Meditations and Musings

Lao Tsu, as he often does, presents us first with a series of four opposites that are somehow necessary for each other. We have shrinking and expansion, failure and strength, casting down and being raised up, and receiving and giving. Understanding the interconnectedness of these things seems to be a special kind of perception. Feng and English translate the next stanza:

This is called perception of the nature of things.
Soft and weak overcome hard and strong.

Interestingly, the Chinese in the first line above refers literally to “light.” Waley translates the line, “This is called ‘dimming’ one’s light.” And Muller translates it as, “This is called ’subtle illumination.’” If memory serves me, this is not the first time that Feng and English ignore some literal translation involving light. Perhaps they believe that the Western baggage surrounding the idiomatic use of “light” is somehow incommensurable with the idiomatic usage of the term in Chinese religious and mystical culture. If so, it is interesting that none of the other translators I have consulted have a similar problem with using the word “light” here. Though an interesting topic for consideration, this does but little to aid our understanding of the chapter. Nevertheless, we have seen this motif throughout the Tao Te Ching before. Ideas like softness and “weakness” are often part of the feminine conception of nature. Somehow if we possess an enlightened perception of the nature of things, we will understand how the soft overcomes the hard and the weak the strong. And perhaps, as another wise man said, “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

While meditating after reading this chapter, I had an interesting experience. The sudden and exquisitely detailed image of a lotus flower popped into my head and bounced around in my mind for a few minutes. I have no idea why, but I somehow became fixated on this image and envisioned a nice idea for glazing one of the bowls I have thrown with an image of a lotus flower. The lotus is considered one of the Ashtamangala, or Eight Auspicious Signs in eastern culture and Buddhist symbolism. The lotus in particular, as the trusty Wikipedia tells us, represents purity of body, speech, and mind. One can envision a beautiful lotus flower floating serenely in a fetid puddle of raw sewage. Get the picture? What does this mean and why did it pop into my head, especially since I had only vague memory of the symbolism I mention before I looked it up to be sure. Certainly, I can see the lotus as an example in meditation - the serenity above the attachment of the mind. The image itself might be seen as a distraction that should have been let go by my grasping mind. Interesting, though.

Living my whole life in New Orleans, except for two months following Hurricane Katrina, Lao Tsu’s words seem familiar.

Passersby may stop for music and good food

It is human nature to be drawn to the pleasures of the senses. And we are drawn as well to those who show true contentment and happiness through their keeping to the Way. But these casual passersby inevitably find the work of spiritual practice bland and tasteless. For them the Tao seems flavorless and without substance. If they were to STOP! and be something more than a passerby. Then, they would realize that the Tao is an inexhaustible font of “rest and happiness and peace.”

In an earlier post I talked about the idea of Flow in psychology. In Chapter Thirty-Four Lao Tsu writes, “The great Tao flows everywhere, both to the left and to the right.” As we considered flow earlier in the text, we saw it especially as it applied to the psychology of the practitioner. Here we focus on the flow of the Tao itself. This flow informs all of creation, silently supporting the existence of the ten thousand things without taking mastery over that creation and without making a show of this support.

Over the history Western Philosophy, there has been much debate about the type of cause God is in relation to the rest of existence. For some philosophers and theologians, God is not only the original cause of existence, the speaker of that “fiat lux” - the First Cause or Prime Mover. God is also the constant cause for all being, at each moment of existence. This second way of thinking of God is closer to what Lao Tsu means to say about the Tao. All things depend upon the Tao for their existence. It is the flow of the Tao through the ten thousand things that makes them real.

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.

For any philosopher the ancient Greek aphorism carved on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is a familiar thought, one which is well-worn and comfortable like a favorite walking stick. But any good philosopher sees the problem with the statement right off. Just what is knowledge, and even more problematically, what is the self? Certainly one would be partially right in arguing that the statement is meant to be taken in an everyday sense, but I think this would miss something important that Lao Tsu is trying to tell us. Clearly this is a very different kind of knowledge than we are used to considering in the everyday sense - here it means “enlightenment,” to use the word chosen by Feng and English. Other translations use the related word “illumined.”

I have also been reading the Upanishads recently and I think we can find some illumination from the Katha Upanishad here. Lao Tsu ends this chapter by writing:

To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

In the Katha Upanishad Nachiketa goes to the world of the dead to speak with the King of the Dead. After he waits for three days and three nights, the King appears and finding Nachiketa deserving, he says he will answer three questions. The third question Nachiketa asks is about the secrets of death. Throughout the dialog, we learn about the realization in enlightenment of Atman, the Big Self, as opposed to the little self (which is more like our everyday understanding of our “self”). The stillness of meditation is like the death of this little self, and enlightenment is the realization of our inseparable participation in Atman, the Big Self. In a real sense we die but do not perish; in fact, in this realization we truly live.

The Tao is forever undefined.

Lao Tsu says that in its unformed state The Tao is small, though it cannot be grasped. I am reminded of the Katha Upanishad where it is said that the Self, or Atman, is thumb-sized. How prosaic. For the modern mind intelectualizations are unproblematic. But it seems that to the ancient mind something that brings the mystical down to the everyday, like this idea of smallness in size, is a matter of course.
As we have seen in earlier chapters, our experience of the ten thousand things leads to a division in Being, and in so doing, names are required for our understanding. But this is not a true understanding.

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.

The wise know that the naming of the ten thousand things is not the way to knowledge of The Tao.

Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.

Carrying on with the idea of Thirty, Lao Tsu makes it clear that weapons and war are never prized by one who follows The Way. Living as I do in a country that is, for all intents and purposes, always at war, I am unsurprised that so many Americans have difficulty finding peace in their own lives. As Lao Tsu says, a victory at war should never be cause for celebration for it occurred as a result of great slaughter. When I hear our government officials talk about civilian casualties in Iraq being at acceptable levels, which they claim is 30,000 innocent lives, I am sickened. A recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins put the number at 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. Even if that number was half wrong…. Mission accomplished, Mr. Bush?

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of the Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I have found many connections between the truths of Taoism and the experience I am gaining from throwing pottery on the wheel. There is a timeless truth in the notion that the application of force can rebound upon the unwise. As a general principle of behavior, strength of character can never be gained by the application of force or violence in the world. This lesson is something that I find reflected in the process of throwing a piece of pottery.

The first step when one goes to the wheel is called “centering.” I think that it is no coincidence that we often think of good spiritual, emotional, and psychic health as being “centered.” When one centers a piece of clay on a spinning wheel, the application of force or violence will always lead to disaster. Instead one places one’s body in such a way that the clay becomes, in a sense, part of the centered being that is an extension of your body. One’s hands are placed on the clay and as a result of the centering of one’s body, the resistance provided to the spinning clay causes it to center itself. In fact, all of us in class have days when this just does not go well. No matter how hard one tries, one cannot get the clay centered on the wheel. In every case, the reason is that one is having trouble being centered oneself. I don’t mean this in a mystical sense, but instead, in a physical sense. You could argue that there is some connection between the two, and I won’t dispute that. But here is a lesson for life in general; when you push the world, the world pushes back. This is not The Way.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.

I think in considering Chapter Twenty-Nine that we can divide it into two parts comprised of two stanzas each. I’ll address the second part first. The quote above sums up this second part well. The ancient Greeks had a great word for this: sophrosyne (σοφροσύνη). It’s a difficult word to translate into English because it is very complex and philosophical at its base. Part of the meaning is embodied in the quote from Lao Tsu above, but it entails a deep understanding of oneself, which is very much in line with the greater meaning behind Lao Tsu’s words above that we have been tracking throughout the text of the Tao Te Ching. It is Socrates’ famous motto echoed from the Oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself!” In a real sense, this is the project central to this blog. And, in this self-knowledge, we hope to gain a balance in life and our relationship with the universe.

This relationship to the universe as a whole is the connection we can use to consider the first part of the chapter. As Lao Tsu admonishes us, we cannot both follow The Way and try to rule over and change the universe. Lao Tsu argues that these two things are incompatible with The Way. Western philosophy and science are radically opposed to this principle. Instead of the “Sacred Vessel” that Lao Tsu sees the universe as, to the West, the universe is a complex problem that must be solved using analysis (literally cutting it up) and manipulation (the experimental maxim of Western science). As Marx so eloquently argues, the world is just that which we work over and recreate in our own image; in fact, this is integral to Marx’s idea of the Self. In his book Reconstruction in Philosophy, John Dewey even goes so far as to say that the universe is like a tortured prisoner, and it is only by turning the metaphorical thumbscrews of the scientific method that we pry the truth out of it. And this image is presented in what Dewey thinks is a positive light! How nauseating! What truth is ever gotten by torture; isn’t it the case that the prisoner will say exactly what his jailor wants to end the torture? What a bizarre analogy!

Perhaps there is some happy medium that we can take between Lao Tsu’s universe which is “dangerous to tamper with” and Dewey’s would-be torture victim. I am inclined to see human beings as essentially part of the universe. Of course we will effect it, change it, add to it. We are it! In what meaningful sense are we outside of nature? I see nothing to make me believe this. When we are nature, we are responsible for it in just the same ways we are responsible for ourselves. This, I would argue, is the meaning of sophrosyne.

Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.

We have heard mention of the valley spirit from Lao Tsu before. The valley spirit represents the feminine, the creative impulse, the vessel to be filled with creation. To be the valley of the universe is to be resourceful in the literal sense. When we take on this quality, we are like the uncarved block. I especially like Wright’s translation here:

The block of wood is carved into utensils
by carving void into the wood.

The master artisan applies just the right amount of “void” to bring the envisioned reality into existence. I am reminded of Aristotle’s term “entelechy” here. For Aristotle, things with purpose are entelechies, especially self-guided purpose. For the human soul, our path through the world is drawn by purpose. In a real sense, we begin as pure potential. As Lao Tsu says, “Become as a little child once more.” Even in modern physics, objects can have potential energy. The valley spirit is pure potential, ready to be set free by action. But not just any action - action guided by The Way. For when the sage converts this potential to actual, she does so with just the right application of void to make things useful in order to fulfill the ends for which they are made.

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.