The Cascadian Wanderer

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)

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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)

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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.

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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.

This chapter brings forward a couple of reflections. First we have the translation thing again. Here’s a line-by-line combination of two translations, Victor H. Mair on the left, followed by Jane English & Gia-fu Feng on the right:

Understanding others is knowledge,               Knowing others is wisdom;
Understanding oneself is enlightenment;     Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Conquering others is power,                           Mastering others requires force;
Conquering oneself is strength;                    Mastering the self needs strength.
Contentment is wealth,                                    He who knows he has enough is rich.
Forceful conduct is willfulness;                     Perseverance is a sign of willpower.
Not losing one’s rightful place is to endure,     He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not be forgotten is longevity.       To die but not to perish is to be eternally                                                                                         present.

In my personal usage of language there is a difference between understanding and knowing, there is a difference between conquering and mastering.

“Understanding” involves mind and our engagement in language and thought. “Knowing” involves our connection with the Tao through agencies and faculties more mysterious, holistic and comprehensive.

A “Conqueror” confronts and overcomes an adversary through forceful will and/or actions to gain (the illusion of) control.

A “Master” encounters opposition yet has more options and can choose to confront, deflect, or redirect, rather than use force. A Master will seek to establish an equilibrium based on joined symbiotic harmony. A Conqueror dominates a hierarchy wherein there are winners and losers, powerful and weak, rulers and subjects.

Yet in the two above translations they are used synonymously. Victor H. Mair’s interpretation could be characterized as cerebral and active and yang, while the translation by Jane English and Gia-fu Feng drifts in subtle counterpoint toward the intuitive, observant, yin nature.

Confusions of nomenclature and definitions and language and the personal and social biases which work their way into translations of source materials – and personal interpretations – are relevant, obviously.

The forceful person will gravitate toward and seek insight in Victor H. Mair’s translation, and perhaps find, instead of wisdom, a rationale which empowers selfishness through self will. The meek or gentle person, drawn toward the translation of Jane English & Gia-fu Feng, may find, instead of wisdom, a rationale supporting fatalistic resignation and withdrawal from the world.

Where words are concerned then, there is always a potential for imbalance rather than balance to be perceived in the communiqué.

There’s a whole world of commentary available here regarding perspective and viewpoint with regard to what is in the foreground and what is in the background of any particular view. We could look at the Age of Reason and the rise of rationalism, which shapes our contemporary perspectives, and examine what is gained and what is lost in that perspective.

Recently I was reminded of that historical shift in the philosophy of human thought and perception by the commentary on Chapter 38 at Ralston Creek Review. In what is arguably characterized as “The Age of Enlightenment” in 18th-century Europe, the goal was to establish an authoritative ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge based on an “enlightened” rationality. There is a contrast there between the humanistic, holistic, spiritual perspective of George Fox, the progenitor of Quakerism, and the concurrent rise of rationalism which was shifting the focus of human consciousness from the mysteries of spirituality to the intellectual concretisations of logic.

It was not so much an elimination of one in favor of the other so much as a rebalancing of the two. Balance was not the result; a redistribution of the weight ascribed to each and a changed perspective was. The foreground and background shifted, humanity’s viewpoint moved from one knothole in the fence to another, yet the view over the top of the fence remained the same. Everything was still available to be seen there.

Perspective is always a consideration on the paths we follow. Perspective can skew our interpretations of everything, even these wisdoms of the sage of the Tao Te Ching. Yet this wisdom is clearly accessible to us if we remember that, beyond the biases of personal perspective, we share commonality in the substance of the thing. We can make the connection to the substance within because it is in the sage, it is in the sage’s words, and it is in us.

My second reflection is broader and is about my personal experience of the flow of recent chapters, the nature and content there, the tone and perspective, and a certain subtle flux of mood and energy and focus which appears there.

A study of the chapters as discreet kernels of wisdom yields much, yet there’s more to be had from a broader view of the sage’s work. We’re all riding the river of the Tao in this boat with the sage, and it is natural that we would be exposed to more than the content and related forms here. We would also be exposed to the personal experience, the moods and energy of the sage as he wrote these chapters. This work predates us nearly 2500 years, yet we still share a common human experience.

The observations of the sage are wise, they demonstrate experiential engagement, they are the result of acute processing by the intelligences of both mind and heart. Yet there are moments here when the expressions of truth in language seem wearisome to me, and even insubstantial. They are linguistic forms and symbols. The form, overextended at times, becomes the substance, and we become involved in further, endlessly explicative extensions of the form rather than carried forward into beholding and knowing the real substance of being human. It becomes a tiresome thing, this exercise of language, even though it is a useful tool.

It seems to me as if the sage is slowed down in this chapter by the same thing, resigned to speaking but not wholly engaged in the process. I sense a diffident interest and energy. I personally think it marks the sage’s own transition in perspective from the primarily observant, peaceful, reflective viewpoint of the previous chapter (chapter 32) and then the subsequent return to the practicality of using a second-hand form, language, to describe the first-hand substance from which the form proceeds. A speed bump located at the midpoint, the line of demarcation, between the existential and spiritual poles we perceive in our dualistic nature. Somewhere in here I sense the sage sighing, and thinking, “Well… back to it,” with a sort of accepting resignation as the river approaches, yet again, another run of linguistic rapids.

There is a certain appreciable rhythm which can be sensed ebbing and flowing in the recent chapters. In chapter 29 the sage takes a perspective moving toward the practical application of wisdom; in chapters 30 and 31 the practical existential applications are even more focused, and narrower, and stimulate a lot of consonantly reflective dialogue.

Then, in chapter 32, the sage shifts into a more peaceful, observant mode, a broader view, less existentially focused, drifting back toward being and beholding, moving away from doing and acting. A sort of natural adjustment, a balancing effect appears as the sage reminds us that “Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already enough names. One must know when to stop. Knowing when to stop averts trouble.”

The naming of parts can be problematic. It is a good thing to know when to stop. Language is so form-based, so derivative, that a question arises about the relative value of the medium of words in relation to the attainment of true wisdom. Do words lead us to a true knowing of the human experience? Or do they lead us to an understanding of the words which describe the human experience, but do not lead to knowing the substance of it? It’s a subtle yet clear distinction, and very real and relevant to spiritual path walkers: Can language deliver me to knowing? If so, how?

It is as though the sage, on the river in this boat, flows from the rapids of the active existential perspective of chapters 30 and 31 to the still, contemplative stretches of peaceful water where, untroubled, we behold the Tao in chapter 32. We flow with the sage into this perspective and embrace the peace there, resting in knowing that “Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.” We have come here by knowing when to stop with language.

I was certainly grateful for the restfulness of Chapter 32 after the busyness of the previous two chapters, and I sensed that the sage was, too. I experienced a connection with the humanity of the sage, a shared experience. We all drift between words and knowing. In this chapter I felt that fitful transition which comes as perspective shifts back to words. The sage almost audibly sighs and then carries on, ramping back over into the place of ongoing expressions and forms. It seems the sage is not quite there yet, not precisely articulate, and so the profound and often not easily grasped truths we often encounter in most chapters are, in this one, more simply expressed reflexive truisms.

Obviously we communicate and share with language, and it is a vital part of our existence. My point, difficult to express, involves misgivings about engaging too much with language and, by extension, being caught up by and suspended in the useful constructs of intellect, the symbols which represent things yet are not the thing itself.

This observation about silence and spiritual practices, taken directly from Wikipedia, suggests a benefit in transcending linguistic understanding:

“Many religious traditions imply the importance of being quiet and still in mind and spirit for transformative and integral spiritual growth to occur. In Buddhism, the descriptions of silence and allowing the mind to become silent are implied as a feature of spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism, including the teachings of Advaita Vedanta and the many paths of yoga, teachers insist on the importance of silence, Mauna, for inner growth.”

The expressions of the sage are understandings. They are knowing once-removed from their source by language, knowing converted into information virally transmitted in a word-code of forms which produces understanding. These expressions are conveyed in complexly evolved symbols with cleverly fashioned combinable facets which can be deconstructed and recombined into many different highly complex constructs, all of which convey the basic communiqué, the knowing, with details and flourishes and pointillist pains and peculiar impressionist perspectives. And of course it is possible to linger long in the complexity of language and symbolic thought, to be caught or arrested or suspended in that exercise for a long time.

There are times which come on my path when I devolve from this complexity and wish to say what I know and what I’ve learned – simply. Moments when I want to express what I truly know as an unvarnished, certain, self-stated epitaph, bequeathed to everyone. It’s a difficult task when one understands the inadequacy of language to convey knowing.

I wonder if the sage was in such a moment when he formed the previous chapter? I wonder if, at the root of his expressions, in the mind and heart of the sage, there was a profound desire that the form be not so much transmitted and heard, but rather that the substance therein be understood, known, and applied by the recipient of these expressions. And I wonder if a certain weariness regarding the effectiveness of language might have crept into the sage as he began this chapter.

Did the sage desire that this virally transmitted knowledge make what has been characterized as the “eighteen inch journey from the mind to the heart,” and thereby engender the realization of the message rather than result in the mere retention and ongoing contemplation of what linguistic and philosophical nuances and meanings are present there? Certainly.

I know that particular hope is there when I share my own experience. It’s the same hope the parent has for the child, the grandparent for the grandchild – that ways and means of living which enhance and enrich and fulfill the lives of others might be given forward. These truths and aphorisms are the ones which translate across individual, varying perspectives and so are the best consigned to the ages and future generations. Yet often the point of the message is lost in contemplation of the message itself. We study the pointing finger rather than direct our attentions to what the finger is pointing at.

When truth becomes a truism for us – that is, when it becomes so obvious it is unnecessary to say it – why do we continue to speak the message of truth, why do we compel ourselves to restate the obvious in permutations of our own?

Is ego the culprit and are we blind to our own engagement with that which we urge others to transcend? Is false love the instigator of the impulse? Do we desire to elevate others to our own perspective for the enrichment of their understanding and their attainment of our own satisfactions, and so personally acquire the ratification of our own ways and means and conclusions in this life? Yes, in part this answers why we continue to engage in convolutions, in linguistic orbits around a simple body of truth.

I use language quite a bit in a number of causes. And to be honest I have to say that my motivations there are in part involved with personal aspects of all the small things mentioned above – ego, false love, personal satisfaction, ratification of special worth. Yet my motivation also comes out of a sincere desire to pass a useful torch to others. Being aware of these things, and sincerely dedicated to the removal of smallness in my thoughts and deeds, I intermittently “go mauna,” become silent, and so connect with the whole and holy Tao.

I navigate back and forth between these two states of being, between the peace of stillness and the forceful dynamics of expression, moving with the ebb and flow of rhythms coursing through the Tao. I walk in the woods, beholding the river, moving quietly in the infinite cathedral of creation with my beloved by my side, being small and insignificant and yet infinite and unique and perfect in some inchoate, poignant way.

Then I return to speak again, and always in the return I sense a border crossing between two distinct places which I expect would, at some point, merge rather than continue to be defined by this crossing over, this border sensed between the two. Is it the border between Snake and Crane, earth and sky, mind and spirit, the existential and the One? Is it the natural flow of the river of the Tao, passing through each and all places? Yes.

Do I return to speak again for the simple purpose of exercising, exposing, and so apprehending the smallness of my ego-self? It’s a good question to ask when I become too wordy, as I have been here. And when it appears, it’s a very useful flag.

So I stop. And become silent. And beholding the Tao, remember who and what I really am.