Nature and Understanding

Putting together some ideas from others here. The other day I posted a quote by Ran Prieur in which he paraphrased the Tao Te Ching. Ran wrote: "This reminds me of a verse from the Tao Te Ching, which I would paraphrase as: 'When you lose touch with the Tao, there is nature; when you lose touch with nature, there is human morality; when you lose touch with human morality, there is law.'"

I was paging through Daniel Quinn's "If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways" and found this quote: "The received wisdom [Of our culture] is that such a thing as Nature EXISTS, that it is a veridical entity out there--as real and substantial as the US Congress or the Roman Catholic Church--enjoying a separate existence from our own. This is the entity people are thinking of when they say that they 'love Nature' or would like to be 'closer to Nature.'"(Pg.79) He then goes on to say later on in the dialogue, "The distinction between 'us' and 'it' [Nature] is a cultural construct, and a very old one."(Pg.80)

As a culture, we've lost touch with alot more then just the Tao. The gulf between mind and matter is vast...