Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 78

78

Nothing in the world

is as soft and yielding as water.

Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,

nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;

the gentle overcomes the rigid.

Everyone knows this is true,

but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains

serene in the midst of sorrow.

Evil cannot enter his heart.

Because he has given up helping,

he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 77

Poem 77

As it acts in the world, the Tao

is like the bending of a bow.

The top is bent downward;

the bottom is bent up.

It adjusts excess and deficiency

so that there is perfect balance.

It takes from what is too much

and gives to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,

who use force to protect their power,

go against the direction of the Tao.

They take from those who don't have enough

and give to those who have far too much.

The Master can keep giving

because there is no end to her wealth.

She acts without expectation,

succeeds without taking credit,

and doesn't think that she is better

than anyone else.

Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 75

Poem 75

When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.

When the government is too intrusive,

people lose their spirit.

Act for the people's benefit.

Trust them; leave them alone.

Commentary

It is very difficult to make any commentary on the above short poem because it is so simple, indeed simplistic might be a better word for it.  I am singularly disappointed in this short poem as it so lacking in depth and wisdom.  However, like the Bible or any other sacred text that one might take up one is delving into a mixed bag.  One cannot find much profundity here, and this is very untypical of this sequence of poems namely the Tao Te Ching. However, intrusiveness is a bad attitude in general to the dealings of people with people and most definitely with the dealings of a state with its citizens.  Indeed, a state should not put its nose into family life at all.  That goes without saying in the modern Western World.  If a government progresses with such respect for its people, it will not go too far wrong.  Surely the same should apply to churches, too?

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 61

Poem 61

When a country obtains great power,

it becomes like the sea:

all streams run downward into it.

The more powerful it grows,

the greater the need for humility.

Humility means trusting the Tao,

thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:

When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.

Having realized it, he admits it.

Having admitted it, he corrects it.

He considers those who point out his faults

as his most benevolent teachers.

He thinks of his enemy

as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,

if it nourishes its own people

and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,

it will be a light to all nations in the world.

Commentary

As a frequent traveller I am well used to having my identity checked at passport control or immigration counters as one enters various countries.  In these days of growing terrorist problems worldwide, our identity, and proof of it, was never more important.  Also, if we are users of the Internet, as most of us are now, we also realise that identity theft is a singularly common crime, so must must protect ourselves against that as much as we possibly can.

The beautiful Synogogue in Prague, February, 2016

It seems to me as a Special Needs Teacher and a part-time psychotherapist ans counsellor in a secondary school that one of the most sacred things that I do is to help any individual pupil come to acceptance of his identity (I hasten to add that I teach in an all-boys school, hence my use of male possessive adjective here), to come to realise that the fostering and development of one's own self is the most precious task each of us is charged with as a person. Therefore, coming to an awareness of our real identity is very important for every one of us.

In Ireland, we are celebrating the centenary of the beginnings of our young nation in the Easter Rising/Insurrection of 1916.  There have been many books, journals, magazines and commemorative pamphlets, running into hundreds at this stage, dedicated to this centenary celebrati0n - indeed, our own school has produced two such pamphlets.  To state this in other terms, one could truthfully say that our young nation is engaged in the task of coming to terms with its own identity.  Who are we as a young Irish nation? Where stands the vision of those men who first proclaimed the Irish Republic?  Has their vision of true equality for all "the children of the nation" been actually achieved?  We are, then, at present dealing with this and other questions in our commemorative ceremonies, in the many learned commentaries given, in the books written, in all the various media outlets - written, broadcast and digital - and such activity has been a rewarding exercise for us as a nation as individuals.

Artist at work, Firenze, summer 2002

Our Taoist poem speaks about power and about powerful nations.  Ireland is most certainly not a powerful nation, and yet she has power over her own people, can represent them internationally at the EU and at UN fora.  Power in the hands of evil men can lead to much destruction both of people, animals, the goods of the earth and the work of human hands as we have witnessed in the twentieth century.  Matthew White reports in his Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2010 that the number of deaths by war and oppression during that period amounted to some 203 million human beings.  One wonders as to what the destruction of animals (mainly horses) and property amounted to - a figure I should prefer not to know as I'm sure it would be mind-bogglingly huge.  As the English Catholic politician and historian Lord Acton famously observed: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."  The statistics quoted confirm that statement.  Power corrupts individuals because of their selfish and worldly-driven and ambitious egos, and it is no wonder then how much more  power actually corrupts whole nations.  The second part of his famous quotation most definitely can be related to such men as Hitler and Stalin and the many hundreds of other despots the world has known since the beginnings of civilization.

Lord Acton, 1834 - 1902

Power, our Taoist poet recommends must always be accompanied by the virtue of humility if it is not to fulfill Lord Acton's famous statement about power quoted in the previous paragraph. Humilty has always been widely viewed as a central virtue in many religions and spiritualities deriving therefrom, and indeed in many philosophic traditions.  It has also often been counterpointed or contrasted with such vices as narcissism, "hubris" and other forms of pride. Humility, needless to say, is related to the adjective "humilis" that can be translated as humble and it is a virtue that became very much abused in Roman Catholic circles over the years where novices in religious orders, and women in particular were called upon to be self-abnegating to such an extent that they might have had a far too low opinion of themselves, perhaps even a low level of self-esteem and consequently very little apreciation for their real selves. However, the Latin word "humilitas" also has a link with the word "humus" which means "earth" or "clay." Hence humility, which obviously entails a certain level of ability to put the ego in its rightful place, also encompasses a sense of being "grounded" and "earthed."  It is this sense of the word that I feel the Taoist poet has in mind in the above quoted lines.

Being grounded and earthed means being able to admit that one does not have all the answers; that the ego has to take its place along with the heart, empathy and compassion as just one motivating factor in our lives; that there is no one right way to live life or any one simple answer to complex problems and that truth is rarely pure and never simple (Oscar Wilde); that everyone makes mistakes and that the admission of them is truly ennobling of the humble person who is always willing to learn.

Individuals as well as nations, then, are called upon by our Taoist poet to be humble, to be earthed, to be grounded, that is to be centered in the Tao.

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 45

Poem 45

True perfection seems imperfect,

yet it is perfectly itself.

True fullness seems empty,

yet it is fully present.

True straightness seems crooked.

True wisdom seems foolish.

True art seems artless.

The Master allows things to happen.

She shapes events as they come.

She steps out of the way

and lets the Tao speak for itself.

Commentary

Howth Harbour, 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 41

Poem 41

When a superior man hears of the Tao,

he immediately begins to embody it.

When an average man hears of the Tao,

he half believes it, half doubts it.

When a foolish man hears of the Tao,

he laughs out loud.

If he didn't laugh,

it wouldn't be the Tao.

Thus it is said:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.

Yet it nourishes and completes all things.

Commentary

Scene on the Garovogue River, summer 2006

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

Scene from the Garavogue River, Sligo, Summer 2006

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

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

Namaste, friends. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 38

Poem 38

The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,

yet he leaves nothing undone.

The ordinary man is always doing things,

yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,

yet something remains undone.

The just man does something,

and leaves many things to be done.

The moral man does something,

and when no one responds

he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.

When goodness is lost, there is morality.

When morality is lost, there is ritual.

Ritual is the husk of true faith,

the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Commentary

It is sad but true that a certain number of people like to exercise their power over others.  Of course, you can substitute the word "control" for "power."  I have never ceased to be perturbed and amused in turn by these "power-hungry" or "control-obsessed" people. Why does this or that person want to exert their power or control over others?  They must feel very much undermined by others, that is, their own sense of self-confidence must be very low.  They are saying to themselves, in a sense, something like the following: "I will have to exert my power here or I shall be totally undermined.  I am someone, you know!" That is the way, I believe, that they see themselves.  

The school where I teach, founded 1888: Place of Learning & Wisdom

I remember the clinical psychologist and conference speaker Dr.Tony Humphreys saying that "all control is self-control."  In like manner we can say that "all power is power-over-self."  True power, I believe, is actually self-knowledge or at least an openness to learning to grow in self-knowledge.  These two paragraphs, then, are an explication of the first stanza above which I'll repeat for emphasis here:

 The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The author of the blog waiting on the ferry for Reggio at Messina, Sicilia

One thing no commentator can tire of repeating is that when one reads literary and spiritual texts one is in the realm of image, simile and metaphor.  Therefore, it is at a significant cost to the truth to indulge in literalism and simplistic or surface or superficial interpretation. When a seeker of the truth encounters literalism, in other words, any fundamentalist reading of a text s/he is not a little shaken by the seeming refusal to let go of the easy and superficial interpretation that assaults and insults our native intelligence and our natural and honest scepticism.  Truth is never simple.  There are no easy saccharine answers to help us swallow the pill of the harsh realities of life.  Truth is often a deeper and darker mystery which we are always striving to reach and often striving to be open to its outreach into us, too.

View of Badolato Beach

So, what is our author poet getting at above?  What lies below a literal or literalist reading of the words?  The idea that lies below the surface in the depths of meaning is something like what I attempted to describe in the last paragraph, to which I will add the following comments.  Often, the wise person observes and meditates and contemplates on what s/he observes.  Then, and only them, do they react and do things.  In other words, the wise person does not over-react; does not take things personally; does not try to give what to them appears to be the obvious, though superficial answer or reaction to this or that situation; rather they wait and then respond to the given situation with a wise equanimity. In this, they are seen to be calm and still, almost unperturbed as if they had done nothing. However, really and truly, they have done a lot by not rushing into action with the simple and superficial solution that all too often gets further and further negative reactions and over-reactions down the line.  That is what I believe the poet has in mind when he says of the Master or Mistress that he or she "does nothing." Hence, we can now intuit the meaning of the paradox that in doing nothing the Master leaves nothing undone.

Wild flowers, Calabria, Italia

Once again, our Taoist poet proceeds with similar and parallel paradoxes which we now understand cannot simply be taken at a literal, literalist or superficial level.  The reader or meditator or contemplator has to dig much deeper for the unvarnished truth.  I will leave it to the reader here to interpret the series of paradoxes with which the author continues to confront us in this poem.  I wholeheartedly agree that ritual can be nothing but a husk of faith if it has no implications for the way we behave and act in our day-to-day world. However, as a part-time counsellor and psychotherapist I value the important role of ritual in community life in terms of its helping us cope with birth, marriage and death and other big transitions we have to make in our little brittle lives.  However, on the level of paradox, beyond the literal and literalist level, I intuit the deeper truth at which out Taoist poet points me.

In conclusion, there is no better way of finishing this post than with repeating the final stanza of the above poem which lifts me to the heights of my spirit and brings me down to the depths of my soul as I type these few words:

  Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 22

Stanza 22

If you want to become whole,

let yourself be partial.

If you want to become straight,

let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full,

let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn,

let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything,

give everything up.

The Master, by residing in the Tao,

sets an example for all beings.

Because he doesn't display himself,

people can see his light.

Because he has nothing to prove,

people can trust his words.

Because he doesn't know who he is,

people recognize themselves in him.

Because he has no goad in mind,

everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said,

"If you want to be given everything,

give everything up,"

they weren't using empty phrases.

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

My father's headstone in Fingal Cemetery, Balgriffin

Commentary

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

Again, the author engages in making lists of opposites:

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

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

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

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

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

NAMASTE