There are three ultimate questions in Eastern and Western philosophical systems: Who am I, where do I come from, and where is my life going? On the surface, this is a discussion of the meaning of life, and if we want to ask on a larger scale, the "I" here can represent all matter and existence in the past and present, in the four dimensions. The extension of the meaning of life is where the universe comes from and where it ends.
How did the universe come into being? Whether it's the creation theory, the Big Bang theory, or the other theories, after repeated scrutiny, we will find that there are some things that cannot be justified. So, in the Taoist view, how did our universe come into being?
Taoism believes that the universe was formed by the evolution of the Tao. In the Taoist "Changqing Jingjing", it is said: "The avenue is invisible, giving birth to the heaven and earth, the avenue is ruthless, running the sun and the moon, and the avenue is nameless, and all things are nourished for a long time." "The Tao gives birth to all things, which is the most basic Taoist view of the generation of the universe. Moreover, the Tao both begets and at the same time is contained in all things. It is written in the "Wen Shi Jing": "There is nothing that is not heaven, nothing that is not life, nothing that is not God, and nothing that is not mysterious." The heavens, destiny, gods, and mysteries here are collectively called "Tao." In other words, everything in heaven and earth contains the nature of the Tao, and the Tao is an existence that transcends time and space.
So, some people also ask, what was the state of the world before the Tao biochemical things?
The Book of Taoism once described that the universe was originally in a state of chaos, with no beginning and no end. All things are mixed into one, life is one and the same, and all things have no significant individual distinction in the gloom and diffuseness. Boundless, no inside and no outside, no contradictions, no mixture, no birth and death, no right and wrong, no turbidity, no four-dimensional up and down. Hongmeng rotates, all kinds are silent, Taoguang is obscure, and wisdom is not released. There is only a little spiritual light to shine on the body, and the Xuanhuang Qi machine is faintly visible. God is condensed, quiet and natural. This chaotic state has a figurative metaphor, the "chicken", which resembles an unbroken egg, from which everything we are today is born.
In the book "Seven Signatures of the Clouds", which is known as the "Xiaodao Collection", it also divides the chaotic stages of the universe that have not yet differentiated into three periods, namely the chaotic period, the chaotic cave period, and the chaotic period.
Mixed Yuan Period: All existence is dominated by the primordial Qi. All things are silent, rooted in the abyss of the beginning, formless and imageless, running in the secret of the Xuanzhu. The primordial ancestral Qi walks in the origin of the avenue, true and pure, and simple. This period corresponds to the physical mind, that is, the sub-hour of the twelve hours, which lurks the precursor of the stars of the biochemical universe.
Mixed Cave Period: Based on Lingbao Zhenqi as the source. All things are silent, rooted in the time of fetal nurture and nourishing, formless and formless, running in the manifestation of spiritual loneliness. Lingbao Zu Qi walks freely in the immersion of the avenue, true and pure, simple and unchanging. This period corresponds to the tangible mind, that is, the ugly hour of the twelve hours, which hides the clues of the biochemical earth, mountains and rivers.
Chaos Period: Execution for Taishang Yuanqi. All things are silent, rooted in the germination, formless and imageless, running on the unmanifested surface. Taishang Zu Qi walked freely in the form of the avenue, true and pure, simple and untransformed. This period corresponds to the tangible mind, which is the twelfth hour of the hour, which is filled with news of the life of the biochemical spirits.
Chaos, Confusion, and Chaos have gone through a very long time, and it is impossible to count. They are also unusually far apart from each other. According to the records of the Seven Signatures of the Clouds, the interval between the chaotic element and the chaotic hole and the chaotic hole is 99,999.9 billion billion years if calculated in earth time. After that, the phenomenon of polarization began to appear, that is, the Taoist belief that "something out of nothing" is born from a piece of emptiness, which is called "Taiji" (note: the meaning of "Taiji" here is not the figure of the yin and yang fish, but the pole of the primordial). Then this pole gradually differentiates into yin and yang, and with the gradual differentiation of one yin and one yang, and merges with each other, all things in the universe are slowly formed.
From the three periods of chaos, chaos, and chaos, to the differentiation of Taiji, and then to the transformation of yin and yang into the complex universe we have today, this whole process is essentially a natural phenomenon and the inevitable result of the operation of the Heavenly Dao, and no one is deliberately controlling or dominating it, and there is no external force acting on it. Its biochemical development is only a natural operation, the so-called "Taoism of nature", at the level of "nature", yin and yang are the elimination of each other, mutual transformation. In the Book of Changes, it is mentioned that "solitary yin does not give birth, and solitary yang does not grow", and the Tao gives birth to all things, and all things return to the Tao, which is the only unchanging truth in the universe.
Therefore, although chaos to polarization is infinitely long, no matter how long it is, it is only a process and not an eternity. According to the law of its development, we can know that the polarized universe will go through a period of time, no matter how long this period is, it will inevitably return to a state of chaos. After that, it will gradually diverge from chaos to give birth to a new universe.
In this way, the universe runs non-stop in a process of chaos-polarization, re-chaos-re-polarization, endlessly, and never stopping. This is very much in line with the Taoist theory of yin and yang. "One yin and one yang is the Tao", the yin and yang are born, the yang is born, and the yin and yang are constantly transformed, which constitutes the endless life of our world. At this point, it is pointless to ask where you came from and where you are going. What is even more worth thinking about is how we can live this worldly life.
This is another big proposition.