We like lists. From the Eight Pillars to the Ten Commandments to the Bill of Rights to Getting Things Done, it seems the human race can't find a list it doesn't like. There's even a list of Seven Deadly Vices! As if we need to count!
But that's the way the mind works best, by consolidating and enumerating things outside of ourselves. And of course, that's all we can consolidate and enumerate -- things outside ourselves -- everything interior is one "I." Which is probably why we have tended to define god as "One," because we experience god within where it cannot be counted.
But that paints a very one-dimensional picture of god. No matter how much we want to believe that we know just who, how and what god is, that's coming at best from a glimpse remembered and interpreted by a mind entangled with ego and material identification.
Messy.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
