Dao, Mind, and Soul: The Self-Realization and Self-Discovery of Dao

Value is the most relevant and important attribute of something. Its narrow sense is the most relevant and important attribute for human existence which includes moral value and aesthetic value categorized respectively as good and beautiful values. It is the discovery of values that triggers philosophical and religious breakthroughs, thus creating the axial age in human civilization history. The learning of value of various religions and philosophies all contain two levels, namely the practice of values, and the origin of values. As for the origin of value, many religions in the world believe that values come from gods or worshiped idols, while various philosophies believe that value comes from the origin of the universe and the essence (ousia) of the world. Therefore the most fundamental characteristic and greatest contribution of the axial age is the discovery of values and the formation of a basic human value system. However, it has been questioned in modern times. Philosophers like Kant and Mou Zongsan sought to explore new origins of values but were unsuccessful. The author uses Yi to represent the world that emerged from Big Bang, i.e., our current world. Yi produced Taiji which represents the Singularity. Since Taiji is a material being, everything in this world it produced is also material in nature. This implies that all aspects of human nature are physical nature and that there is no such thing as moral nature. Values exist in a separate and independent world from the material world. To simplify this concept further, Zang is used to represent the world of value. There exists a passage between the material world and the value world known as the soul. Thus, eternal Yi , Zang and soul together constitute Dao – with Zang serving as the sole foundation for values imported by soul into our current world. The evolution of Dao includes two forms, one is the process of self-realization of Dao, another is the process of self-discovery of the Dao . The mind is a product of the material world, so it can only understand the material world, grasps the material world in which we exist and its “ideas”. In contrast, since the soul does not belong to the material world in itself, it can transcend the material world to grasp the value world. Its object is the value world and its “eudia”.