Poems I Journey With 27

Sketch of John Keats

As a young student of English literature at college in the late seventies of the last century when I was 19 or 20, I discovered the wonderful poems of John Keats (1795 – 1821).  There was romance written in the face of the young poet depicted in whatever copies of sketches or paintings that were then available.  To add to the romantic mystery and intrigue was the fact that he had perished from TB, or consumption as it was then called, at just 25 years of age. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for a period of only four years before his untimely death. Coupled with this, his devotion to his craft, to nursing his younger brother Tom and to his sweetheart Fanny Brawne also added to the romanticism that surrounded this great poet.  To add further to his mystique, we were to learn that in 1816, when he was just 21, Keats received his apothecary's licence, a qualification which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon. Further as a qualified doctor he was to know that his death was imminent when he coughed up blood during his sleep – indeed, he recounts this sad fact in one of his letters.  However, before the end of 1816, he announced to his guardian that he was resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

Needless to say, given these brief biographical details one could not be faulted for concluding that John Keats lived with dying and death on a daily basis. The first poem I offer the reader for reflection is his beautiful sonnet “When I have Fears” which is suffused with this ultimate concern, to use the current language of Existential Psychotherapy.

When I Have Fears - Poem by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. 

The second poem I should like to offer the readers of these pages is a less well-known one named “Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis.” 

Sonnet: Written on the Top of Ben Nevis

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, -- just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,
And there is sullen mist, -- even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, -- even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might! 

A pensive John Keats

I love this sonnet for its mysticism and also for its rather “misty” attempt at naming the mystery at the heart of life. In fact, the poem is all about our incapability of grasping this strange mystery, this rather cloudy or unclear life that we live.  The absurdist writer Albert Camus often ended up in despair at life as it was so full of contradictions and unclarity while he was obsessed with finding confirmation and clarity. His book The Myth of Sisyphus is all about the sheer absurdity of the human project which he likened to that of Sisyphus having to eternally roll his great rock up the steep hill of life.   Keats admits in this poem that his own insight into himself, or that his own knowledge of his self is simply shallow to say the least, or foggy or misty to use the imagery of this very poem:

Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,--
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag....

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 56

Poem 56

Those who know don't talk.
Those who talk don't know.

Close your mouth,

block off your senses,

blunt your sharpness,

untie your knots,

soften your glare,

settle your dust.

This is the primal identity.

Be like the Tao.

It can't be approached or withdrawn from,

benefited or harmed,

honored or brought into disgrace.

It gives itself up continually.

That is why it endures.

Commentary

Picture of myself some years back

The line that jumps out at this commentator as he reflectively reads the above poem is the one which runs: "This is the primal identity."  What a wonderfully loaded line.  Using the literal meaning of the word "primal" we could substitute into one meaning of the word the following synonyms for it in this statement, namely "original," "first," "initial" or "early."  A second meaning given for "primal" renders the following synonyms: "basic," "fundamental," "essential," "vital" and "central." Therefore, other meaningful ways of stating our Taoist assertion would be: "This is the real identity," or "This is the true identity" or "This is the essence of identity" or "This is the vital identity."  From the moment of first consciousness we are meaning seekers and meaning makers, and certainly the older we get the more strongly we pursue our rather elusive identity.  It would seem that for us moderns that the search for meaning and the search indeed for ultimate meaning is what often keeps us going in life. The question of personal identity looms large for all of us.  "Who am I?" is a question to which we all seek an answer and one to which we do give an answer insofar as we manage to live any kind of meaningful lives. 

My shadow on Donabate Beach

In the philosophy and practice of psychotherapy, and indeed in that of psychiatry, the question of personal identity is essentially very central.  Listening to the client is an empathetic and affirming way is one sure way of helping him or her to greater self-awareness and greater self-acceptance.  And yet, it is surely a huge question as to what the nature of personal identity is in the first place.  One of the founders of humanistic school of psychotherapy, namely Carl Ransom Rogers stated that the goal of all therapy was the actualization of the Real Self, and this is a very good modern equivalent of what our Taoist poet is getting at in the above poem when he mentions "primal identity."  The task of all meditation practices, and indeed what more secular psychologists and psychotherapists refer to as the practice of mindfulness is in a strong sense one and the same.  They both seek to establish a strong sense of the Real Self or of a real sense of living in the Now of existence. Therefore, the turn to the East - and by this I mean both the actual journeys made by many psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, creative writers and musicians and many religious scholars to India and Tibet, as well as the written accounts of their experiences and newly gained knowledge and so on - in the middle of the twentieth century should not surprise us at all.  So many Westerners of note began living in ashrams and studying and meditating under various gurus and masters.  From this there emerged a wonderful blossoming of esoteric scholarship that flowed into the New Age Movement that in turn spawned an almost universal interest in Self-Development, Pop Psychology and Self-Help.  Therefore, mindfulness is merely a secularized account of the meditation practices used in the various religious denominations of Hinduism and Buddhism.

The author as a young lad aged 7.  Is this actually the me I am now?

The second phrase that jumps off the page at this commentator is "settle your dust."  How many times have we heard the old wise saying that we must let the dust settle on this, that or the other problem?  We have other similar phrases like: "Let's let sleeping dogs lie for a while" or "Let's sleep on this problem for a while" or "Don't make important decisions when you are upset in any way!" or "Choose your battles carefully!"  These phrases or sayings are all getting at the same wise advice, namely not to be reactor to this or that situation.  The easiest thing for anyone to do is to "shoot from the hip" as another phrase puts it.  Still another saying offers this piece of wisdom: "Act in haste, repent at leisure!" Meditation is all about slowing down and taking our time, of getting centered in the "Now" of being, of achieving a point of equanimity we may call the Still Point of life, of stilling the body, of becoming aware of what it's really like to inhabit or to live in this body, or even more correctly still, what it's like to be this body here in the now of existence.  I have always loved the statement, also a very wise one, that our minds tend to either live in the past (regrets and remorse and sad memories and so on) or in the future (expectations, ambitions, anxieties and/or fears and so on) while our bodies most definitely live in the present.  That, indeed, is why all meditation or mindfulness practices begin with stilling the body, of becoming aware of the body at first, then becoming aware of our feelings and just letting them go, then becoming aware of our thoughts and letting them so and so on and on, and deeper and deeper into the stillness of the "Real Self" or what our Taoist poet calls the "Primal Self."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 55

Stephen Mitchell's translation of Poem 55 runs as follows:

He who is in harmony with the Tao

is like a newborn child.

Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,

but its grip is powerful.

It doesn't know about the union

of male and female,

yet its penis can stand erect,

so intense is its vital power.

It can scream its head off all day,

yet it never becomes hoarse,

so complete is its harmony.

The Master's power is like this.

He lets all things come and go

effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results;

thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed;

thus his spirit never grows old.

The city of Prague from the castle walls

 Derek Lin's translation of the same poem runs thus:

Those who hold an abundance of virtue

Are similar to newborn infants

Poisonous insects do not sting them

Wild beasts do not claw them

Birds of prey do not attack them

Their bones are weak, tendons are soft

But their grasp is firm

They do not know of sexual union but can manifest arousal

Due to the optimum of essence

They can cry the whole day and yet not be hoarse

Due to the optimum of harmony

Knowing harmony is said to be constancy

Knowing constancy is said to be clarity

Excessive vitality is said to be inauspicious

Mind overusing energy is said to be aggressive

Things become strong and then grow old

This is called contrary to the Tao

That which is contrary to the Tao will soon perish.

Swan on the river Vltava, Prague, Feb 2016

Commentary

I have often heard it said that as we go further on our path in life in terms of our own personal development that we have to unlearn much of what we have learnt during our early socialisation as children and many of our inculturated opinions so as to eventually reach some level of self-knowledge or individuation.  What I am referring to here are crazy ingrained opinions like "children must be seen not heard," "boys never cry," "men must be strong," "women must be ladylike," "If I haven't a beautiful body I'm not really important," "not to have money is a supreme failure in life," "bad exam results mean failure" and a host of other opinions which can fester into downright prejudices against and hatred of self and others.  And the worst thing about all these ingrained opinions and prejudices is that for a long enough period of our growing as people we are blithely unaware of them.  However, if we are open at all to life, we won't be long about learning lessons in awareness.  After all, life does have a habit of slapping us in the face every now and then as if to say in no uncertain terms: "Wake up! Can't you see what life is doing to you? Do you really think all those things you have gathered around you in life are going to last?  Do you think you can take them to the grave with you? Do you think your thoughts are the only right thoughts? How much of you is ego? Is the price you are paying for all those ego trips really worth it?  Where lies your heart or your soul? Do you not realise that you too will pass as will everything in this world?

Charles Bridge, Prague, February 2016

Solid things after a while begin to seem less solid as we grow older.  Things begin to lose their gloss and sparkle as our body ages.  And yet, are there not things of the soul, goods of the spirit?  Traditional wisdom teaches us that there are.  Things of the soul or goods of the spirit or spiritual values are perhaps, our Taoist poet tells us, whatever is unconsciously pure and natural just like a newly born baby that is totally in harmony with itself.  It is in that natural state of being that approximates, I'd imagine, to what the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi means by "flow," that is the total absorption of the person in what the person is doing, an actualised being in the now. For an article on the concept of flow see HERE.

Montbretia flowers in my garden, Summer 2007

The natural power of life is seen in the potential power that the infant naturally possesses. In the above poem the author refers to the classic infant grasp reflex.  I have always loved putting my little finger into a young baby's open palm and them to feel that wonderful natural grasp - that wonderful infant tenacity of life, that natural thrust there is in every newborn life to cling on and to survive.  In a sense, what the Tao Te Ching is about, as is the case with all true religions and spiritualities, is finding that natural current of life, tapping into life's Still Point, discovering the Source of our natural power as it were.  As we grow up and become inculturated into whatever society we are born into, we learn to put on the ways of the world; to learn off all the various roles we have to play in life if we are to survive - in other words, we learn to put the ego firmly in the driving seat or into the saddle.  That is part of our survival skills and is very important to do if we are to get on in life.

Montbretia, my garden, Summer, 2007

However, problems emerge when we become besotted with success; when we begin to become enthralled by our own ego; when we begin to believe in the literalness of our own constructed identities; when we begin to believe that any single one or even a combination of some of the masks we are forced to wear is the real us. These obsessive and compulsive parts of ourselves which almost suffocate by times the real us are essentially what Buddhism means by the vices of clinging to and living in dependence upon the apparently real world. Let me liken the real or total self to a diamond with a multitude of faces.  Every face is a face of the diamond and all the faces together conspire to reveal the unique mystery of each individual self.  Spirituality helps us to transcend over-identification with any one face of the diamond, with any one mask of our many workaday masks.  Its the totality of faces/masks/identities and the ability to move with ease from one to another as required and then to deepen our pursuit of the real self through going into the heart or depths of the diamond through meditation and prayer.  There we will encounter the real if elusive self. When one starts out on this spiritual quest for the real self, the "follower of the way" or the "disciple" is drawn into a magical web of discovery that transcends even the self.  However, this writer has only touched on the outer perimeters of this growing reality.  Readers desiring deeper or higher spiritual truths will have to search elsewhere for such insights, into the writings of more powerful and enriching spiritual teachers, those rare souls who have travelled further on the path to self-awareness, awareness of others and an awareness of the abiding presence of the Other, some of us, including this writer, dare call God.

Ireland's Eye from Baldoyle, Summer 2006

Our Taoist author sees the naturalness of the little child, how at-one the little creature is in itself; how united it is in body and soul; how unsplit mind and body are in this natural new little being.  The world is about to work its spell on the little infant and socialise it in its ways and mostly in the ways of the ego and in the ways of its obsessions of humanity.  The new human being will begin to learn the lessons of separation, of how to separate body from mind; body from soul, if you prefer and then be taught the tough lessons of life when the mind ignores the body to the sore cost of both.  Then all the psychologies and all the spiritual paths will kick in for the person who desires to be whole again.

The little baby boy, according to our Taoist writer, experiences arousal in the erection of its manhood and yet it is a sexually unaware arousal insofar as it only experiences the power of life in its member and not the thrust to penetrate its feminine counterpart.  This natural power is felt in his little body, akin, I should imagine, to the generative and receptive powers felt in the female infant's little womb. All this is natural and unselfconsciously natural.

Cycle Path, Baldoyle, 2006

The Tao works by flowing through all the good and natural things of life.  As an erstwhile theologian, I can see parallels here with what classical Catholic Theology referred to as the Natural Law which was concerned with morality mostly and how moral laws can be deduced by human reason by observing nature - in other words, all human values are there already in nature and have only to be deduced or discerned therefrom through the faculty of reasoning. However, that's a shallow enough parallel, but a parallel nonetheless.  Note the Catholic concept would not embrace the vitality associated with either a Pagan or New Age concept of what is natural.

Another traditional Eastern analogy that the writer of this blog likes is that of how the wise person is not like a tree in the storm which can be fractured, broken, even uprooted if the wind is strong enough, but rather like a blade of grass which can bend in the wind and consequently not be harmed.  This is the sense that the above Taoist writer is getting at above when he says in the second stanza that the Master "lets all things come and go," or as I've already said above he learns to "go with the flow."

Finally, in this Holy Week as we fast approach Easter Sunday, read the above verses reflectively again and let their words have an effect on your soul.  Happy reading and peaceful meditating, friends.  Namaste!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 23

Stanza 23

Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.

If you open yourself to the Tao,
you are at one with the Tao
and you can embody it completely.
If you open yourself to insight,
you are at one with insight
and you can use it completely.
If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

The good old worker bee,  I took this photograph in 2010

Commentary

The above poem is essentially about the twin skills of openness and listening.  Both these skills lie at the heart of the practice of meditation.  When we sit to meditate we firstly relax our bodies and de-stress it bit by bit.  Then we concentrate on the rhythm of our breath as it oxygenates our body and expels carbon dioxide through our nostrils - that basic process physiologists and biologists call respiration.  In meditation circles we call the attention to our respiratory apparatus simply "the act of returning to or paying close attention to the breath." This simple act is one of sheer receptivity to the breath that keeps our very body alive in this moment in time.  In holistic practices like that of Focusing, invented by Dr. Eugene Gendlin the person engaged in the process focuses on the "felt sense" of some problem,  Essentially focusing like mindfulness uses those skills used for thousands of years by the different masters and practitioners of meditation in the various religious traditions.  

The sand on Donabate Beach, 2013

In focusing one is literally listening to how we hold certain feelings in our bodies.  I would argue that meditators actually do that very naturally anyway.  It is also my contention that mindfulness is secular meditation and that modern authors who peddle their wares in the form of books, CDs and DVDs on mindfulness stole the clothes of the traditional meditators, but that is a story for a different post than this one.

Another major theme in the above poem is that of self-expression.  Such expression can be done in many creative ways: in art of all kinds, in literature, in poems, in music, in dance, in mime and in sculpture and architecture and so on.  Then, once one has expressed how one feels, the author recommends that we learn to keep quiet.  This is good wisdom as we must for sure express all our emotions, especially negative ones as unexpressed feelings will eat and gnaw away at us forever until they are given expression through one medium or another,  However, there is nothing worst than someone who continually repeats the same old moan and never has the courage to do anything about it.  Such is not what our Taoist writer has in mind.  He (or she) sees the expression of feelings as being therapeutic once expressed.  In this way, the person gets whatever is weighing them down or even lifting them up off their minds.

The second stanza sings the praises of openness which it also sees as essentially healing and therapeutic.  Such openness allows us to feel empathy with our inner self, with others and indeed with the source of all life which some of us dare call God.  Interestingly, the poet recommends that we be open both to negative and positive experiences: On the one hand we can be open to the positive experience of insight and by being so open we become one with it.  On the other hand, we can be open to the negative experience of loss and in so doing becoming one with loss.  Such an openness paradoxically helps us accept that loss and learn to live with it from day to day.  In short, such openness allows the human spirit to heal.

The author invites us in essence to open ourselves to the Tao and in so doing we open ourselves to the healing powers of the universe.  The final stanza works like a chorus and is worth repeating as it is really a summary of the whole poem:

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

In conclusion, some word or phrase or line may suggest itself as a matra for meditation or as a thought to inspire a short period of contemplation.  I wish the reader of these few words peace and happiness in the now of experience.  Namaste, friends!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 13

Poem 13

Success is as dangerous as failure.

Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?

Whether you go up the ladder or down it,

your position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground,

you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?

Hope and fear are both phantoms

that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don't see the self as self,

what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things.

Reflections

These poems from the Tao Te Ching are designed to make the reader or indeed listener (as in those ancient times when these lines were written oral cultures abounded, as only the very rich or people of status were able to read) think; to snap the person into a state of wakefulness or awareness.  Koans, which can be in the form of a story, a question, a statement or even a dialogue, were traditionally used in Zen Buddhism to provoke the disciple into a deeper awareness or a keener sense of wakefulness than heretofore.  In this way, the student's progress in Zen practice was tested. To my mind, the poems in the Tao Te Ching share in that purpose, namely to test and to deepen the student's progress in wisdom. The above poem is quite koanic (if this word exists) or koan-like  in this regard. 

Objectivity

All meditative practices allow us to withdraw a considerable distance from our own ego or from our obsession with self, from our egocentricity.  If we can arrive at this stage of personal or spiritual development, we have become more objective about ourselves and are less likely on the one hand to swell up with pride when we are praised by another or on the other hand retreat in failure into gloomy despair when criticized.   In that sense we can meet success and failure in our stride and not be too overcome in either an overly positive or overly negative sense.  Another way of stating these objective sentiments would be by making the paradoxical or koanic statement that "success is a dangerous as failure."  Once again, it's a question of not clinging onto or obsessively desiring those allurements or charms of the ego.  In that sense, success can be dangerous to our discovering real happiness, which lies in discovering the real or true self that is hidden behind all the empty promises of our ego-ridden society.  Failure can be crippling to the ego and reduce it to a state of not being able to do this or that.  We want to keep the ego in a healthy place in our psyche, and we certainly don't want to cripple it.  In fact, when we learn to give it its proper place in the psyche, balanced well astride the super-ego and id, then we can function confidently in life.  We have to learn to be ruthlessly objective and never allow our failures to have any negative effect on our real and true selves.  This takes some work in both personal development and on-going meditative practice to achieve. 

Our Taoist poet tells us also that "hope can be as hollow as fear."  In other words, the poet is telling us that unfounded fear or anxiety can reduce a person to an ineffective and passive on-looker rather than an active participant in society.  Unfounded hope can be mere wishful thinking and lead us into despair.   

Stanza three is pure koan and will only yield up a little of its wisdom after meditating upon it many times.  Therefore, I am offering no explanation here, or attempted explanation even, as I have to humbly, like Socrates, admit my ignorance.  What I will do is meditate and pray on it and leave it to the great Unconscious (or God, or Meaningfulness, or the spirit of life or whatever you wish to call it) to offer up some suggestive answer.

It is also my opinion that the Taoist poet uses the "self" in two differing ways in this poem. Stanza three seems to suggest that when we go beyond the self, or beyond being preoccupied or even concerned with self that it is only then that we have nothing to fear.  Stanza four recommends, in a rather contradictory sense, that we must see all things in the world from the perspective of the self that it is only then that we can really love everything and everyone. This last stanza, then, is in the tradition of Jesus' famous command to his disciples to love their neighbour as themselves.

John Keats: 1795 - 1821

However, as we all know by now, it is in the tradition of Taoist wisdom, as it is in that of Zen Buddhism, to hold the two opposites in a polar tension or union.  Therefore, as readers of this beautiful Taoist poem, we are happy to remain in a state of what the famous ill-fated wonderful Romantic poet John Keats called "negative capability," a term he coined himself for the learnt ability in the human mind to balance opposites and hold them thus "without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." (see Negative Capability)

Conclusion:

One again, by way of conclusion, I invite the reader to read reflectively through the above Taoist lines and let a word or phrase spark a mantra for a five or ten minute meditation.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 10

Can you coax your mind from its wandering

and keep to the original oneness?

Can you let your body become

supple as a newborn child's?

Can you cleanse your inner vision

until you see nothing but light?

Can you love people and lead them

without imposing your will?

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,

having without possessing,

acting with no expectations,

leading and not trying to control:

This is the supreme virtue.

Commentary/Reflections

One of the central problems experienced by the neophyte meditator is that of all the mental distractions that race through the human mind when one attempts to still it.  This is what the poet means above by his term "the wandering mind." In that field of thought called philosophy of mind, there is an interesting question: Do our thoughts think us or do we think our thoughts?  That question never really engaged me early in my life even though I had heard it discussed in that area of philosophy concerned with the nature of the mind. However, it did hit me very strongly and existentially when I had a major breakdown, or indeed a break-through really, at the age of forty - that is, at the time of the typical midlife crisis brought to a point where Yeats says, "the centre cannot hold."  It was then that I experienced my mind being literally hijacked by my thoughts.  The centre could not hold whatsoever: the hub of control had totally disintegrated and the spokes of identity had shattered and scattered into chaos.  Thoughts ran riot in my mind and there was no controlling them.  The nerve-centre of my identity, or if you like, the core of my self had undergone a meltdown.  

Good mental health essentially means that the person is on the way to establishing an identity that is individuated (Jung), integrated (Storr) or actualized (Maslow et al).  In other words the person is as fully their real or true self as is possible: metaphorically we are a series of spokes (character qualities and traits) centred around a hub called the "Real Self" rotating on a unique path. None of us probably ever reaches the acme point in that process. Spiritually, the parallel term in Eastern philosophy would be "the enlightened mind."  The poem above is as deep as can be and has many layers of meaning as the language struggles to express the spiritual quest of life. Quieting or stilling the mind is a wonderful metaphor for getting under the chaos that our unstilled mind can be.  Spiritual writers speak about the task of achieving a Still Point below that agitated surface of existence.  In the above poem, this task is expressed in the words "original oneness."  Each couplet is another way of expressing the search for this elusive Still Point.

If a true pilgrim of the way or a faithful disciple of enlightenment achieves a position of leadership s/he will be able to "love people and lead them without imposing their will."  In other words, their ego will be firmly under control and integrated into their personality. They will have no need for petty jealousies, for "getting their pound of flesh," for settling old scores, for one-up-man-ship of any kind or for any sort of micro-management.  They will be visionary leaders able to bring their staff with them while allowing everyone the freedom to grow and to succeed on their own terms without interference.  Stepping back and not wishing to control things is central to good spiritual and indeed psychological development. We all learn quite quickly that the only people we can change are ourselves, never ever anyone else.  Some of us only learn that lesson painfully and the ego-ridden person makes that mistake all too often. And so, in light of these comments, the following lines from the above poem are worth repeating and reflecting on here:

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?

Another way of saying this is that the person further on the road to enlightenment is getting ever more detached from the non-essential things of life; is getting nearer to that elusive Still Point of being; that primordial state of being our Taoist poem calls "the original oneness."

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 5

Poem 5

The Tao doesn't take sides;

it gives birth to both good and evil.

The Master doesn't take sides;

She welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:

it is empty yet infinitely capable.

The more you use it, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the centre.

Commentary

Our systems of justice and indeed our systems of government in the West are adversarial and taking sides comes so naturally to us.  Some few minutes ago I listened to politicians from both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland arguing as to whether the IRA had really "left the stage" or not in that little corner of life on this wonderful, if at times so wounded, planet, often "knee-high in blood" because of one conflict or another.  One could not but indulge in a fleeting moment of despair as one remembered all the wanton bloodshed of some thirty years of Troubles that bedevilled this little island in my own lifetime.  And so when one reads that the Tao does not take sides, one is brought into a spiritual world of promise and of hope, of aspiration and inspiration, and one could, in times of desperation, entertain another fleeting thought as to how unrealistic our spiritual desires may be.

And yet, we all entertain the hopes of a better life, of justice and peace being possible if we really get our act together as human beings.  We write much about these ideals and many brave numbers of us have given their lives for the dream of peace which is, in fact, the work of justice.  And so we have many volunteers who give the sweat of their brow and often their very life's blood for the ideals of the betterment of other human beings. Indeed, some of our number are even willing to spend our energy and indeed our lives for the betterment of planet earth and its very fauna and flora.  Again, spiritually this is understandable as spirituality may be defined as the inherent native desire within every human being to engage in a tripartite connection, i.e., to connect with (i) the self, (ii) others and (iii) the very source of life, some of us dare call God.  In embracing this spiritual desire to connect, one realises that one is but an insignificant, but very conscious, speck with infinite desires and hopes among some 7.5 billion other such conscious specks with equally infinite desires to know and to connect. 

And so our spiritual desire to connect pushes us to what the Tao calls a position of "not taking sides."  This spiritual stance is no easy one to achieve and only some of us will attain that.  Indeed, we all know how hard it is to get rid of our native prejudices which obviously prevent the achievement of such a spiritual state.  However, many of us realise that the attainment of that state of consciousness is the ideal.  Another way of putting this, I suppose, would be to say that such a state of consciousness is the state of enlightenment or even sainthood.

Once again the Tao welcomes both "saints and sinners," but unlike the Bible of the Abrahamic religions, it does not call for repentance, though one assumes that there is an unwritten call to right action assumed by the text.

Once again, like all good poetry, these lines are replete with images and in the second stanza of this poem, the author uses the image of the bellows to represent how the Tao works in the world in an invisible but very capable way.  In this sense it fans the fires of life, inspiration, exhortation and aspiration in all of our lives.

Yet again, the poem warns us that all our talking and writing about the Tau is often so much hot air as really it is only something we can apprehend and appreciate by the route of meditation in action and contemplation of human experience.  Language once again is seen as such a poor tool to express the mystery.

Finally, a lot of spiritual practices emphasise the fact that it is important for the meditator to centre themselves and to find and hold onto that centre.  In short, the Tao may be found by centering ourselves.  To misquote our national poet, William Butler Yeats, it is only when we learn to meditate that we will find that the "centre will hold."

Namaste, friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 2

Tao Te Ching

Poem 2

When people see some things as beautiful,

other things become ugly.

When people see some things as good,

other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low depend on each other.

Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master

acts without doing anything

and teaches without saying anything.

Things arise and she lets them come;

things disappear and she lets them go.

She has but she does not possess,

acts but does not expect.

When her work is done she forgets it.

That is why it lasts forever.

Reflections

Paradoxes have long been a means of expressing an abstract thought or feeling or some experience that goes beyond the ordinary. A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true (or, indeed false at the same time). Poetry is, by its very nature, replete with paradoxes. The most memorable paradox that we learnt at school way back in the early 1970s was one from the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth: "The child is father of the man," a line from a short lyric entitled "My Heart Leaps up When I Behold," a poem from 1802 that we all had to learn off by heart.  The line makes no literal sense obviously, but metaphorically it means much, as the child will eventually grow into a man who will in turn father a child.  So, therefore, humankind stretches language as far as it will go to get at a deeper understanding and meaning.  To remain at a literal level is to be two-dimensional and superficial.

Polarities

Our poem above is replete with polarities.  In philosophy polarities are called dualisms, dichotomies or binaries.  In poetry/literature polarities are often referred to as opposites (Coleridge spoke a lot about this dynamism) and even antinomies (a word much favoured by our own national poet William Butler Yeats).  Anyway, it really does not matter what name you call polarities by, because they all amount to the same thing, viz., pairs of opposing concepts.  Our stanza above maintains that each side of a polarity requires the other.  These polarities shoot through much literature of either a religious or spiritual nature and even of none.  A partial list of such polarities would be:

• Light vs Dark
• Night vs Day
• Clear vs Opaque
• Heavy vs Light
• Tall vs Short
• Good vs Bad
• Soft vs Hard
• Rigid vs Loose

and so on and so forth - you can add your own examples to this list.  It would seem that like the positive and negative poles of a magnet or of a spherical body like the earth itself, it would seem that one pole cannot exist without the other.  In like manner, the great psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung spoke about there being a Shadow aspect to every Self.  He argued that it was by incorporating the shadow aspect of the Self that we become whole.

The above poem pushes these polarities even further and stretches language to the very  breaking point of incomprehensibility.  The poet tells us that the Master "acts without doing anything" and that he the Master is actually a "she" when we would be expecting a "he." Obviously Male vs Female would be another example of a polarity.  Bisexuality and androgyny obviously both share in this polarity. Indeed, the Master/Mistress can teach without saying anything.  It's often in silence that we learn much.  I love the healthy tension set up in the following polarity in stanza 3 above: "She has but she does not possess."  This is a wonderful spiritual insight and is really, once again, the second noble truth that dukkha or suffering is caused by our craving of or clinging to our baser and even higher desires.  How often do our possessions possess us?  It is surely possible to own something without being "possessed" by it? We could even be possessed by our relationships as in over-dependence on another.  Again the Master/Mistress is not possessed by her work as "When her work is done, she forgets it."

Again, there is much about "living in the now," that classic statement, that is a plank underpinning every spiritual tradition worth its salt hinted at and implied in the above poem. There is also in these lines a sense of the cyclic nature of things - that the cycle of life endures and perdures and goes on forever.  Maybe that is the sense of eternity hinted at here.  

Conclusion: One again, I invite you to read the above poem and meditate on it for 5 or 10 minutes.

Namaste, friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 1

Writing any kind of spiritual diary is a very difficult task as one finds one begins to to exhaust the well pretty quickly as it were, and, indeed, the worst results of that is the dreadful experience of repeating oneself to such an extent that one begins to doubt whether one has really progressed any further along the road to spiritual enlightenment.  That is the way I feel about this spiritual journal in the shape of this particular blog. I have often found, that in such periods of aridity and emptiness it is better to go to another well to slake one's spiritual thirst.  Over the next several posts, I am going to visit Lao Tzu's well by way of commentary on that wonderful spiritual work attributed to his hand, namely the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu, according to some sources, was a philosopher and poet and founder of the philosophical school called Taoism and author of the spiritual/mystical book just quoted above, and on which I'll attempt to comment here.  Some scholars say that he lived around the 6th century BCE and was a contemporary of Confucius while others reckon that he existed some time during the Warring States period of the 5th or 4th centuries BCE.  Others still, argue that he was a purely legendary figure and that, like the works of other spiritual traditions, there may have been more than just one person involved in the composition of the Tao Te Ching.  While a little bit of background information is always good for us, there is really no need to know much about the author of this spiritual classic as its riches lie purely in the text and its transformative spiritual power on its meditative reader.  Therefore, let us turn now to a meditation on the text itself.

A depiction of Lao Tzu

For my purposes here, I shall be commenting on the following version of the text: Tao Te Ching: An Illustrated Journey, translated by Stephen Mitchell, London: Francis Lincoln Ltd., 1999.

Poem 1:

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realise the mystery.

Caught in the desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestation

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding. 

If we think about it, even a little, it is very hard to determine what is actually real. What is the real? What is reality?  These are deep philosophical questions that have been dealt with by great philosophical minds over the long history of philosophy.  From Plato's discussion of this question in his story of The Cave in his book The Republic right down through the centuries, through the works of many philosophers, most especially that of René Descartes on the cusp of the modernist period, right down to the recent film The Matrix (1999) where the character Morpheus raises this question with another character named Neo, the burning issue of what reality actually is has besotted us as human beings and obviously still does. Being a spiritual being, as well as a material one, or being a material-spiritual reality and often being quite troubled as to the interrelationship between both, our journey through life is often painful and not a little interesting, intriguing and wonderful at times in consequence.

Our life journey is a meaning-making one, a project in which we are called upon to create our own selves, our very own identity or indeed, often our own reality.  It is up to each one of us to fashion our own meaningful self from a world of myriads of often mind-blowingly different choices. And that is no easy task.  To say the least, it is a life-long undertaking.

And so, we might do worse than turn to some of the spiritual classics like the Tao Te Ching.  the first stanza quoted above resonates with a Buddhist-like sensibility.  What is real may indeed be somewhat nebulous and intangible, always somewhat beyond us and yet somehow we are attracted by its mysterious magnetic pull.  Somehow, the truth or the tao cannot be caught - it is like the wind, in that regard. It certainly cannot be caught in words.  Anyone who has ever attempted to explain what his heart desires is often stuck for words.  In the Jewish tradition, the name of God is so revered that it cannot be spoken aloud and even today some Jews write G-d or G!d when they have to inscribe or write his sacred name.  This is a way of stating that whatever absolute "meaning," "truth" or "reality" may be, it is always unutterable and ineffable and certainly cannot be captured in words. This, I feel, is the sense of the first two lines in our first stanza above, and indeed that of the entire stanza.

I am also struck by the power of the second stanza which also has resonances with Biblical texts as the capacity to name a thing was always traditionally seen as being very much an act of creativity and creation.  To name is to exercise power and control over others and over things.

The third stanza is very Buddhist in its meaning and is basically the second noble truth of Buddhism, namely that our cravings and desires cause us to transform our pains into deep suffering.  We can so easily get so caught up in our weaker and baser desires whether they be material or emotional or ego-based.  When we free ourselves from our desires and the all-too-easy clinging to the crutches of material or emotional supports, this stanza promises us more than a mere taste of mystery.

The fourth stanza brings us to the much disputed area of the relationship between material things "out there," as it were, "in the world" and our perceptions of those things.  The reader of these words will think of the many philosophers who were concerned with these questions over the past two and a half thousand years - Locke, Hume and Berekeley et al to name several.  Reality exists perhaps somewhere between "the world out there" and my experience or perception of it "in here.".  And yet, all of this is so mysterious and wonderful really as it defies our very thinking powers, and any statement of it seems to fall so far short of what we would wish to express.  However, some wonder is the very heart of spirituality really, is it not.  After all, they used to say that philosophy begins in wonder (Socrates said this, according to Plato in Theaethetus).  Surely, the same may be said of spirituality, that it, too, begins in wonder at the mystery of things as we encounter them.

Like all traditions, the Tao Te Ching suggests that much wisdom begins in darkness, and even in "the darkness within darkness."  Resonances here would be the "dark night of the soul" as found within the Roman Catholic Spiritual tradition of St John of the cross.  A scriptural text that comes to mind here, as I finish these reflections, is that from St Paul that here on earth "we see through a glass darkly."(1 Cor 13:12)

Exercise: Now that you have read the above words from the Tao Te Ching you could do worse than meditating upon them for five minutes or so as a way of centering yourself.

Namaste.