Personal reflections extra: Dao, virtue, change, and propriety

Personal reflections extra: Dao, virtue, change, and propriety

I wrote this extra in my spare time last year. It has nothing to do with this book. I tidied it up a little and posted it to make up for all those times I took leave. Let me say this first: there are no aliens or fantasy elements here. These are some reflections from my research into and study of our culture. If you aren't interested, feel free to skip it.

Some readers previously asked me to write an extra about Buddhism and Taoism. I put it at the end of Blue White Society, under the title "Dao's Yi Principle and Buddha's Enlightenment."

That extra covered Dao's Yi principle. I merely made a start and sketched out a framework. I didn't go into much depth; at most, it counted as a preface.

I said at the time that if I laid everything out, I might never finish explaining it in my lifetime...

Take Dao alone: that one word could fill an entire essay. But to discuss Dao, I first have to discuss Yi, or change. And to explain Yi in terms you can readily understand, heaven knows how many extras I would need... My own research into the "I Ching" might still be only introductory.

Some things are there in my mind, but breaking them down piece by piece while keeping you interested enough to understand them is practically impossible.

Otherwise, why would people say Dao cannot be expressed in words?

I thought it over again and again, faced with countless tangled threads, and struggled to find a starting point. To understand one thing, you first have to understand another, which then branches out into a host of other prerequisites.

They connect to one another in an enormous circle, like a