As we have seen, the concept dao may be understood – as it predominantly was – as referring to a deeper, underlying reality. This picture of dao is often held in conjunction with the view that dao is a monistic reality. This means that reality is ultimately a singular entity, albeit comprised by a multitudinous variety of all things (the ten thousand things). Of course, the correlation is not to be taken as a necessity; one could hold that dao refers to a collection of different truths or realities. However, the philosophy of the Daodejing does lend support to the idea of dao as the one, singular reality. There are specific references to the ‘one’: ‘Tao produced the One’ (chapter 42, trans. Chan 1963b: 176; see also chapters 14, 39). Dao has an all-encompassing nature (chapters 16, 21, 25, 34, 35). Furthermore, the themes of return and reversal (chapter 40) suggest a restoration of original unity – the uncarved block (chapter 57) – that is superior to existing ways of life. The discussions in the previous chapter were predicated on the assumption that dao is a monistic reality: the complementation of polarities, the concept of nonbeing, the acquiescent virtues in the Daodejing, the concept de that sustains the individual within the whole, and the transcendence of the mundanely human perspective are aspects of the one dao.