Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 68

Poem 68

The best athlete

wants his opponent at his best.

The best general

enters the mind of his enemy.

The best businessman

serves the communal good.

The best leader

follows the will of the people.

All of them embody

the virtue of non-competition.

Not that they don't love to compete,

but they do it in the spirit of play.

In this they are like children

and in harmony with the Tao.

Commentary

In the West non-competition would practically never be seen as a virtue. It's hard to see from our experience in the modern Western world where non-competition would fit in at all. Certainly, our professional sports are competitive as careers and a lot of money depend on the success of the various players or teams. Indeed, even the amateur sports people here in the West are nothing if not competitive.  Competition is so entrenched in our psyche that it is hard to see how we can transcend our competitiveness and become non-competitively playful.  Our schools, universities and our businesses all subscribe to the rules of competition as only the best in their field are chosen to partake in the courses  or jobs on offer. And yet, in the context of the existential nature of life, which involves much sorrow as well as joy, we know that everyone around us will pass on as we will, too.  We are often driven, through ill-health, mental breakdown or some other catastrophe that befalls us to question the purpose of our lives, and then we begin to put things in context.  What is the point of being so driven? Surely there are limits to success? Surely there is a limit to the money we can earn? If one wins Wimbledon five times, is it really important to win it a sixth? 

Again, we must remind ourselves that spiritual tracts or texts all attempt to provoke us into deeper thinking.  In that sense, the questions posed, the suggested answers are often necessarily exaggerated.  It is very hard to see how there could have been any progress and advancement historically in any society without there having been a sense of competition and competitiveness around.  While I find some wisdom in the above poem, its sheer impracticality bowls me over.  However, having spent an amount of years studying theology, philosophy and spirituality, I like to be challenged and pushed to the edge.  In a certain impractical but wise way the author of the poem is right - if only we could always take a bird's eye view of things.  If only our perspective were that of the director of the play or film, then we should see where everything fits in.  Likewise as we get older we (hopefully) gain more perspective.  We begin to see that quality and not quantity is what matters in life; the value of something is more important than its price; our time is more important than any extra money we can earn.  It is that perspective pushed to the nth degree that the poet is pushing us towards.  Life pushes us towards wisdom and if we are open and swim with and not against its tide we will be happier and wiser.

Bar the above thoughts, I am singularly lacking anything else to say.  Therefore, I will stop here.

Namaste!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 53

Poem 53

The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper

While farmers lose their land;

when government officials spend money

on weapons instead of cures;

when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible

while the poor have nowhere to turn-

all this is robbery and chaos.

It is not in keeping with the Tao.

Commentary

Books in "Shakespeare and Co," Prague Feb., 2016

We now live in an era where pluralism is the order of the day.  Modern wisdom encourages us to believe that there is no one way to the truth; that there are, in fact, as many ways to the truth as there are cultures and religions in the world; and some would even go so far as to declare that there as many versions of the truth as there are people on the planet.  Indeed, this wisdom is, for the most part, sound, though one instinctively feels that, like all generalisations, it cannot be the whole truth of the matter.  We instinctively allow for exceptions to every rule. I will return to that in a moment.  However, let us explore a pluralist aproach for the moment. 

At times, I like to think that the human quest (or life itself) can be compared to climbing a hill.  Some might want to substitute the image of a mountain, or even that of a cliff in extreme cases, but I don't want to paint life as that hard, though indeed, it can be very much so for those amongst us who are unlucky in the hand of cards life plays them.  However, I quite realise that in purist and essentialist thinking I would be seen as a perspectivist, that is, that I would be looked upon as one who sees one perspective as being just that, one perspective amongst many, and that that one perspective would be just as important as the next.  Again, with our philosopher's hat on, we have to ask ourselves the legitimate question, "What's wrong with that? Such a contention is quite plausible, and even logical, is it not?" Let us draw out the implications of our simile or analogy, therefore.  (With our philosopher's hat on we might call this drawing out of the implications our thought experiment).  Let's say that  there are 5 major highways to the top of the hill (where the hill = Heaven, Nirvana, the Other World, The Afterlife, the Aim or Goal of life, the Good, the Truth and so on).  Let's call the Christian Way, Highway No. 1, The Jewish Way, Highway, No. 2, The Muslim Way, Highway No. 3, The Hindu Way, Highway No. 4 and The Buddhist Way, Highway No. 5. However, there are other highways outside these five great world religions as well like Taoism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Shinto, Baha'i, Jainism and Zoroastrianism.  These make up what we learned at college to be the twelve classical world religions.  We might name all these highways in ascending order according to their individual populations or popularity. Therefore, let's call these the 12 classical highways to heaven.  Now, according to some estimates there are as many as 4, 200 religions in the world.  Most of the 12 religions referred to above have other subdivisions or churches or communions or sects within their own particular designation.  In other words, our analogy quickly gives us a complicated and complex picture. Literally, then, there will be a huge network of roadways and pathways up our imaginary hill with 12 major highways, some fifty or sixty secondary roads, hundreds of tertiary ones and many overgrown pathways as well.

Man and his best friend, Prague, 2016

Religions obviously comprise a communal vision that is shared by many thousands of believers, while if one allowed for individual perspectives on things and further allowed that every individual made his or her own unique way to the top of our imaginary hill, then there would be some 7.5 billion pathways.  What a complex picture that would be.  However, perspectivism that ends in a 7.5 billion maze is nothing short of chaos.  The way of Jack the Ripper or Robert John Maudsley (the real life psychopath or sociopath on whom Hannibal Lecter is based: see HERE) and many other murderous human beings cannot obviously be seen as ways to truth, but rather to utter evil and perdition.  There are surely many thousands of people who possess immoral and amoral motivations and who commit acts that are not acceptable to civilized society.  This raises moral and ethical questions of a higher order than a rude perspectivism or wide relativism might allow.  Some paths lead to nothing but evil and perdition.  Some paths, in other words, are more correct than others, are truer ones, if you like.  Which are, then, the more correct truths and, further, which are, therefore, the less correct ones?  Which is the more correct way up the hill?  After a while all civilization comes up with straighter paths, with more correct maps of the terrain, with more appropriate and more direct ways up the hill, if we may sustain our metaphor. In this sense, then, there must logically be a hierarchy of ways to the truth, and that one way can be a better way there than others.  It is surely the business of ethics and of every religion and science worth their salt to decide on this hierarchy of values.

Distorting mirrors: Kafka Museum, Prague, Feb., 2016

The Tao, or God, or Truth or whatever is the way there to the top of our mythical or symbolic hill, is certainly a principle that gives balance and equanimity to life.  Our Taoist poem above indicates that we all wander astray from the balanced path, from the Still Point of being, from the core principle of life, from our own authentic truth that is recognized in a community setting (thereby obviating the confusion of a 7.5 billion maze-like chaos) and not just egotistically validated.  Becoming authentic human beings necessitates being centered in the core values of a greater community of acceptance and belonging, a community which is centered in the Tao or in a greater priciple.  I remember years ago reading the accounts of the crimes against humanity that came before the international judges at Nuremberg in the wake of WW II and noticing how the judges struggled for a standard of values that needed to be validated by a higher power or authority, namely God or the Tao or Truth or the Source of Value or of Life and so o others.  Why is murder wrong?  Why is it wrong to humilate and degrade others?  Why is it wrong to dehumanise others?  Against what criterion are we judging these crimes?  Who or what is the author of those criteria and vindicator of those against whom crimes are committed?  Is it just society or is there a higher authority.  These are big ethical questions that border on ontological and metaphysical ones.  If all is mere chance, then why bother fighting for justice at all?

W.B. Yeats said in the poem "The Second Coming" that

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...

An over-arching horizon of values is needed, a vision to lead us on, or what the philosopher Charles Taylor refers to as our innate need for a moral framework within which we as individuals and as members of a community can orientate ourselves towards values and goods we hold dear; a framework by which we can judge whether we are moving closer to or further away from those same values.  These values or goods are what he calls "strong evaluators" of the standards we set ourselves in our lives.  These standards or goods become central to the those values by which we culturally, socially and personally identify ourselves.

All that robs us of such values - the heartless and egoic pursuit of worldly success and/or wealth - reduces our sense of authenticity as true selves.  We are thereby no longer centered in the Tao.  We fast become uprooted, or indeed rootless and have lost our true orientation to value which in centered in the Tao.  That is what our Taoist poet is insisting on in our first stanza in poem 53:

The great Way is easy,

yet people prefer the side paths.

Be aware when things are out of balance.

Stay centered within the Tao.

Our translator here is the wonderful writer and classical scholar Stephen Mitchell and he describes what it is like for us and for society to be rudderless and uncentered or unbalanced if you like.  Everything becomes egotistical, superficial and outwardly directed without the balancing nature of the Tao.

Thoughts on the Tao te Ching 39

Poem 39

In harmony with the Tao,
the sky is clear and spacious,
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves,
endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.

The Master views the parts with compassion,
because he understands the whole.
His constant practice is humility.
He doesn't glitter like a jewel
but lets himself be shaped by the Tao,
as rugged and common as stone.

Commentary

Pont des Arts, Paris, June, 2007

There are so many questions that any thinking and reflecting human being can ask about the world in general, about life as we experiences it and about how we might explain that meaningfully to ourselves.  Big and small questions like: Where does the rain come from? Where do I come from?  Is there more to these questions than the how of their physical formation? Why is there pain and suffering in the world? Is there a meaning to life?  Does Truth exist in itself?  What is reality?  Does God exist?  What is life about anyway?  Why does the world exist? Why do I exist? Who am I? What is identity? What is meaning? Why do we pursue meaning? What is love? What is colour? Why is there something rather than nothing?  

As I have just returned from the rather wonderful film Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson and written by Emma Donoghue, my mind is quite full of these types of question outlined above.  The screenplay is based on the book of the same name that Donoghue also wrote. As a result the film is particularly true to the original novel.  The plot is very simple: after having been held captive for a period of five years in a garden shed - called "Room" by the little boy  - a young woman and her five-year-old son finally manage to gain their freedom.  The film follows the attempts by both mother and son to cope with, in turn, their experiences of captivity and freedom. In this film, the imagination of both mother and son helps them cope with the complexity of their situation both inside and outside of the room.  Big questions crop up for the viewer as they undoubtedly do for the characters:  What is the real world? What is reality?  What is the imagination?  Where are the demarcation lines between reality and imagination? Do not imagination and reality overlap anyway? Indeed, what is the real world? Is not what's real for us the world of our perceptions anyway?  In other words, does reality equate solely with our perception of it?  Indeed, all literature, film, music or whatever cultural means we conjure up are essentially ways of creating meaning or structure so that we can survive in the world around us.  The mother (just a grown-up adolescent anyway who was kidnapped five years previously as a teenager) needs to create a world where her son can learn to live within a dreadfully confined space.

Compassion and care for the young: Work experience: TY 2003

Why this seeming wandering away from our given text?  Well, as I reflectively ponder the above Taoist poem, I am struck by the power of the human faculty of perception.  What are the ways we perceive the world? Are there different perspectives we can take?  If I look on my own life as a story I am writing or as a film I am directing then perhaps an author's or a director's viewpoint can be more objective and indeed more creative for me, and consequently I may be less likely to grow depressed and less likely to indulge in narrower and more restricted perceptions of any particular situation I might find myself in? Hence, the power of the following lines of the final stanza of Poem 39.  Let me quote those two powerful lines here:

The Master views the parts with compassion,

because he understands the whole.

There is one take on perception that has always appealed to this author since he first learnt a bit about rudimentary psychology as a trainee teacher, namely Gestalt psychology.  It is really a theory about how the human mind perceives and makes sense of the world. Its central contention is that the mind forms a "global whole" with self-organising tendencies. To my mind Emma Donoghue's book and Lenny Abrahamson's film illustrate this dynamic in the human being to make his/her world meaningful through imagining it as a "global whole" that has inherent self-organising tendencies.  The human mind is hardwired to form a gestalt or total or unified perception of its world as a whole or as an overall or over-arching unit.  This overall or over-arching perception has its own reality independent of its parts.  It is interesting to note that the original phrase used by one of the first Gestalt psychologists, Kurt Koffka is "The whole is other than the sum of its parts" and not its usual misquotation as "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."  There is a particularly important difference and nuance contained in "other than" that is not contained in the idea of "greater than." What Koffka wished to underline or stress is that the whole simply has an independent existence apart from its constituent parts, not that it was greater which is far too mathematical or quantitative a concept.

Meditation, no matter what its provenance in whatever religious or non-religious context, is always about attaining perspective, of retreating from the noisy world of conflicting parts, of centering self in some interior unity or one-ness or whole, of finding a still point of existence, of collecting or recollecting the self, of reassembling or re-member-ing or putting the self back together.  It is essentially about attaining and rejoicing in the view of the whole, in the unity of the totality while having complete compassion for the disjointedness and disunity for the parts.  It is in that disjointedness and disunity that evil, suffering and pain exist.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 22

Stanza 22

If you want to become whole,

let yourself be partial.

If you want to become straight,

let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full,

let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn,

let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything,

give everything up.

The Master, by residing in the Tao,

sets an example for all beings.

Because he doesn't display himself,

people can see his light.

Because he has nothing to prove,

people can trust his words.

Because he doesn't know who he is,

people recognize themselves in him.

Because he has no goad in mind,

everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said,

"If you want to be given everything,

give everything up,"

they weren't using empty phrases.

Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.

My father's headstone in Fingal Cemetery, Balgriffin

Commentary

It is difficult to avoid repetition in these short commentaries because like most poetic and spiritual texts there is much recapitulation in the Tao Te Ching. Once, when the modernist poet T.S. Eliot was asked to comment on his constant repetition of several themes, he replied that while he may have re-iterated those topics he never recorded them in the same way.  There is much wisdom in Eliot's words as one can approach a theme from many different angles and give different perspectives on the one subject.  In that sense, one is never, as such, engaging in a boring repetition.  In fact, you are adding to the theme's nuances and resonances, to its denotations and connotations.

Again, the author engages in making lists of opposites:

• partial vs whole
• crooked vs straight
• empty vs full
• birth vs death
• receiving vs giving
• showing vs hiding
• self-denial vs self-indulgence

and so on.  Once again, it is in the tension of opposites that truth lies.  This is a deep wisdom because there is no such thing as either extreme on its own.  It would seem that most realities contain some of both polarities.  In other words, to cite a simple polarity by way of illustration: how can be know what dark is if we don't know what light is and vice versa?

There are also parallels in the above stanza to certain verses from the New Testament, e.g., the statement by Jesus that " whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?" corresponds to the verse in the above Taoist stanza that runs: "If you want to be reborn, let yourself die."

Identity of the self comes through finding oneself by living in the Tao.

By way of conclusion, once more, perhaps there is a word, a phrase or a line that catches your attention.  Repeat that quotation as a mantra for a short meditation.

NAMASTE

Journal of a Soul 13

Let's get Some Perspective on Things

There is a word I particularly love and that is "perspective."  It is one much loved by philosophers among others.  A phrase I especially love, too, and perhaps, that is because I use it quite often myself, is "It all depends."  Or again, an answer  I always liked from one of my erstwhile lecturers from the mid nineteen seventies to a thorny question:  "Well, the answer is yes and no; yes in so far as ... and no in so far as..."  One could cynically say that this erudite professor was hedging his bets.  On the other hand, one might also say that he was being particularly careful with the use of language.  And, dear reader, care with language is not often the concern of many communicating with us (and hopefully with one another) in today's media.  Oftentimes most of us can be talking at cross purposes as we are not really talking about the same thing at all.

These thoughts come to my mind as I have recently flown home from Italy.  The Italian perspective on life is different to the Irish perspective.  They are, in general, a happier people than we, and that is the result, I believe, mainly of climate.  After all, the strong presence of the sun not alone illumines the landscape, but it also uplifts the soul.  There are so many more colours in Italy under the influence of the sun.  Here in Ireland our colour range is diminished greatly by the weather - when the rain or mists descend, we are reduced to almost a monochrome world.  It is no wonder that we Irish suffer from depression of all kinds as our moods often mirror this sad lack of light on our landscape.

A Place to Meditate - Under a tree in Sant' Andrea

Again, flying high above the earth gives more perspective.  What are huge objects on the ground become mere objects of toy proportions even when a little above the surface of the earth.  In other words a different perspective is immediately forced upon the attention of the alert air traveller.

A younger colleague of mine, Christy Oonan, now sadly passed away, RIP, had an appreciation for perspective. Once when in New York he told the tour group of students he was leading to "look up!" On another occasion, I remember standing with him in a funeral home beside the coffin of his late brother Liam and his saying to me, "there's no time, Tim, to waste in this life.  It's too short.  We must really learn to live it!"  And that Christy did in the last four years of his long and painful illness.  He was travelling places right up until the last.

Or again, the comments of a learned philosopher acquaintance of mine on the tragic demise of his brother-in-law:  "This death has really put things in perspective for me!" And that from a brilliant philosopher who has a wider perspective on things than many of us simpler folk.

The late great Victorian theologian, writer and scholar, John Henry Newman used be fond of saying that to gain perspective we must climb a hill or a mountain so that we can see the overall terrain.  The metaphor is a good one, is it not?  (As humour is another way of gaining perspective, I do believe the words he used were somewhat like"we must mount upon an eminence!"  Now, coupling "mounting" with "eminences" (Victorian speak for heights) is funny, given the sexual connotation of the first word today and the fact that he ended up an "eminence" or cardinal in the Holy Roman Church. I'm not so sure if Newman had a great sense of humour, and certainly he wouldn't appreciate this joke!)

Out of Perspective

When people have problems, it is because they have got things out of perspective.  They, as often as not, are using a magnifying glass rather than a telescope.  I owe this metaphor to Professor Michael Paul Gallagher S.J., now teaching in the Gregorian University, Rome, but then teaching in U.C.D. here in Ireland.  Now this is not to reduce the significance of the problem for the person or client involved.  It is, rather, to give them the chance of gaining another optic on the situation.

Offering perspective to people is never something that should be done early or in the immediate wake of a specific crisis.  It most likely should or will come anyway with the passing of time.  However, therein "lies the rub" as Shakespeare puts it, as often inappropriate timing or prolonged delay can result in failure to deal with the problem or in achieving some important healing for the suffering person.

However, all of us must be taught to avail of the skill of being able to broaden the perspective, zoom out on the problem we are in, get a sort of a bird's eye view, even if it is only from a low-hanging branch of a tree.  Perspective training and practice should be done on a daily basis when we are not enduring huge problems.  In that way, when crises do come, as indeed assuredly they will, we will be so much better equipped to deal with them

As I was flying over the mountains of England and Wales this morning I noticed a lot of snow on the higher peaks and much frost on the lower lying fields.  The sun was just after coming up, somewhere around 6 A.M. and one could sense that the frost on the lower lying plains, roads, lanes and houses would shortly melt away.  All in all, I had the feeling of getting an eagle's eye view if I might strain the previously overworked metaphorical bird. We are such small creatures on such a marvellously wonderful spaceship called Earth, or on a marvellously wonderful organism called Gaia - depending on your preferred metaphor or indeed, perspective.

Perhaps, I'll finish this post with quoting in full one of my all time favourite poems by the Elizabethan poet and conspirator Chidiock Tichborne who paid with his life for conspiring to hatch a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I.  He went to the gallows at the young age of 24.  His words give great perspective on the transience of our little lives.  Meditate on this words, dear friends, and I guarantee you'll gain not a little perspective:

Elegy

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,

My crop of corn is but a field of tares,

And all my good is but vain hope of gain;

The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,

My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,

My youth is spent and yet I am not old,

I saw the world and yet I was not seen;

My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,

And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,

I looked for life and saw it was a shade,

I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,

And now I die, and now I was but made;

My glass is full, and now my glass is run,

And now I live, and now my life is done.