According to the Internet encyclopedia of philosophy, the term Daodejing come be split to form the dao, Now according to the Chinese philosophers, Dao means ‘’the way’’. The reason behind this is the based on the fact that the term is used as a nominative and at the same time as the verb. (Kessler, 2001). While explaining the dao one has to put in mind that the dao is a process in itself, which explains the process of transformation when things come together. The origin of the later philosophy can be traced back to the Chinese belief that change is an inevitable characteristic of all things.
(Internet encyclopedia of philosophy)In the classic of change called the Yi jing is represented as a series of symbolic figures numbering up to sixty four, and this are made of the correlative forces referred to as hexagrams. The relationship between the dao and this hexagram comes because the dao is an ‘alteration of hexagrams as forces’. (Kessler, 2003) A commentary called the xici is believed to have come about at the same time as the Daodejing. This commentary is based on the Yi yang and it defines the taiji or the great ultimate as the beginning of the correlative forces and in turn the xici associates the taiji with the dao.According to the dao, the argument might be between what things are and what they are not, but between chaos or the hundun and de. Ultimately, according to Gary E.
Kessler (Kessler, 2003) there is the dao as opposed to the world or the cosmos. The ideology of Daodejing, according to the internet encyclopedia of philosophy, hold that the understanding of the Dao is beyond human understanding because in real sense there is no given to it that can describe the dao fully.The basis of Daodejing philosophy is that human beings should not strive to understand reality and that Wu Wei should be the only way of life employed by humans as a way of life. This assumption, according to the argument of Gary E. Kessler in his Voices of Wisdom, provides us with the central theme that correlatives are the ‘’expressions of the movements of the dao’’. According to the Chinese philosophy correlatives are not to be taken as opposites in the sense that they are mutually excluding each other but they are to be viewed as an ‘’ebb’’ and a reality.
The fullness of Yin suggests that Yang merges at the horizons. This then leads to the feeling that Daodejing is a philosophy filled with a lot of ‘’paradoxes’’. This is why Kessler writes that those who are crooked will be perfected. The internet encyclopedia of philosophy argues that ‘’ those who are crooked will be straight and those who are empty will be full’’.
(Internet encyclopedia of philosophy). This statement is more correlational much as it may appear paradoxical.
