Dào  道

By Li Dao-Chun

The Dao that can be talked about is not the true enduring Dao. The true enduring Dao begins where there is no beginning and is named from that which has no name. Thinking to discuss it, you feel like you have it straight in your mind, but as soon as you open your mouth you are wrong.

Suppose you could speak: what is the Dao? Since one cannot speak, how is one to perceive the Dao? What you can say is not right, not speaking is also not right: so what is right?

If you can apply a turning phrase right here at this point, all of your studies are complete.¹

But if you cannot, you will need to check, 24 hours a day, rising, resting and eating, all those places you turn your mind to: what is this majestic, lively, nothing-to-do-with-the-world thing? Checking this, checking that, checking until there is no longer any place to check, suddenly you feel the breath in your nostrils and break out in a sweat all over, and only then do you know that this was something you had yourself all along, something which has not changed during the last age of the world, and that is why they say not for an instant can one separate from the Dao.

They also say walking, stopping, sitting or lying down, this cannot be left; moreover between heaven and earth every thing, animate or inanimate, all are this; from ancient times to the present it is only this; what gave birth to heaven and gave birth to earth is only this; as to everyday common use, every breath, moving or still, is yet only this.

Every single thing that has form will decay, only this is ever present. Heaven, earth and space all come to ruin, only this will never degenerate.² If only this cannot be penetrated with iron eyes and bronze pupils, why can it not be penetrated? The problem lies in not coming face to face with it, although coming face to face with it is also a mistake – but you must say where the mistake is!

Do not just answer randomly! How does it all actually and finally come together?

I explain and make this all clear, but there is a lack of people willing to take it up.

If only I could encounter someone who knew my heart, I’d give them a wink and pick them up, hey?

   Last night, a new rain passed the head of the river.

   This morning, as of old, the distant mountains are green.

Ode

Reaching the limits of the Dao, most empty and quiet

Formless, shapeless, nameless and immaterial

Unseeable, ungraspable, imperceptible: seek it, it’s untraceable

Uncontained by the greatest, entering even the tiniest

Generates heaven and earth, nourishes the ten thousand things

Transforming endlessly, hiding and emerging immeasurably

It cannot be known; knowing, it cannot be conceptualised

The tongue of the great Lao Zi had no bone, the classic clearly revealing it

Endless words are not worth a single silence

This Ο is a stop – then even more doubt than before!

Endnotes

1. “一转语 Yī zhuǎn yǔ is a Chan term for a word or phrase that reveals the speaker’s degree of enlightenment or that transforms the listener’s mind at a critical psychological moment.” Sasaki and Kirchner. The Record of Linji, University of Hawaii Press, 2009, p. 290.

2. Quran, Surah Al-Qasas, 28:88: “All things are perishing except for His face.”