is ultimately indescribable and transcends all analysis and definition. Thus the Daodejing begins with: “The Dao that can be told is not eternal Dao.” Likewise, Komjathy writes that Dao has been described by Daoists as "dark" (xuan), "indistinct" (hu), "obscure" (huang), and "silent" (mo). According to Komjathy, the Dao has four primary characteristics: "(1) Source of all existence; (2) Unnamable mystery; (3) All-pervading sacred presence; and (4) Universe as cosmological process." As such, Daoist thought can be seen as monistic (the Dao is one reality), panenhenic (seeing nature as sacred), and panentheistic (the Dao is both the sacred world and what is beyond it, immanent and transcendent). Similarly, Chan describes Dao as an "ontological ground" and as "the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable. It is at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course." The Dao is thus an "organic order", which is not a willful or self-conscious creator, but an infinite and boundless natural pattern. Furthermore, the Dao also is something that individuals can find immanent in themselves, as well as in natural and in social patterns. Thus, the Dao is also the "innate nature" (xing) of all people, a nature which is seen by Daoists as being ultimately good. In a naturalistic sense, the Dao as visible pattern, "the Dao that can be told", i.e. the rhythmic processes and patterns of the natural world which can be observed and described. Thus, Kohn writes that Dao can be explained as twofold: the transcendent, ineffable, mysterious Dao and the natural, visible and tangible Dao. Throughout Daoist history, Daoists have also developed different metaphysical views regarding the Dao. For example, while the Xuanxue thinker Wang Bi described Dao as wú (nothingness, negativity, not-being), Guo Xiang rejected wú as the source and held that instead the true source was spontaneous “self-production” (zìshēng 自生) and “self-transformation” (zìhuà 自化). Another school, the Chóngxuán (Twofold Mystery), developed a metaphysics influenced by Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy. De The active expression of Dao is called De (; also spelled—Te or Teh; often translated with Virtue or Power), in a sense that De results from an individual living and cultivating the Tao. The term De can be used to refer to ethical virtue, as in the conventional Confucian sense, as well as to a higher spontaneous kind of sagely virtue or power, which comes from following the