Talk:Tao/Archive 4

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was consensus against move. The relevant policy, as noted, is Naming conventions (common names) and tao is far more common in English than dao.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

requesting that the article Tao be renamed Dao, which is the preferred romanization for the word. -- Ludwigs 2 00:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

note: Dao currently exists, and is a redirect to the disambiguation page DAO. however, the vast majority of the links to Dao are references to the Chinese philosophy (I found one that was a reference to the Yao people) so this move would actually fix a number of disambig links. I'll fix any leftover links myself. -- Ludwigs 2 00:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It would help if you indicated "preferred" by whom for the sake of clarity. Personally, I am weakly in favor of keeping it in its current, less accurate, place, because of seeing the name spelled with a "T" more frequently than with a "D", but I am more than willing to have my opinion be overlooked for the sake of greater accuracy, if that is the consensus here. John Carter (talk) 00:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (e/c) sorry, my mistake. Pinyin is preferred both by the scholarly community and by wikipedia policy, the exception being cases where (as you suggest) the older spelling is significantly better known.  I'm suggesting the move mostly because of the inconsistency: Dao's sister concept De uses the pinyin spelling (I suppose because it has made fewer inroads into the English speaking world), leaving a confusing mix of Tao Te Ching, Tao, and De.  plus, every article in the daoism realm begins with an explanation of Tao vs. Dao, and redirects will ensure everyone ends up at the right page, so there's really no advantage to maintaining the outmoded romanization.


 * It would probably be easier to rename pages like De to the Wade-Giles spelling, but that would meet with objections as well (and did, when I suggested that as the simpler solution a few days ago). If I'm going to have to swim against a current either way to create some consistency, then I'd prefer to swim in the direction of the scholarly usage.    -- Ludwigs 2  01:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose In my experience I have never seen in called "Dao". It's always Tao whenever I see it written or hear it talked about.  TJ   Spyke   01:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * granted, but I'm not sure it's relevant. Until a few years back I'd never heard of chickpeas - it was always garbanzo beans. and yet... -- Ludwigs 2  01:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose. What English-speakers read or hear is the only essential question: we are optimized for lay readers, not for specialists - and in cases like this, we are (by the same principle) optimized for anglophones, not sinophones. Chick-pea/garbanzo bean is an instance of WP:ENGVAR; this is not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * actually, no. the only essential question is what is presented in reliable sources, which in this case (with any work published in the last few decades) would almost uniformly be pinyin. Don't get me wrong, I understand the desire to accommodate conventional language (and 'Tao' is what I myself grew up with, not 'Dao'; I tend to use the WG form), but wikipedia is an encyclopedia, with an obligation to present things in their current states.  the fact that many English language users do not know that 'dao' is the preferred romanization would seem to make it more important for us to use it, not less.  and to be frank, given redirects and the already-in-place text explanations of the romanization differences, I don't see a problem with naming the page Dao.  I mean, what's going to happen?
 * a user types Tao in the search box
 * ends up at a page called Dao
 * is momentarily confused, but...
 * reads the first line or two and figures it out. (and wow, s/he learned something!)
 * compare that with the inconsistency of using different romanization schemes for the same word-root on different topics, which just makes wikipedia look confused. If you want to argue that we should rename De and other pinyin-titled pages in the scope of Daoism back to their WG forms, that would be fine (a bit regressive, but fine).  but you'd need to have a stronger argument than "it's what wikipedia readers are expecting" to justify maintaining the current more or less haphazard naming differences.  -- Ludwigs 2  03:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This is an excessive limitation of "reliable sources" - reliable sources on Taoism are not limited to sinology. (Nor is sinology limited to pinyin; for example, the currently appearing complete translation of Sima Qian, edited by Nienhauser, presents all historic names including the author's in Wade-Giles.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * well, ok. I still don't think I buy the argument, but it seems that there's a strong interest in keeping the page name WG.  I'm still concerned about consistency, though; should we re-open a discussion for renaming the De article to Te?  -- Ludwigs 2  16:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I might, as another exceptional case. De (Chinese) consists almost entirely of quotes discussing how it should be translated; almost all of these are WG. There's a reasonable case the article will be most comprehensible if our text is also WG (with a clear early explanation that the pinyin is de). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:31, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know, it's really over-quoted. I've been thinking about starting revisions there, but I'm still in the 'mulling-it-over' phase.  at any rate, I'll go back and make the suggestion again, see what happens.  -- Ludwigs 2  03:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose Tao is the prevalent form in English, by an extreme margin. A simple Amazon search shows a 3:1 preference for "Tao". Pinyin imperialism is also problematic, since alot of things found in English language sources use Wade-Giles, so that many of the "renamed to 'preferred' romanizations" articles no longer match the predominantly found version anymore. 76.66.196.218 (talk) 03:27, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Week oppose - because the Tao returns - it will flow back, circumvent, and eventually undo any attempts to force it into a particular path. --Salix (talk): 06:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * and therein lies true wisdom.  -- Ludwigs 2  17:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:UCN, because the form in common usage in English is Tao. It is not WP's place to say what should be used, but only to reflect what is used.  This is paramount to crosswiki consistency, which itself doesn't really count for much. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 08:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * oppose per most common usage. Chris (クリス • フィッチュ) (talk) 15:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Thanks to Ludwigs2 for pointing out the inconsistency, if not absurdity, of a reference work having most articles entitled with Pinyin (like De (Chinese) and Laozi) but a few "common usage" exceptions with Wade-Giles (Tao and Tao Te Ching). Since the present consensus appears to be opposition, there's no point in rehashing the pro/con arguments expressed under Daoism-Taoism romanization issue and Talk pages (see above, Taoism, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, etc.). Search engines reveal that English usage is steadily changing from Wade-Giles to Pinyin (note this 2005-2009 comparison). Eventualism predicts that future WP editors will make titles and redirects more consistent. As the Daodejing (formerly known as Tao Te Ching) says, "Reversal is the movement of the Way; Weakness is the usage of the Way". Keahapana (talk) 20:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. "Tao" is in common use in English, so reference to a system of romanization is unnecessary. This is analogous to similar treatment of Japanese loan words as set forth at WP:MOS-JP. Dekimasu よ! 06:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose per common usage. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  08:21, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:DAO which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 00:31, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Korean word confuses me
The Korean translation for tao is transliterated into English as "tog" or "dog". However, I do not see a giyeok in the Hangul. Is that a mistake?Mwidunn (talk) 19:46, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

What is the Tao?
What is the Tao?

In the primary Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, the legendary author Lao Tzu uses the word Tao to indicate two ideas:

1) the Tao, literally the "Way", is the non-behaviour of the enlightened person

The enlightened person is nothing. This person does nothing, says nothing, knows nothing, etc. This is explicit in the Tao Te Ching.

What is "nothing"? See idea 2.

2) the Tao, literally the "Way", is a metaphor for "nothing"

There is a permanent changelessness underlying the world of perpetual change that we all know. This continuity cannot be named or known, and is best called "nothing" or "nameless". This is explicit in the Tao Te Ching.

How can a person be "nothing"? By emptying oneself of all knowledge and all wisdom, one becomes enlightened. Such a person lives solely in the present and therefore is, does, says, or knows whatever the situation requires, no other, no more, and no less. Such a person has no unnecessary consciousness of past experience but draws on it with perfect efficiency, without effort. Such a person does not imagine the future but anticipates it with timely and effective action, in whatever way will best serve the community, never thinking of self-gain. The enlightened flow in harmony with the permanent continuity, the "nameless." This is explicit in the Tao Te Ching.

Ideas 1 and 2 Harmonized

Idea 1 is that the enlightened person is nothing. Idea 2 is that the enlightened person is anything. When a person submits to the nameless this person unites with it. When a person unites with the nameless the result is selflessness, or harmony. Enlightened behaviour is natural, or, in other words, it is unwilled action in accord with necessity. This is explicit in the Tao Te Ching. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.16.131 (talk) 10:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Close, but when you are there, you tread to fast (and you trip).
 * You take the obvious route, writing down what is (as you say it) Explicit in the Tao Teh Ching. However, your reference to tao (or the person enlightened by being Tao) being nothing, is as much as saying it is everything, so the person is everything and should know everything as such (past, present, future). All Tao is, is something to direct people to. As the first line of the TTC says: You can't name it, to know it.--Maddehaan (talk) 10:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No, and it is wrong to think an expression will explain it properly. Our logics (logos?) do not do what Dao does. Selecting the Dao yields only Tao, as it is not what it is anymore. "the dao is unchanging, and everlasting" is a simple statement I remember. Tao is also 'not western reality', hence the apparent plurality of meanings. Tau is what is, 'to you', tao is therefore both wisdom and the path ahead of you, but quite neither. In use Tau can even yield the dot-product equivalent of a complicated subject, where you are the receiving vector. Althus, the Tau of Motorcycle maintenance. 84.241.194.69 (talk) 14:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)