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I
                          THE  ENCYCLOPEDIA  OF  TAOISM   VOL.  I

             When the root of the Dao had been established, from the non-existent (*wu)
           there grew existence (*you).  The Great Basis first  began to sprout, to sprout
           though as yet with no outer sign. The *qi was all together, and all appeared as
           one-an undivided Chaos (hundun bufen ill! i~ /f fJ'). So the Account of the Dao
           (Daozhi lltc:, i.e., the Daodejing) says "There is a thing confusedly formed, born
           before Heaven and Earth." The body of its qi could by no means yet be given a
           shape. Its stillings and quickenings could by no means yet be given regularity.
           Things remained thus for more long ages; this was [the stage called] vast and
           floodlike (panghong  J~ ~). It was the stem of the Dao.
             When the stem of the Dao had been grown, creatures came into being and
           shapes were formed. At this stage, the original qi  split and divided, hard and
           soft first divided, pure and turbid took up different positions. Heaven formed
           on the outside, and Earth became fixed within.  Heaven took its body from
           the Yang, so it was round and in motion; Earth took its body from the Yin, so
           it was flat and quiescent. Through motion there was action and giving forth;
           through quiescence there was conjoining and transformation. Through binding
           together there was fertilization, and in time all the kinds of things were brought
           to growth. This is called the Great Origin (Taiyuan *5L:). It was the fruition
           of the Dao. (Hou Hanshu, Zhi it, IO.32I5,  commentary)
           The presence of accounts of the emergence of the cosmos from non-ex-
        istence and primal Chaos might prompt the obvious question as to whether
        (and if so when) it might revert to non-existence, and if so whether it might
        in time reemerge. Such questions do not however seem to have been raised
        systematically in ancient China before the coming of Buddhism, and unlike
        the case of ancient Greece and later Europe, the question of the eternity or
        temporality of the existence of the cosmos does not seem to have been seen
        as an important issue.

                                                        Christopher CULLEN
        m Kaltenmark 1959; Le Blanc 1989; Major 1993, 23-28; Mathieu 1992; Schafer
        1977a, 21-31

           2.  Taoist notions
        The return to the Origin (yuan  j[), or to the Dao as the source and foundation
        of the world, is one of the main notions running throughout Taoism. Several
        facets of this notion must be examined for its importance to be appreciated.
        First, Taoist writers often compound the ideas of the absolute Origin and
        the beginning of existence. These ideas, however, are not entirely equivalent:
        while the Origin is  an ever-present foundation in both space  and time,  the
        beginning of existence must be located in an unknown past. Second, both
        ideas are equally paradoxical: on the one hand, the absolute Origin cannot
        be something determinate, but if it were nothing it would not be the Origin;
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