Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 38

Poem 38

The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,

yet he leaves nothing undone.

The ordinary man is always doing things,

yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,

yet something remains undone.

The just man does something,

and leaves many things to be done.

The moral man does something,

and when no one responds

he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.

When goodness is lost, there is morality.

When morality is lost, there is ritual.

Ritual is the husk of true faith,

the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Commentary

It is sad but true that a certain number of people like to exercise their power over others.  Of course, you can substitute the word "control" for "power."  I have never ceased to be perturbed and amused in turn by these "power-hungry" or "control-obsessed" people. Why does this or that person want to exert their power or control over others?  They must feel very much undermined by others, that is, their own sense of self-confidence must be very low.  They are saying to themselves, in a sense, something like the following: "I will have to exert my power here or I shall be totally undermined.  I am someone, you know!" That is the way, I believe, that they see themselves.  

The school where I teach, founded 1888: Place of Learning & Wisdom

I remember the clinical psychologist and conference speaker Dr.Tony Humphreys saying that "all control is self-control."  In like manner we can say that "all power is power-over-self."  True power, I believe, is actually self-knowledge or at least an openness to learning to grow in self-knowledge.  These two paragraphs, then, are an explication of the first stanza above which I'll repeat for emphasis here:

 The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The author of the blog waiting on the ferry for Reggio at Messina, Sicilia

One thing no commentator can tire of repeating is that when one reads literary and spiritual texts one is in the realm of image, simile and metaphor.  Therefore, it is at a significant cost to the truth to indulge in literalism and simplistic or surface or superficial interpretation. When a seeker of the truth encounters literalism, in other words, any fundamentalist reading of a text s/he is not a little shaken by the seeming refusal to let go of the easy and superficial interpretation that assaults and insults our native intelligence and our natural and honest scepticism.  Truth is never simple.  There are no easy saccharine answers to help us swallow the pill of the harsh realities of life.  Truth is often a deeper and darker mystery which we are always striving to reach and often striving to be open to its outreach into us, too.

View of Badolato Beach

So, what is our author poet getting at above?  What lies below a literal or literalist reading of the words?  The idea that lies below the surface in the depths of meaning is something like what I attempted to describe in the last paragraph, to which I will add the following comments.  Often, the wise person observes and meditates and contemplates on what s/he observes.  Then, and only them, do they react and do things.  In other words, the wise person does not over-react; does not take things personally; does not try to give what to them appears to be the obvious, though superficial answer or reaction to this or that situation; rather they wait and then respond to the given situation with a wise equanimity. In this, they are seen to be calm and still, almost unperturbed as if they had done nothing. However, really and truly, they have done a lot by not rushing into action with the simple and superficial solution that all too often gets further and further negative reactions and over-reactions down the line.  That is what I believe the poet has in mind when he says of the Master or Mistress that he or she "does nothing." Hence, we can now intuit the meaning of the paradox that in doing nothing the Master leaves nothing undone.

Wild flowers, Calabria, Italia

Once again, our Taoist poet proceeds with similar and parallel paradoxes which we now understand cannot simply be taken at a literal, literalist or superficial level.  The reader or meditator or contemplator has to dig much deeper for the unvarnished truth.  I will leave it to the reader here to interpret the series of paradoxes with which the author continues to confront us in this poem.  I wholeheartedly agree that ritual can be nothing but a husk of faith if it has no implications for the way we behave and act in our day-to-day world. However, as a part-time counsellor and psychotherapist I value the important role of ritual in community life in terms of its helping us cope with birth, marriage and death and other big transitions we have to make in our little brittle lives.  However, on the level of paradox, beyond the literal and literalist level, I intuit the deeper truth at which out Taoist poet points me.

In conclusion, there is no better way of finishing this post than with repeating the final stanza of the above poem which lifts me to the heights of my spirit and brings me down to the depths of my soul as I type these few words:

  Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Thoughts on the Tao Te ching 25

Poem 25

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,

I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,

inside and outside, and returns

to the origin of all things.

The Tao is great.

The universe is great.

Earth is great.

Man is great.

These are the four great powers.

Man follows the earth.

Earth follows the universe.

The universe follows the Tao.

The Tao follows only itself.

Commentary

Who knows what came before the beginning of the universe?  In these big questions theoretical physics, philosophical theology and spirituality-meditation are paradoxically similar or parallel.  In psalm 110 we read:

A prince from the day of your birth 

on the holy mountains;
from the womb before the dawn I begot you.

According to Christian tradition this psalm foretells the birth of Jesus which, according to the psalmist, was preordained from before the beginning of the universe or from before the initiation of time.  In other words, this psalm like the Taoist poem attempts to describe the mystery of the origins of the universe.  The Taoism poet puts it in equally paradoxical and poetic terms:

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

Alexander Vilenkin contends that the Big Bang wasn't a one-off event, but merely one of a series of big bangs creating an endless number of bubble universes.  In this model, there is neither a single Big Bang nor a single beginning.  Instead the universe continually goes through oscillating cycles of expansion, contraction, collapse and expansion anew. (See HERE) 

Of the above three accounts, one could contend that The Taoist poet offers us a Taoist take or Taoist myth of creation; that the Biblical author offers us a Jewish take or Jewish myth of creation and finally that Alexander Vilenkin offers us a scientific take or scientific myth of creation.  Here, obviously, I am using myth in a particular sense and certainly not in its usual sense of an unfounded or false notion or contention.  I am using the word "myth" in the sense that humankind always needs to propose a meaning and an explanation for the existence of the world in which he lives as well as a meaning for his own life.  Fair enough, the first two accounts may be pre-scientific, allegorical or metaphorical or even literal efforts at explaining existence in ancient times - however, they are legitimate efforts even if somewhat fanciful.  I use the term "scientific myth" in a similar way, that is, as a modern presentation of the meaning and significance of life in the twenty-first century which will itself appear more than a little pre-scientific to thirtieth century humankind.  Myth for me represents any valid and authentic attempt at explaining the meaning of life in any particular culture at any particular time, in any particular context.  Now re-read the first stanza of our Taoist poem above. 

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

One of the best attempts to link theoretical physics and spirituality/meditation is surely that of Dr Fritjof Capra's classic The Tao of Physics (1975) wherein Dr Capra argued that Theoretical Physics could be reconciled with Eastern Mysticism.  Near the end of this book, the author summed up his motivation in the following words: "Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both."

The interpretation of a literary text is a complex process that involves much learning and not a little intuition.  A good reader of a text is aware of its many layers: literal, allegorical, metaphorical, poetic, aesthetic, historical, linguistic and structural and so on and so forth.  It is when the reader insists on reading the text at any one level solely that problems emerge.  As we have seen from the recent horrific massacres wrought by a fundamentalism of one kind, literalism can lead to sheer terrorism. Needless to say, fundamentalism in "-isms" of all kinds from fascism to communism to scientism can and will lead to the same bloody conclusion.

Finally, let us read the above poem reflectively letting a word or phrase suggest itself to us as a mantra for a five or ten minutes reflection.

Namaste, friends.