Reversing View, Method, and Fruition
Undoing Everything I've Said Since 2534
It is called shapeless shape, formless form.
What becomes an image returns to emptiness.
Daodejing, Ch. 14
I thought I was having an argument about World War II, but it was actually about playground bullying.
View is important. It wasn’t until my friend and I agreed on a framing that the tension resolved. Despite our differing perspectives, we were able to stop analyzing and posturing, and just talk.
The Dao of Not Dao
In a recent post, I defined a path or practice in terms of its View, Method, and Fruition. As the axiom goes: View suggests Method, Method produces Fruition, Fruition Confirms View. Concepts like this help us navigate, troubleshoot, and talk about our practices. They also help us resolve them.
For Daoists, everything is a path. You can cultivate the Dao of Motherhood, the Dao of Painting, the Dao of Catholicism, or the Dao of Blogging. Each path has its own View, Method, and Fruition—and each contains the seed of its resolution.
The Daoist notion of Return suggests that there is no Transcendence at the end of the rainbow. Life is made of cycles upon cycles. The seasoned archer discovers that the path of mastery leads back to the beginning. He might be able to knock a thimble off a marmot’s head, but the action is empty. Concepts like accuracy, skill, and success reveal themselves to be “images” floating up from the void. This realization tugs us (or piledrives us) back to simplicity, innocence, spontaneity. I call this path the Dao of Not Dao.
The Dao of gRRBLaDHfbHykS
Listen. I’ll try out a few careless and doubtful words, and you listen careless and doubtful. Ok?
- Zhuangzi, Ch. 2
The Dao of Not Dao still emerges from a conventional View. You can talk about it using words and concepts. It travels in a line, albeit a very squiggly one.
There is another View that coexists with Not Dao, or perhaps precedes it, or subsumes it, or tickles it. It is impossible to define, by definition. It makes you talk in bad poetry.
In the shadow of Not Dao, there is Dao. Have you heard of it? You know, stands on nothing, does not change? Travels in circles without end? (DDJ 25)
In the Dao of Dao, the path never begins or ends.
In Daoist ritual, the priest opens a space outside of time, where forms dance in undifferentiated chaos. Whereas a shaman undertakes an epic spirit journey, the Daoist priest goes nowhere. As she circles the altar, she walks backwards inside herself.1
In the Dao of Dao, View, Method, and Fruition are one. The practitioner exists in a world that is self-arising and self-resolving. This is a description of meditation. Also pooping.
So, yeah… there’s not much else to say about it.
One of the defining features of Daoist practice is this pulsing between Dao and Not Dao, unity and differentiation, spontaneous inspiration and evolution. We can experience this pulse as the shifting of View. In our bodies, we can experience it as breathing.
The ten thousand things arise side by side,
And I observe them return.
Each separate thing comes forth in a great profusion of fruition,
And each returns to its root.
DDJ, Ch. 16
Next time, we’ll take a look at how the Daoist View gave birth to a proliferation of Chinese body arts (Methods), and how returning to that View can enrich our practice (and prevent tragic arguments on Reddit).
This walk was later incorporated into internal martial arts.