Poems I Journey With 27

Sketch of John Keats

As a young student of English literature at college in the late seventies of the last century when I was 19 or 20, I discovered the wonderful poems of John Keats (1795 – 1821).  There was romance written in the face of the young poet depicted in whatever copies of sketches or paintings that were then available.  To add to the romantic mystery and intrigue was the fact that he had perished from TB, or consumption as it was then called, at just 25 years of age. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for a period of only four years before his untimely death. Coupled with this, his devotion to his craft, to nursing his younger brother Tom and to his sweetheart Fanny Brawne also added to the romanticism that surrounded this great poet.  To add further to his mystique, we were to learn that in 1816, when he was just 21, Keats received his apothecary's licence, a qualification which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon. Further as a qualified doctor he was to know that his death was imminent when he coughed up blood during his sleep – indeed, he recounts this sad fact in one of his letters.  However, before the end of 1816, he announced to his guardian that he was resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

Needless to say, given these brief biographical details one could not be faulted for concluding that John Keats lived with dying and death on a daily basis. The first poem I offer the reader for reflection is his beautiful sonnet “When I have Fears” which is suffused with this ultimate concern, to use the current language of Existential Psychotherapy.

When I Have Fears - Poem by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. 

The second poem I should like to offer the readers of these pages is a less well-known one named “Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis.” 

Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, -- just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,
And there is sullen mist, -- even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, -- even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might! 

A pensive John Keats

I love this sonnet for its mysticism and also for its rather “misty” attempt at naming the mystery at the heart of life. In fact, the poem is all about our incapability of grasping this strange mystery, this rather cloudy or unclear life that we live.  The absurdist writer Albert Camus often ended up in despair at life as it was so full of contradictions and unclarity while he was obsessed with finding confirmation and clarity. His book The Myth of Sisyphus is all about the sheer absurdity of the human project which he likened to that of Sisyphus having to eternally roll his great rock up the steep hill of life.   Keats admits in this poem that his own insight into himself, or that his own knowledge of his self is simply shallow to say the least, or foggy or misty to use the imagery of this very poem:

Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag....

Poems I Journey With 25

Introduction: Poems and characters from Elizabethan Times 1

Shakespeare’s plays – written in Elizabethan times, that epoch in English history marked by the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603, born 1533) – are highly popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts for some few centuries now though there was an period when his work lay undiscovered or unpopular. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England. His themes, then, are truly universal and transcend time and place.

Christopher  Marlowe

It is, I find, very fruitful to place Shakespeare in his era by listing several of his many contemporaries, those who lived at any time during his life span: Shakespeare’s own dates are 1564 – 1616 and he was 39 when Elizabeth died, and some of his contemporaries are Christopher Marlowe (1564 –1593), a brilliant young playwright and poet killed in a tavern brawl; James I of England 1566 – 1625, formerly James VI of Scotland who translated what is known as the famous King James Bible,  Sir Walter Raleigh 1554 –1618, one of whose poems I have already reproduced in these pages; Dr. Simon Forman (1552 – 1611) the astrologer, occultist and herbalist, much maligned and persecuted during his lifetime because of his heretical and unorthodox beliefs, yet he is credited with having saved many patients during the London plagues (1592 and 1594); and, of course, the famed actor, theatre owner and artist Richard Burbage (1567 –  1619).

Poems and songs appear in many of Shakespeare’s plays. They are often profound. One universal theme, of course, is that of death and dying, that is, one of the four ultimate concerns outlines by the Existential Psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom. Mortality and the sheer unpredictability, even the pure random chance of life are uppermost in my mind as I write these lines.  Firstly, I was in a car smash yesterday where I wrote the vehicle off, or totalled it, as those of you who are from the USA would say. Thankfully I was uninjured and no one except me was involved as I nodded off at the wheel after an exhausting day at work. How I got out of the car in one piece I’ll never know. Having to spend 12 hours in A & E or ER was in itself a wonderfully mind-concentrating experience. I witnessed much that I care not to dwell on much here, yet it was a “wake up call,” to live whatever remains to me on this earth as fully and as profitably as I can as indeed we are fragile and brittle creatures that can literally be snuffed out at any time. Meditating on death and mortality is good for the soul as it enables us to value life all the more and to live in the moment or in the NOW. 

William Shakespeare

With this in mind, I have been leafing through and pondering poems that I love on line.  I quite like the following poem or song from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline (Act IV, Scene ii, lines 2656 to 2680). The first two stanzas are spoken (not sung) alternately by the two brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus. Then, they take it in turns to recite each line of the remaining two stanzas alternately, except the final two lines of each stanza, which they recite together. Guiderius and Arviragus are the sons of Cymbeline, abducted as babies by Belarius, and brought up as woodsmen. They recite the song over the corpse of Fidele, who they think is a man, but who is in fact Imogen, their sister, who they have never seen, and who is actually not dead, but who has drunk a draught of a poison the effect of which puts her into a state which resembles death. Cymbeline is often called a "problem play" because it defies traditional categories of genre. Many Shakespeare critics settle on calling it a "tragicomedy" since the first three acts of the play feel like mini-tragedy, while the play's second half feels like a comedy. In this sense, it is a play that incorporates many existential themes as well as humour as a way to cope with those problematic themes. In short, this beautiful song speaks much to me after my recent escape from the swing of the “Grim Reaper’s” indifferent scythe.

Fear No More

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.

Fear no more the frown of the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dread thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave! 

Poems I Journey With 18

We turn to literature for many reasons: for comfort, for escapism, for entertainment, to give us insight into life, to educate us, to challenge us and so on and so forth. A turning point for this present reviewer was his discovery of the local library. I remember joining the branch at Charleville Mall in north inner city Dublin when I was seven years of age. It was then that my love of books, for knowledge and for literature in general began. To take out two different books every two weeks was a delight for me and a brief embrace with the wonders of knowledge and indeed of life itself. Umberto Eco has declared in one of his books that the main purpose of literature is to learn how to die.  In my opinion he only took into account one side of the story in that declaration as it is my contention, and indeed, that of many others, that the main purpose of literature is to learn how to live and how to die. Life and death are inextricably linked realities. Poems are in a sense a distillation of prose literature, an intense expression of what is said in a more expanded and expansive way therein.

Carol Ann Duffy

This evening I would like to present the readers with a poem from the pen of another wonderful woman poet, namely, Carol Ann Duffy.  As the Wiki succinctly puts it:  “Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE FRSL (1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold the position.” See this link: Carol Ann Duffy

This poem works through a fairly standard technique or literary device called “personification,” where Duffy presents us with a feminine version of history, history as an old woman waking up in her bed and coming to realise all that has been done to her. Rather than saying anything more at this stage, let us read and reflect upon the poem:

History

She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand - twigs, stained gloves - 
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;

witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,

seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved 
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,

in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor. 

Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy covers some 2000 years of history since the birth of Jesus Christ in this poem and comments on how history, personified as a woman, might feel given the drastic changes that have occurred over those two millennia.  This personification is an effective conceit to get us thinking. The one problem I have with this poem is that perhaps the period covered in too broad a canvas that thereby renders the conceit somewhat too simplistic and consequently somewhat less than effective as a literary device here.  However, the message of the poem is clear:- we humans have really messed up and messed up very badly indeed.

Poems I Journey With 12

The world throws up many wonderful and wondrous souls over and over again, but none so wonderful and wondrous as Isaac Rosenberg (1890 - 1918) who was sadly killed at the age of 27 as he and others were returning to their trenches, having just finished night patrol. Rosenberg was the least privileged of the British poets as he was born into a poor working-class Jewish family that had emigrated from Russia.  His economic circumstances militated against his attending either Cambridge or Oxford. However, he was a talented artist as well as a great poet, whom both Eliot and Pound acknowledged as a good modernist poet - great praise indeed.  Had he lived he would have matched them with work equally as good as theirs.  Alas that was not to be.  Too many young men were killed during the Great War - "half the seed of Europe one by one" as Wilfred Owen, another First World War poet would put it. As a talented artist, the young Rosenberg enrolled in evening classes in the Art School at Birkbeck College, London University. Indeed, he had hoped to make his living as a portrait artist and had moved to South Africa to pursue that career when war broke out. Like most young men of his time he would have felt he was abandoning his native homeland were he not to return to England and enlist. He was no sympathizer with the war at all - he simply felt duty-bound like many a young man of his era.  He was to write in a letter to a friend that "I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.  Nothing can justify war.  I suppose we must all fight to get the trouble over."  Commentators are united in their view that the voice of a modernist poet can be heard in his poems.

Returning, We Hear the Larks

Sombre the night is. 

And though we have our lives, we know

What sinister threat lies there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know

This poison-blasted track opens on our camp –

On a little safe sleep. 

But hark! joy - joy - strange joy. 

Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks. 

Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.

Death could drop from the dark

As easily as song –

But song only dropped, 

Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand

By dangerous tides, 

Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there, 

Or her kisses where a serpent hides. 

Isaac Rosenberg, selfportrait, 1915

It is somewhat ironic that it was when returning from such a patrol the the young artist and poet, Isaac Rosenberg was killed. "And though we have our lives, we know //What sinister threat lies there" are words sombre indeed as the night. The opening imagery is clear and stark: "dragging anguished limbs," "poison-blasted tracks," and then the wonder of hearing a little joyous song breaks the sombre tone with joyful aural images in the stanza

But hark! joy - joy - strange joy. 

Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks. 

Music showering our upturned list’ning faces,

lines that obviously make more sense when read aloud to get their full aural effect. And then, we are given the wondrous and wonderful final stanza that is loaded with mystery and magic interwoven with fear and dread. It is as if Rosenberg is taking the fear and awfulness created in the first and second stanzas and the joy, beauty and exultation of the third and combining them both into a rather eerily beautiful and shockingly scary mixture in the final stanza. It is indeed eerie and scary that death can drop from the dark sky just as easily as song, but that is the nature of war.  Then those wondrous and magical lines that suggest inevitable lostness (blindman's dreams) on "sands," (not a very stable support) which are right beside "dangerous tides" (being washed away to destruction.)  Then those juxtaposed opposites in "girl's dark hair" (love and beauty) and the "ruin" that may lie there is hauntingly bleak. Finally, then, even her kisses which should be sweet, may hide the serpent lurking deep within.  And so, to end, dear reader, let us reread and ponder the words of the last stanza:

Death could drop from the dark 

As easily as song – 

But song only dropped, 

Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand 

By dangerous tides, 

Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there, 

Or her kisses where a serpent hides. 

Poems I Journey With 6

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918) from early on became one of my favourite poets.  Firstly, as a young boy and as a teenager I was always fascinated with wars, especially World War 1 and World War II, not from the military point of view solely, but primarily because of the havoc it had wrought on the world through the destruction of human life and property on such a vast scale.  Such wanton destruction on such unprecedented scales amazed and astounded me. That humanity veered so quickly and so spontaneously towards war, rather than engaging in political debate and conflict resolution was also an intriguing feature that seemed to suggest that there was something rather corrupt that stank to high heaven within the human make-up.  Then, I discovered the War Poets from both world wars, and those from the first of these wars were the more moving for me as that war in particular involved  the first widespread use of machine guns, air power, submarine operations, armoured vehicles, bigger and more powerful guns and the use of poison gas and, of course, the mad rush of opposing troops against each other across NO-MAN'S-LAND, all of which led the poets to describe the horrors of war in such graphic detail that I was hooked forever and still moved, often to tears, by their words and images.  To them we owe a great debt of gratitude for highlighting these horrors.  Wilfred Owen was only 25 when he was killed on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal exactly a week before the signing of the Armistice that ended the War.  In a rather ironic twist of fate, his poor mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day just as the bells rang out in jubilation at the cessation of hostilities.  He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery.

Lieutenant W. Owen

Owen is the foremost poet of the Great War and his poems are much anthologized. Therefore, I will not publish any of his more popular ones hereunder as the reader will be almost too familiar with them.  Instead, I will quote here another powerful, but less well known poem from his pen:

The Parable of The Young Man and The Old

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. 

Wilfred Owen

There is no need for commentary on this wonderful little poem save to say that it is crafted with care and based on the famous Old Testament story of God's command to Abraham to slay his son Isaac by way of offering to appease Him.  Those of us, au fait with mythology will know that such an image of God as a rather cruel task-master, who seemingly has no concern for morality as He is somehow beyond all such standards of proper behaviour, will realize that this is pure story, a story with a moral or a message - a story composed by priests or scribes simply to teach us lessons.  The lesson here is simply that God often tests our loyalty in strange and even cruel ways.  Whatever about Old Testament times the twentieth century unleashed the wrath of a most bloody God or Gods - Gods of greed and hate and vengeance - that slew "half the seed of Europe, one by one."  As an officer, the young Lieutenant Owen would have witnessed so much bloodshed and so many horrible deaths of his soldier comrades that it must have surely felt that some bloodthirsty gods somewhere were slaying the young men of Europe one by one.  This is not one of his famous poems, but I feel it is beautifully written, and most solemnly so as it practically repeats the beautiful English of the King James Bible and interweaves in the story images from the horrors of the First World War: "fire and iron," "belts and straps" (soldiers would have had many of these about their uniforms) and "parapets and trenches."  However, it is the last two lines that are the most effective for me as they sum up the horrors of the Great War:

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. 

Poems I Journey With 5

There are no fights as bitter as those between members of the one family, and indeed no wars as bloody as those between citizens of the one country. Somehow we learn to hate more easily and more deeply those we are supposed to love the most.  With respect to the poem I am going to discuss in these thoughts today - "Tichborne's Elegy" -  I wish to paint in the historical background here firstly.

In the history of the royal families of England & Scotland there have been many gory intrigues and many bloody plots.  One of those was the Babington plot, which occurred in 1586, whose purpose was the assassination of Queen Elizabeth 1, a Protestant with the intention of replacing her on the English throne with the rescued Mary, Queen of Scots, (aka Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland) her Roman Catholic cousin who had been imprisoned for 18 years since 1568 in England.  Indeed, Mary had been incarcerated at the behest of her cousin Elizabeth 1 who feared for her throne. The discovery of this plot would lead eventually to the execution of Mary Stuart as one of her letters to one of the plotters revealed that she had consented directly to the assassination of Elizabeth 1.

Now, the long-term goal of the Babington plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Philip II of Spain and the Catholic League in France and therefrom the restoration of the old religion.  However, Elizabeth's notorious spymaster, one Sir Francis Walsingham discovered this plot, and he deviously used his discovery for the entrapment of Mary with the direct result that she would now forfeit any claims she might have on the English throne. The tragic Mary was beheaded at Fetherington Castle in 1587.  She was only 44 years of age.

The author of the poem I have chosen for today's entry in these pages is one Chidiock Tichborne who was born into a devout Catholic family in Southampton around 1558 and he was destined to become involved in our aforementioned Babington plot.  Like all Catholics, his life was to become increasingly difficult after Elizabeth 1 made the practice of the Roman Catholic Religion illegal, and he and his father, who had already spent time in prison, found themselves under constant surveillance by the Queen's spies.

Our poet author, Chidiock Tichborne joined the conspirators involved in the Babington plot which, as we have stated, sought to assassinate the Queen and supplant her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots.  However, the plot was discovered and the conspirators all executed.  As far as we know Chidiock only wrote three poems, or at least only three of his poems survive the ravages of time.  His famous "Elegy" is by far the best of the three and I quote it in full hereunder.  The unfortunate poet enclosed this poem in a letter he sent to his wife Agnes from the Tower of London on the eve of his execution for treason.  Here is the poem and it is a masterful feat of poetry, replete with metaphors of an intensity that could only be forged in the mind of a talented and sensitive poet on the eve of his execution:

Tychbornes Elegie, written with his owne hand in the Tower before his execution

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruite is falne [fallen], & yet my leaves are greene:
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seene.
My thred is cut, and yet it is not spunne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my wombe,
I lookt for life, and saw it was a shade:
I trod the earth, and knew it was my Tombe,
And now I die, and now I was but made.
My glasse is full, and now my glasse is runne,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Portrait of Chidiock Tichborne

On reading this poem one is immediately struck by its sheer authenticity and depth, two factors no doubt influenced by a mind concentrated on its imminent demise.  Indeed, the biographical and background information given also adds to the popularity of this much anthologized poem which I remember studying many years ago at college.  The images are literally forged from a wonderfully sensitive mind under the sentence of death.  We are aware that this man is speaking directly to us as he was then also directly speaking to the love of his life, her dear wife Agnes.  Every line contains an antithesis, a polar opposite, a sheer paradox.  These antithetical statements are woven into paradoxes that cut to the heart of the mystery that all human life faces us with - namely its ending in insuperable death. Again, for a moment just reflect on these antitheses in the first stanza:

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of paine,
My Crop of corne is but a field of tares,
And al my good is but vaine hope of gaine.
The day is past, and yet I saw no sunne,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

One can easily list these antithetical words/images in the first stanza thus: youth/cares, joy/paine, corne/tares, good/vain hope, day/no sunne and live/is done and we may continue so to list them rather easily right on through the next two stanzas.  I'll leave it to you, good reader, to do so if you wish.

In short, for this reader, this is a profound poem which plumbs the heights or the depths of our human predicament, the human condition where the theme of our mortality is a central one for all of us.  I have already acknowledged in these poetical reflections that all literature, and consequently and most essentially poetry, is concerned with the basic ultimate concern of death as outlined by Professor Irvin Yalom.  See Poems I Journey With 1: Here.  

There is also an ingenious weaving of tenses together to suggest that time is a very complex entity as in: "And now I live, and now my life is done": In fact the poet repeats this line by three, once in each stanza at the end as a sort of paradoxical chorus that sums up our human predicament - our past and our future are somehow telescoped into the present "now" that is itself so elusive, one "now" that will be cut short by execution for our poet the following day.

If the reader gives voice to this poem by reading it aloud he or she will be greeted by the sheer drama of the declamation.  One becomes a Hamlet or a Macbeth or an Othello or a Lear on the stage of one's own life.  Indeed, one can imagine any one of these tragic heroes giving voice to Chidiock's moving and dramatic words.  We are, as it were, presented with the dance of life with death in thes3 dramatic and moving words.  What more quintessentially human drama could we be granted to behold upon a stage?  Tichborne was only 28 when he wrote these words and "shuffled off his mortal coil" so tragically.  Obviously these words brought the poor man some comfort as he faced his leaving of this painful world.

Queen Elizabeth 1

For sheer mastery of the English language, for poetry of such high and refined emotion, for dexterity of phrase and the forging power of metaphor I know no poet better than the tragic Chidiock Tichborne.  His poem is a masterly composition where time shifts all too quickly and all too mysteriously, and if time could only shift such that we might meet him, I believe we should encounter a wonderfully sensitive individual.

Carol Rumens

Monday 26 November 2012 10.26 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 4 December 201206.23 GMT

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Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 74

Poem 74

If you realize that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,

there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future

is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

When you handle the master carpenter's tools,

chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Commentary

ST Augustine defined time as the measure of change.  John Henry Cardinal Newman stated that to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  Change is of the very essence of things.  This is a very old philosophy dating back to the sixth century B.C., the time of Heraclitus at least.  So it isn't hard to believe that the Tao Te Ching from the fourth century B.C. should preach something similar. 

Indeed, there is nothing we can really hold onto in the world, even though the lessons of our ego is such: that we can hold on to things.  Not alone does our ego insist on holding onto things, it also insists on getting more and more things, on expanding the human grasp on things.  Nations do the same as the historical rise of nationalism and two world wars have taught us.  Yet, we still haven't learnt the lessons of history.  Every generation has to learn its lessons the hard way, it would appear.  When I was growing up my father used to quote an old proverb: "There are no pockets in a shroud" or sometimes he used to put it even simpler still, "You cannot take it with you."  We spend a lifetime building up ourselves (i) getting a good education, (ii) being successful at our jobs or professions, (iii) reading a family, (iv) stocking our brains/minds with the highest of cultural acquisitions and yet all these things in the end will fade from our grasp.  All religions and all spiritualities worth their salt teach this wisdom.  Yet, it should not be used to frighten us from living.  It should be used like the Buddhists do, learn to live life all the fully, with deeper values.  They do this through meditating on how transient are the things of this world and by realising deep within that everything changes and we change too within those changes.  When I was a student of the Latin language our teacher used to quote Ovid who declared:  "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."  It translates: "The times change and we change with them."  We cannot even bring all our learning, all our well-stocked minds with us either.  We simply disappear when we die.  Perhaps we may linger in the memories of those who love us, those who are still left alive after us.

The lesson to us from these few stanzas are to learn to be humble, to declare our ignorance, to say "no" to the blandishments of the ego and to value the dignity of life by living in the present.  That is why the writer advises us not to attempt to control the future.  Such is as foolish as trying to catch the wind or like trying to be a master carpenter with none of the skills.  It would seem that our egos lead us often into false expectations and we simply "cut our hands" with the carpenter's tools.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 65

Poem 65

The ancient Masters

didn't try to educate the people,

but kindly taught them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,

people are difficult to guide.

When they know that they don't know,

people can find their own way.

If you want to learn how to govern,

avoid being clever or rich.

The simplest pattern is the clearest.

Content with an ordinary life,

you can show all people the way

back to their own true nature.

Commentary: 

This poem contains sentiments that are found in other religious and spiritual traditions. When one writes about spirituality, no matter from one tradition or another or even from a neutral stance, one will find that certain themes repeat themselves.  Our Taoist poet refers to what is called in the early Christian tradition the "docta ignorantia" or a "learned ignorance." St Augustine of Hippo was the first among the early Fathers of the Church to use this phrase which occurred in one of his sermons.  The full sentence in Augustine's wonderful Latin runs: "Est ergo in nobis quaedam, ut dicam, docta ignorantia, sed docta spiritu dei, qui adiuvat infirmitatem nostram."  A translation would run: "There is in us, therefore, a certain learned ignorance, so to speak, but one taught by the Spirit of God, who helps us in our infirmity."  In other words when we talk about the divine we are never in a territory which is systematically mapped out.  The only guidelines in this spiritual province would be divine inspiration or divine revelation for St Augustine.  A similar line of thought in traditional Christian theology is that of the "via negativa" where we mortals can only deduce attributes of the Deity by declaring all that an infinite, all-powerful and all-loving Being cannot be. Another term for this approach in the mystical tradition is Negative Theology or more elaborately Apophatic theology that proceeds by describing God by negation, speaking of the Divine only in terms of what He/She is not (apophasis = repudiation or denial) rather than presuming to describe what God is.  It is in such a way that our Taoist poet writes in the first stanza of the above poem:

The ancient Masters

didn't try to educate the people,

but kindly taught them to not-know.

The way of "not-knowing" also fits in nicely with the Socratic tradition of declaring one's ignorance constantly in  any matter before proceeding to learn about it incrementally by research and learning.  To present oneself as the repository of all knowledge is obviously a very egotistical thing to do and a very weak approach to epistemology or any valid theory of knowledge.  Again this Socratic approach is to the fore in the second stanza:

When they think that they know the answers,

people are difficult to guide.

When they know that they don't know,

people can find their own way.

In a sense as we grow as human beings we have to unlearn many of the prejudicial opinions and beliefs we have acquired during our early life.  This is the experience of most adults as they grow older and wiser.

All religions and spiritual approaches to life advocate the sufficiency of an ordinary plain life, unencumbered by great riches and power.  In  the end we all end up dead, and dying and death as as natural as living and life.  In pondering the former we learn to appreciate the latter better.  In short, we learn to value our very breath as human beings.  This is the sense I get when reading the final stanza:

If you want to learn how to govern,

avoid being clever or rich.

The simplest pattern is the clearest.

Content with an ordinary life,

you can show all people the way

back to their own true nature.