Tao: The Big Picture 27/11/2009
Of all the Eastern martial arts concepts, Tao is a good place to start, because it provides an overview. In fact, Tao is an overview so big that in reality, you can’t see all of it. That’s because Tao is literally ‘everything’ (the Universal Om!) and we can’t hold everything in our mind. If we did, it wouldn’t be everything, but just a thought in our head. (That’s why, in his classic text on the subject, Lao Tzu begins by saying, ‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’.)
Instead of using the real Tao, we need to resort to using a working definition, which we can call the Big Picture. It often helps to look at the Big Picture before drilling down into details. It’s a place free of preconceptions, where the only rule is there are no rules and you don’t need to get bogged down in worries about whether something is right or wrong, true or false. Looking at things from a Tao perspective is all about observing rather than judging.
It’s important to understand that the Big Picture is not static, like a snapshot. The universe is in a constant state of flux, so the Big Picture is a moving picture. Despite the gazillions of things moving around inside this Big Picture – solar systems, stars, planets, clouds, seas, people, insects, atoms – it remains just one thing, a single, ever-changing entity.
The concept of Tao is originally Chinese and sometimes written as ‘Dao’. The Japanese equivalent is ‘Do’ which will be familiar to practitioners of Karate-do, Aiki-do, Ken-do and Ju-do — where Do is often translated as ‘Way’. (More on Do specifically, later.)
Buddhist and Taoist philosophies were introduced into Chinese and Japanese martial training to add a spiritual dimension to the practitioner’s life and, it can be argued, create an art rather than a skill, trade or profession. Thus the way of the warrior became a ‘way of life’ rather than one of violence and death.
Instead of using the real Tao, we need to resort to using a working definition, which we can call the Big Picture. It often helps to look at the Big Picture before drilling down into details. It’s a place free of preconceptions, where the only rule is there are no rules and you don’t need to get bogged down in worries about whether something is right or wrong, true or false. Looking at things from a Tao perspective is all about observing rather than judging.
It’s important to understand that the Big Picture is not static, like a snapshot. The universe is in a constant state of flux, so the Big Picture is a moving picture. Despite the gazillions of things moving around inside this Big Picture – solar systems, stars, planets, clouds, seas, people, insects, atoms – it remains just one thing, a single, ever-changing entity.
The concept of Tao is originally Chinese and sometimes written as ‘Dao’. The Japanese equivalent is ‘Do’ which will be familiar to practitioners of Karate-do, Aiki-do, Ken-do and Ju-do — where Do is often translated as ‘Way’. (More on Do specifically, later.)
Buddhist and Taoist philosophies were introduced into Chinese and Japanese martial training to add a spiritual dimension to the practitioner’s life and, it can be argued, create an art rather than a skill, trade or profession. Thus the way of the warrior became a ‘way of life’ rather than one of violence and death.
