Meditations and Musings

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering.

In the film Rivers and Tides, Andy Goldsworthy makes a piece of art that really struck me deeply. He took a series of large leaves and threaded the stem of each leaf through the broad part of the next leaf making a long chain of leaves. The chain was placed in a river where it was taken by the current. The photographer shoots the chain as it meanders through slower and faster parts of the current, sometimes finding eddies and curling in on itself, sometimes speeding up and unwinding from these curls. The flow of the river as described by the floating chain is absolutely mesmerizing.

This piece of art, I think, captures what Lao Tsu is communicating in Forty-Eight. The art gets its meaning from the features of the flow of the current. It is both part of the river and builds on it. When we experience the Tao, we flow in just this way. There is no interference. Our participation in the Tao is organic in just the way the current and its flotsam describe the flow of the river.

The farther you go, the less you know.

Thus the sage knows without traveling;
He sees without looking;
He works without doing.

It takes an act of the will to get back to this project. If I float along thinking, “I’ll get back to it soon. Maybe tomorrow.” It’s just not going to happen. And all the while I feel less and less centered. At first I think to myself, “You’re feeling this way because you haven’t been meditating and writing.” But soon this voice fades and the feeling of disquiet becomes pervasive. Only now it’s vague and I don’t know why I feel this way. The sage works without doing, but I do not.

I’ll try to pick up the thread again. Making time for this is just worth it. Without a doubt. But I am not the sage, and I will have to work at it.