Cosmological question – Primal chaos (Hundun) -and Without limit (Wuji)

Hi Chris,

Since a lot of these concepts are beyond words
and comprehension, each person will probably have
their own interpretation–each with its own measure
of validity–so it’s difficult to point to one
person being right or wrong.

Nonetheless, I’ll play:

My feeling:

The Dao gives birth to the prenatal and postnatal.
The Dao is the ultimate well-spring of change,
an “anti-black hole” if you will, the spigot of
ultimate source and pure change. It is the
singularity itself, from which infinite
pure change flows from. If you draw a “hole”,
vomiting of pure intensity a substance we’ll
call “change”, then the Dao is the hole,
or maybe more precisely, it’s unreachable surface,
and is ultimately pure change itself.

The Hundun, primal chaos, is this infinite
“confused” busyness lying in the center of
the Dao’s surface which is on the verge of being birthed
as pure change. It is the fuel for the
Dao’s “engine”.

The Wuji, the supreme mystery, is what lies
behind/beyond the anti-black hole, an unknown
“point” preceding the Dao. It is below the
surface of the hole, and exists before the
busyness.

We live on the “outside” of the
hole, subject to the everflowing stream
emitted from it, the manifestation of the Dao.
All we experience or understand is on the outside
of the hole. We can’t really even see the surface,
only get glimpses/approximations of it–so we can’t
even see the Dao or the Hundun clearly.
Since the Wuji lies below the hole, good luck getting
any idea of that.

Forced to put an order as you did on it, I would
say

3. Post-natal/Pre-natal (occur simultaneously,
even though due to physical life, we view the
prenatal as preceding the postnatal; in that
view, list prenatal as item #2.5)

2. Dao & Hundun (Hundun, the fuel for the Dao, lives
in the Dao’s house, and is on the same level as it)

1. Wuji

Of course, everything I said in the above descriptions
I caveat with saying that my “descriptions” are
simply metaphors, as Dao, Hundun, and Wuji are beyond words.

I’ll attach what I once said about “what the Dao is” on
a previous forum post below . . .

Best,
Steven

Re: What the Dao is

The Daodejing states that the Dao is beyond description and
that words are insufficient to describe it. I accept this
wholeheartedly, but I suppose it’s fun to try to come up
with approximations motivated by intuition.

Thus, I would use the following pieces of cloth to describe
a part of the infinite tapestry:

1. If the lifeforce is a river, the Dao is its current.
More than that, it is the continuously changing current
that changes completely from location to location and
moment to moment. As soon as you see “it”, you are only
seeing what was–not what is.

2. If time is simply a measurement of change, then
the Tao is the source of *all* change. It is the change-maker,
or the arrow-of-change. In some sense, it is change itself.
This is why it’s indescribable. You can’t describe something
that is the embodiment of change. Since it is *change*, as
soon as you describe it, it has already become “not what
you described”.

3. The intersection of the Dao with a human life is the
instantaneously and continuously creating “life path” that
one is walking. It is the sidewalk that is being built
continuously before one’s walking feet, but more than that
it is the “sidewalk building energy” that is doing the building.
But more than that, it is the conscious thought that is driving
the “sidewalk building energy”. But more than that, it is the
continuously 100% purely innovating force that is motivating
the aforementioned thought. But more than that, it is all such
things simultaneously because cause/effect implies the evolution
of time, which goes back to the description in #2. Cause
and effect can not be used. The Tao is pure “cause”, in its
most primal form. And of course, this is just a description
of the intersection, which is a proper subset of the whole,
and has proportion to the whole a number indistinguishable from zero.

Then “multiply it by infinity, take it to the depths of forever
and still you will barely have a glimpse of what I am talking about”*
*from the movie “Meet Joe Black”

S

>>>The impression I get of the Wuji is as
>>>being the “universal ground”, [rest snipped]

I see you as a senior instructor someday, teaching
a class called “Grounding yourself in the Wuji”.

Big smiles,
Steven

P.S. It’s been a fun discussion 🙂