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 76

Poem 76

Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

Commentary

One cannot but love metaphors as they resonate with many levels of meaning, and depending on either the time of day or the mood the reader is in they offer up differing insights.  Rigidity versus flexibility are wonderful metaphors for ways of being in the world. As such they have much to teach us.  Let's take the ego by way of example by looking at the person who believes he or she knows the one way or the correct way to do something.  To be a "know all" can lead very quickly to our downfall as we will quickly learn from lived experience.  It is often better to declare our ignorance before we start to solve a problem because that way we are open to all lines of inquiry, and we shut out no avenue of exploration no matter how improbable that may seem at first sight.  This is the long known approach of the great Socrates. First, he says, the inquirer must always declare his ignorance and proceed in logical steps from there.  So flexibility in thought is much to be advised.

Likewise, flexibility in feelings is also much to be desired.   To stubbornly and inflexibly follow one path just because we dislike or even hate another person and deep down know we are wrong is another form of ignorance.

Likewise, look at the way some leaders function. Good leaders learn to motivate others through being flexible in their approach to leading their staff rather than rigid.  Being rigid often sets us up for defeat.  Did you ever work with someone who was a control freak, who couldn't let go or who could not delegate?  I worked with one such person once and he ended up working himself into an early grave.  I still work with a few control freaks.  They seek in vain to micro-manage things. Unfortunately,  or rather, very fortunately, the world simply does not work like that.  The forces of life work so much differently, and they don't spend too long teaching us the error of our ways. That's how people get all those psychosomatic illnesses from peptic ulcers right across the board to high blood pressure, nervous breakdowns, panic attacks and actual heart attacks.

How many times have we heard the age-old advice that we must learn to "go with the flow"? Flow theory was popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihali who really discovered nothing new. Rather, he was open enough to recognise this process, give it a name and describe it in detail and then popularise it.  Here is a Ted Talk he has given on this interesting theory if you are interested: TED TALK.  

Thankfully, I learned early in my teaching career just how much I can control, when to ask for help, when to take action according to how serious something is.  One has to learn to become open to observation, to learn to read the signs, pick up the clues and interpret them properly.  That, of course, can only come with experience.  There is a Zen recommendation that it is better to be flexible like the grass rather than rigid like a tree in the wind.  Indeed, this is very old wisdom and even Aesop had a fable about it.  An old proverb runs that it is "better to bend than break," or even that "reeds survive the wind while mighty oaks do fall." Obviously, the same wisdom is found in the above short poem.

So softness is often preferable to hardness, gentleness to strength, flexibility to rigidity if we are to survive our journey through life.

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 64

Poem 64

What is rooted is easy to nourish.

What is recent is easy to correct.

What is brittle is easy to break.

What is small is easy to scatter.

Prevent trouble before it arises.

Put things in order before they exist.

The giant pine tree

grows from a tiny sprout.

The journey of a thousand miles

starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.

Trying to grasp things, you lose them.

Forcing a project to completion,

you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action

by letting things take their course.

He remains as calm

at the end as at the beginning.

He has nothing,

thus has nothing to lose.

What he desires is non-desire;

what he learns is to unlearn.

He simply reminds people

of who they have always been.

He cares about nothing but the Tao.

Thus he can care for all things.

Commentary

Modern building, Milan, Easter, 2016

At the risk of boring the reader let me repeat what I have said here in this sequence of posts many times.  One concept I have underlined before is that of the psychological concept of flow as proposed by the Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi.  Flow is a central concept in positive psychology, and it is also known as the zone.  Children can far more readily enter this zone than we adults because they are closer to their hearts and to their intuition that we adults are.  We adults are far more likely to be locked in the world of logic and intellect.  Flow or the zone is the mental state or that state of being where the person doing some action or activity is fully immersed in his/her experience of the moment, and is fully energized and well focused on the task at hand.  Flow is characterized by complete absorption in what is being experienced.  

In a sense, what the above amounts to is an appreciation for the quality of living and being in the now of experience, of going with the natural flow of life, by doing everything that is not using and abusing energy by pushing against its natural flow.  It is in this sense that we read our first stanza above:

What is rooted is easy to nourish.

What is recent is easy to correct.

What is brittle is easy to break.

What is small is easy to scatter.

Milan Cathedral, Easter 2016

The second stanza is about very much being prepared and proactive, of planning out things in a natural way, consistent with the flow of life, of living and of being.  In this stanza we read the  often quoted line that "the journey of a thousand miles" begins with our taking the first step now. 

Stanza three makes for good sound wisdom.  Forcing an item into a space it will not naturally fit into will distort or break the item.  Pushing one another in a queue for a bus or train will certainly not improve matters - indeed, it will most likely slow the loading of the bus down and actually delay the departure time, and perhaps even result in injury to some one.  Rushing into things never helps, while doing things mindfully certainly will. 

When we meet spiritually advanced people, no matter what their overt religious or even non-religious affiliation, the striking characteristic we notice is that of equanimity, calmness, peace of mind and a sense of deep attention to living in the now.  We are singularly blessed when we meet these beacons of hope and peace in our lives.

Let us read the above poem reflectively and mindfully once again and let any line or phrase offer itself to us by way of a short meditation to begin our day with the goal of being present to all whom we meet and most essentially to our own self.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 63

Poem 63

Act without doing;
work without effort.

Think of the small as large

and the few as many.

Confront the difficult

while it is still easy;

accomplish the great task

by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;

thus she achieves greatness.

When she runs into a difficulty,

she stops and gives herself to it.

She doesn't cling to her own comfort;

thus problems are no problem for her.

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

Commentary

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

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

Trees in Newbridge House, Summer 2014

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

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

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

Namaste, my friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 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 51

Poem 51

Every being in the universe
is an expression of the Tao.
It springs into existence,
unconscious, perfect, free,
takes on a physical body,
lets circumstances complete it.
That is why every being

spontaneously honors the Tao.

The Tao gives birth to all beings,

nourishes them, maintains them,

cares for them, comforts them, protects them,

takes them back to itself,

creating without possessing,

acting without expecting,

guiding without interfering.

That is why love of the Tao

is in the very nature of things.

Commentary

Dublin Bay from Clontarf, January, 2016

If spirituality is about anything, it is about the desire in each of us to be one with our own self, with others and with the significant Other, some of us dare call God.  In short, it is about forging connections. In a sense, spirituality is like a source of power into which we may connect ourselves in order to be enlivened or to come truly alive.  There is a plethora of definitions of spirituality given by all the various religions, but the one I have given here is the most general one I can give - one that embraces the multitude of other definitions.  The great contemporary Catholic Christian Meditator, Fr. Richard Rohr and Master of Contemplation describes himself in the following words on his own web page as "a globally recognized ecumenical teacher, bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition.  He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico...." (see HERE ).  This "universal awakening" is essentially about being aware or mindful that everything is part of the jigsaw of life, that everything connects and interconnects.  In other words, everything in the world, including most essentially us humans, connects or links together in one great spiritual or mystical union.  One of Fr. Richard's books is called succinctly Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (2003, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company).  For the meditator or contemplator, everything connects up with us and we with them, that is, true spirituality is about working at our growing awareness of that connectedness and interconnectedness.

Boat on the River Vltava Prague, February 2016

Everything connects, or in the words of Fr.Rohr, "everything belongs," that is nothing is superfluous or left out of the equation of life.  Literally, everything is included, even pain and suffering.  This is the type of spirituality that is behind the above Taoist poem. In this sense, therefore, "Every being in the universe// is an expression of the Tao."   As one reads, ponders and meditates upon the words of this poem, one soon comes to appreciate the underlying nature of reality, that is, that essentially everything connects, that everything in the universe is part of a greater plan, part of a greater unity that lies beyond actual individual things, that a deeper connection, "a golden thread of connection," if you like (this blogger's phrase), exists between all things.  Every line in the above poem is about all things, including us humans, being buoyed up and kept in deep connection by an underlying unity that can either be called the Tao or God or the Meaning of Life or the Goal (Telos) of life.  No wonder, then, that everything is sustained by the Tao or by God and, therefore, love of this Tao or God is the most natural thing in the world: "That is why love of the Tao // is in the very nature of things."  Therefore, with our Taoist poet, we may pray or meditate or contemplate as a result of reading the following lines once again:

The Tao gives birth to all beings,

nourishes them, maintains them,

cares for them, comforts them, protects them,

takes them back to itself,

creating without possessing,

acting without expecting,

guiding without interfering.

That is why love of the Tao

is in the very nature of things.

Namaste, friends!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 50

Poem 50

The Master gives himself up

to whatever the moment brings.

He knows that he is going to die,

and he has nothing left to hold on to:

no illusions in his mind,

no resistances in his body.

He doesn't think about his actions;

they flow from the core of his being.

He holds nothing back from life;

therefore he is ready for death,

as a man is ready for sleep

after a good day's work.

Commentary

One of the disputed quotes attributed to one of the mid-twentieth century Prime Ministers of Great Britain, Mr Harold Macmillan, who when asked what was most likely to throw any administration into crisis, is the famous one which goes, "events, dear boy, events!" Whatever about the accuracy or inaccuracy of its attribution, its wisdom is simple and so true.  Things happen either purposely or by chance, crises occur, accidents  take place and so on and so forth, and the wisdom we must learn to our definite cost is that we must weather these incidents with equanimity if we are to survive in this world in any sane sense.  This is the type of wisdom that our Taoist poet is alluding to in this poem above.  Once again, I hasten to point out that what he is recommending is no mere passivity in the face of random or caused occurrences, but rather an attitude of mind, a seemingly imperturbable spirit that will allow us peace of mind and sanity to deal with the human fall-out of those events no matter what the level or depth of their tragedy.

A weak flame tries to pierce the falling dusk: January 2016

Once again, at the heart of all spirituality is the contemplation of death and dying.  It has most rightly been pointed out by our inherited wisdom as a human race - in almost all spiritualities to a greater or lesser extent - that death is not the end of life - in fact, they maintain that it is part of the experience of living and central to life itself.  After all, individuality is but a little part of what life is.  We individuals are but mere specks of life who mostly subscribe to our own mythology of being so much more than we actually are: life is always greater than we small specks of it. However, when those close to us die, we are reminded in no small way what fragile vessels of life we are in actual fact.

In this regard, the Master lives by holding nothing back from life, by retaining nothing within his being that should not be spent on living and thereby adding to the sum total of life in the outer world.  He most naturally goes with the flow of life or the river of being.  As I type these fragile words on this virtual page in computer space, I realise how much more powerfully moving and existentially-loaded is the phrase "river of being" than the reductive, though solidly biological, "river of genes" of Richard Dawkins.  As humans, we are spiritual realities inhering so mysteriously and intricately in our temporary biological bodies. And so, as death and dying are inextricably part of all growth and of all life, the Master lives also by holding nothing back from the inevitability of life, not even his own death.  And so, dear friends, chance readers of these cyphers in virtual space, we could do worse than re-reading and pondering the above poem, which I repeat here for emphasis.  Namaste!

The Master gives himself up

to whatever the moment brings.

He knows that he is going to die,

and he has nothing left to hold on to:

no illusions in his mind,

no resistances in his body.

He doesn't think about his actions;

they flow from the core of his being.

He holds nothing back from life;

therefore he is ready for death,

as a man is ready for sleep

after a good day's work.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 49

Poem 49

The Master has no mind of her own.

She works with the mind of the people.

She is good to people who are good.

She is also good to people who aren't good.

This is true goodness.

She trusts people who are trustworthy.

She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.

This is true trust.

The Master's mind is like space.

People don't understand her.

They look to her and wait.

She treats them like her own children.

Commentary

The River Vltava in Prague with the Castle in the background

The first thing that strikes a reader of the above Taoist poem is that the Master or the Tao is totally non-judgemental, and treats all with an even hand, no matter whether they are good or bad.  Also, in keeping with the plurality in unity that is a hallmark of Taoist thinking, the translator S. Mitchell sees the Master as feminine here. (He alternates between "he" and "she" superbly and seamlessly in his version of the Tao Te Ching.)   This strikes us immediately as a much more compassionate approach than that of the God of the Old Testament who is presented as a rather dictatorial judge.  The Tao is such that

She is good to people who are good.

She is also good to people who aren't good.

This is true goodness.

However, one must also point out that the Bible has various viewpoints within it and that it is not at all as monochrome as some more fundamentalist interpreters would want it.  There are often contrary and contradictory texts in that same book or rather collection of books. Therefore, an astute reader of the Biblical texts will be open to quite a variety of possible interpretations, especially of the more controversial texts.  For instance, the Wisdom literature openly questioned God's justice when the authors lamented the fact that evil doers prosper as well as those who do good, and that, further, many good people really do suffer in this life and often die young.  Educated readers of the Bible will realise that it was written by many writers over many centuries and that each had a viewpoint that mirrored the times and contexts of the communities of faith in which they dwelt.  They will also realise that the Bible is a collection of books, written by many authors over many centuries and that consequently their concept of God grew as they increased in their knowledge of Him.  

We are never alone: Prague, February 2016

We all know how hard it is to trust others, but the Tao is a mystery or mystical presence that trusts all, it would appear.  It is rather hard for us emotional beings to grasp this, given that we are instinctively prone to retribution.  For us Christians, Jesus stood all of that old law of Old Testament retribution, that "lex talionis" on its head.  Being totally committed to peace and compassion for all, Jesus even forgave his tormentors and crucifiers by understanding that they truly "knew not what they were doing."  Likewise, many commentators say that the Parable of the Prodigal Son can also be construed as the Parable of the Older Brother as this brother illustrates well the all-too-human reaction of most of us when others are forgiven for their years of disloyalty while the always loyal servants (ourselves) have been overlooked by a goodness and justice that goes beyond the boundaries of human love.  It is in this sense that the Tao trusts all of us, that is in a parallel sense to how the Christian God loves those who sin and fall away.  The Taoist lines above are therefore worth repeating and contemplating once again here:

  She trusts people who are trustworthy.

She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.

This is true trust.

In conclusion, our Taoist poet emphasises the power of a mother's love - a love that knows no boundaries for her offspring.  It is indeed little wonder that the image of mother is quite often attributed to God and the Tao and to many deities in a multitude of religions.  Many years ago, I remember an old teacher who taught me saying that one unruly pupil was truly a child that "only a mother could love."  I instinctively knew what he meant.

The Master's mind is like space.

People don't understand her.

They look to her and wait.

She treats them like her own children.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 29

Poem 29

Do you want to improve the world?

I don't think it can be done.

The world is sacred.

It can't be improved.

If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.

If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,

a time for being behind;

a time for being in motion,

a time for being at rest;

a time for being vigorous,

a time for being exhausted;

a time for being safe,

a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,

without trying to control them.

She lets them go their own way,

and resides at the center of the circle.

Commentary

Yellow Poppy

Having lived in this world for almost 58 years now, I have in the past been mostly annoyed and angry at people who cannot resist the urge to take control of others, though mostly I am more amused at their antics in the last number of years.  Life has taught me that I simply cannot control any other human being, much less the world.  We are such insignificant ants on the anthill called the Earth, a mere individual among about 7.3 billion human beings. And yet some of us think we are so important that we actually dare to attempt to control others.  I remember reading in one of Dr Tony Humphrey's books the succinct and wise statement: "All control is self-control!" There is much wisdom in that - indeed, there is much Zen in it, or even, dare I say it, much Tao!  As a young teacher I often went astray by trying to control what I simply could not control.  We can only exert influence over whatever little patch of ground that we alone are in charge of.  I learnt from other more experienced teachers how to exercise control within my own classroom and how to give instructions to adolescents without their sounding like being commands inviting opposition.  

It is indeed a truism to say that none of us can change the world, and we know that working together, yet again like ants on an anthill, but with all our wonderful brain power, we can achieve much material change for the good of humankind.  I think the above poem is somewhat pessimistic about life in a way, though one can understand such an attitude given that the poem was written over 2,000 years ago when no one could change much about an inevitably hostile world and where human lifespan was very short indeed.

Much spirituality essentially boils down to working on our egotism.  Just as the sun certainly does not revolve around the Earth, the world certainly does not revolve around any one individual.  There is nothing as bad as encountering people who are egotistical and self-centered.  St John the Evangelist put this in a very Christian way - as he, needless to say, saw our relationship with Jesus Christ as being of paramount importance - "He must increase and I must decrease" or as it is also translated, "He must become greater, I must become less." (John 3:30)  In other words we can translate this overtly Christian exhortation as a recommendation to bring our egos under control.

Malahide at sunset

Christmas Day is a special one for all Christians.  Even if you are of another faith or even none, you can still rejoice in the power of the simple yet wonderful myth or story, that whatever power is behind the universe (some dare call this power God) deigned take human form in the shape of a simple little infant.  This doctrine is known as that of the Incarnation, literally the en-fleshing of the Godhead in human form.  If anything, the heart of the meaning of this myth is that all of creation and especially humankind are shot through with a value that is beyond human reckoning.  This, then, I believe, is what it means to say that something is sacred.  The Earth and all it contains is sacred, that is, of priceless value. Christians believe, then, that everything in creation, especially humanity as the guardians of the goods of the Earth, is sacred.

The above poem shares some of this Christian insight into the sacredness of the world.  I admit it sounds somewhat negative to our modern ears, but I remind the reader again that this verse was written over 2000 years ago when people were simpler and fatalism loomed large in all cultures.

I need hardly remind the readers of this blog that the third stanza above is remarkably like the more famous stanzas from Ecclesiastes 3 from the Old Testament: "There is a time for everything, // And a season for every activity under the heavens" etc.  Once again the Taoist and Biblical writers are ad idem  with their enthusiasm to pile polar opposites one on top of another.  I have mentioned over and over again in these posts that spiritual writers of every hue have a predilection for the balancing of polar opposites and for keeping the healthy tension between both poles.  One could do worse than read Taoist Poem 29 in conjunction with Ecclesiastes 3.

My prayer for anyone reading these rather short and hurried reflections is that we may learn to let go of the restrictions of the ego, to let go of the urge to control others, to learn to accept what we cannot change and at the end of the day to learn to live peacefully with ourselves and others.  After all, we are what we are and we must learn to love ourselves, forgive ourselves and be compassionate to ourselves as well as to others.  That is no easy task, but it sure is one essential one if we are to steer the bark of self through the choppy waters of life.

Namaste, friends and a very Happy Christmas.