Meditations and Musings

Forty-three is one of those chapters that encapsulates the Tao Te Ching nicely. It’s one that comes to mind when thinking about Taoism in general. In this very concise chapter, we have the idea of wei wu wei, along with the concepts of yin and yang, and also the idea of teaching without words. While I was reading and meditating on this chapter, I focused on the idea of no-substance presented in the quote above. One might think of spirit or soul in the classical sense as something which has no substance in this way. At least we might see it as being nonphysical allowing it to be where there is “no room.” This ridiculous idea is very unappealing to me.

Instead, what came to mind when I was thinking about what this sentence might mean was the idea of a “string” in String Theory from modern physics. Oversimplifying horribly, string theory holds that all events in the physical world are ultimately caused by the various “vibrations” of extremely small multidimensional “strings.” One of the problems that opponents of this theory point to is the fact that if string theory is in fact true, because strings are actually smaller than the Planck length, we cannot observe them in any meaningful sense. The Planck length, or the smallest meaningful unit of length, is equal to 1.6 x 10^-35 m or about 10^-20 times the size of a proton. Our current understanding of the physical world cannot make claims about anything smaller than this unit of length. Therefore, opponents of string theory assert, the hypotheses of string theory are not falsifiable and as a result cannot be called scientific in any rigorous sense of that word. One could not prove string theory is wrong because the hypotheses associated with it cannot be tested. Therefore String Theory is more like an ideology than a scientific theory.

What in the hell does this have to do with chapter Forty-Three of the Tao Te Ching? Well, not much, except that when I think of things without “substance” in the usual sense, I don’t think about souls, I think about strings. If a string is smaller than the Planck distance then you could fit as many as you like “where there is no room.” Kind of like the old jab at the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Therefore the sage takes care of all men And abandons no one. He takes care of all things And abandons nothing.

This is called “following the light.”

It is said of Bodhidharma that he believed that the intuitive grasp of the Buddha Mind is within everyone. So the spiritual practice of meditation is all that is needed for one to realize the Buddha Nature. The trappings of ritual and doctrine are unnecessary for true spiritual practice. Thus it is that Bodhidharma is connected with the introduction of the Zen koan as a means for breaking through the rigidity of our human intellect. Interestingly, Bodhidharma is also connected with the use of tea in meditation as a means to stimulate the mind. It is said that he once stared at a wall in a cave near the Shaolin Monastery for nine years. After seven years, he fell asleep and was angry with himself; taking a knife he cut his eyelids so this could not happen again. Where his eyelids fell, tea plants grew. Perhaps we need not go so far in “following the light.” But at the very least we can enjoy the stimulation of an excellent cup of tea.

Bodhidharma’s teaching that each of us has within us the means to walk the path to enlightenment is analogous to the teachings of Martin Luther and the protestant movement in Christianity. Central to the protestant reformation is the core belief that we have within us the means to foster a relationship with God that can lead to our salvation. We need not rely on the Pope or his ordained representatives, priests, to get us any further than we can get on our own. Both of these ideas represent the democratization of a spiritual practice - an anti-institutionalism that I find very attractive. In contrast, we can compare the Catholic Church with its Pope as the holy representative of God on Earth and Tibetan Buddhism with its strong appeal to spiritual lineage represented in the transmigration and reincarnation of souls. As a result, I find neither of these traditions especially appealing.

Chapter Ten is a very difficult chapter for me to take in. For each of the translations I consulted, there was a (sometimes radically) different interpretation of Lao Tsu’s words. Lao Tsu is trying to communicate what Feng and English call “the Primal Virtue” or what Waley calls “the Mysterious Power.” Mysteries, of course, are not, by virtue of their status as mysterious, the sort of thing anyone can communicate in words. So rather than focusing on the chapter as a whole I will use one of the phrases from the text as a jumping off point that might lead to or at least gesture towards a coherent interpretation of the chapter.

“Attending fully and becoming supple, Can you be as a newborn babe?”

Though the original Chinese centers around the idea of chi, or breath, Feng and English interpret the line as having to do with “attending.” This interpretation is interesting to me. Clearly Feng and English take the term chi to be metaphorical here. In considering what it means to attend fully and be as a newborn babe, I am reminded of the famous chapter on attention in William James’ masterpiece Psychology. James’ work was a seminal text in the birth of modern psychology. As James puts it, one of the essential features of the mind is attention. He describes the mind of a newborn babe in its experience of reality as “a blooming, buzzing, confusion.” And by “confusion” he means in the literal sense con-fusion, the intermixing of all things into mass of experience, unfiltered and unedited by the mind in any way. One of the earliest developments in the origin of the mind in a child is the power of attention. When the mind attends to things it delineates boundaries that make the world meaningful in a mature psyche.

I’d like to apply this conceptualization of the newborn babe’s experience to Lao Tsu’s words above. I think we can equate “attending fully” to the blooming, buzzing, confusion James remarks on. In a very real sense, being like a newborn is opening oneself up to the real without any delineated boundaries artificially placed on Being to edit and simplify it for the mind so that it can apply “meaning” to it. In this sense, we have become supple and open, lacking the rigid boundaries of the developed ego. Attending fully we are One.

Chapter Five is a good example of what I mentioned in my first post; that is, there are many ways to translate the text Lao Tsu has given us and it is often useful to consider several interpretations to get a clearer picture of the whole. Feng and English use the word “dummies” in the first stanza, but the original is closer to “straw dogs.” Taken together, these terms help us to see what is meant more clearly. Sub specie aeternitatis. As Spinoza taught, under the aspect of eternity, temporal accidents can never be confused with Being. The trick is achieving that point of view. Clearly, such a view would be a side effect of a deeper achievement and not merely a shift in perspective.

The second stanza of Chapter Five is more interesting. “Heaven and Earth and all that lies between is like a bellows.” It is empty, but, when it is worked, it gives rise to the ten thousand things. The more it moves the more it yields. Lao Tsu contrasts this with the operation of the intellect: the more words, the less understanding. Thus: “Far better is it to keep what is in the heart.” Or in another translation: “Hold fast to the center.” Here is the core of Taoist anti-intellectualism which flows forward equally into Zen, as well. I have always found it difficult to accept this core belief. But I am content to leave it at a realization that there are in fact mysteries that confront us more often than some of us like to admit.

So early in the text and we have run up against a truly alien standpoint to our everyday American sensibilities. In Chapter Two we had our first hint of wu-wei, the virtue of non-action. Here in Chapter Three we find ourselves confronted with wei wu wei or “action without action.” I like the phrasing that the author of the Wikipedia article on wu wei uses for wei wu wei: “effortless doing.” Lao Tsu writes:

“The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.”

I believe I feel and even understand what Lao Tsu means when he writes about effortless doing. I think we have all had moments of clarity, when we are truly living in the present moment, when everything else (the ten thousand things) falls away and we are just what we are doing. There is no I; there is only the act. This mode of being is the clarity of the wise, that Lao Tsu is talking about in Chapter Three. An essential ingredient to achieving this way of being is one of the central tenets of Buddhism, the state of no-desire. When we cease our grasping, only then can we be free of suffering. When we achieve this mode of being whether it is momentarily or a way of life, we can feel the unity of all things– the connectedness that is always there, but which is hidden from us because of our grasping or desiring.

So, I’ve been working my way through all of the episodes of the X-Files over the last several months and I ran across an episode in season 7 that was written and directed by Gillian Anderson (who plays Scully) called “All Things.” You can get some details on the episode at TV.com.The episode is filled with Buddhist and Taoist imagery and sounds, and the theme revolves around the interconnectedness of things and the need for one to slow down, live in the moment, and to be open to the lessons of our world and the thread of our lives. To me, this is one of the best episodes of a show that is filled with great episodes.

So here is my project. Gillian Anderson’s beautiful creation brought back many ideas that I have not paid enough attention to lately in my life. I was first exposed to these ideas when I took a life-changing course at Loyola University when I was an undergraduate, Zen I. The course was taught by Ben Wren, a deeply flawed individual, but an excellent teacher. At the time he was a Jesuit priest, but he left the priesthood not long after Pope John Paul II wrote his letter extolling Catholics not to be ensnared by the teachings of Eastern mysticism and spirituality. What a fucker that guy was. The now (thankfully) dead Pope, that is. Ben Wren married soon after he left the priesthood and lived for about 10 years until he died recently here in the New Orleans area. Father Wren, as I knew him then, had a saying to describe my current position in the world; he would say, “You have lost your thread.” So this blog is an attempt for me to pick up the thread, as it were, and reinvest my energies in the actual practice of the things I believe to be the best way of life offered by any spiritual tradition I am aware of.

Here’s how I envision this attempt to pick up the thread. I will be using a fantastic version of a classic of Eastern thought, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. The edition is the one I used in Wren’s class and is translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. The text is filled with beautiful photographs and calligraphy. You can see inside it and purchase it if you like on Amazon.com. I will read a page of the text, spend some time meditating afterwards, and then write a post on the blog using the page from the book as a jumping off point for the post. I also hope to have the ideas and impressions I take away from the reading inform some of my pottery and drawing, which I will try to share through images in the blog. At the very least, I hope to get back into the habit of regular meditation and writing, both of which I really love. I hope that my thoughts will engender some interesting conversation with and among any readers who find their way here.

Online Translations

Here’s a short list of online translations if you want to follow along and don’t want to buy the text I am using. The list comes partly from the Wikipedia article on the Tao Te Ching and even includes a link to a version setup for running from your iPod as Notes. I think it is useful to consult several translations because they often vary widely and, because of the necessary interpretation that is integral to this kind of translation, they may all be equally valid.

• Daodejing - Original text arrayed with translations in English (Waley, Lau), French (Julien), German (Wilhelm) and modern Chinese. This site is really excellent. It includes the original Chinese ideograms with word by word translations available when you hover your cursor over the character. You can also hide or display each of the translations independently. The parent site includes similar translations and presentations of several other sacred Chinese texts.
• English Translation by James Legge (1891) at Internet Sacred-Texts archive
• An online translation by Charles Muller is available at Professor Muller’s site: Daode jing
• An online translation by j.h. mcdonald is available at Religions and Scriptures: Tao Te Ching
• An online interpretation by Ron Hogan is available in several formats at Beatrice.com: Tao Te Ching
• An iPod formatted version of this translation is available at SwiftlyTilting.com: The Tao Te Ching for your iPod