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Dao In Chinese Buddhism

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In this essay, I will be discussing the role of Dao in Chinese Buddhism, along with other important concepts that are closely related to Dao, and how they play a part in ultimately achieving Nirvana, the ultimate goal of Buddhism and also the third noble truth. Dao (道), or “way”, is the beginning, and is also known as the mother of all things. It is the root of everything, including the cosmos and the universe. To say that something exists, is to say that some larger entity possesses it. For us to say that the universe exists, we have to think of something that is larger than the universe, something that surrounds it, and surpasses it. Therefore, the universe has to have come into existence from an ultimate source, and this source is referred …show more content…

We do not do so randomly or disinterestedly: our selecting an object is motivated by desire.” When we say we value something, it is akin to desiring it, which makes our values and desires essentially the same. When we try to focus on an object, “something is focused on and singled out” and this leads to us disregarding the rest of the object, or its background, and only concentrating on the part of the object that we chose to prioritize. Our perceptions are based on what we are trained to see and observe, but there are other things that we do not see. To better illustrate this concept, we can use the analogy of an iceberg. Let each thing be associated with the tip of an iceberg. Since most of the iceberg is submerged beneath the water, what we name as “this thing” is really only just the tip, and not the whole iceberg itself. Like the iceberg, we usually come to name the difference that we can see, and not the shared part that is always seen. Our perceptions are based on what we are trained to see and observe, but there are other things that we do not see as well. This leftover part that we tend to ignore, is referred to by early Daoist texts as the “unhewn”. (Ziporyn, 111-130) However, the unhewn refers to not only what is leftover after what is desired has been extracted, but the unhewn also refers to the object in its whole, before it was carved out. The Dao is “both the “disvalued” and the “not yet valued” or disvalued”. (Ziporyn,

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