The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu. The opening lines from Chapter One
“This is one of my favorite quotes of all time and has lived with me ever since I first read the Tao te Ching back in the 1970s. As a philosopher what I love about this statement is that it directs our attention beyond reason, and logic, and language. Not that reason, logic, and language don’t have value. They do but they have limitations. If we’re going to tune into the Tao, if we’re going to feel the unfolding of the way of the world, the way of the universe, that opening phrase is telling us is that we need to get beyond language and thought. The Tao is the natural intelligence of nature and that is something that we need to feel rather than think about. Those two lines remind me of the limitations of reason and logic. One of the things I like about reason and logic is that they can acknowledge their own limitations. It’s reason that tells me there is an end to reason and that beyond the end of reason and language there can be other domains of reality that need to be accessed non-linguistically and non-logically. That is what the opening lines of the Tao te Ching is referring to.”
Christian de Quincey, Ph.D.,
Professor of Philosophy & Consciousness Studies
at John F. Kennedy University and author of
Blind Spots: 21 Good Reasons to Think Before You Talk
