The Cascadian Wanderer

As a preamble to the following dive into philosophical ethics occasioned by the commentary on the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, at Ralston Creek Review, I’d like to make a few comments about death, and the one in ten who lives a life not focused on death.

There are a couple of forms of death which come to mind. First and most obvious is the death of the body in the cycle of Creation which seems to have an effect upon the manner in which the nine in ten live their lives. We all know people who are in bondage to their past or future, gripped in the present by the pains of what happened in the past, or enslaved by fears of what might happen in the future.

A good argument can be made that all forms of desperate seeking through intense effort to transcend or circumvent the natural principles of creation, particularly the fact of bodily death, is rooted in fear – and that all strife is merely the result of a personal perspective which creates a fearful reflection of that inevitable fact.

And so the second form of death, the ego-based fear of “self” death, comes to mind. The individual, separated self desires to be alive to its own needs. It cannot afford to look honestly at Creation and understand its own humble location there. Granted, each of us is unique in our own way, but we are not, as the ego would have us believe, special in the sense of being apart from, or above, the facts of life and death or indeed any other basic principle of Creation.

When we fear death of the body or the ego we can not live in the present. We live as slaves to the past and the future. The sage of the Tao Te Ching observes that this is common, and to live here and now, without fear of death, is uncommon.

Death is not to be feared, either by the body or the ego. A constant watchful eye over the ego is a good thing. It’s good to make sure it does not consider itself precious and special and above others in any manner which results in behavior and actions which are rooted in fear and not in alignment with a life lived with harmony and acceptance of things as they are, really – that is, living a life in the spirit of wu wei.

Enough said on that subject for now. On to the response to Louis’ comments on TTC Chapter 50 at Ralston Creek Review, regarding law. I’d suggest reading it before reading what follows.

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Hello, Louis,

You’re the expert here, with a lifelong practice of law to draw upon. Plus, I know you are a moral and ethical person of good character, and as such have a refreshing knowledge of the ethical bases of law which I suspect is rare in your profession. So I’ll come at your two questions from my own perspective.

I would tend to agree with Han Fei Tzu in that rules appear as a condition of existence in the dualistic realm of human perception. The polarity we create with individual mind generates plus and minus, good and evil, right and wrong – all of which are by definition a subset of the Tao.

The question becomes, then, a matter of identifying the underlying basic first causes upon which the subsets of deontological and consequentialist principles, and indeed all branches of normative ethical philosophies and all other ethical philosophies, are conditioned upon.

In the Tao there are no distinctions. It is what it is. So the distinctions of law must arise in a place where the things which the law addresses – intent, action, and result – are also present. This is the place where rules enter. In the Tao there is no place for death or laws or any other distinctions of dualistic perception. So to answer your first question it seems to me that the sage, beholding the Tao and aware of the nature of its manifestations in the human mind and experience, has a place within where death and rules do not enter, and simultaneously a place where they do.

Which also begins to answer your second question. Is the inherent power in the Tao virtuous? Yes and no. Is the essence of humanity virtue? Yes and no. Is the essence of humanity to be found in the act of being within the context of the laws which give rise to Virtue and Te? It depends on which laws we are talking about, and how virtue is defined.

Ain’t dualism great? And yet if, being engaged as we are in a dualistic experience, we accept a perspective of simultaneity rather than strive to get personal control of our experience by pursuing rigid answers and insisting that only one side of every “either this or that, but not both” perception is true, then we find a place of peace.

If we are talking about the basic laws or principles of creation – which is comprised of the One and its essential Te/Virtue which gave rise to the Two and Three and the 10,000 things, and which exists whether or not human perception is present – then I think we’re getting somewhere.

If we are talking about human perception of those basic laws/principles of creation –  then I think we’re getting somewhere schizoid, because we’re starting at the place where individual identity coexists with universal identity. This is the place where the law enters, and ego enters, and where both gain the ability to go right or wrong as definitions are formed, depending upon what perspective point human perception is standing on, and seeing from.

The laws of civil and religious society and any other body which regulates or guides belief or behavior does so, hopefully, with an eye upon the “higher law” of Creation, of the One.

Ego, individual identity, will be self-interested if it chooses to be and will create laws which benefit it in practical ways. Yet separate egos exist, and often their personal desires are in conflict with others.

Ego too often chooses self delusion when looking at objective Creation from the subjective viewpoint and legalizes its own local perceptions, replacing the higher law with local law. Sometimes there’s enough higher law in there that the light shines through, and you get, for instance, a religion that guides its members to know truth rather than instruct them to know the local perceptions and interpretations of others regarding truth. Sometimes, not so much.

A body of laws can hold the potential to weigh blindly rather than judge with one eye open and a hand upon one side of the scales. It is to be hoped that the  highest intent of human law is to be in accord with the higher law of Creation when it comes to weigh intent, action and consequences in the realm of the 10,000 things.

What is higher law, what is true virtue, and when and where does it enter into the human experience? I think it’s the “the root of the root,” and bears looking at here.

I would imagine that in your experience, Louis, you’ve had to meet more than once those situations in which administration of the law seems not to serve justice – the definition of which is in itself a full day’s chaw – so much as it serves its own principles.

Laws, through ongoing evolutions which at their very necessary best serve to refine the formulary there can become so superfine that one might wish for certain conclusions of the legal authority to be characterized as particular rather than general, that is to say, unique to an extremely narrow range of conditions. One of the quandaries local law faces over and over again in its constant self-refinement are those instances when local law does not conform to higher law and an adjustment is necessary.

The issue to determine then is whether local law prevails and is applicable – or whether it is indeed local, and limited, and needs to acknowledge its own limits and refer back to first principles, that is, those which are universally present in Creation.

I realize that that is basically what the ongoing evolution of law is supposed to do. But one would prefer that rather than over-refine the law into an arcane, complex body of information, and then give precedence to it, there was instead a certain and simple set of first principles given precedence which would always be brought to bear before the arguments of finer points within the law. And of course there is.

From this viewpoint I would say that certain stated understandings of the individual ego of the higher law could reflect the essence of higher law and so constitute a foundational basis for “local law,” be it a civil or religious or other sort of human-inspired matrix of local definitions which establishes a local code of conduct.

I would say a local reflection of higher law would go something like this: “We acknowledge that human beings are endowed in their essence by Creation with certain universal conditions present there, among them life, liberty (choice, and freedom to choose to act outside the boundaries of local laws and conditions when they are not in accord with higher law), and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., security, safety, sustenance, harmony, peace.)

A merely local, egocentric law would be just that: “Don’t eat pork because it will kill you since we don’t know how to attenuate the effects of trichinosis and erysipelas and other hog ills, and if you do we’ll ostracize or stone you.”

My point here is that if you want higher law to be the source and go-to reference for lower law then it is best to keep both eyes open to the One and remain blind to the local ego.

Of course then ego asks who among us is able to do so, and answers its own question: “No one.”

The response of Creation is the opposite: “Every one.”

And so we come full circle to the place where local law enters, because many choose to ignore what they know in favor of what they desire.

The concept of a jury, for example, acknowledges Creation’s response that every one of us is able to know the truth and so anyone is able to judge with wisdom and an eye upon truth. Yet at the same time the composition of a jury acknowledges the fact that not all will do so. The best imperfect solution employed to date is a group consensus and the hope that truth will find its way forward out of the conflict therein between ego and higher law, and that in the selection of twelve persons a consensus would arrive which was good and true.

Indeed it seems there are a number of checks to ego in the law in order to balance the dualistic human nature. A judge oversees the jury and the litigants and their representatives, and may supersede the resultant judgment based on – theoretically, at least – a superior knowledge of the law, its intent, and its applicability to the case at hand. And the judgments of judges are subject to review by a chain of higher courts, all of which constitute an opportunity for the “higher law” to be reflected in the laws of humanity.

It is a system which in its complexity has created many opportunities for the intent of the law to go off the tracks and has proven demonstrably imperfect many times. Yet it is the result of the best efforts of good and great minds of many generations to create an equitable and just definition of what behaviors are acceptable and which are not in human social interaction.

Always the dualistic is present. Sophocles observed that when a person takes a position which the law favors then the advocating argument is best based on the letter of the law; but when the law is opposed to the advocate then the best argument is the one which points out the insufficiency of the local law when it is held up to the nature of universal law.  He says the advocate does well to “urge that the principles of equity are permanent and changeless, and that the universal law does not change either, for it is the law of nature, whereas written laws often do change.”

Aquinas, Montesquieu and Locke also observe that there is a standard of equity and justice present in nature and Creation, the “will of God,” which is a higher law by which local law is to be based upon and subject to. Rousseau and Kant added to the body of those thoughts with regard to the relationship between the individual and government.

Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, asserted that civil law is the product of reason, and that reason is the product of nature, and that therefore established civil law is the highest law. He says “nothing the sovereign representative can do to a subject, on what pretence whatsoever, can properly be called injustice, or injury.”

Hobbes’ argument is a good example for me of an ego-based insistence of supremacy, produced in the confines of local perception in the rational mind, which is perfectly understandable when one considers the limits which are present there.

Hobbes began at the same point others did, examining the “social contract” which is established between the individual and government and defined by law. Rousseau and Locke looked at the same primary reference point, the social contract, and yet their judgments constituted a powerful counterpoint to certain conclusions arrived at by Hobbes.

Hobbes’ assertion that an individual more or less automatically gives up their right to act freely when a government exists which is enforcing a social contract is logical and understandable in a local context, but runs counter to the sensibilities of, for example, the American Revolution. Hobbes certainly brooks no room for civil disobedience such as that practiced by Martin Luther King, Thoreau, Ghandi, and the many who have insisted on the reconstitution of local law on the basis that it does not reflect higher law. Those persons chose to be actively disobedient to laws based in a consciousness which they regarded as being in conflict with natural, higher law. In the actions of these persons it is evident that a consciousness of higher law was present in their human conscience, and that thing which we identify as “conscience” is in fact the thing within us which connects us to the Tao, Creation, and the principles of equity and justice present in the very essence of our human experience.

So I’d say that the unknowable Tao, giving rise to the One and Two and Three, and the 10,000 things of Creation, is the seat of true, higher law. And in the trinity of Creator and Creation and Created Ones there is a bridge connecting all to each, sometimes characterized as The Holy Spirit, or Conscience, or the “still, quiet voice within,” which is the agency through which we can, if we so choose, know higher law and refer to it when we seek answers to baffling questions of legality. It is never enough to be in touch with only the letter of the law. It is necessary to be in touch with the inherent morality which proceeds out of the first cause, and the intent there, and the Virtue there, which is the essence of the Tao and all that flows from it.

My friend Louis has a blog called Ralston Creek Review. He has created a place there devoted to observations and commentary about the Tao Te Ching, the first 37 chapters of which I have also commented on here as a result of his unbearable insistence that I do so. (Not really – I actually did it to myself.)

There has always been a simpatico resonance present between Louis’ and my own related commentary on the TTC, but after Chapter 37 I took a break from my own (roughly, off and on, sort of) weekly contribution to the effort while Louis, a paragon of tireless application and an admirably disciplined guy, devotedly carried forward his efforts.

I, instead of doing that – and being more true to my type which only begins to be described as a mercurial spiritual butterfly – have been availing myself of the blooms he continues to produce, and lately that sympathetic resonance I mention has reached a reverberating frequency high enough that it is producing ever more bounce-back in the form of lengthy responses from me, which I have, up until now, been posting on his blog rather than here.

It has occurred to me that I am using too much of his bandwidth, and I would certainly not want him to run out of byte room there and so deprive myself of his work. So I have decided to begin posting my responses here instead. There are some who will be heartened by this development, knowing that at the rate I am going I will soon run out of byte room here and the world will become as a result a much better and quieter place.

This, then, is my response to his commentary and the subsequently generated call-and-response replies begun at the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 54, posted at Ralston Creek Review. It would be well to read Louis’ commentary and the replies there before going forward from this point here, and I strongly encourage you to do so.

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That being said, here it is:

Well done and well said, Louis.

Al sounds like a wise man, a practical-minded sage. It amazes me who people really are. People tend to think of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, cabinet-makers, contractors, and just generally everybody else as persons immersed in their trades or defined by their professions, people with “normal” identities in their personal lives who go home, read a paper, watch TV, have a family, play video games, eat sugar, get fat, etc. – and all in all just conform to some vague, mundane social stereotype of what “common” people do. My experience tells me no one is “common” in that sense. The world is full of people living an uncommon life, and living it fully.

Your comments moved me to go to my bookshelf and revisit a couple of treasured books I haven’t looked at for quite awhile, Helen Bacovcin’s translation of “The Way of a Pilgrim,” and “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence. When I discovered the dog-eared pages and heavy underlining it carried me back to a time in my life when I was wholly devoted to the full-time exploration and study and earnest practice of spiritual knowledge and the ways of spiritually conscious people.

I lived in the mountains in Colorado then, not far from Trungpa Rinpoche’s ashram and about a half hour from Boulder, where Allan Ginsburg and the Naropa Institute were embracing a sort of Hassidic Beat Zen sensibility. My study and practice involved neither.  I encountered an anonymous Master in the mountains there out of pure “serendipitous non-coincidence” – that is to say, I had become ready and so the Teacher had appeared.

My master’s method was to teach an equal rather than an acolyte. He was my elder and held a great fund of knowledge and knowing, yet he shared rather than instructed and advised rather than directed. In all the moments we shared together the consciousness of “who we are really” was not restricted by definitions of a master’s  superiority or a student’s ignorance. We were just two people sharing this life in exactly the way described in your quote from Dylan’s “I Shall Be Free No. 10,″ which is what reminded me of those days. We were souls; equal, unique and mutually interesting, and my own enrichment and knowledge and knowing flourished in that environment.

One of the earliest things we spoke of was the importance of prayer, and so I began to study and practice that. The above mentioned books constituted my introduction to the classic form of prayer. As time has gone on the form has changed for me, but the practice remains essential to my life.

The form of prayer can be as extensive and disciplined as the form described in The Way of the Pilgrim. As Al so wisely imparted to you, the form can be as short as two words. It can be shorter. It can be wordless. It can be nothing more than a developed reflexive calming response which leads to, as you note, a “release of control,” a giving up and giving over of the self-mind, a capitulation of desire and a commending of our entire self into the hands of the great mystery which is within, without, and throughout all things. Some call it God, some the Tao, some have other names as we have so often noted in these pages before.

The triune godhead which we have spoken of and is reflected in one tradition as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is reflected in my mind (here and now, although they shift locations in the lexicon of mind and find different words in different places often) in the words the Tao, the Self, and the Bridge – although they are wholly unworthy to encompass what each is.

Al’s suggestion is a way to connect the first and second by way of the third. It is a universal practice which has come to us from the divine ground and then been pressed into as many forms as there are religions and belief systems, because it is the actualization process of an essential thing which is always active and present in our human experience. When embraced, the prayer of release enriches our experience in a truly boggling, extraordinary way.

When I cracked open “The Practice of the Presence of God” the oracular method of approaching a book for an answer didn’t fail me, a thing which always pleases me and comes always to confirm the wonderful, mysterious connections afoot in the universe. I found the Fourth Letter before me and, near the end of it, flagged for me with the word “torrent,” an affirmation of my earlier observation of how connection and consciousness flow from release:

 “…there they flow like a torrent which, after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course, when it has found a passage, spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance.”

The Prayer of Release, regardless of the form, opens that passage. In my own experience it can come in the practice of the calming breath or, in extremity, a repetition of my own prayer of release, formed by my own experience and personal to me. That prayer, uttered so often, has become inextricably embedded with the essence of the thing, and calls release forth like a reflex. It is vital to my own experience and not an option for me. I think anyone who practices it has the same feelings about it.

As far as the belief which projects quantum shifts in global consciousness occurring when 1% of the population experience the benefits of meditation and prayer I will say this:

It’s a multidimensional universe, and quantum shifts are occurring constantly at an inconceivable order of magnitude from moment to moment. When one – just one – practice of prayer occurs, there is a consonant quantum shift in global consciousness, in the universe at large, and in the world in which we live our daily life. At times those shifts can manifest in our own particular experience in miraculous ways. It is not our viewpoint which has shifted – it is the Tao, it is the universe, it is global consciousness, it is everything – and it shifts in that adjustment because it is you and desires to in all ways be with you and not be separated from itself. Al can likely describe the effect on the “Sonship” of the prayer he practices, and I expect that his description will resonate with these thoughts also.

To address and ratify your observations about the horrors and glories present in the world – genocide, holocaust, whole societies evolved into the antithesis of the Noble Path, and also the presence of selflessness, generosity, service to others, commitments to right thinking and right action – I’d say well, yes, there they are.

And then I would say, and here am I. Then I would ask, what am I to do about it? And then, knowing through experience and countless failed attempts to do so that I cannot answer that question by myself, I would release it in a prayer and wait.

One of the things about things released in prayer is that an answer is always returned. It may be quiet and soft and still and barely perceptible within the threshold of local consciousness, but it is always there. It may be so simple as to be regarded as no answer at all. Yet it is there, and it is an answer.

In the terms of a Course in Miracles, the miracle comes when we give our illusions of perception and the hallucination of personal control and self-sufficiency in such matters over to the Holy Spirit. We let them go, release the things which trouble us, and because the truth of who we really are does not wish these illusions to remain in us, or we with them, it sends the answer back across the bridge, sometimes as a torrent, sometimes as the still, small voice within.

The answer I have been given to that particular prayer, which I still find it necessary to pray from time to time because perfect and permanent release of the “real world” is not part of my particular path, at least for now – is an odd one. Rather than share it here I’d simply say it’s better if every person seeks and is given the answer through their own practice of prayer.

And finally a footnote to the above personal reminiscences, which I feel compelled to make in order to give folks the opportunity to hear more than an ego speaking there.

My time in the Colorado mountains spent in a sort of specialized, monastic practice is a time in my life which I treasure. It was a time when, in a pure and honest openness I approached the spiritual life earnestly and with dedication. For a time there the practice of the presence of God and the admonition to pray unceasingly led me to the discipline necessary to be able to constantly repeat the “Jesus Prayer” in the background of waking and sleeping consciousness without pause. It came for five days or so and then it slowly subsided as I walked forward on my own path, learning ever less from the prescribed forms of established practice, learning ever more on the divine ground itself through prayer and stillness. In retrospect I see this was the way of my Master, and he taught me well. I remember it all as one of the great granted graces in my life.

What I want to emphasize here is not the “specialness” of my experience, but the knowing which evolved as a result of it. In the beginning, the admonition to pray without ceasing was paramount, and it is indeed a singularly powerful path. Yet eventually I came to regard every life, and all life, everywhere, as a constantly unceasing prayer which we are engaged in, and while consciousness of that fact is a powerful grace and blessing, it is not a requirement. It is just good to be aware of it.

Eventually my practice led me to a place of choice, and the choice I made was to conclude the specialized practice of those useful and esoteric forms which had taken me so far along in the development of my own consciousness and which prevail in the focused environs of the monastery and ashram. I determined that I would follow the path of karma yoga.

I chose to go out into the world, and live in it and experience everything there, the glory and joy and mundanity and lostness and everything every one of us experiences in our lives. It is a good thing to do. Jesus chose to live that way, which recommends it well, and the example given there is a model of the unity of existential and spiritual being.

Few of us are so perfectly conscious as Christ or the Buddha, yet the perfect, ongoing, unceasing prayer which is in life is in every of us, as perfectly as it is in them. It is what we all are, what every life is – a constant, unceasing prayer.

And so again the words begin to feel inadequate to the thing and I am at the end of this particular expression… Sure wish I could say it better. I’ve given it my best for here and now.

Time to go clean up the shop. I’m building something for our Lab Charlie, who is getting old enough to use and appreciate a set of steps to help him get in and out of the car when we go for walks in the woods in places farther away from home than we care to walk to. The cottonwoods are in full storm mode here and my shop floor is covered in a faux snowfall of sawdust and cotton which swirls around my ankles and gets up my nose as I walk through it. Off I go, pinching my nose with one hand, a broom in the other…

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PS: On my shelves next to the above two mentioned books are several others from those days in the mountains. After writing this (and returning from the shop full of dust and with little progress made on Charlie’s steps) I pulled another one of those “old friends” from the bookshelf, The Cloud of Unknowing. It holds a ratification of the observation that we cannot grasp the divine with mind, and yet can know it through contemplating with the “heart.”

It too is a work about prayer and the process of opening the passage between the Tao and Self. It was a difficult text for me. I remember having to plow through it a bit at a time in the old days, absorbing and then coming back to reread short bits until I could understand what the author was observing. When I opened it this time the oracle was merciful and the passages I found at the end of of Chapter 6 and the beginning of Chapter 7 were clear and to the point for the purpose of this discussion:

“Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love (that is, my devotion and focus) that thing which I cannot think!”

And shortly after addressing the nature of even good and holy thoughts which might appear during that practice, there is a good description of where it  leads if they are taken up rather than released:

“Before you know where you are you are disintegrated beyond belief!  … paradoxically, no man or woman can hope to achieve contemplation without the foundation of many such delightful meditations.  …All the same, the practised hand must leave them, and put them away deep down in the cloud of forgetting if he is ever to penetrate the cloud of unknowing between him and God.”

Which is yet another reflection on the process, and the effect, of release.

My friend Louis, who has a fine blog at Ralston Creek Review, let me know several months ago that Amy Putkonnen, another worthy blogster, had extended an invitation to interested persons to comment once a week on a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Amy called it “Tao Tuesdays.” I decided I would do that.

I have been enriched by the commentaries of both Amy and Louis. Amy is a remarkable source of practical, acutely insightful, compassionate and caring and useful observations about the Tao Te Ching and how it speaks to our daily, boots-on-the-ground existential experience. Louis has proven to be a great source of scholarly information about the Tao Te Ching, and has woven into his commentaries a historical, generational perspective and great insights imbued with his own gentle, measured spirit.

Both Amy and Louis have shared their experience and understanding and wisdom well, and I’m grateful to them for that.

Now that the first 37 chapters (the “Tao Ching” portion of the TTC) have been commented upon, I’ve taken time to review my own part here. I have mixed feelings about my contributions, yet over all I regard it as time well spent. I’ve found things I said well and clearly, things which are useful and helpful and wise. I also found other things said poorly, conveying more confusion than clarity, even though my intent was pure and the message carried was clear to me.

The benefit of my participation here, in addition to the enrichments which Louis and Amy have supplied, has been to remember an old lesson which I learn over and over again. It’s a lesson which I am always happy to relearn and yet quick to forget. I have been reminded of how good it is to become exhausted and sick to death of my own use of words when it comes to translating what the heart knows into what the mind sees. I have been reminded of how good it can be to just shut up, and let go, and know the Tao.

Amy and Louis speak clearly and well in their own voices, and I hope they continue to do so. My exhaustion is in no way a reflection upon their fine insights and thoughts, which I appreciate and hope they continue to offer.

I am going to withdraw from my commentary here for awhile, and I don’t know for how long. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see whether the old recurring lesson has been completed or is still in progress.

I’m a writer by nature and may never shut up completely, but I may be able to speak less. I presently find myself disinclined to use words in the expression  of knowledge and understanding, and more inclined to use them to “paint” with. I think I will try to paint koans on the wing rather than trap thoughts in a box for awhile.

I thank each of you for all the good thoughts and wisdom and knowledge you have shared. Keep up the good work! I will check in to your blogs often and avail myself of the ongoing reflections there.

And if I do manage to paint a koan on the fly I will hang it on the wall here, where I know there are visiting souls who have eyes which see such things, and ears which hear the flutter of those wings.

The Rhythm of Life

He who is to be made to dwindle (in power)
Must first be caused to expand.
He who is to be weakened
Must first be made strong.
He who is to be laid low
Must first be exalted to power.
He who is to be taken away from
Must first be given,
– This is the Subtle Light.

Gentleness overcomes strength:
Fish should be left in the deep pool,
And sharp weapons of the state should be left
Where none can see them.

Lin Yutang

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THE SECRET’S EXPLANATION

1. That which is about to contract has surely been expanded. That which is about to weaken has surely been strengthened. That which is about to fall has surely been raised. That which is about to be despoiled has surely been endowed.

2. This is an explanation of the secret that the tender and the weak conquer the hard and the strong.

3. As the fish should not escape from the deep, so with the country’s sharp tools the people should not become acquainted.

D. T. Suzuki & Paul Carus

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If You Want

If you want something to return to the source,
you must first allow it to spread out.
If you want something to weaken,
you must first allow it to become strong.
If you want something to be removed,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to possess something,
you must first give it away.

This is called the subtle understanding
of how things are meant to be.

The soft and pliable overcomes the hard and inflexible.

Just as fish remain hidden in deep waters,
it is best to keep weapons out of sight.

J. H. McDonald

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YIELDING

One way to get past an unwanted thing is to not avoid it, which prolongs its presence, but rather to embrace it and give it as much power as you can.

An example would be grieving. When grief is denied, sadness can prevail for a long time. When grief is embraced and allowed to crest over us like a tidal wave, tumbling and thrashing us in its overwhelming fullness, it ebbs quickly and leaves us empty and exhausted and on new ground. We rise up and carry on, and our grief is not gone but attenuated into a balance of grieving and sadness and remembrance and acceptance.

I don’t think it’s unfair to observe that often when embarking on a path to understand life and the conditions and terms which prevail here, and the truth of it all, the beginner is in a heavily weighted yang frame of mind. We are determined to find the answer and discover the meaning of our circumstances by means of our own rigorous efforts and resulting achievements. In essence, to paraphrase Rumi, we ride out in the morning to seek a deer, and end up chasing, and being chased, by a “hog,” – by a Handle On God, which we unilaterally seek to discover, or install, thinking in this way we will become realized and whole.

This heavily active, aggressive yang mode of pursuit, in the terms of this chapter, is spread out, diffuse, unfocussed, strong, flourishing. The belief in gain through personal achievement is a closely held possession, and we are loath to give it up. To counter this imbalance, many spiritual paths of instruction meet the active, aggressive seeker with practices purposed toward leading the seeker to become exhausted and emptied of their yang ways.

When seeking by personal attainment is exhausted, and the seeker has become tired of desire – of desire to study and learn and discuss and know, to attain, to rise above, to transcend, to effect satori, to be wise and knowing, respected and known and seen – when that is gone, done, used up, the individual finds the void created by their release of “only yang” energy filling with an inrushing of yin sensibility, and the resultant  balance between the two is experienced as inexpressibly and indefinably truly strong and fulfilling.

Now, before anyone gets too excited about “achieving” true strength and fulfillment on the basis of this information, let’s remember together that most of us have already, and often, deflected ourselves from that condition or reverted back out of it once we became reconvinced by our ego that it really means we must become defenseless and empty in a world we perceive to require extensive, strong defenses and self-filling achievements.

It’s a cycle, a process, not a destination. A destination is static, a fixed point, an illusion. We all move in the dynamic Tao where, moving back and forth between perspectives weighted by yin and yang, we must constantly find our balance.

It is important to know what we have, accept what we have been given, and cooperate with what we are a part of. The sage tells us to remember pursuit of want and gain will lead to exhaustion, and when want and gain are done with then real strength and fulfillment will come, and we will remember who and what we really are.

Exhaustion is a good practice. We do well to exhaust desires, to not seek to quench them so much as allow them to occur in harmless ways, or at least in ways in which the only harm is to us, and the only harm there serves the greater purpose of helping us to become tired of them, exhausted by their practice, and so, finally, aware of what they are and what they are not.

When we allow all things to move through their cycles rather than resist certain stages within them we are seeing creation in a “Subtle Light.” It’s good to remember “the secret that the tender and the weak conquer the hard and the strong, that the soft and pliable overcomes the hard and inflexible.”

The Peace of Tao 

Hold the Great Symbol 
   and all the world follows, 
   Follows without meeting harm, 
   (And lives in) health, peace, commonwealth.

Offer good things to eat 
And the wayfarer stays. 
   But Tao is mild to the taste. 
   Looked at, it cannot be seen; 
   Listened to, it cannot be heard; 
   Applied, its supply never fails. 

Lin Yu Tang (1955)

—–

Hold fast to the great image and all under heaven will come;
They will come but not be harmed, rest in safety and peace;
Music and fine food will make the passerby halt.
Therefore,
When the Way is expressed verbally,
We say such things as
“how bland and tasteless it is!”
“We look for it, but there is not enough to be seen.”
“We listen for it, but there is not enough to be heard.”
Yet, when put to use, it is inexhaustible!

Victor H. Mair, 1990

 And so the sage, aware of the separation between being and seeing, reflects upon looking and listening for the Tao, of speaking of it in language. The sage observes that being in the Tao, knowing it, sustains us more than looking at it and listening for it and speaking of it can.

 This chapter was foreshadowed by the sage in Chapter 33 and my commentary there covers the ground here. As we approach the end of the Tao Ching with Chapter 37 and begin the Te Ching (see the postscript to the commentary on Chapter 38 at Ralston Creek Review) we find the sage reflecting upon the usefulness of language and intellect, and the limits there. It will be interesting to see how the sage wraps up “The Book of Tao” in the next two chapters.

The way is broad, reaching left as well as right.
The myriad creatures depend on it for life yet it claims no authority.
It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.
It clothes and feeds the myriad creatures yet lays no claim to being their master.

For ever free of desire, it can be called small;
Yet as it lays no claim to being master when the myriad creatures turn to it, it can be called great.

It is because it never attempts itself to become great that it succeeds in becoming great.

D.C. Lau (1963)

—–

The meek inherit heaven and earth.

The person who desires nothing other than what they have is free of further desires. To have no desires, no appetites, no passions seems small in the world of desires. Yet the one who is the One Self, merged with all, is great beyond measure.

The Tao, like Gaia, the living earth, succors life yet does not exert authority over it; living things live and die as they do.

When we are what we are and claim no mastery of anything, we are beyond the smallness  of attempting; we are merged with the greatness of being.

Bloom where you’re planted. Accept the sun and rain, root in the earth, grow toward the sky.

I have no desire to be remembered. I know every unique moment of my life will be lost in time, like tears in rain. The ten thousand things will come together, and gentle rain fall, and I will be in the rain.

I lay no claim upon the One, for it has already laid its claim upon me.

—–

Personal reflections of this chapter, for what they’re worth. For a reciprocal resonance of the above reflections on Chapter 34, I refer you to the commentary on Chapter 39 at Ralston Creek Review. The corresponding observations here and there, inspired in different places by different chapters, offer a reminder of the harmonic connectivity of each to all. It’s not in the Chapters, it’s in us. The Chapters strike certain chords, we hear the music within, we sing it out together. Different voices. One song.