The ancients who first taught Dao were simple, rustic people. They formed their view by walking in granite-bladed mountains, digging in grainy soil, and sailing down wide rivers.  As they worked and traveled, they slowly discerned a grand order of life.  They noticed the regular phases of the stars, sun, moon, earth and tides. They followed the seasons.  They watched the births, lives, and deaths of people, animals and plants, as well as the rise and fall of kingdoms. 

In the nights, the ancients sat beside open fires and spoke to those who wanted to learn.  As illustrations of their ideas, and to aid their students’ memories, they drew pictographs in the dirt.  They taught their lessons from what they had experienced; life was a movement supreme-greater than humans, greater than heaven and earth.  Nothing was fixed, for everything-from the cycles of the stars, sun and moon, to the making and destroying of empires-showed endless, cyclical transformation.  All this they summed up by drawing a picture of Dao, a person running along a path. 

Those who want to study Dao can gain much from that simple image.  It represents the organic movement of the cosmos as a great, balanced and dynamic body in motion, just as it represents the path each of us follows through life. Sometimes intellectual definitions of Dao can be challenging. Returning to the image of Dao centers our contemplation.