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. 

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 78

78

Nothing in the world

is as soft and yielding as water.

Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,

nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;

the gentle overcomes the rigid.

Everyone knows this is true,

but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains

serene in the midst of sorrow.

Evil cannot enter his heart.

Because he has given up helping,

he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

Commentary

Let me begin by quoting from an authoritative web page with respect to the importance of water in our lives, indeed in the very life of our little planet: "According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water.  The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79% water, and even the bones are watery: 31%.  Each day humans must consume a certain amount of water to survive.  Of course, this varies according to the age and gender, and also by where someone lives.  Generally an adult male needs about 3 litres a day while an adult female needs about 2.2 litres per day.  Some of this water is gotten in food." The quotation is from HERE.  In short, we are literally bound together in this important substance.  Indeed, all literature and all the religions of the world see water as a most potent symbol, not alone of earthly life, but for those who subscribe to belief in God, a potent symbol of the spiritual nature of that life.

Now that we have set the biological, literary and spiritual background to our 78th Taoist poem we can begin our more spiritual reflections.  Once again, this poem is replete in imagery, the use of polar opposites in a healthy tension and, of course, paradox, the use of which is mentioned by name in the last line by our translator. The oppositions we find are the usual ones, which, as we have seen, are repeated rather liberally throughout our text: soft vs hard, yielding vs inflexible, gentle vs rigid, and serenity vs sorrow.  We have discussed this healthy tension of opposites many times in these commentaries.  The beauty of the Tao and all superior spiritualities is that they are somehow able to avoid speaking in terms of the deliberate separation of opposites, that style of religion which espoused a dogmatic and rigid separation of everything into blacks and whites where there are no shades of grey in between let alone the coulours of the rainbow.  That's why the taijitsu or the Yin-Yang is a most potent symbol for Taoists where the black half of the symbol contains a dot of the bright and the bright half of the symbol a dot of the black.  Could any symbol be more potent?

Likewise, the paradoxical two lines near the end of the poem appeal greatly to my sense of growing old and becoming a little wiser through the dint of hard lived experience in life: "Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help."  As a young teacher, I used to try and help everyone, that is, rush in with a sort of fire-brigade approach to sorting X, Y and Z problems out, but lived experience has taught me to realise: (i) how little I can do in X situation and that it is better to let another person who may be able to do something handle that issue (ii) that it is better to wait and have patience until a more opportune time presents itself with respect to Y situation and (iii) that it may be better to actually do nothing as in that Z situation things have gone far too far for any helpful intervention on anyone's part.  It is in this sense that I understand the pardoxical lines just quoted.

Oscar Wilde, as I have said here recently, remarked about the pure and simple truth that it is rarely pure and never simple.  That is a rather wise statement as it gives the lie to the black and white version of the truth.  His statement, in that sense, is very Taoist.

As we proceed to age in life, let us become more aware of the dangers of an attitude that sees the world through a very narrow lens.  Let us rather try to view the complex world through a prism that breaks light into all the colours of the rainbow.

Namaste, dear friends, until I get the time for an other reflection in these pages, and have a contented time just being the real you!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 77

Poem 77

As it acts in the world, the Tao

is like the bending of a bow.

The top is bent downward;

the bottom is bent up.

It adjusts excess and deficiency

so that there is perfect balance.

It takes from what is too much

and gives to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,

who use force to protect their power,

go against the direction of the Tao.

They take from those who don't have enough

and give to those who have far too much.

The Master can keep giving

because there is no end to her wealth.

She acts without expectation,

succeeds without taking credit,

and doesn't think that she is better

than anyone else.

Commentary

Oscar Wilde in his play The Importance of Being Ernest has one of his characters declare with respect to the pure and simple truth of things that "the truth is rarely pure and never simple."  In a politics that prizes soundbites over nuanced and careful statements, it is hard to know what the truth of any particular situation is.  Soundbites simplify things far too readily and easily and in doing so warp the truth beyond all recognition.  There are at least two sides to every story as the cliche runs.  Finding that elusive balance with respect to life is a task each one of us has to face in the course of our existence.  Understatement and exaggeration are often much abused by those in power to convince their followers.

It takes much discernment, a process of deliberate and even critical reflection upon one's perception of life, to arrive at balance, to arrive as it were at a "viewing point" where one can calmly assess the journey up to that point and at least some of the pathway that lies before us.  I often like to call this "vantage point," my "still point," my "centre of gravity" and even my "centre of equanimity."  The same with any crisis in our lives, or at the time of a big decision, what we most need is the power of discernment a skill much advised by St Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit Order which he founded.

And so let us return to the image in our first stanza above, namely the balanced distribution of force throughout the action of a bow and arrow.  I especially like the last two lines of this first stanza that run:  It takes from what is too much//and gives to what isn't enough.  Indeed, it is hard to see any such balance at work in the world, especially in the financial sectors.

Forcing control really never works out in the end - it may in the immediate future, but never in the long-term future.  Most oppressed peoples do eventually, often after much suffering and blood loss, manage to attain their freedom.  Micro-management in a work situation is often used by very poor managers who like to over-criticise and over-supervise their "underlings" and they proceed as if they have all the answers.  There is much room for the balance of the Tao in most work places.

Again, our third stanza proceeds by way of hyperbole and exaggeration.  There is much paradox in the sentiment that the Master or Mistress "can keep giving" as "there is no end to her wealth."  She is also exceedingly modest and when she succeeds at anything she never wishes to take any credit for her good action.  Again, this strikes the present writer as complete wishful thinking.  Yet, in the context of the whole poem, and, indeed, in the context of the whole book, we are ready to cut the author some slack and say, "Well, yes, I could possibly go along with a little of that, but it is completely contrary to my experience."

In conclusion, then, when we meditate, we should be open to balance and perspective as we proceed. Here's praying that both of these qualities, balance and perspective, will rule in our lives.  Namaste, friends and thanks for reading.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 73

Poem 73

The Tao is always at ease.

It overcomes without competing,

answers without speaking a word,

arrives without being summoned,

accomplishes without a plan.

Its net covers the whole universe.

And though its meshes are wide,

it doesn't let a thing slip through.

Commentary

What we have here is a short lyric praising the Tao.  Once again, commentary is perhaps more than usally superfluous, given its sheer succinctness.  Also, as is the case with most devotional and spiritual treatises, their authors praise the object of that act to the highest degree.  Once more, as in praises of the beloved in all love poetry, exaggeration is used again and again, e.g., "It overcomes without competing" - it is at once paradox as well as sheer exaggeration. "It answers without speaking" and accomplishes all it needs to "without a plan."  Quite obviously, we humans cannot get our head around any of these exaggerations and paradoxes as they contradict our lived experiences of the world.

However, once again, we are confronted with the nature of reality - what is the real world? What is reality in itself? As everything eventually breaks down according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics perhaps contemplating the wisdom that everything on this side of the grave will fade and pass - almost into oblivion when the last people who could possibly remember little us have passed, too - might help us to appreciate the wisdom our Taoist poet is presenting for our contemplation in the above poetic lines.  

It would seem also that our author wants his readers to learn to go with the flow; to realise that, in this world of experience everything does fit in, that there is an underlying pattern to things that is beyond our ken; that nothing is ever lost, that everything forms part of a greater whole; that there is an order despite the seeming disorder.

Namaste. 

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 70

Poem 70

My teachings are easy to understand

and easy to put into practice.

Yet your intellect will never grasp them,

and if you try to practise them, you'll fail.

My teachings are older than the world.

How can you grasp their meaning?

If you want to know me,

look inside your heart.

Commentary

I remember years ago at college a lecturer fulminating against those who attempted to paraphrase poetry, quite simply because it destroyed the magic, the very essence of the poem and the poetic enterprise.  In similar manner, that same lecturer and many other colleagues encouraged us never to ask the question "what does a poem mean?"  They believed that a poem just was what it was or is what it is and that the readers should allow the words to work their magic on them in  their own way and in their own time. Let's use a mathematical concept here in order to further our understanding of what these lecturers were at.  Those of you accustomed to mathematics will know all about functions and the one to one correspondence of elements in the domain and the range.  No element in the domain can be mapped onto two elements in the range.  If we use this mathematical concept we could say that a paraphrase attempts a one to one correspondence between words and their significance, between poem and meaning: in short, it tries to make the poem out to be a mere one dimensional functional thing.  A poem cannot denote like a function denotes; rather it connotes many levels of meaning.  Hence, no simplified paraphrase will ever suffice; no on-to-one correspondence will be adequate.

Likewise, our above spiritual poem defies simplification or oversimplification.  Once again, our Taoist poet uses exaggeration and paradox and he either overstates or understates things thus: He tells us his teachings are easy to understand; that our intellect will never grasp them (two contradictory sentiments); that if we try to practise his teachings of the Master or of the Tao we will fail; that the teachings of either Master or Tao are beyond our human understanding; and that the journey into the Tao begins with diving deep into our own hearts. This latter assertion is pure Augustinianism or pure "interiority" as St Augustine called the meditative or contemplative way of discovering God within our own souls.  He also called that that phenomenon the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit."

However, my advice to any reader of poems is to let the poem be, let it call forth all the associations, personal and otherwise that it sparks in the mind and heart of the reader.  My recommendation is similar for spiritual writings.  All such works are attempting the nigh impossible - to capture the movement of the human heart towards God and the movement of the Divine towards humankind.  Insofar as it is engaged in that task, those spiritual writings, of necessity, employ the use of metaphors, similes, comparisons, parables, stories, allusions and connotations, and all these devices serve to strike resonances of all kinds in the mind and heart of the reader.  In like manner, that is what we have to do with the above rather paradoxical and enigmatic poem.  Read the words in a contemplative way, seeking not to understand them in the head, but rather to accept their multiple and contradictory meanings with the heart.

Namaste, friends. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 69

Poem 69

The generals have a saying:

"Rather than make the first move

it is better to wait and see.

Rather than advance an inch

it is better to retreat a yard."

This is called

going forward without advancing,

pushing back without using weapons.

There is no greater misfortune

than underestimating your enemy.

Underestimating your enemy

means thinking that he is evil.

Thus you destroy your three treasures

and become an enemy yourself.

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go

to the one that knows how to yield.

Commentary

Once again our Taoist poet is pushing us to the edge of incredulity and asking us to jump.  It is so hard to jump into the sheer irrational! There is a link here somewhere with Kierkegaard's "Leap of Faith," though commentators say that he spoke rather of a "Leap to Faith." It would appear that Kierkegaard was appealing to his reader, and to himself, to stop over-thinking, to stop thinking about thinking and getting all tied up in knots - as we are  so prone to getting caught up in philosophical, theological and even spiritual knots, it is surely better to just have faith, that is, take the leap to faith.  All of this is so hard to do as we lesser mortals need to prove so much to ourselves; we need to have the dubious satisfaction of having worked it out on our own; we simply are gripped so often by the childish need to shine up our egos.

Once again our Taoist poet is appealing to the wisdom of generals.  However, I don't know what generals he may be referring to as in the little I have read about war, mostly about World War I and World War II and the generals that were around then very few if none acted like the generals our poet mentions above. Those referred to above would never win any war with such a ridiculous strategy.

And yet, once again as we are becoming adjusted to the perspective of a Taoist take on life, we can glimpse a certain amount of truth and wisdom.  Even if all that's written above contradicts our reasoning we suspect there is a deeper wisdom being adumbrated by the poet.  I have always loved the wise saying: "This, too, will pass."  This piece of wisdom has been attributed to so many that it is hard to be exact about its provenance.  It bears similarity to the phrase "sic transit gloria mundi," or "thus passes the glory of the world," a phrase used at papal enthronement ceremonies from the fifteenth century right up until 1963, namely a warning to the Pope to realize that he too is very mortal indeed. However, these small points of not so useful information can be duly forgotten, but not their meaning or import, namely, that life is all too transient and fleeting.  With this wisdom in the back of our minds we may now read our poem again.  With this perspective or bird's eye view attained, we may swallow what has been presented to us in the above poem.

It is hard to take much of the above seriously with respect to war in the twentieth century, especially the lines:

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go

to the one that knows how to yield.

Hitler and Stalin especially gave the lie to the sentiments expressed here. Think of Neville Chamberlain coming back to London, having swallowed all of Hitler's lies, saying to his nation and to the world from the steps of Downing Street on the 30th of September, 1938: "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

Once again, this poem is pushing us to the edge of the cliff and asking us to jump; asking us to have faith; or to take the leap to faith; asking us to trust in a deeper or higher wisdom despite the evidence of our all too human eyes.  

In the final analysis we are a people of contradictions, and one suspects that Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he opined that we are only fruitful when we are "rich in contradictions.

The rest, my friends, is SILENCE.

NAMASTE!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 43

Poem 43

The gentlest thing in the world

overcomes the hardest thing in the world.

That which has no substance

enters where there is no space.

This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,

performing without actions:

that is the Master's way.

Commentary

Poppy, Easter 2014, Ardgillen Park, Skerries

What we have in the above poem are hard words - ones that contradict our lived experience. I remember an old teacher once remarking to me that there is an ancient animalistic instinct in the herd to tear the weakest member apart limb from limb.  He was remarking on how certain pupils can be bullied because they are perceived as weak.  However, I hasten to add here that this reported anecdote is over thirty years old and that since those times much has been done here in our schools in Ireland to write up good policies and establish equally good anti-bullying practices in our schools and work places.  However, that old teacher's comments still stand.  I suppose it's an ancient instinct that goes back to the survival of the herd in pre-historic times.  And yet, I was more than a little surprised to get hundreds of references on Google to the topic of crushing the weak.  Here is a report that appeared relatively recently in the October 21st 2015 edition of the The Tribune, which is a North Indian Newspaper published in Chandigarh, and the following quotation therefrom is worth reading in connection with our above poem:

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Prime Minister, Haryana Chief Minister, the BJP and RSS of practising “politics of crushing” those who are weak.

“This is an attitude shared by the Prime Minister, Chief Minister of the state and the entire BJP and RSS. The attitude is if somebody is weak, he can be crushed. What you have seen is the result of this attitude,” Gandhi said while visiting the Dalit family that lost two children on Tuesday in an attack allegedly by upper caste members in Sunped village near Ballabhgarh.

Two children were burnt alive and their parents suffered burn injuries allegedly after some upper caste members set their house afire while they were sleeping.

The village today erupted in grief and indignation, with the locals blocking the National Highway 2 in protest. (See CRUSHING THE WEAK )

Tulip, Easter 2014, Ardgillen Park, Skerries

I was horrified also to find that there was a Facebook page dedicated to, I quote "Crushing the Weak for Fun" and which has the following "raison d'etre" appended to it under its "About" tab: "This page is dedicated for (sic) all those who believe that the physically and intellectually superior should crush those weaker or less financially stable than they, as sport."  Undoubtedly, it was set up as a "spoof" or "send up" page (I hope) judging by the only photograph on the totally empty profile page.  The whole thing is devoid of content bar what I have reported here, but that the idea should have occurred to those who attempted to set it up mirrors how sick society can be at its lowest and basest level of behaviour.  

More flowers in Ardgillen Park, Skerries, Easter 2014

However, I will leave it to the reader of these few words to add their own examples of how they have experienced the weak being crushed in their lives.  What I wanted to illustrate here is that, more often than not, deep wisdom can contradict lived experience in the short term, in the actual "now" of experience, in the very horrific and painful occurrence of one tragedy or another.  And yet, we know that there is a greater perspective, a wisdom that needs longer to play out, a reflection on experience that issues in a wisdom that is paid for in pain and tears over a longer stretch of time.  That's why no wisdom tradition worth its salt offers easy answers or instant cures or miracles.  I have referred in these posts before to the habit within well-established religious and spiritual traditions of setting up paradoxes, seeming contradictions and a balancing of opposites in a healthy tension that offers no easy answers but rather provokes deeper questions that search out and shine a certain little light into the darker corners of experience.  It is in this sense and in this sense only that the above Taoist poem must be read.  It is stating the deepest truth in a paradoxical way. Yes, indeed, gentleness is a great strength as witnessed by that great master of non-violence and peace, the wonderful Mahatma Gandhi whose practice of non-violence eventually ended in the freedom of India -  though the people of all traditions had to experience much suffering in a chieving it. He showed that those who brutalised the people who demonstrated non-violence in their stance for justice were in fact brutalising themselves in the long run.  And yet, we know that such methods simply could not have worked against the likes of a Hitler or a Stalin, dictators of such an evil level that it required a necessary violence to bring them down and eventually establish justice.  It is then, with all of these experiences and the necessary reflection on those experiences taken into account that we read the Tao Te Chin or any other spiritual text.  In short, life is as complex as the people who go to make it up.  Let us resist an over-simplification of life.  Let us paint it in its full complexity and proceed by contemplating the paradoxes and the tension of opposites that all deep religious and spiritual texts require us to do.  There simply is no alternative to right living and right practice.  Now, let us practise getting to know our deeper selves through pondering meditatively once again our chosen poem:

The gentlest thing in the world

overcomes the hardest thing in the world.

That which has no substance

enters where there is no space.

This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,

performing without actions:

that is the Master's way.

Namaste, friends.