I love the natural concreteness of Daoism

Abstractions are fine. We humans have evolved to be able to conceive of abstract ideas such as love, justice, infinity, God, and so much else.

But it's possible to get lost in a maze of abstractions where each idea leads to another idea, and then another... no exit in sight. 

Daoism (or Taoism) is my favorite philosophy, along with non-religious Buddhism, because it's wonderfully concrete. I've practiced Tai Chi for seventeen years, which can be viewed as Daoism made physical. 

Yin and yang aren't abstractions in Tai Chi. They are directly experienced realities as a yin move flows into a yang move and a yang move flows into a yin move.

Now and then I turn to my bookshelf of Daoist titles and choose one to read before my morning meditation. Today it was Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation.

Here's some passages from the introductory section that I enjoyed re-reading.

The Daoist correlative cosmology begins from the assumption that the endless stream of always novel yet still continuous situations we encounter are real, and hence, that there is ontological parity among the things and events that constitute our lives.

As a parody on Parmenides, who claimed that "only Being is," we might say that for the Daoist, "only beings are," or taking one step further in underscoring the reality of the process of change itself, "only becomings are." 

That is, the Daoist does not posit the existence of some permanent reality behind appearances, some unchanging substratum, some essential defining aspect behind the accidents of change. Rather, there is just the ceaseless and usually cadenced flow of experience.

In fact, the absence of the "One behind the many" metaphysics makes our uncritical use of the philosophic term "cosmology" to characterize Daoism, at least in the familiar Greek sense of the word, highly problematic. 

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The Daoist understanding of "cosmos" as the "ten thousand things" means that, in effect, the Daoists have no concept of cosmos at all insofar as that notion entails a coherent, single-ordered world which is in any sense enclosed or defined. The Daoists are, therefore, primarily, "acosmotic" thinkers. 

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For ancient China, time pervades everything and is not to be denied. Time is not independent of things, but a fundamental aspect of them. Unlike traditions that devalue both time and change in pursuit of the timeless and eternal, in classical China things are always transforming.

In fact, in the absence of some claim to objectivity that "objectifies" and thus makes "objects" of phenomena, the Chinese tradition does not have the separation between time and entities that would allow for either time without entities, or entities without time -- there is no possibility of either an empty temporal corridor or an eternal anything (in the sense of being timeless).

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It is for this reason that things resist "definition" in the literal sense of finis -- a practice that delineates some ostensibly discrete boundary around them, and thus reduces all relations to external, extrinsic transactions. 

With fluid and shifting boundaries among things, integrity for any particular thing does not mean being or staying whole, or even actualizing its own internal potential. 

Rather, integrity is something becoming whole in its co-creative relationships with other things. Integrity is consummatory relatedness. 

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The field of experience is always construed from one perspective or another. There is no view from nowhere, no external perspective, no decontextualized vantage point. We are all in the soup. The intrinsic, constitutive relations that obtain among things make them reflexive and mutually implicating, residing together within the flux and flow.

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A corollary to this radical perspectivism is that each particular element in our experience is holographic in the sense that it has implicated within it the entire field of experience.

This single flower has leaves and roots that take their nourishment from the environing soil and air. And the soil contains the distilled nutrients of past growth and decay that constitute the living ecological system in which all of its participants are organically interdependent. 

The sun enables the flower to process these nutrients, while the atmosphere that caresses the flower also nourishes and protects it. 

By the time we have "cashed out" the complex of conditions that conspire to produce and conserve this particular flower, one ripple after another in an ever-extending series of radial circles, we have implicated the entire cosmos within it without remainder.

For the Daoist, there is an intoxicating bottomlessness to any particular event in our experience. The entire cosmos resides happily in the smile on the dirty face of this one little child.

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

"It is for this reason that things resist "definition" in the literal sense of finis -- a practice that delineates some ostensibly discrete boundary around them, and thus reduces all relations to external, extrinsic transactions. "

Those boundaries don't exist except in the eye of the viewer. But as they look deeper, their view changes. Did the object change? No. Did its relationship to other things change? No. Our understanding of it, it's connection to all things, and our connection to it, deepened.

Hence, a concrete materialism is merely a single layer of understanding.

A conceptual unchanging God may not exist. But neither does the Pringle or the Dr. Pepper. Each is in motion, each defies the label.

And yet even that motion of change is from our perspective. At another level, there may be no change at all. We are the summation of different, static states, viewed at different moments. That is what time is.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

[Spence Tepper]

"Master we have been arguing all day. He says it is the waving flag that is moving. I say it is the wind.

" You are both wrong. It is the mind that is moving. "

Zen Flesh Zen Bones - Alan Watts

[Spence Tepper]

If you are on a train looking out the window, you might be seduced into thinking the environment is moving. But it isn't. It is your mind that is moving.

In meditation you go where your attention takes you.
So you can say the star exploded, or you can say that your focused attention simply magnified the star and its entire history from birth through death in an instant as your attention brought you closer and closer to it and then through it.

The whole creation here may be an entirely static infinite set of strings, save for our attention that keeps us observing this one dimensional point of no time or space, expanding into its related, connected moments as we attend to it, so that we perceive the time and motion of this life passing us by. Just a little more attention could take us anywhere else.

[Sonia]

“The difference between collecting data and understanding its meaning is the difference between concrete and abstract thinking.

Abstract thinking is the ability to understand concepts that are real, such as freedom or vulnerability, but which are not directly tied to concrete physical objects and experiences.”
— https://www.healthline.com/health/abstract-thinking

I’m extremely comfortable with abstraction. :) I believe there are mechanisms behind every “abstract concept” (that’s the Scorpio in me). I always want to understand the deeper meaning and how things work on a micro/nano level. How things work—that’s what I’m constantly striving to understand and that purpose requires a mind open to discovery and trial and error.

I’m very comfortable with the unknown because I know there’s an explanation for it somewhere—just have to find it. And even if I don’t find it in my lifetime I won’t deny the existence of something I don’t understand.

That said, the article above makes a good point that is in line with Brian’s opening comments in this post. Over generalizations can be a negative side effect of thinking too abstractly.

“Striking a healthy balance between abstract and concrete thinking is important for maintaining good mental health and daily functioning.”
—(from the article in the link above)

I believe there is a mechanism behind everything that scientists of all kinds are working hard to identify and quantify.

[Sonia]

I’m a Libra with Scorpio rising. I don’t know what Brian’s rising sign is—probably an earth sign. 😉

[Sonia]

But for the record, I’ve never been able to “own” Chinese or Vedic astrology systems. Maybe because I’m a westerner…

“One of the religions that influenced the zodiac was Taoism. In the Taoist beliefs, they use constellations and space to determine a person's "future." This applies to the zodiac because in Chinese astrology, they believe that the positions of the things in space can affect a person's destiny.”
— https://depts.washington.edu/triolive/quest/2007/TTQ07030/religion.html

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Sonia
You wrote
"“Striking a healthy balance between abstract and concrete thinking is important for maintaining good mental health and daily functioning.”

The issue is different levels of perception.

What is perceived by one individual, without any thinking about it, becomes an arcane abstraction to another person with no exposure to that except in theory.

When I was in High School our physics teacher showed us two metal electroscopes each with its own clear plastic removable insulating cup on the outside. Having charged the metal cups with a desktop DeGraff generator he demonstrated the transfer of a blue charge of electricity between both metal electroscope cups by holding the little metal ball at the top of each close together. Zap, a blue spark and a Crack of lightening! He charged them up again and this time removed their insulating cups. Now, when he held the metal balls close together their was no zap. But where did the charge go? The class tried to figure it out and was stumped. I offered "You just scraped the charge off onto the plastic cups. It's still there."

He slid the insulating cups back on and brought the two steel balls back together again and sure enough, the spark and crackle of a brief electric arc happened.

The teacher said" Spence understands it perfectly. "

But I figured nothing out. I simply saw the charge, the field surrounding the cups stuck on the plastic insulating cups. It had nothing to do with intelligence, merely a level of perception.

[Sonia]

Hi Spence,

Thanks for sharing.

I guess that’s why it is said by the sages that perception is not true knowledge just as belief is not certainty. Belief is like hope. It isn’t concrete but it isn’t necessarily wrong because it serves a purpose in navigating the laws that govern this world. Only in the eternal can there be true knowledge. But that knowledge (or understanding) isn’t the kind of knowledge we think of here. That “knowledge” is complete certainty. Absolute certainty is something the mind cannot fully or truly posses. But again, belief does serve a purpose with regards to the laws that govern this world. Beliefs can be helpful or harmful depending on the beliefs themselves.

Even words are merely symbols. Language is not concrete. Language serves the purpose of conveying ideas and concepts.