You're listening to the partially examined life episode 311 Part 2.

We've been discussing the Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu with our guest Theo.

We left things by talking about what the Dao is.

The very first line, the Dao that can be put into words, is not the eternal Dao.

So I always thought that that was some mystical Dao is like, God, and that it was just apophantic

religion.

But you could also take it if you just take the Dao as a recipe for success.

And well, you got to be flexible.

So if you can actually write out the recipe for success, well, that's not going to teach

you how to respond to all the contingencies.

The rules of thumb are inevitably going to be falsified in some circumstances.

The Dao in that sense is not the real Dao.

A very mundane versus a very mystical take on the same sense.

Yeah, it goes back to this idea about explicit rules and rule following, you know, a rule

that can be graphs mentally and articulated and then just practice, right, thinking again

of thick and stone.

I think eventually we do get beyond that into something more mystical because as you

say, the Confucians had an idea of like effortless action as well.

Their Dao wasn't know how.

You put your mind to learning something and once you learn it, you throw away all these

distinctions.

That's what you do with any Dao.

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