Early in 2024, I first encountered Daoism, through a YouTuber who had "accidentally" encountered it and ended up living and training like a monk in the Wudang mountains. I was profoundly moved by the experience this creator shared, and I decided to read Dao De Jing for the first time.
It was incredibly helpful to me to read it first with commentary by translators Roger Ames and David L. Hall, who put a lot of effort into decoupling phrases and ideas that we Westerners tend to Christianize when reading Dao De Jing. For example, just because we can translate Dao (also spelled Tao) as "the way," we must avoid linking it up to the Christian imagery and understanding of "the way," since they are radically different things.
Since then, I have only recently been able to revisit this profound text, this time using the translation by Red Pine, and I find it increasingly applicable to our modern world, despite how it may seem at first glance.
You have surely seen the yin-yang symbol (☯), a circle that has two sides (black and white) swirling / chasing each other—both sides having a small circle of the opposite color within. This is a great way to visualize the tension and the forms of the Dao: there are two opposite expressions in the same body. There is masculine and feminine, there is material and immaterial, there is named and unnamed, there is life and death. All of these opposites are part of a single whole—none of these properties can be removed entirely from the other without causing the entire whole to cease to exist.
Red Pine helps us connect the Dao with the moon, because of its cycling between the new moon (dark) and the full moon (light).
The advance of civilization has separated us from this easy lunar awareness...Lao-tzu redirects our vision to this ancient mirror. But instead of pointing to its light, he points to its darkness.
This composition of opposition feels paradoxical, but it very well tracks in our reality, where despite much effort on our part, things aren't so singular, unchanging, and reduced as we'd like them to be. In particular, I find the idea of naming to be relevant with our technology. Consider the start of Verse 1 (from Red Pine's Tao Te Ching):
The way that becomes a way
is not the Immortal Way
the name that becomes a name
is not the Immortal Name
Right from the first words of the entire text, we have two examples that fit this yin/yang model, but it's only there in between the lines. If the way becomes a way—it is "defined" or "expressed"—it is not the Immortal Way (Dao). Where yang is discrete and expressed, yin, its opposite, is the unexpressed, the undefined. As soon as the way becomes a way, it moves into yang territory.
When technology moves into a part of our lives, it must be expressed, it must be named. That is how technology works—it is entirely yang because it is produced, it is named, it is material, it is concrete. Code only works through expressions and literal names—every variable is given a name like job_title and profile_picture. Every database uses names to draw out or store information (even if the name is not human readable like 12345678asdf). Technology reduces things down into what can be expressed. It is the light side of the moon, because it is prominent and takes little to no work to notice it.
If words are of any use at all, they are the words of the poet. For poetry has the ability to point us toward the truth then stand aside, while prose stands in the doorway relating all the wonders on the other side but rarely lets us pass.
...the Taoteching is one long poem written in praise of something we cannot name, much less imagine.
Poetry plays in the yin space, because it invites multiple interpretations and it adapts to the reader, while prose tends to be linear and funnels you through a thought. This is how I see the power in studying poetry and Dao De Jing, while inundated with the narrowing views of technology. We spend so much time in a yang state where things are fed to us or we are just fiddling with things that have already been contained and expressed, the opportunity to expand into the opposite world of paradox and poetry helps us reset and reintegrate.
After all, "[w]hen one is absent, both are absent"(1). If all of our time, energy, and thought is placed in a yang state, then everything falls apart (absence of yin means absence of both yin and yang).
The name that becomes a name is not the Immortal Name. Technology comes from humanity, but it is not humanity itself. Let's spend some more time with the dark side of the moon: the mysterious, the unexpressed, the slow.
(1) Tao Te Ching, translated by Red Pine, quote from Wu Ch'eng, pg. 4
Notes You can follow Sheng Huang reading Tao Te Ching on YouTube as a way to easily access the Red Pine translation.
While I am using yin/yang imagery here, I'm not saying this is a "correct" interpretation of Dao De Ching or of Lao-tzu's intent with the text. I'm riffing from my understanding, which is still colored by Christianity, Western thought, and all of the biases I carry.