who knows how to preserve it; chapter 74 warns that it is useless to threaten with death a people that no longer fears it. Chapter 33 contains a disputed line — one who dies without perishing is long-lived — which some read as permanence in the Dao and others as lasting fame. What the text allows us to affirm is an attitude: to accept the cycle of arising and returning, neither forcing life nor fearing its end. The quest for physical or spiritual immortality belongs to the later Daoist tradition.

Как достигается освобождение или спасение?

There is no salvation to attain: one returns to the root, to the Way

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The Daodejing does not speak of salvation or liberation in a religious sense. What it proposes is a return: attaining utmost emptiness, keeping stillness and watching the ten thousand things go back to their root, what chapter 16 calls knowing the constant. The path is not cumulative: whoever devotes himself to learning increases daily, and whoever devotes himself to the Way decreases, until reaching non-action (wuwei), according to chapter 48. Hence the call to simplicity, to fewer desires and to abandoning cleverness and prescriptive morality (chapter 19). The fruit is not escape from the world but living in accord with the course of things, without forcing it, and thereby enduring without danger.

Нужен ли учитель?

The sage teaches without words; slighting the teacher, however clever, is great confusion

Полезен, но не обязателенСледует из учения

The Daodejing does not treat discipleship as an institution, but it offers two indications. The first is that the sage teaches without words (chapter 2; also 43): his teaching is his way of being, not a doctrinal body or an authority imposed. The second is in chapter 27: the good man is the teacher of the one who is not good, and the one who is not good is material for the good; not to value the teacher nor care for the material is, however much one knows, a great confusion. The teacher therefore has value, though his way of transmitting is silent example. Since the Way cannot be spoken (chapter 1), no verbal instruction delivers it entirely.

Реален ли мир?

The ten thousand things are born of the Way and return to it in constant cycle

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The Daodejing does not ask whether the world is real or illusory; it describes it as a process. The Way begets the one, the one the two, the two the three, and the three the ten thousand things (chapter 42); things arise from being and being from non-being (chapter 40), and all eventually return to their root (chapter 16). The course of the world is an alternation of opposites that generate each other, soft and hard, full and empty, and the Way follows what is so of itself (ziran, chapter 25). The world is therefore fully real but changing; wisdom consists in attuning to that course without forcing it.

Что такое любовь?

The highest good is like water: it benefits without contending or proclaiming itself

То, что появляется, когда «я» прекращаетсяСледует из учения

The Daodejing distrusts love understood as a virtue to be preached. Chapter 5 says that Heaven and Earth are not benevolent (ren) and treat beings as straw dogs; chapter 18, that humaneness and righteousness appear when the great Dao has been lost; chapter 38, that superior virtue does not regard itself as virtuous and therefore has virtue. Against the cultivated benevolence of the Confucians, the text proposes a goodness without self-assertion: that of water, which benefits all beings and does not contend with them (ch. 8), and that of the sage, who puts himself last and therefore comes first (ch. 7). Among its three treasures, chapter 67 names compassion (ci), comparable to a mother's care, from which courage is born. True love is not manufactured: it flows when the urge to stand out ceases.

Свободны ли мы или всё предопределено?

The Daodejing does not pose freedom: it proposes moving with the Dao

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The *Daodejing* does not know the dilemma between free will and determinism as the West framed it, and attributing a position to it would be anachronistic. What it offers is something else: the Dao acts without acting and nothing is left undone (ch. 37), and the sage imitates that non-forcing (*wuwei*). In chapter 16, returning to the root is stillness, and stillness is «returning to one's destiny» (*fuming*): destiny is not an imposed chain but each being's own course, to which it is fitting to return. Chapter 73 adds that Heaven's net is vast and wide-meshed, yet nothing slips through. The freedom the text cares about is not choosing among options but ceasing to resist the natural course of things.

Зачем медитировать или молиться?

Empty and still oneself to watch all things return to their root

Видеть реальность такой, как она естьСледует из учения

The *Daodejing* describes no meditation technique, but it contains passages the Daoist tradition read as such. Chapter 16 asks one to reach utmost emptiness and hold fast to stillness; then, as the ten thousand beings arise together, one watches their return: all things flourish and go back to their root. Chapter 10 asks whether one can embrace unity without parting from it, make the breath soft as a newborn's and cleanse the mysterious mirror until it is spotless. Chapter 48 adds that the Way is followed by diminishing each day. The aim is not an extraordinary experience, but to see clearly the natural movement of things and stop getting in its way.

Может ли разум познать предельное?

The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao

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The *Daodejing* opens by denying that the ultimate can be captured in words: the Way that can be spoken is not the enduring Way, and the name that can be named is not the enduring name (ch. 1). Throughout the text accumulated knowledge appears as an obstacle: whoever devotes himself to learning increases each day, whoever devotes himself to the Way diminishes each day (ch. 48); the one who knows does not speak and the one who speaks does not know (ch. 56). This is not irrationalism but the conviction that the Dao precedes every conceptual distinction and is known only by ceasing to impose categories on it. The knowledge it proposes is of another order: clarity (*ming*) in knowing oneself and in contemplating the return of things.

Уйти от мира или преобразить его?

Governing without forcing: of the best ruler the people barely know he exists

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Although the legend recorded by Sima Qian tells that Laozi left the Zhou court and departed westward, the Daodejing is largely addressed to the ruler. Its ideal is not withdrawal but an order achieved without imposing: of the best ruler the people barely know he exists (ch. 17); the more prohibitions, the poorer the people, and the sage does not act and the people transform themselves (ch. 57); governing a great state is like frying a small fish, without stirring it too much (ch. 60). Chapter 80 describes a small, sparsely populated community, content with what it has, where the neighbours' cocks can be heard and no one feels the need to travel. Wisdom is realised in the world and in politics, but through non-action (wuwei): reducing desires, weapons and laws until the natural order is restored.

Shiyan, provincia de Hubei · China

Wudang Mountains: Taoist pilgrimage

Comité de Administración de la Zona Turística de Wudangshan

The Wudang Mountains are one of the four sacred mountains of Taoism and one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the tradition whose founding text is Laozi's Tao Te Ching. Their palaces, monasteries and temples, built largely under the Ming dynasty and inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1994, are scattered across the slopes up to the Golden Summit. Communities of Taoist monks live there, keeping the liturgy, inner cultivation and the martial arts associated with the mountain. The official website is published by the Wudangshan tourism zone administration, in Chinese only.

Centro internacional cerca de Orangeville (Ontario) y clases en numerosos países · Canadá

Fung Loy Kok Institute of Taoism: Taoist Tai Chi

Fung Loy Kok Institute of Taoism

The Fung Loy Kok Institute of Taoism is a charitable, volunteer organisation founded more than fifty years ago by Master Moy Lin Shin, who brought his arts to twenty-five countries. It describes itself as the source and depository of the Taoist Tai Chi arts he taught: a set of 108 movements based on the principles of Taoism and aimed at cultivating body, mind and spirit, along with chanting practices. Its international centre is near Orangeville, Ontario. It is a practical rather than textual route into the tradition whose foundations go back to Laozi.