On Following the Dao and the Nature of Water
I have heard that to follow the Dao is to follow the nature of water. In 太極拳, this means the person must sink lower and lower. In 詠春拳, it means being able to flow forward unhampered and being able to adapt. But in general, to flow as water ultimately means that there is no I. Things flow through and beyond you, and you merely move as the Dao moves. But does flowing like water mean emptiness...? No. Flowing water is never still. Flowing water is full of movement. It is ultimately alive. And no living soul is ever alive and not moving. The body of a person is not always moving, and at every moment it is much closer to its death, but the soul, the spirit (not to be confused with the concept of ghost) is never on a sure path to death. It may be alive one moment, nearly dead the next, but always the spirit can return to its living state, and just like water, when it is alive, it moves. And so therefore you will know if you have ceased to flow when you feel like you're lingering on something that is quickly passing in time...the man who follows the Dao moves with time...therefore he knows that he is moving forward, although he might not necessarily moving of his own accord, but surely he feels the forward motion. The follower of the Dao never lingers, he is always fleeting, always open to the possibility of disappearing and being forgotten, like shadows, or perhaps a happy dream, in the night. The follower of the Dao never lingers. He moves on, always flowing, reappearing and disappearing, always elusive, always adaptive, always alive...and as such, the follower of the Dao is immortal... Even Lao Tzu, I believe, did not think of immortality as an external fact, but an internal state. People who turn into "Immortal gods" do not become deities of ethereal power...they become "gods" because they seem to be able to attain their potentials as people, which to my mind is always great but rarely tapped, and in being so they become "immortal", for they are never affected by death, and even after they have long disappeared, people will still remember because of the mark they made on the world and in the people around them, even if the person himself may presume that he is always forgotten...