We Wonder About The Wonder

From wonder into wonder, existence opens.

Lao Tzu is considered the founder of Chinese Taoism, and the author of Tao Te Ching. The words Tao Te Ching mean The Way and Its Power. Some Chinese scholars believe the Tao Te Ching was actually a compilation of paradoxical thoughts and poems written by a few Taoists. They used the pen-name, Lao Tzu. Whatever we believe, there’s no doubt that Taoism along with Confucianism are two different and distinct responses to the political, social, and philosophical nature of reality two and a half thousand years ago in China. Confucianism is intently concerned with social conduct, relations, and the nature of human society, Taoism, on the other hand, has a much more individualistic and mystical flavor to it. The thoughts contain in the Taoist belief system are definitely influenced by nature and what fuels nature.

We wonder about the wonder that surrounds us. We put our wonder in categories, and mark it with conditions. Those conditions are an essential part of our belief structure. Our belief structure is a combination of wonder, insight, intuition and knowledge infused with ancient wisdom. We build our reality around our endless wonder, concrete associations and influences. Concrete meaning facts we accept as truths.

Our Chinese ancestors did the same thing, but their associations and influences as well as their truths were different. They were taught to tune into the world of inner senses, and use them to experience existence. The art of living was about knowing and remembering rather than wanting and accumulating. They had a sense of self within the shell of existential skepticism. They used virtue rather than vanity to shape the flow of events than develop from the endless probabilities that exist within consciousness.

We wonder about the wonder within us. We want existence to be more than the sum of our physical parts just like the ancients. We move through each experience grabbing a figment of wonder and we make it real to us. We do this to sense the sensibility of our innate desire to know the self in every existence.