Poems I Journey With 28

T.S. Eliot said in “Burnt Norton,” the first poem in the sequence of poems called “Four Quartets,” that “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” Reality here, I contend, can be interpreted as all that wears us down as human beings as we try to negotiate our way through life, as we try to cope with its many highs and lows and make some meaning of our own journey through it. Again, I repeat this great poet’s words merely to highlight our need for some form of escapism from time to time: a good holiday, an inspiring read, celebrations of all kinds, concerts, drama, plays, music recitals, and all the cultural conventions and traditions that attempt to help human kind cope with the “jagged edges of existence” or “reality” as T.S. Eliot puts it in the above quoted poem.

Here, I’d like to return to two poems from the pen of our great national Nobel Laureate for Literature, W.B. Yeats and reproduce here for the readers of these musings two lovely refreshing poems that quite soothe my drooping spirits in these stressful days after a traffic accident.

Poem 1: The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1888):

Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Poem 2: The Song of Wandering Aengus

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Briefest of Commentaries

Yeats was born in 1865 and so he was only 23 when he wrote “Lake Isle of Innisfree” while he was 34 when he wrote the second poem. Eleven years is a long time in anyone’s life, and the second poem is obviously a far more mature and far deeper poem than the first. However, they are both written against the background of the nourishing and sustaining power of nature for us humans. In short, a good walk out in nature can heal many a broken heart and lift many a depressed spirit. These poems help me cope with life then at this first level, that is, at the level of the balm, the comfort and the healing that nature can offer us if we are open to her charms.

As Yeats grew older he became much more interested in what we in Ireland call the “Celtic Twilight” period, namely that Romantic turning back not alone to nature, but also to mythology and the strong links that mythology had with nature as it developed.  Also Yeats as a poet became far more enchanted with anything to do with mystery, mystique and, indeed the mystical. To commune with nature was to commune with the sustaining power behind that universe – the pagan Celtic gods as represented in that wonderful body of Gaelic Celtic mythology that he himself did much to preserve and to promulgate.

The “fire” that was in his head is a very potent line because it shows the passion for nature that is in Aengus’s mind and indeed in that of the poet himself. Again, Aengus cuts and peels a “hazel wand” and we are immediately enchanted with a magical act that brings us into a more mystical world to which we can escape from the harsh reality around us.  Everything around Aengus is magical and mystical and shot through with the powers of the gods of nature. There are moths on the wing there while the very heavens contain the mystical “moth-like stars” and the repetition of words serves to enchant us further as this is indeed the song of a wanderer through nature with all its healing attributes – indeed it yields up a “silver trout” to feed us on our journey.

Then we are invited into Aengus’s company as he lights a fire on the forest or wood floor, and then some mysterious person calls Aengus, or indeed us the reader, by our name. For sure, we are now in the mythical and mystical woods of the Celtic imagination, of the Celtic Twilight.  Indeed, we are so enchanted that we want to stay there with Aengus.  Like a fairy presence, this female voice changes into a beautiful girl who enchants Aengus and us the readers:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Reading the final verse, this commentator writing these few reflections feels old like Aengus in the poem: “old with wandering” or old and worn out from looking for meaning in an often sad and painful world.  But this final verse is full of promise and hope; full of beauty and truth; full of wisdom and inspiration, for we truly can live in an enchanted world when we read those wonderful final lines of this second poem:

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Poems I Journey With 14

Emily Dickinson

After Gerard Manley Hopkins, I turn most often to the wonderful and wondrous rhythms of the poems of Emily Dickinson, another spiritual and mystical poet who also loved her periods of isolation and aloneness and even ascetic living like the Victorian Jesuit priest and convert. Dickinson was born in 1830 (fourteen years before Hopkins was born) and died at the age of 56 in 1886 when Hopkins was 42.  While their lives overlapped then for some 42 years in terms of linear time neither would obviously have been aware of the writings of the other given their personal and indeed the social circumstances of the day and indeed the fact that neither sought publication of their work.  But, I personally get a lot of spiritual sustenance from the poems of both great poets. Both were also most unusual is that they both broke away from the then conservative conventions of what poetry was deemed to be. While both are spiritual and mystical poets their work is correspondingly completely "sui generis," unique and authentic to the very syllable of their output.  As her poems are so short I will offer three short favourite poems from Dickinson's pen here below:

1. Hope is a thing with feathers

Hope is a thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

2.  Heaven

"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree—

Provided it do hopeless—hang—

That—"Heaven" is—to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud—

The interdicted Land—

Behind the Hill—the House behind—

There—Paradise—is found!

Her teasing Purples—Afternoons—

The credulous—decoy—

Enamored—of the Conjuror—

That spurned us—Yesterday! 

A somewhat younger Emily Dickinson

3. My cocoon tightens, colors tease

MY cocoon tightens, colors tease, 

I 'm feeling for the air; 

A dim capacity for wings 

Degrades the dress I wear. 

A power of butterfly must be 

The aptitude to fly, 

Meadows of majesty concedes 

And easy sweeps of sky. 

So I must baffle at the hint 

And cipher at the sign, 

And make much blunder, if at last 

I take the clew divine. 

The Briefest of Commentaries:

I love Emily Dickinson's poems because they invariably give me a spiritual lift and a deep insight into the depths that simple things can have. I also like her unique writing style with dashes, which is completely unique to her and revolutionary, indeed, at the time she was writing.  She is simply unique, "sui generis" and so authentic. Who could not be moved by the image of a little bird?  It is at once so fragile and yet can fly to such heights and gain an overall view of things we humans are not privy to. Then the equating of hope - a complete abstraction - with that little physical image of a bird is simply mindblowingly powerful.  That equation or juxtaposition of two utterly different "objects" is so wonderful and wondrous that it strikes us immediately as being insightful. Hope, which we all need to keep going, is often as fragile as a little bird which we often doubt will be able to weather the storms of life. Where does that little bird of hope perch? Yes, in the very cage of our souls!  It sings a tune without words, the delicate and fragile tune of hope.  And that strange little fragile creature, that brittle bird of hope, never asked a single crumb of sustenance from its jailer, that is, ME and YOU and US!!

The second poem is about Heaven. However, no mystic will ever offer a cheap or cheapened image of that place or state or whatever we call Heaven.  Dickinson presents that reality as somewhat unattainable like the apple on the highest bough while we are mere children playing about the trunk of that great tree. There are hints also of Moses not being granted his wish to the Promised Land which has traditionally also been linked with whatever Heaven is, may be or could be. In fact, I like this poem also, and have placed it under the poem on Hope as Dickinson talks about the reaching of the apple being absolutely hopeless.  In that regard let me repeat its opening stanza for our contemplation here:

"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree—

Provided it do hopeless—hang—

That—"Heaven" is—to Me!

The third poem reminds me of the sage advice, or at least the wise comment of Anais Nin (1903 - 1977) that the day will come for all of us "when the risk to remain tight in the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom."  These words resonate with those of the entire poem and especially those of the first stanza. The growth of the little seed in the bud to full flower and blossom parallels the formation of the butterfly from egg to larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to adult butterfly:

MY cocoon tightens, colors tease, 

I 'm feeling for the air; 

A dim capacity for wings 

Degrades the dress I wear. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 72

Poem 72

When they lose their sense of awe,

people turn to religion.

When they no longer trust themselves,

they begin to depend upon authority.

Therefore the Master steps back

so that people won't be confused.

He teaches without a teaching,

so that people will have nothing to learn.

Commentary

Aristotle, following his teacher Plato's insight, believed that philosophy begins in wonder. The American philosopher Garreth Matthews (1929 - 2011) describes what Aristotle and Plato before him believed wonder to be: The wonder Aristotle has in mind is, he argues, "astonishment over basic puzzles or perplexities (aporia)." The actual word in Greek is "thaumazein" (wonder).  Aristotle talks about a man who is constantly wondering, namely constantly puzzled about the nature of people and things in this world.  So, it is so much more than simply having a question.  For Aristotle wonder is about the puzzlement we experience when contemplating the beauty of numbers - say the irrationality of root 2, the motion/path of the planets and so on and so forth. Basically, then, it's a "ah" moment rather than a "ha" or "aha" moment.

It is more than interesting, and not a little surprising that our Taoist poet sees religions as lacking in the sense of awe and wonder.  In other words, then, for our Taoist writer, religions attempt to domesticate wonder, capture it in neat phrases, doctrines, dogmas and formularies.  In so doing, our poet is arguing that they kill mystery and awe.

When people, he further argues, stop trusting their own native instincts and intuitions they begin to become dependent on the advice and on the recommendations of those in authority.  They become, consequently, overly dependent on external approval and begin to lack inner responsibility for themselves, their thoughts and their decisions.

In the final stanza, once again, our Taoist author takes refuge in paradox for the sake of making us flounder in a sea of confusion, that is, lest we become too complacent with our newly found insights into the awe and mystery of the Tao.  What he or she is saying is that we will, of necessity, be awe-struck and wonder-enraptured when we come to pondering the depths or heights of the mystery of life.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 63

Poem 63

Act without doing;
work without effort.

Think of the small as large

and the few as many.

Confront the difficult

while it is still easy;

accomplish the great task

by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;

thus she achieves greatness.

When she runs into a difficulty,

she stops and gives herself to it.

She doesn't cling to her own comfort;

thus problems are no problem for her.

Our graduating Sixth Years:  May they learn to go with the flow and stay in the zone!! 

Commentary

Once again, our Taoist poet and philosopher uses the balance of polar opposites to put across both the mystery and complexity of life on the one hand and the depth or height of spiritual wisdom on the other.  In a certain sense, we can appreciate the above poem if we let go of our rigidity, especially the rigidity associated with linear logic.  We have to learn to think outside the box, to go beyond the rigid linearity associated with intellectual knowledge or logic and allow the reasons of the heart to attract us to action.  As Pascal tells us, "le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point" - "the heart has its reasons which reason itself can never comprehend."  In this sense, it may be said that we can "act without doing."  In a similar way we can "work without effort."  Moreover, we can stand things on their head by treating the large as small and vice versa.  In a way, what our poet is suggesting is that there is as much a universe in the atom as there is in the expanse of space.  Lines from the "Auguries of Innocence" by the wonderful pre-Romantic poet William Blake come to my mind:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

Trees in Newbridge House, Summer 2014

Yet again, another associated thought that comes to mind is that of the psychological concept of flow as proposed by the Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi.  Flow is a central concept in positive psychology, and it is also known as the zone.  Children can far more readily enter this zone than we adults because they are closer to their hearts and to their intuition that we adults are.  We adults are far more likely to be locked in the world of logic and intellect.  Flow or the zone is the mental state or that state of being where the person doing some action or activity is fully immersed in his/her experience of the moment, and is fully energized and well focused on the task at hand.  Flow is characterized by complete absorption in what is being experienced.  

It is, then, in this sense, that we can agree with our Taoist poet that we should confront the difficult while it is easy and achieve great tasks by doing small ones.  By not intending to reach for greatness the Master achieves it effortlessly.  Moreover, when she runs into difficulty she does not struggle with it or face it head on in pointless opposition - oh, no.  In fact she surrenders herself to it and swims with its tide.  And finally, like any true Taoist or Buddhist, or even Christ-like believer she never clings to her own comforts.

In this way, she never encounters problems.  As the philosopher Gabriel Marcel and the theologian Eugene Joly aver she rather embraces the total mystery of life.

Namaste, my friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 54

Poem 54

Whoever is planted in the Tao

will not be rooted up.

Whoever embraces the Tao

will not slip away.

Her name will be held in honor

from generation to generation.

Let the Tao be present in your life

and you will become genuine.

Let it be present in your family

and your family will flourish.

Let it be present in your country

and your country will be an example

to all countries in the world.

Let it be present in the universe

and the universe will sing.

How do I know this is true?

By looking inside myself.

Commentary

Random stones on a random street, Prague, February, 2016

One of the abiding questions that has always intrigued me is how progress is measured.  As a teacher I am well used to setting examinations and correcting them.  As a student myself of one thing or another for the most of my life I have obviously subjected myself to such assessments, too.  Further, most workplaces insist on certain levels of self-assessment these days.  It can be quite easy to measure specific things without a doubt, like temperature, air pressure, blood pressure, water pressure, traffic speed, acceleration and so on.  Likewise, our measurements of such forces have become more refined and more precise as society progresses.  We can ask many questions with respect to progress and measuring it.  One such question, among many, we can ask is whether we can accurately measure intelligence? The answer is in the affirmative, but first we have to agree on what we mean by intelligence. With the ground-breaking psychologist, Daniel Goleman, most educationists and psychologists agree that traditional IQ tests are pretty restrictive and restricting and are only measuring a very narrow range of native intelliegence.  Goleman and others now recognise some nine forms of intelligence, and indeed there may be more.  Furthermore, there have also been many geniuses who failed miserably at school, not because they were unintelligent or stupid, but essentially because they did not learn in the restricting ways most school systems require.

That leads us on to whether we can measure our emotions and feelings.  How can we measure compassion and loving kindness, or even our love for one another or for a particular friend or sweetheart or our attraction to this, that or the other piece of art or sculpture or architecture or music?  There are so many immeasurable things - indeed, we often call them priceless as we cannot fix any monetary value to these works of art, to these cultural entities - that we humans are caught up in by the sheer accident of our birth. 

Girl with here dog, Prague, February, 2016

The further question, a big existential question for this writer here, is how do I measure my spiritual progress at all?  I have read many philosophy, theology and spiritual books in my time - certainly since I was 18 and went to college - and am still reading them, and yet at a certain level I feel as far away from my goal as I ever did at the age of 58.  Progress along the spiritual path is often very hard for me to measure at all.  Sometimes I wonder if I have really made progress at all? One day I feel that I have comprehended this or that deep truth, experienced this or that spiritual delight, and then, to my utter disappointment, these small comprehensions and minute illuminations seemed to have slipped away overnight into the ether upon waking the following day.  It's as if I was back at the beginning again and had to struggle on and find new and more compelling experiences and insights. (I am, of course, here reminded of T.S. Eliot's great spiritual insight that "We shall not cease from exploration//And the end of our exploring//Will be to arrive where we started//And know the place for the first time." In other words, I often take a little encouragement from these profound words, and realise that my knowledge has deepened rather than increased! "Little Gidding")

Classical Musician, Prague, Feb, 2016

As I sit here now I remember all the people who impressed me in my life with their spiritual commitment or  insights.  I think of my mother for her spiritual strength, a woman who never let life get here down, who quite simply was willing to begin again and again everyday, literally to start the struggle to survive and to provide for her family over and over on a daily basis.  Further, I think of the kindness of the old people I knew as a child who lovingly gave us a few coins for doing this or that message for them and I recall their kind words. I remember the older boy, Lar Cranny, who brought me to the children's hospital when I was badly bitten by a dog when I was a boy of 6 or 7 years.  Poor Lar, who became a teacher like myself, is now dead, R.I.P., having been tragically killed in a motor accident some years ago. I remember how my father refused to be victimised by the illness of polio through which he lost the use of his right arm and how he kept going for us his children.  I recall the wisdom of our teachers at school and college.  Those who influenced me spiritually I can list here as Rev Dr. Paddy Wallace, a wonderful visionary and prophet, and Rev Dr. Michael-Paul Gallagher S.J. who taught me how to meditate, Rev. Dr. Brian McNamara, S.J. who taught me how to wrestle with even the most complicated of theologies and Rev Dr John Macken who taught me to appreciate the way of "wise ignorance" or what St Augustine called the "docta ignorantia."  John had that gift in abundance and his gentle scholarly soul led me through many intricacies is post-graduate theology.  I tried to internalise all the lessons these wonderful people have taught me in my life, and yet as I go on, I find life is still somewhat of a struggle, that the journey continues.  I recall here, Robert Frost's famous answer to the question as to what he had learnt from life as being simply, "It goes on!"  Yes, life goes on, and that is surely both its beauty and its challenge at one and the same time.  All we hold dear would be so much superficial dressing were it not for suffering and death, two realities which raise the value of human life in its fragility to the nth power as it were.

Love is.... Prague, Feb, 2016

What keeps the heart going?  What keeps us from giving up? Each of us must, of necessity have some aim or a goal in life; have some reason to get out of bed in the morning; have some courage to keep going no matter what the cost; have some hope in the face of despair - maybe that's what Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he said that life begins on the far side of despair?; have some reason to live and some reason to die. We have to put down roots somewhere, otherwise we will wither and die all too quickly.  That's why commitment to values, to religions, to deeply held beliefs even outside the religious fold, to goals and visions to give us courage to keep going are so important in the human prject of making sense of our little brittlr lives.  That's why our Taoist poet above calls upon us "to be rooted in the Tao," to work at getting a spiritual centre, a Still Point of being to give us focus in our lives so that we can carry on.

It often seems to me that spiritual progress can be somewhat cyclic and that it can lead us further down (depth psychology or depth spirituality) into the profundity of mystery or further up (height psychlogy or height spirituality) into the sublimity or heights of mystery. In that cyclic journey it can seem that one is returning to the same place. (See quotation from T.S. Eliot above)  I think here of the analogy of the spiral staircase - as one is either going up or down, it can often seem as it one is going around and around in the same space and yet that is the deception.  One is in fact moving - either up or down - while all the time on the journey, it may seem as if no progress is being made.

Here, I would like to finish with a very siritual poem - one of my all time favourites by a contemporary Irish poet, whom it has been my privilege to meet many times in my life, namely Brendan Kennelly - which sums up for me the heart of all great spiritualities and in our particular sense what our Taoist poet has been expressing so well in the above stanzas.  

Once again, I invite the reader to read the above Taoist poem as reflectively as possible and then do the same for this equally beautiful and equally spiritual modern poem:

Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,

begin to the roar of morning traffic

all along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls

the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal

bridges linking the past and future

old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

begin to wonder at unknown faces

at crying birds in the sudden rain

at branches stark in the willing sunlight

at seagulls foraging for bread

at couples sharing a sunny secret

alone together while making good.

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending

that always seems about to give in

something that will not acknowledge conclusion

insists that we forever begin.

— From The Essential Brendan Kennelly

Swans, Prague, February, 2016

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 45

Poem 45

True perfection seems imperfect,

yet it is perfectly itself.

True fullness seems empty,

yet it is fully present.

True straightness seems crooked.

True wisdom seems foolish.

True art seems artless.

The Master allows things to happen.

She shapes events as they come.

She steps out of the way

and lets the Tao speak for itself.

Commentary

Howth Harbour, 2003

Once again, we are in the misty realms of the mystical where nothing appears clear - at least clear in the conceptual or cortical or logical sense Once again, to continue by way of a refrain, we are in the country of poetry which nicely parallels the world of the mystical. Another related, and indeed cognate word to mystical is undoubtedly that of "mystery." Both derive from the Greek root "musterion" and the Latin word "misterium" through "mistere" of Old French to mean something akin to hidden meaning or truth, or a deeper religious feeling or some sort of esoteric experience of union with that meaning or truth behind whatever reality is. Maybe, indeed, it is that reality in se? Moreover, it suggests a strong, though hidden, presence of the source of all truth, namely God or some other such esoteric principle, with the person doing the experiencing. 

Further, let me point out here, at the risk of repeating myself somewhat ad nauseam, that there is more to human intelligence than the logical, the cortical or the narrowly mathematical.  There are many other aspects to the human intelligence as the great contemporary psychologist Howard Gardner so powerfully pointed out to us in his book Frames of Mind (1983) namely Musical, Visual, Verbal, Logical, Bodily, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal,  Naturalistic and Existential.  There are other scholars who would add some others to this list. Be that as it may, these nine intelligences are essentially highly useful and intuitively obvious models of Intelligence, and obviously they do overlap and mutually co-operate in the workings of our human brains/minds.  In the main, as a schema or suggested structure for the complexity that is the human intelligence, they are useful in many fields of endeavour, especially in education and mental health areas to name but two.  What I am about here, to state my argument as vividly and as clearly as possible, is to emphasise that argumental clarity is a trait of logical and mathematical intelligence pre-eminently, and that it is not necessarily a strong trait in other aspects of intelligence as in Art or Music or Bodily or indeed Existential Intelligence.  In short, it is only at our peril that we look for a logical clarity in spiritual or mystical or indeed in existential writing.

"Of the writing of books there is no end!" Own library

Once again, to sustain my old refrain, poetry lends itself well to the expression of mystical theology, mystical experience, religious or siritual writing in a most important way. Poetry places all its powers at the disposal of the spiritual or mystical writer: simile, metaphor, paradox, imagery of all types, symbolism and so on, along with much subtlety of connotation.  Yet again, setting up pairs of polar oposites is to the fore in the above poem: perfection vs imperfection, fullness vs emptiness, presence vs absence, straightness vs crookedness, wisdom vs foolishness, expression vs concealment, openness vs closedness or closure, masculine vs feminine and so on.    

Perfection is essentially a hard word really, a relentlessly condemnatory and judgemental one at that, I believe. Somehow, unrealistic and obsessional teachers and professors have used it over the years as a cruel weapon in education to beat their pupils and students relentlessly with and in so doing massage their own egos. To my mind, they were simply that, that is to say, simply unrealistic, obsessional, cruel and egotistical.  A friend of mine, whose father was a professor and scholar of note at one of our foremost colleges described him as a "grammar fascist" in his ruthless pursuit of perfection in his chsosen language of study.  It is educationally sound to strive for a certain perfection as a goal but never to be obsessional in its pursuit as it can be so dismissive of seemingly lesser achievements, achievements which may require greater effort on the part of strugglers than the effort expended by the experts in the discipline in question. After all, does not life teach us that imperfection is often the order of the day?  Things fail and structures crumble as indeed do the creators and makers of those things.  As a young boy, I was often quite upset when this or that toy broke.  And then, I learned to live with the inevitable breaking down of things.  A deeper and more bitter lesson yet had to be learnt by me as a young boy, and that was that people as well as things broke, faded and died.  This is life, I learned to my then consternation. Perfection is always ahead of us, often never, if ever, here in the now. Living in the now often requires that we be satisfied at times with accepting what we cannot improve or change despite our greatest efforts, and that some individual things and some situations in which we find ourselves in life may just well be such as the old saying has it, that is, that they represent life's being simply "as good as it gets!" 

And yet perfection may include within it an element of the imperfect.  After all, how can one describe light without shade, black without white, good without bad, kindness without cruelty and so on?  Those polar opposites may just well be in that healthy tension suggested by many philosophers and creative writers?

As one of our great Irish writers, Oscar Wilde, once so pithily put it "the truth is never pure and rarely simple."  Indeed, Wilde did not write his words flippantly (as we often infer from his more humorous works) as he had suffered much in his quite short life and much of his thoughts and indeed his great humour were tempered with the most bitter of experiences of a life that had as many lows and well as it had highs. 

In a sense, existentially we are called upon, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre to shape our own destinies by modelling the best self (or our best identity project) we can from the talents at our disposal within the orbit of our own little lives.  In that same sense, we are condemned to be free within the limits and constraints of our own private and public worlds.  However, we are but mere dots on a bigger blob of earth that is in turn a mere dot within a bigger blob that is a mere dot within another bigger blob and so on ad infinitum.  In that sense, the Tao or the Wisdom behind the universe or God or the Great Spirit or even what some call the Indifferent Energy behind the universe, or whatever is at the base of reality, shapes much that is beyond our puny control.  We are definitely mere "flies to wanton boys," as Shakespeare once so timelessly put it, in this particular context outlined. And yet, our task is at least to make the best stab we can at making even a little splash in our tiny pond of life.  To this end, all cultures call us, and all religions, too, which are, of course, mere aspects of those same cultures.  Maybe, indeed, the cultural must, of necessity, always and ever be greater than mere individuality, that most wonderful and elusive myth of all.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 41

Poem 41

When a superior man hears of the Tao,

he immediately begins to embody it.

When an average man hears of the Tao,

he half believes it, half doubts it.

When a foolish man hears of the Tao,

he laughs out loud.

If he didn't laugh,

it wouldn't be the Tao.

Thus it is said:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.

Yet it nourishes and completes all things.

Commentary

Scene on the Garovogue River, summer 2006

Once again, we are in the realm of myth and mysticism, and consequently we are immediately in the domain of poetry with its metaphors, images, paradoxes and seeming contradictions.  Quite simply, when we are in these environs we have to let go of all literalism.  Philosophers of the analytic school of philosophy seek to reduce reality to statements that either make sense or don't, to a reflection on experience that seeks to analyse it conceptually and express those concepts in logical statements.  From their point of view none of the above poem makes any rational or reasonable sense and is merely a flight of the imagination.  For us folk who have a religious or spiritual sense which we believe opens us to a mystery or a unity or a truth beyond our finite human reason and reasoning, the above poem brings us into a sense of wonder at the very mystery and often the painful beauty of life.  For the sceptic or the atheist such is mere delusion.  However, that is the way life is.  As the great scholar and theologian, John Henry Cardinal Newman, once remarked, "one can neither argue a man into or out of a religious commitment or belief" as it is as much, if not more, a question of the heart as well as of the head.

Scene from the Garavogue River, Sligo, Summer 2006

To achieve the status of the "superior man" is no mean feat and requires a lot of practice and discipline.  So few of us are able to so "embody the Tao."  To embody the Tao equates with what the Buddhists term "enlightenment."  It would be nothing short of hubris to insist that such a state is achievable with ease and facility.  This is the import of stanza one. Stanza two is the one that abounds in well balanced polar images: light vs dark; forward vs back; strong vs weak; pure vs tarnished; permanence vs change; clarity vs obscurity; sophistication vs simplicity; wisdom vs stupidity; love vs indifference and being lost vs being found.

In conclusion, I invite the reader to read the above poem reflectively and to let whatever word or phrase suggests itself become a mantra for a short meditation.

Namaste, friends.