Heaven - the mother? (creation, doctrine, experience, eternal)

[Bishka]

I am currently reading the Tao de Ching and I have a question.


In chapter one, it mentions


"While Heaven, the mother is the creatrix of all things."

What does that mean?

Thanks!

[Scarlett Wampus]

Just before that line there is this: "Nothing - the nameless is the beginning."

I interpret this as talking about negative and positive existence. Negative existence being the great void, unmanifest, is the great formlessness of the Tao. Positive existence being everything in the phenomenonal world is the ever-changing manifestation of the Tao. Following on from that line you quoted there is this: -

"Follow the nothingness of the Tao,
and you can be like it, not needing anything,
seeing the wonder and the root of everything.

And even if you cannot grasp this nothingness,
you can still see something of the Tao in everything.

These two are the same
only called by different names

- and both are mysterious and wonderful

All mysteries are Tao, and Heaven is their mother:
She is the gateway and the womb-door."

The reason I've italicised the above sentence is that it is imperative to understand that manifest existence is linked to unmanifest existence, they are like two sides of the same coin. This is the equivalent of what the Buddhist Heart Sutra is trying to get at when it states, "Know then that in such depth form is only emptiness, emptiness only form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." I suggest reading the Heart Sutra to compare it to this opening and vital chapter of the Tao Te Ching.

As for still seeing the wonder of everything, if you are attached to phenomenal existence I think the suggestion is if you are lively enough to experience curiousity, awe and beauty in that then you are on the right track to realising the all-pervading expansive nothingness of the Tao. Why? Because these things are linked and if you follow this curiousity, awe and beauty to its root, stuff will happen.

As I see it the doctrine of the Mysterious Female (google it) is a Taoist version of enlightenment. The opening of the Mysterious Pass is also the opening of the Mysterious Female, the idea being that entering through this is like becoming a child again, or rather, returning to a state of bornlessness. Being bornless it is neither alive nor dead, so in a sense immortal. When you open to the changeless void as the root of all change & creation it is like realising your fundamental nature as immortal. Everything phenomenal changes, passes away, but the great void is eternal.