The Tao of God-dess

There is a thing inher­ent and nat­ural, which existed before heaven and earth. Motion­less and fath­om­less, It stands alone and never changes; It per­vades every­where and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the Uni­verse. I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.
— Lao Tse

As many know, Tao is a con­cept found in ancient Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy. While the Chi­nese cal­li­graphic char­ac­ter itself trans­lates as way or path, or more loosely as doc­trine or prin­ci­ple, it is often used philo­soph­i­cally to sym­bol­ise the fun­da­men­tal or true nature of the world. Whilst Tao­ism holds that Tao can­not be expressed, it holds that it can be known and its prin­ci­ples can be fol­lowed. Taoist writ­ing also focuses on the value of fol­low­ing the Tao, which is called Te, or virtue.

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eter­nal void:
filled with infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties.
It is hid­den but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
– Tao Te Ching, Ch. 4

In reli­gious Tao­ism, Tao is under­stood in terms of these con­stituents:
• Jing, cor­re­spond­ing to energy;
• Qi, or flow of energy and
• Shen, or the Spirit.

Jing Qi Shen — the triad Jing Qi Shen con­sti­tutes the Tao of all that is, and are rep­re­sented as deities in the Three Pure Ones.

There are char­ac­ter­is­tics of Tao that are often used to describe its nature.

Tao is undifferentiated

All dis­tinc­tions are rel­a­tive com­par­isons bound together by their mutual ref­er­ence. Hence there is no such thing as long except by com­par­i­son to short, and vice versa; there is no such thing as non-being except by com­par­i­son to being. Because Tao itself has no defined shape or defined size, all com­par­isons fall within it. There can never be ‘real’ differences.

Tao returns

This con­cept is often used to describe that Tao will flow back, cir­cum­vent, and even­tu­ally undo any and every attempt to force it into a par­tic­u­lar path.

Tao is sub­tle and quiet

The most impor­tant aspects of Tao are its sub­tle, unno­ticed, every­day work­ings. The soft­est thing in the world over­comes the hard­est. Many places in the Tao Te Ching under­line that dra­matic, allur­ing or extra­or­di­nary events may catch the eye and assume sig­nif­i­cance, but it is the slow, slight, unob­served and con­tin­u­ous move­ment of the man­i­fes­ta­tions of Tao that actu­ally accom­plish things.

Tao is simul­ta­ne­ously dis­pas­sion­ate and nurturing

Because all beings are man­i­fes­ta­tions of Tao, Tao gives itself com­pletely to every­thing and every­one. How­ever, by the same expres­sion Tao is believed to be indif­fer­ent to the char­ac­ter of man­i­fes­ta­tions. Birth and death, hap­pi­ness and sor­row, and life itself, from the per­spec­tive of Tao, are only move­ments and transformations.

Gems of Tao Te Ching

Accord­ing to tra­di­tion, “Old Mas­ter” or Lao Tse (Lao Tzu), a record-keeper at the Zhou Dynasty court, com­posed Tao Te Ching. Text is essen­tial to the philo­soph­i­cal Tao­ism and Chi­nese reli­gion in gen­eral, and strongly influ­enced other schools, includ­ing Chi­nese Bud­dhism. Many artists, includ­ing poets, painters, cal­lig­ra­phers, gar­den­ers have used the Tao Te Ching as a source of inspi­ra­tion. Its influ­ence has also spread widely out­side East Asia, suc­cored by hun­dreds of trans­la­tions of Tao Te Ching into West­ern languages.

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eter­nal Tao;
The name that can be defined is not the unchang­ing name.

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inex­haustible, it gives birth to infi­nite worlds.

Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond ‘is’ and ‘is not’.
How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see.

Know­ing oth­ers is intel­li­gence; know­ing your­self is true wis­dom.
Mas­ter­ing oth­ers is strength; mas­ter­ing your­self is true power.

A leader is best when peo­ple barely know that he exists …

The Mas­ter (teacher) has no pos­ses­sions.
The more he does for oth­ers, the hap­pier he is.
The more he gives to oth­ers, the wealth­ier he is.

The Tao nour­ishes by not forc­ing.
By not dom­i­nat­ing, the Mas­ter (teacher) leads.

A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles started with a first step.

Schol­ars of the high­est class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and prac­tice it earnestly.
Schol­ars of the mid­dle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly.
Schol­ars of the low­est class, when they hear of it, laugh at it.
With­out the laugh­ter, there would be no Tao.

Tao of Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism

Although sourc­ing from pro­gres­sive Chris­tian­ity its out­look on dynam­ics of per­sonal rev­e­la­tion, and from Gaudiya Vaish­nav­ism its enchant­ment with all-attractive God-dess, in its heart and mind Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is clos­est to ancient wis­dom of Tao­ism than to either Gaudiya Vaish­nav­ism or Chris­tian­ity, for it refuses to share their pre­dom­i­nantly out­dated world­views (or flow against the Tao).

It doesn’t seek fol­low­ers yet it gives itself to all who would like to fol­low the Tao, or God-dess.
As a good trav­eler it has no fixed plans, and is not hur­ry­ing upon arriv­ing.
As a good artist it let its intu­ition lead it wher­ever it wants.
Know­ing the mark of a mod­er­ate man is free­dom from his own ideas, it tries to best express itself but also lets go of all those ideas. All ideas even­tu­ally fail to describe the inde­scrib­able, all-beautiful God-dess.
Know­ing the more laws and reg­u­la­tions are made promi­nent, the more mis­con­cep­tions, thieves and rob­bers of truth there will be. Thus it fol­lows no rules, and asks for no rules.

We live our best moments when adapt­able, aware of our sur­round­ings and what we need to do to go for­ward — flow­ing with the Tao, or God-dess.

It flows effort­lessly between dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal, exis­ten­tial and sci­en­tific ideas, for flow is what Tao is. Tao is ever new. It is able to be expe­ri­enced in dif­fer­ent cul­tures and dif­fer­ent times.

Fol­low­ing the foot­steps of Lao Tse, we call Tao also Tao. We call it God-dess. Also Radha-Krishna. We call it God-dess for the sake of mutual under­stand­ing with all oth­ers who are more famil­iar with the term God. His­tory made peo­ple imag­ine God as a mas­cu­line absolute, dis­pas­sion­ate ruler detached from this world, and have per­son­i­fied that fear from God, ruth­less­ness and sense­less­ness into wider soci­ety. As a con­se­quence world suf­fers in male dom­i­nance, dis­crim­i­na­tion, wars, cri­sis and misery.

We desire to walk the path of Tao, the path of under­stand­ing and bal­ance. World has had enough suf­fer­ing and we want it to enjoy itself bet­ter. Find a new sen­si­bil­ity and mean­ing. Hence we empha­sise love for the fem­i­nine aspect of Tao and its inte­gral part in our lives. God-dess thus describes both mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine, both Yin and Yang. By observ­ing his­tory we can con­clude it existed before God and God-dess, which means, it’s older even than man’s dreams of God, or God-dess, or any other name.

We dub it per­son­ally Radha-Krishna, a beau­ti­ful name for oth­er­wise inde­ter­mi­nate Yin and Yang, because as per­sons we’re immensely in love with it. Our earnest desire is to see the embraces and kisses of Radha and Krishna in groves of our hearts; eter­nal God-dess, Tao, its hap­pi­ness beyond limits.

– Zvon­imir Tosic

Book­mark It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 06:55 and is filed under Cursum perficio and tagged with God-dess, Lao Tse, Radha-Krishna, Tao. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.