Book VI (part 3)

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

The instruction to 'forget them both' regarding moral judgments employs negation to approach the Tao beyond conceptual categories.

Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.

The passage explicitly narrates cosmic origin: 'Before there were heaven and earth, from of old, there It was, securely existing. From It came the mysterious existences of spirits... It produced heaven; It produced earth.'

The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.

[auto] The metaphor of hiding the world in the world so it cannot be removed illustrates the concept of the divine reality being concealed within existence itself.

The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.

The Dao pervades all of existence: the body finds support on it, life toils on it, old age seeks ease on it, death finds rest in it; 'hide the world in the world' so it cannot be removed.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

The Dao is described as having no bodily form, doing nothing, being neither high nor deep, neither old nor new — a pure, undivided, attribute-less principle.

A historical or mythical chain of transmission for secret wisdom from master to disciple across time and cultures — the credential of the teaching, not merely its content. Distinct from oral_tradition (the spoken-not-written modality of transmission, which a lineage may or may not use) and hidden_sayings (the concealment-for-readiness of a teaching's meaning, independent of who transmitted it or in what unbroken chain).

The passage lists a chain of sages (Shih-wei, Fû-hsî, Wei-tâu, Sun and Moon, Khan-pei, Fâng-î, Kien Wû, Hwang-Tî, Kwan-hsü) who each 'got It' and accomplished specific cosmic or personal feats through it, forming a clear transmission lineage.

Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.

The Dao 'may be apprehended by the mind' but 'cannot be seen' and 'may not be received by his scholars,' pointing to a direct, non-sensory, non-doctrinal mode of knowing as the only access to ultimate reality.

The practice of stilling the mind and speech to open receptivity to divine knowledge or presence.

The repeated command to 'forget' distinctions and others implies a practice of stilling the mind's judgments.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The Dao is presented as the ordering principle through which the universe was created: 'It produced heaven; It produced earth,' mediating between the transcendent source and the manifested world.

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The Dao is described as a single, self-grounded, undivided principle ('It has Its root and ground in Itself') from which heaven, earth, and all existences flow.

The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.

[auto] The instruction to hide the world in the world to find the 'ever-during Thing' suggests a merging of the individual or manifest reality with the ultimate Tao.

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The passage explicitly advocates forgetting moral dualities (praising Yao/condemning Kieh) and equates life and death as equally good, centralizing the dissolution of binary oppositions.

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

[auto] The text uses paradoxical imagery such as hiding the world in the world and equating life with death to destabilize ordinary understanding.

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

[auto] The passage urges seeking the 'renovation of the Tâo' and returning to the natural state of rivers and lakes rather than struggling on dry land.

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] The text describes hiding the world in the world and asserts that what makes life good also makes death good, indicating a non-dualistic view of existence.

Effortless action aligned with the spontaneous flow of the Dao; non-coercive, non-striving conduct that yields results without forcing — the sage acts without acting.

The Dao 'does nothing and has no bodily form,' and the passage's central ethic is non-striving: the fish should 'forget one another,' the sage 'enjoys himself in that from which there is no possibility of separation' without forcing.