Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 3

Tao Te Ching

Poem 3

If you over esteem great men,

people become powerless.

If you overvalue possessions,

people begin to steal.

The Master leads

by emptying people's minds

and filling their cores,

by weakening their ambition

and toughening their resolve.

He helps people lose everything

they know, everything they desire,

and creates confusion

in those who think that they know.

Practise not-doing

and everything will fall into place.

Commentary

In the above poem not-doing equates to being.  Traditionally, in most philosophical and spiritual traditions, there has been a polarity set up between being and doing.  In the Christian Scriptures there is the lovely story of Martha and Mary that refers to an episode in the life of Jesus which appears only in the Gospel of Luke, and can be read immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:38-42). 

Icon of this Lucan story: See HERE

In this story Mary sits at the Lord's feet listening (that is, a metaphor for contemplating or meditating or praying or simply being in a state of reverence for the holy) while her sister was anxiously doing preparations so that the welcomed guest (the Lord Jesus) would have all the generosity the household could offer (that is, action or doing). All traditions of spirituality recommend a balance between both, while in this Biblical story Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the right course of action in this case, that is, not-doing, meditation, contemplation or prayer.  Once again, and it bears repeating, that all traditions emphasize the balance between both and how both are necessary to good spiritual practice.  However, there are, of course, stories that emphasize either one according to the intentions of the author at that particular time to get his message across.  All Scriptures, whether Christian or Taoist or Buddhist or Hindu have to be taken on balance.  There is nothing as bad as Scriptures used to prove a polemical or didactic point without an appreciation of context, good scholarship and that elsewhere in the same Scriptures that there are other balancing texts giving a different perspective on the question but never necessarily being self-contradictory.  That's why a knowledge and understanding of polarities or binaries or opposites is so crucial to our spiritual journey. Doing and Being are both important aspects of the Doing-Being polarity.  (For readers with an interest in graffiti here is an interesting article on the origins of the graffito joke: To Do is To Be - Socrates, To Be is To Do - Aristotle and Do Be Do Be D0....  - Sinatra: Quote Investigator ).

What is appropriate in life is obviously BALANCE.  All good mainline spiritual traditions recommend such balance.

Avoidance of Extremes

In keeping with the notion of balance the above poem opens with a call to the reader/meditator to avoid extremes.  Over-esteeming some people, our author poet argues, disempowers others.  Over-valuing possessions leads people to steal.  The question of over-valuing is an interesting concept in itself.  We all too often hear of the polar problem of undervaluing.  Indeed, it is interesting to follow this line of argument philosophically and spiritually.  Moot questions would be: Is it possible to over-value human life?  Is it possible to over-value humankind's place in the world? Is over-valuing anything, including ourselves, a mark of our ego-driven ambitions and sheer hubris? These are all questions, not statements, of course.  In this regard, I firmly believe that what the Physics Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said is totally correct, that we should "..... rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."  However, a good pilgrim on the path to self-knowledge or spiritual-awareness will know that it is the balance between the extremes that counts; that it is the healthy tension set up between the poles that is important, not either pole in itself.  Over long years of spiritual questioning and questing, I have become enamoured of how close theoretical physics can be to spirituality.  As the great nineteenth century theologian John Henry cardinal Newman used say: no truth from any area of knowledge can contradict another truth from another area if it is to be the truth at all - this, in short, is axiomatic or foundational to all knowledge or truth. 

Emptying and Becoming Empty

These notions are central to most mainline religions also.  The believer has to empty himself or herself of his/her EGO, pride, hubris and all other lesser attributes so that they can become receptacles or vehicles or conduits of the divine.  In meditation and prayer in all traditions, the seeker has to empty his/her mind of distracting thoughts and baser desires. Even if we are not religious qua religious or spiritual qua spiritual in the specific sense, we are all spiritual in a general or generic or psychic sense.  There is always much in us that has to be healed, or made whole in the process of Integration of the self (Anthony Storr et al) or in the process of Individuation (Jungian Analysis), or in the process of Self-Actualization (Carl ransom Rogers and Abraham Maslow) or in that Self-realization (general). In spiritual terms, if we belong to a specific religious or spiritual tradition we might call it an emptying in order so we can be filled by the divine.  In a sense, of course, these are all human words that stretch language to breaking point in an attempt to describe a religious or spiritual experience.  For Christian believers, St Paul advanced the notion of the kenosis undergone by Jesus Christ in order to save the world.  As a discourse on this Christian concept is beyond our needs here, please refer to the following links if you wish to read about it: WIKI  and  Theopedia. 

There is throughout the Tao Te Ching,  then a call to humility, a call to declaring first our ignorance before going on our spiritual way.  Please note how close this is to Socrates' call to all who would wish to be philosophers or followers of what is true to first declare their ignorance and that knowledge will follow from there by a process of radical questioning of all our thinking.  St Augustine, the fifth century A.D. philosopher and theologian maintained that even with the aid of Christian revelation that divine knowledge was so far beyond our ken in this world that the most we could achieve, after all our intellectual and spiritual travail, is merely what he termed a "docta ignorantia" or learned ignorance.

Meditation:

Read the above poem again and let whatever line or  phrase or word jump out of the text for you and repeat it in your mind slowly like a mantra.  Then close your eyes, centre yourself and meditate on those words for five minutes.

Namaste, friends!

Journal of a Soul 39

The Human Condition

Autumn scene, Fairview Park

This title covers a multitude.  It is a phrase I have heard bandied about since I was in my mid-teens.  When I was young I was very certain of what things I really believed in; I trusted instinctively what society in its wisdom through the education system and the broadcast and print media wanted us to accept almost unquestioned; I welcomed almost wholly the accepted truths promulgated by either Church or State.  However, as soon as I got to college I was encouraged to question accepted opinions and beliefs on a cerebral level. However, it was when things began to crumble on a personal level much later in life that I really began to question the old certainties.  Questioning old certainties has always been part of the life of the thinking person.

Daily Reality

As a firm believer in the positive outcomes of such practices as those of various Meditation techniques, Yoga, Zen, TM, Tai Chi, Falun Gong, Focusing (Eugene Gendlin) and so on, and even ordinary everyday physical exercise, I have instinctively in the last twenty or so years almost always listened to the wisdom of my body.  The body, when listened to in any attentive fashion, is a great yardstick of and guide to what is truly real.  Our bodies in a physical way (through pain and the development of the various psychosomatic diseases) "know" much more about us -  stuff we either refuse to accept about ourselves or the world - or are simply unconscious of in the first place.  That's why another name for Meditation is Awareness (Anthony de Mello has written a wonderful book with this very title which is really worth reading) and Mindfulness, still another more modern synonym.  Such practices train us in precisely becoming more aware firstly of our own bodies through concentrating on or being aware of something so essentially and simply human as our very breathing, and then becoming aware of our "real" or "essential" self, or simply by learning to delight in simply being.  Doing versus Being is an interesting polarity, or contrast, or healthy tension, or dichotomy - call it what you will. They are really the two polar opposites of the see-saw of existence as it were.  I will refer to them more fully below.

What is Your Daily Reality?

My daily reality is that of a 55 year-old Special Education Teacher in a Boys' Secondary School where I teach in the Asperger's Unit as well as doing learning support for pupils who have problems in Mathematics.  In between the teaching, or perhaps more correctly, during that teaching I listen to the vicissitudes of the lives of my charges.  One boy who comes in tells me about his suicide attempts and about his friends who have cut themselves.  Young people (that is, teenagers) today have many concerns, not all as grave or as serious as the one I have briefly described in the foregoing sentence.  Others have addiction problems or are perhaps the sons of absent fathers, or of former or current drug addicts, or of abusive parents and so on and on and on. Others are just going through the usual hard and difficult identity crisis associated with their adolescent years.  However, the nub of the problem, that is of the human condition, is very simple really - all they want is a compassionate and non-judgmental adult ear.   In a sense my workaday world is never dull or dry or sterile. It is always gripping and mostly rewarding if at times somewhat tiring. All you have to do, dear reader, is to ponder what your daily reality is.  Perhaps it would be better for you to write it down for yourself, or if you are artistic you might sketch or paint it, or if musical sing it or play it. 

Lessons to Learn

Autumn Scene, Fairview Park, late November, 2011

There are many lessons we can learn from tuning in to life, from becoming aware or mindful, and I shall attempt to list some of them here.  Pardon me if you have read some of them here before because it is really very hard for me to be fresh and insightful a lot of the time.  When I write here, I often feel like I am repeating myself ad nauseam. However, I take much solace from the answer T.S. Eliot gave to an interviewer who commented that the famous and erudite poet had repeated himself much in his poems and writings that while he may have done so he certainly never said anything ever again in precisely the same way. Anyway, here are some short lessons I have learned from life:

(i) We don't get out of life alive.  This world is not a "dress rehearsal."  We only get one shot at living and we had best make the most of it.  In other words, here we have the context for Horace's famous injunction to us "to seize the day" and forget totally about tomorrow and what it may have in store for us.  Those of you who laboured in the vineyards of the Latin language will recall the actual words of Quintus Horatius Flaccus: "carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."

(ii) Are we happy in our own skin?  Are we really happy with what we do in life, with our job, in our friends, in our partner and family? 

(iii) Have we really got time for others?  Do we really listen to them?  Or even more importantly do we really have time for ourselves? Do we really listen to our inner "self"?

(iv) Think about, or rather meditate upon that wonderful dichotomy between Being and Doing.  In reality one is not more important than the other.  It is rather the harmonious balance of both that is of utmost importance.  Doing must be challenged by Being, and Being can be  supported and enhanced and  by Doing. There is a further polarity worth mentioning here, too, that of Being and Having.  This existential dichotomy was emphasized and explicated by the psychoanalyst, psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm.  While the Western capitalist system feeds the greed for Having, the Eastern religions emphasize the overriding importance of Being.  While we need to have the basics to survive, and some social economists and psychologists suggest that after an annual income of some 44,000 $ the happiness index goes no higher.   

(v) Carl Jung, following his great friend, mentor and collaborator but later opponent, critic and rival Sigmund Freud, held that “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  This task takes many long years of work to accomplish.

(vi) Can we live with ourselves, or accept ourselves precisely as we are?  When we make decisions can we sleep easily knowing that we have done our best and have acted from authentic motives?  If we can we are approaching what it means to be true to our core self.

To be continued