Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 48

Poem 48

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.

Less and less do you need to force things,

until finally you arrive at non-action.

When nothing is done,

nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained

by letting things go their own way.

It can't be gained by interfering.

Commentary

Pair of swans, Bull Island, January 2016

Once again, this current poem rehearses all the old themes.  However, that need not distract us, as such is the way all religious writings work, and indeed all great literature works. Themes will be repeated, but almost always in different ways, in different contexts and with different words.  T.S. Eliot underlined that same point with respect to the themes he returned to often in his own oeuvre. 

The Taoist oppositional tension is returned to in Poem 48 above, but this time the opposition is that between addition and subtraction.  Indeed, as a teacher of basic mathematics at secondary school level here in Ireland, I am aware that philosophically these are two inextricably related operations and that subtraction can be looked upon as adding a negative number.  This, in my opinion,  is a good example of how inextricable opposites are in actuality, and that to vere to either extreme is to do some damage to the actual reality of the healthy tension or balance of opposition.  Those of you who have some knowledge of mathematics will know that another example of oppositional operations are those of multiplication and division where division can be seen as the operation of multiplication by a fraction.  Now, to return to poem 48 above, our author is talking about adding to knowledge bit by inexhaustible bit and so on ad infinitum, and yet, he or she sees that, in a way, a lot of unnecessary and weighty information will have to be dropped or subtracted. Indeed, there is much to be learnt here by twenty first century humankind who perdure in a world in which we are literally awash with information.  Indeed, we might quite plausibly push our metaphor further by saying that we are constantly being hit by a tsunami of information on a daily basis in that same world.  One only has to google a topic or a question on that topic to know that one can get literally hundreds and thousands, or more even, of possible answers. Scholars tell us that we are in an era of information overload, and that what is needed is interpretation or analysis skills of that data.  We may be awash with information but we are literally bereft of secure ground on which to anchor our ship of interpretation, and we are often equipped with poor critical and analytical skills to engage profitably and critically with the data.

Unity, Bull Island, January, 2016

A parent remarked to me recently that her second son "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders" while her eldest does not "sweat the small stuff" at all.  Undoubtedly, what the younger lad needs to do is to "let go" or to "subtract" or "take away" or to "get rid of" the small stuff.  This is what our Taoist poem is about above, that is, the subtraction of all that weight from our shoulders, all that heavy unnecessary knowledge.  Knowledge must lead us to the truth, that is, in any deep and reasonable understanding of epistemology, knowledge must not drown us in a sea of confusion, but rather philosophically enlighten our paths to the truth.  This is what we are about in counselling and in psychotherapy.  As a part-time counsellor in my own school, this is one way in which I see my role.  In fact, I will be working with the second boy I have adverted to in the opening sentence of this present paragraph.  That is to say, one of the things I will try to elucidate for the young man is his path to self-discovery by enabling his to throw off some of that weight - how to enable him to subtract or take away some of the load he is carrying.  Admittedly, these weights may not be burdens of knowledge, but they most certainly will be burdens of negative thoughts which are themselves negative information. My task will be to enable the young man to get a handle on what is brdening him, to equip him with the tools to let go of the load he is carrying.  Indeed, in that task, I am a mere channel through which the client is enabled to unburden himself of his load.

Avoiding Passivity

Most people who engage with spirituality, or who involve themselves in meditation practices, or what is more popularly called practices of mindfulness these days, are aware of the criticism levelled at such practitioners that they are passive actors in a world that requires a greater active involvement.  Again, paradoxically, stillness of soul and centeredness of being lead to a more directed and profitable engagement with the world. Such so-called passivity is exactly what was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as the heresy of quietism which elevated contemplation over actual mental engagement or meditation on scriptural or other spiritual texts or even oral prayer.  When I studied the history of mystical theology and spirituality many decades ago we learnt that this practice of quietism was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687. This quietist heresy (or that heresy which led the mind into sheer passivity, according to officialdom) was seen to consist of wrongly elevating "contemplation" over "meditation," intellectual stillness over vocal prayer, and interior passivity over pious action.  Once again, such concerns are merely fuelled by considerations of control and power (closely linked to the ego, no doubt) rather than with, on the one hand, the paradoxical powerfulness of silence, meditation and contemplation and, on the other, the directedness of still-pointedness and focus in meditation or mindfulness.

Once again, by way of concluding these few words, I should like to invite the reader to peruse the above poem again and to let whatever word or phrase offer itself to you as a mantra for a five minute period of still-pointed or focussed meditation or mindfulness.

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.