Daoist Cosmogony

Wuji

 #DaoistCosmogony #Way-MakingtheDao

Daoist Cosmogony

(Wuji, Taiji, Wuwan)

Cosmogony: a creation story

(Disclaimer: As I mentioned in the first entry of this series, I am *not* a Daoist Master, but rather a student of Daoism. Thei following contains what I've studied, discovered, and attempted to assemble about the intent of the Daoist Creation Story as I thread the needle of Way-Making.)

Daoism defies Western dualism. It's all Dào, everywhere, all the time.

The Daodejing's very first chapter explains the conundrum of understanding Dào.

道可道，

非常道。

名可名,

非常名。

(In pinyin:

Dào kě Dào,

fēicháng dào.

míng kě míng,

fēicháng míng.)

"The Dào we refer to as Dào,

is not really the Dào.

The name we use,

is not really its name."

(my translation)

In other words, the term "Dào" can never be more than a placeholder for something that remains beyond our comprehension, beyond our definitions.

That said, Daoism does talk about the constant, transfomative manifestations of the Dào we observe and experience.

Three key terms for approaching a Daoist understanding of the cosmos are

* Wuji

* Taiji

* Wuwan

Master Deng Ming-Dao provides these insights: "In the source, in wuji, all is nothingness. There can be no movement, no consciousness. All is whole. When all is whole, there are no events until there is separation. Only with that division is there the beginning of all we know....

    "Wuji is to be without limits and thus to be without distinctions. As soon as there are distinctions, wuji ends and taiji begins. Taiji brings us into the world of...yin and yang" (The Living I Ching 13).

The Daodejing provides that creation story in Ch 42:

道生一，

一生二，

二生三，

三生萬物。

萬物負陰而抱陽，

沖氣以為和。

Here's the pinyin (Roman-letter alphabet pronunciation equivalents) for the above original text of Ch 42:

Dao sheng yi,

Yi sheng er,

Er sheng san,

San sheng wan wu.

Wan wu fu yin er bao yang,

Chong qi yi wei he.

Here's my translation:

(Wih parenthetical pinyin for key words as well as a couple of subjective interpretive glosses of my own)

The Way (dao) begets (sheng) one,

One begets two (i.e., yin and yang; i.e., the Daoist Taiji; i.e., perhaps what modern cosmology refer to as The Big Bang?),

Two begets three (i.e., Heaven, Earth, and humanity--see gloss below for why it's these particular "three"),

Three begets everything that is happening (wanwu="the ten thousand things"="myriad things"="everything that is happening").

Everything that is happening carries (fu) yin and embraces (bao) yang,

using (yi) the flooding force (chong) of vital breath (qi) to facilitate (wei) harmony (he).

Wanwu is everything and all events in the cosmos, which Ames and Hall translate in Ch 42 as "everything that is happening": "The expression wanwu or 'ten thousand processes or events' refers to the unsummed totality of all particular processes and events as they constitute this world: Wanwu is everything that is happening" (Daodejing 66; my emphases).

But let's go back to the crucial third line above in the creation story: "Two begets three," which I translate as Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. That's because Daoist sages place humans in the realm of creative participants in this cosmology.

Book One, "Cosmogony," of Daoist sage Lie Yokou's Fourth-Century BCE Liezi clarifies why the two-begetting-three consists of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity: "In the great Origin lies the beginning of substance. In the great Beginning, lies the beginning of material form.... The purer and lighter elements, tending upwards, made the Heavens; the grosser and heavier elements, tending downwards, made the Earth. Substance, harmoniously proportioned, became Man; and, Heaven and Earth containing thus a spiritual element, all things were evolved and produced" (6).

The Liezi continues: "It is Heaven's function to produce life and to spread a canopy over it. It is Earth's function to form material bodies and to support them. It is the Sage's function to teach others and to influence them for good. It is the function of created things to conform to their proper nature" (13).

Ames and Hall offer this valuable gloss to explain the Daoist interpretation of the relationship and role of Humanity as part of the creation story:

"[T]ian [i.e., Heaven] is shaped by the human experience, and what it means to be human is constantly being reshaped by tian. That is to say, tian is not just the natural world, independent of human artifice. Rather, tian is a living, cumulative regularity, inclusive of nature and nurture that is not only inseparable from the human experience, but is in an important degree expressive of it" (Daodejing 65, my emphases).

I'm reminded of the repeated research by Quantum Mechanics theorists who reaffirm the role of the Observer Effect, where observers, by simply observing, determine the outcome and behavior of particles during experiments, and, surprisingly and irrationally, influencing not only present but even past events. Something ancient Daoists seem to have intuited from their own observations of the natural world.

Way-Making begins to make sense as an active process. And from the Daoist perspective, we truly participate creatively in Making our Way whenever we act in accordance with the Dào, when we realize we can act as hollographic mirrors of the cosmos, of the Dào.

The next post entry discusses the challenging thing I have had to address as a serious student of the Dào.