| 释义 |
‖ tao|taʊ, d-|
Also Dao, Tao, taou, tau.
[Chinese dào (Wade-Giles tao) way, path, right way (of life), reason.]
1. a. In Taoism, an absolute entity which is the source of the universe; the way in which this absolute entity functions.
1736R. Brookes tr. Du Halde's Gen. Hist. China III. 30 Among the Sentences [of Lao Kiun] there is one that is often repeated..: Tao, says he, or Reason, hath produced one, one hath produced two, two have produced three, and three have produced all things. 1797Encycl. Brit. IV. 676/1 Tao is one by nature: the first begot the second; two produced the third; the three created all things. 1868J. Chalmers Lau-Tsze's Specul. Metaph. p. xii, Existence is..said to be produced from nonexistence, and Tau is the union of the two. 1904W. G. Old tr. Laotze's Simple Way iv. 30 Tao is without limitation; its depth is the source of whatever is. 1934A. D. Waley Way & its Power 50 Tao is the way that those must walk who would ‘achieve without doing’. But tao is not only a means, a doctrine, a principle. It is the ultimate reality in which all attributes are united. 1950A. Huxley Themes & Variations 172 In China and Japan mountains were taken more seriously. The aspiring artist was advised..to contemplate them lovingly until he could understand the mode of their being and feel within them the workings of the immanent and transcendent Tao. 1957J. Kerouac On Road (1958) 251 He was reaching his Tao decisions in the simplest direct way. 1963D. C. Lau Lao Tzu 23 In the Lao tzu, the tao is no longer ‘the way of something’, but a completely independent entity, and replaces heaven in all its functions. But the tao is also the way followed by the inanimate universe as well as by man. 1971F. Mann Acupuncture (ed. 2) iv. 47 The root of the way of life (Dao or Tao), of birth and change is Qi. 1980M. H. Kingston China Men (1981) 96 Bak Goong thought he understood the Tao, which is everywhere and in everything, even in our excrement.
b. = Taoism, Taoist a.
1745tr. J. F. Gemelli Careri in A. & J. Churchill Coll. Voy. & Trav. (ed. 3) IV. ii. iv. 313/2 In some of these Pagods, religious men and women live in community to serve them; of which there are two sorts, the one of the sect of Foe, and the other of that of Tao. 1747New Gen. Coll. Voy. IV. i. v. 214/1 The Sectaries say..that the great Doctrine of Fo and Tau swallows up all in nothing. 1831Canton Miscellany i. 28 Hwuy-tsung, an Emperor of the Sung Dynasty, was fond of being a Priest of the Taou Sect. 1959Listener 26 Feb. 388/2 Tao and Zen. 1980Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts Feb. 137/2 The garden was seen as the most powerful metaphysical symbol for Tao, Shinto and Zen.
2. In Confucianism and in extended uses, the way to be followed, the right conduct; doctrine or method.
1934A. D. Waley Way & its Power 30 Each school of philosophy had its tao, its doctrine of the way in which life should be ordered. 1943C. S. Lewis Abolition of Man iii. 30 In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao—a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. 1966F. Schurmann Ideology & Organization in Communist China i. 50 The Chinese Communists speak of the forces of world history which are universal and cosmic. Though this belief clashes with traditional Confucian beliefs of tao (something akin to ‘natural law’), it bears certain similarities to the Taoist belief in Heaven as a real force. 1970H. G. Creel What is Taoism? i. 2 Tao at first meant ‘road’ or ‘path’. From this it developed the sense of a method, and of a course of conduct. As a philosophical term it appears first in the Confucian Analects. For the Confucians tao is the way, the method, of right conduct for the individual and for the state. 1972F. Fitzgerald Fire in Lake i. 11 In analyzing these disasters the emperor blamed them on his deviation from Tao, the traditional way, which was at once the most moral and the most scientific course. 1980Dædalus Spring 34 A Tao of Physics in which the details of modern macrophysics and microphysics are matched to those of the mystical tradition. |