Slop novels are the Peak of the Dao, what is the Dao? What is the Way? Not in novels but in Real Life and how it connects to slop/misunderstanding webnovels
Why does everyone make fun of Slop novels or Misunderstanding novels or even the Dao in novels, I mean its true its protrayed in a ridiculous manner in chinese webnovels where the Dao is mostly about the pursuit of power through power and comprehension, yet little about enlightenment but i still find some insights in some novels to even exceed taoist scriptures.
Why?
In taoism, there is a concept that the Dao that can be told is not the True Dao.
Why?
Take the wind for example, its flowing, its alive but put it in a box or try to catch it, if you catch the wind in a box, you will only catch air, its no longer wind.
Wind is only wind because its moving but stop it and its no longer wind.
Try to cut water with a sword, impossible, yet offer yourself as an empty cup and you catch it without catching it and are fulfilled.
Trying to catch the Dao in written scripture or through thinking about it? a daoist would tell you its a foolish endeavor, yet he would also say that its impossible to not know the Dao since it is present in everything and is the essence of everything.
It's like you looking for your phone when its already in your pocket.
So a taoist would not go out with you and search for the phone, he would say to you, just check your pockets its already there but you wouldn't believe him, you would go out searching in the world, in experiences, in pleasure and pain, in struggle, and in the end you will return and just find it always was just in your pocket, you just had to check.
That's why most novels finish with the realisation of "I am the Dao and the Dao is Me" which is sometimes misinterpreted to mean I am God which is not entirely false but also completely false.
The Dao is selfless, it does not mean its kind or its righteous or even evil, it literally does not think, it simply exists as the very nature of existence, it's like a child, when it wants to move here, it moves here, when it wants to move there, it moves there, it's simply the self-aware energy that moves through everything and is the very fabric of existence.
Its hard to present the Dao to others simply, however there is an exception, stories!
That's why Chuang tzu wrote a series of near-nonesensical stories in Zhuangzi to try to represent it as simply as possible or the Zen koans of zen masters yet try to grasp them and you fall flat.
However even that is too far from normal people who are entranced by their minds and that's where webnovels come in!
Webnovels are so stupid, so extreme, so sloppy that it reverses in and on itself and represents the Dao through a long story in a way that is digestible to the every day person and especially funny novels and misunderstanding novels or novels where mc tries his best to fail only to succeed or just steamrolls through everything.
Those literally are gems, even better than taoist scriptures.
Wtf? How? Why?
Because they aren't trying to represent the Dao, by not trying, they grasp it.
Yes those taoist books, they can help you understand through paradoxical language however because they are actively trying to point to the Dao, you take the pointing finger for the truth and therefore they counter-act their very goal.
The essence of Daoism is that struggle is futile, that struggling in the world is meaningless, fruitless and exhausting.
I will dump a bombshell, why struggle when you have a golden finger in real life? Why not just steamroll through all realms to the peak?
Well, my friend I will tell you about this golden finger : it's called aligning with the Dao!
How? By literally being a lazy idiot who does nothing and yet still does things without even doing them!
That's literally the Dao itself my brother!
If a true taoist was reincarnated in cultivation novel, he will live without struggle just chilling everyday, he may become a powerful cultivator or he might just be the beggar by the side of the road with no cultivation, if some cultivators are fighting above him and accidentally an attack lands on him killing him, he'd literally not even feel it and just die and he literally wouldn't care.
The true taoist does not feel birth is a blessing nor that death is a curse, he comes into life, acquires a body, rolls through the seasons, accomplishes something or nothing and just moves on, not putting life on a pedestal and not shunning death because he knows that both life and death are not ultimately real.
Life becomes death, death becomes life.
Like why do people even struggle in life?
Like bruh, everything you acquire you will inevitably lose, seperation is the norm, things come and go, things are this way today and immediately another way tomorrow, why even plan, if the planning happens, good, if it doesnt happen? also good.
The Dao literally creates the entire world without effort, without doing a thing!
So the Dao basically did nothing and I, I have to put in effort, lil bro i ain't doing that and that's against the Dao to begin with.
It is effortless, self-aware, present everywhere, try to overtake in a race and its already everywhere before you even move!
So the Daoists understood the way to immortality and to omniscience and omnipotence?
But you just said the opposite?
My brother, if you have no will, if everything that happens is okay with you, aren't you omnipotent? Because anything that happens can be said to be done by the Dao
What does Alignment mean? it literally means aligning, being one with existence and how it moves, it moves you move, it stills, you still.
By not moving and offering yourself to the Dao and accepting everything it does, Its Will becomes Your Will, a daoist walks without walking, he doesn't even know he has a body!
How?
By literally doing absolutely nothing, just forgetting he exists! and letting life take its course!
That's literally the Dao, forgetting the self, letting the body roll like a leaf in the wind, pleasure and pain roll, happiness and misery roll, life and death roll, yet you are unaffected, because in Truth, everything that returns goes and everything that goes returns.
Going from our primordial existence as the Dao to form, Return is inevitable and already present.
The world both exists and doesn't exist at the same time.
The personal self "you" is not the real "You", it simply a mask you play.
You throw the mask and realise you are already the one BEING everything.
That's why emptying the cup is the greatest analogy, giving up the small self, you ascend beyond this dumb ass world.
How is that even possible?
Some say, i pray, why doesn't God answer?
My brother, the silence IS the answer!
When you are silent and don't think, the world exists only as a perception, you see it but its nature is empty.
The world is merely like the imagination of the Dao, the Dao merely imagines the entire world like you imagine the novel except in a more powerful way.
So without moving an inch, you already arrived, without doing anything, you attained existence itself, so what more is there to do?
Anyway, that's why misunderstanding and slop novels are superior.