The Garden of Eden story in Genesis parallels the Taoist view of how humanity fell out of touch with Nature: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”. Interestingly, chapter 1’s The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way; The name that can be named is not the constant name alludes to the same ‘knowledge’ problem as Genesis.
Later, in the Gospels we find, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. This conflicts with Genesis and the Taoist view. After all, isn’t “the tree of knowledge” built on the foundation of words, e.g., Yin vs. Yang; heaven vs. hell, good vs. bad; death vs. life; peace vs. war; old vs. new; and so on etc.? This ‘tree’ imparts a distorted view of nature as a whole.
The bell curve (graphic above) is a more accurate way of viewing nature. There are two rather rare extremes, a total Yin on one side and a total Yang on the other, with most all aspects of nature sharing a kind of middle ground between these extremes. We are generally unable to recognize the complementary character of nature’s entangled reality, i.e. you can’t have one without the other, as chapter 2 observes…
We hang on to words as discrete realities, and we end up thinking—believing—that we know what we know. We only see what we want to see in a kind of self-fulfilling virtual reality. Chapter 71 begins with, To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Deeply realizing I don’t know is the only way I can be more in touch with Nature, the Garden of Eden.
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