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Learn about Dao 学道
Daoism and the Origins of Qigong, Part 2
(道家与气功的起源)
by Livia Kohn, Ph.D.
Levels of Practice
The three levels of healing, longevity, and immortality can be seen as three different dimensions of practice within
the same greater universe of the Dao. The Dao can be described as “organic order”— organic in the sense that it is not
willful and order in that it is clearly manifested in the rhythmic changes and patterned processes of the natural world.
Not a conscious, active creator or personal entity, but an organic process that just moves along, the Dao is mysterious in
its depth and unfathomable in its essence. But beyond this, as order the Dao is also predictable in its developments and
can be discerned and described in ordered patterns. These patterns, the Chinese call “self-so” or“nature” (ziran), the
spontaneous and observable way things are naturally. Yet while Dao is very much nature, it is also more than nature. It is
also the essence of nature, the inner quality that makes things what they are. It is governed by laws of nature, yet it is
also these laws itself.
In other words, it is possible to explain the nature of the Dao in terms of a twofold structure. The “Dao that can be
told” and the “eternal Dao.” One is the mysterious, ineffable Dao at the center of the cosmos; the other the Dao at the
periphery, visible and tangible in the natural cycles. (continued on next page)
January, 2012 Yang-Sheng (Nurturing Life) 15