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originally posted by: Aphorism
a reply to: Itisnowagain
Without words is there any thing at all?
Yes. Stop speaking and using words. What changes?
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
originally posted by: Aphorism
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
The inner space of the house is a direct consequence of the wood. It is the wood that makes it livable.
Space is not the consequence of anything. Space was prior to anything and will be there after any thing.
'Unnameable' is now a name and can never be the real. That is why the tao cannot be spoken!
originally posted by: Aphorism
How can there be space if there is nothing to contain it? Space does not contain itself.
So the only way to know the Tao...is to not know it. Which basically means get on with your life and don't worry about it...?
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Space is boundless.
Have they found the edge of space yet?
originally posted by: Aphorism
a reply to: Itisnowagain
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Why can it not be told, and why can it not be named? Only because people tell us so.
It isn't a thing to be known. If you objectify and pursue it as if it was something to be attained, learned, discovered or known, you're already heading the wrong way. Saying you can achieve it, is the same thing as saying you don't know what it is. It is pursuing an illusory goal. Like trying to define the words 'Ocean wave', without reference to water or ocean. As if it was somehow a separate thing of its own. Crazy talk.
Now place that book next to an actual strawberry
Now eat the strawberry.
Which one is more real? The strawberry or the knowledge of it? Can the strawberry be substituted with words, idiations, imaginations and thoughts? No. With knowledge and arbitrary labels? No
originally posted by: Aphorism
a reply to: Itisnowagain
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Why can it not be told, and why can it not be named? Only because people tell us so.
So, according to Plato, the "cave dwellers" are those who look at the ordinary material world and think that this (material world) is all that there is to "reality". They (irreligious materialists) are only looking at "appearances/shadows" and not the true reality of the "spiritual realm".
That "divine realm" is what Socrates and Adeimantus were discussing when Socrates was arguing (to Adeimantus's head-nodding agreements) that Homer would be strictly CENSORED in a perfect/ideal Greek city state for anything "derogatory" he had written about either Zeus or the rest of the Greek pantheon of gods.
In short and in sum, according to Plato/Socrates it is those who do not believe in God/gods who are looking at a "material realm of shadows" as distinct from the world of pure eternal ideas.
Without getting into religion at all, you hear the same sort of "stuff" from modern physicists. The real world is the world of quarks, photons and/or tachyons which are just as mysterious to most people as is Zeus, Apollo or the Holy Spirit to them.