The Tao or Dao[note 1] is the natural way of the universe, primarily as conceived in East Asian philosophy and religion.
Aside from its purely prosaic use meaning road, channel, path, principle, or similar,[2] the word has acquired a variety of differing and often confusing metaphorical, philosophical, and religious uses.
Much of East Asian philosophical writing focuses on the value of adhering to the principles of the Tao and the various consequences of failing to do so.
Confucianism was largely a moral system emphasizing the values of humaneness, righteousness, and filial duty, and so conceived De in terms of obedience to rigorously defined and codified social rules.
Finally in a particular school of philosophy whose followers came to be called Taoists, tao meant 'the way the universe works'; and ultimately something very like God, in the more abstract and philosophical sense of that term.
The Daotilun is an eighth century exegesis of the Tao Te Ching, written from a well-educated and religious viewpoint that represents the traditional, scholarly perspective.
The devotional perspective of the Tao is expressed in the Qingjing Jing, a liturgical text that was originally composed during the Han dynasty and is used as a hymnal in religious Taoism, especially among eremites.
They integrate a broad spectrum of academic, ritualistic, supernatural, devotional, literary, and folk practices with a multitude of results.
[21] Alternatively, philosophical Taoism regards the Tao as a non-religious concept; it is not a deity to be worshiped, nor is it a mystical Absolute in the religious sense of the Hindu brahman.
[25] In contrast to the esotericism typically found in religious systems, the Tao is not transcendent to the self, nor is mystical attainment an escape from the world in philosophical Taoism.
Though he acknowledged the existence and celestial importance of the Way of Heaven, he insisted that the Tao principally concerns human affairs.
The Great Learning expands on this concept explaining that the Way illuminates virtue, improves the people, and resides within the purest morality.
Hundreds of collections of Pali and Sanskrit texts were translated into Chinese by Buddhist monks within a short period of time.
However, the differences between the Sanskrit and Chinese terminology led to some initial misunderstandings and the eventual development of Buddhism in East Asia as a distinct entity.
[31] Pai-chang Huai-hai told a student who was grappling with difficult portions of suttas, "Take up words in order to manifest meaning and you'll obtain 'meaning'.
Finding the Tao and Buddha-nature is not simply a matter of formulations, but an active response to the Four Noble Truths that cannot be fully expressed or conveyed in words and concrete associations.
The use of "Tao" in this context refers to the literal "way" of Buddhism, the return to the universal source, dharma, proper meditation, and nirvana, among other associations.
In contrast, Zhang Zai presented a vitalistic Tao that was the fundamental component or effect of qi, the motive energy behind life and the world.
Cheng Yi followed this interpretation, elaborating on this perspective of the Tao through teachings about interactions between yin and yang, the cultivation and preservation of life, and the axiom of a morally just universe.
[29] Yayu, the son of Zhulong who was reincarnated on Earth as a violent hybrid between a bull, a tiger, and a dragon, was allowed to go to an afterlife that was known as "the place beyond the Tao".
"[34] He asserted that every religion and philosophy contains foundations of universal ethics as an attempt to line up with the Tao—the way mankind was designed to be.
Similarly, Eastern Orthodox hegumen Damascene (Christensen), a pupil of noted monastic and scholar of East Asian religions Seraphim Rose, identified logos with the Tao.
The history of the character includes details of orthography and semantics, as well as a possible Proto-Indo-European etymology, in addition to more recent loaning into English and other world languages.
Some variants interchange the 'go' radical 辵 with 行; 'go', 'road', with the original bronze "crossroads" depiction written in the seal character with two 彳 and 亍; 'footprints'.
[43] In Old Chinese (c. 7th–3rd centuries BCE) pronunciations, reconstructions for 道 and 導 are *d'ôg (Karlgren), *dəw (Zhou), *dəgwx and *dəgwh,[44] *luʔ,[42] and *lûʔ and *lûh.
"[47] The etymological linguistic origins of dao "way; path" depend upon its Old Chinese pronunciation, which scholars have tentatively reconstructed as *d'ôg, *dəgwx, *dəw, *luʔ, and *lûʔ.
Paronomastically, tao is equated with its homonym 蹈 tao < d'ôg, "to trample," "tread," and from that point of view it is nothing more than a "treadway," "headtread," or "foretread "; it is also occasionally associated with a near synonym (and possible cognate) 迪 ti < d'iôk, "follow a road," "go along," "lead," "direct"; "pursue the right path"; a term with definite ethical overtones and a graph with an exceedingly interesting phonetic, 由 yu < djôg," "to proceed from."
[48]Victor H. Mair proposes a connection with Proto-Indo-European drogh, supported by numerous cognates in Indo-European languages, as well as semantically similar Semitic Arabic and Hebrew words.
In Confucianism and in extended uses, the way to be followed, the right conduct; doctrine or method.The earliest recorded usages were Tao (1736), Tau (1747), Taou (1831), and Dao (1971).
The term "Taoist priest" (道士; Dàoshì), was used already by the Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault in their De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas, rendered as Tausu in the original Latin edition (1615),[note 5] and Tausa in an early English translation published by Samuel Purchas (1625).