‘道可道非常道。’
“The Dao that can be spoken of is not the constant Dao.”
Daoist geometry, including maps and patterns are mostly non-character transmissions and therefore there are very few written records. If you added Chinese characters, you would add the issue of characters. If you did not annotate characters, then you add the issue of the lack of characters. Both have their strong and weak points. Daoist and Buddhist transmissions are without characters, reason why the teachers of the past would not allow their students to take notes of their lectures. They are transmissions of powers, an energy transmitted that carries wisdom, not a transmission of language. The living Buddha in Tibet, when touching the devotees’ crowns, what does he say? He utters nothing at all. We must not use our thoughts to contemplate the wisdom, which “they” use. Our language of the third dimension is simply unable to express their wisdom.
Li Shifu comments, “How could a kindergarten child know what professors teach in university?” Therefore we, commoners, use our thoughts and viewpoints of the third dimension to grasp and understand the seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth dimension. That is why many of the ancient methods, patterns and images do not employ the thoughts of nowadays to explain things clearly and thoroughly. Furthermore the deeper meaning of the above-sentence is that human language fails to describe the True Essences, from which we are far removed. We could be compared to kindergarten children and to newborn babies. We are too minute.
Where are the Spirits? They are over there, in the main hall of Five Immortals Temple, because the Spirit statues sit there. But it is kindergarten children who need the image and form. “Who as an adult is still using diapers though?” You got rid of them, because you are already grown up. Does God need an image? If you think so, you are mistaken. In the past there were no statues in honour for the Spirits in Daoism. But since so many people in society are ignorant, how could they be taught? They are children, hence they are educated
“Do not do bad things, because if you do, ‘they’ will spank your butt.”
Consequently the children are looking at the Spirit statues, become afraid and do not dare to do bad things. Being a child is a phase of development, just as humanity’s development moves forward. Religion needs to open and a lot of aspects in it need to be changed; greatly changed. Li Shifu knows, because he has walked the path of religion for a long time.
