#((tw long post but i thru it under a rewad more for u))

[pctaldrunk]

on the depiction of dao in c.yjm and b.ingchang's dao

I'll get to what all this has to do w/ B.ingchang in a few paragraphs, but I want to talk about dao in context of c.yjm, which I think is arguably underdeveloped...in both source materials that currently exist. Firstly, to establish the loosest sense of the word - dao is a path. It's merely a road of cultivation, a philosophical principle of the universe which an individual has chosen to follow as a guide through and interpretation of the state of being of the world. To understand and find dao and therefore achieve some height of cultivation is only to understand and embody the chosen principle and thereby let go of some worldly obsession. The twice that a specific dao is mentioned is in relation to the main characters. L.i Su Su practices 无情道 (the path of no feeling), and the demon god is intrinsically linked to 同悲道 (quite literally, the path of 'same suffering'/'suffering with'). Effectively - two canonically powerful cultivation paths that destructively symbolize universal good and universal evil.

And yet like a lot of dao - they are linked together in a circle - 同悲 is achieved through suffering, to cause others suffering, to realize that all living beings suffer and to be the sufferer and to be the person causing suffering is at the end one and the same against the backdrop of the cycle of cosmic suffering. 无情 is to be without personal emotion, to see all living things, from a blade of grass to an ordinary person to a villain as only parts of the universe without influence from within, to feel love only for the entire universe and therefore only act in the favor of the universe as an entity and not any of the millions of individuals within it.

Controversially, maybe - I think their effect is the same. Both are paths that completely obliterate circumstance and self and the individual. Both are elevated to godhood rather than the human experience - perpetrators of divine will, a will that exists outside of and involves all living things no matter what dao they choose to practice. 同悲 and 无情 both seek to change the world and the paths of others - assimilation, if you will, into the universal dao - to carry out a divine will - whether that will is for universal good or universal suffering.

And this is why I think...Bingchang sits at a unique middle between daos, and why I find it ironic that she's frequently referred to as a 'B.odhisattva on earth' specifically within the narrative. Her path remains incomplete - unfortunately she dies before she's really able to feel it out comfortably in the novel, but - I believe, overall it finds some of its roots in the concept of 无为 - noninterference. That all paths that exist for her and others are a path of the universe, that all things as they are and in the way that they are and choose to be - have their time and place in the world. That her own path in the world can only be borne out of herself and to do with herself, not about changing the paths of others. A "small" dao, rather than a "grand" one, but a dao of assessment and acceptance rather obliteration.

At the start of her narrative she's trying out universal compassion, and at the end of her narrative she dips a little into malice. The ends of her scale are a very wide range. I believe that eventually when kindness no longer becomes something she can give in abundance and without regard to herself, she realizes that 1) she has always been practicing kindness to her ability, rather than extended to the universe as an entity 2) she needs to reassess her dao and what is "worth it" to her, individually, in terms of that ability. Which is to say - discovering her dao is largely about discovering her limitations and her own obstinacies and obsessions and finding a compromise. She has a uniquely human dao, which is the dao of a great many regular beings who are neither gods nor devils - mercy where mercy can be afforded, unkindness where one cannot prevent it - all according to one's own ability and without interfering with or trying to influence the path of others, bending like water as necessary.

She's very aware that she cannot love and forgive everything in the world the same way and therefore cannot offer mercy to all - consequently she cannot condemn or judge everything in the world in the same way either, and cannot offer suffering to all. But she will make good with all that she can. Maybe one day, a long time later when she is finally at a point where she can accept all things and lay down all the things she cannot let go of - she will finally become a real god - but I'm inclined to believe that when she's referred to as a B.odhisattva "on earth" in the story, it's an indicator - she will always be flawed and individual in her humanity, contradictory as every complex person is, kind and cruel at once - only ever just doing her best.

So I think with regards to cultivation and who she'll become post canon in the grand scheme of this xianxia landscape - a middleman, a conveyer of small kindnesses and small understandings and small anger. Not a great goddess or a great evil but simply a still-learning, still-cultivating individual that wanders the mortal realm for answers that she still seeks to answer for herself.