Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 79

Poem 79

Failure is an opportunity.

If you blame someone else,

there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master

fulfills her own obligations

and corrects her own mistakes.

She does what she needs to do

and demands nothing of others.

Commentary

A common list of the failures of Abraham Lincoln (along with a few successes) is:

• 1831 - Lost his job
• 1832 - Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
• 1833 - Failed in business
• 1834 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
• 1835 - Sweetheart died
• 1836 - Had nervous breakdown
• 1838 - Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
• 1843 - Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
• 1846 - Elected to Congress (success)
• 1848 - Lost re-nomination
• 1849 - Rejected for land officer position
• 1854 - Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1856 - Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
• 1858 - Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1860 - Elected President (success)

And all the failures enumerated above were preludes to his eventual success upon being elected President of America  in 1860.  Indeed, perseverance, no matter how much or how many times you fail will generally result in success at last.  Therefore, giving up or giving in is the one sure way to fail.  One can only delight in the positivity of the sentiments of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the incandescent light bulb who quipped that he "had not failed," but that he had found "10,000 ways that didn't work." There is also a great sense of humour, determination and persistence in what he said here.  Or again take the quotation from the great business man Henry Ford: "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."  Our present Taoist poet states something similar in his/her contention that failure is an opportunity.  There is no one to blame not even oneself.  One just has to accept things as they are and work optimistically from there.

Another piece of wisdom that my father always quoted about failure or failing is the one which avers that "the person who never made a mistake never made anything."

There is very little more that one can add by way of teasing out the thoughts in this poem as it is very clear. However, perhaps a line or a phrase above resonates or strikes a chord in your heart and might serve as a mantra for a few minutes meditation.

Namaste.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 73

Poem 73

The Tao is always at ease.

It overcomes without competing,

answers without speaking a word,

arrives without being summoned,

accomplishes without a plan.

Its net covers the whole universe.

And though its meshes are wide,

it doesn't let a thing slip through.

Commentary

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

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

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

Namaste. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 69

Poem 69

The generals have a saying:

"Rather than make the first move

it is better to wait and see.

Rather than advance an inch

it is better to retreat a yard."

This is called

going forward without advancing,

pushing back without using weapons.

There is no greater misfortune

than underestimating your enemy.

Underestimating your enemy

means thinking that he is evil.

Thus you destroy your three treasures

and become an enemy yourself.

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go

to the one that knows how to yield.

Commentary

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

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

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

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

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go

to the one that knows how to yield.

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

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

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

The rest, my friends, is SILENCE.

NAMASTE!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 60

Poem 60

Governing a large country
is like frying a small fish.

You spoil it with too much poking.

Center your country in the Tao

and evil will have no power.

Not that it isn't there,

but you'll be able to step out of its way.

Give evil nothing to oppose

and it will disappear by itself.

Derek Lin's translation  of this poem is as follows:

Poem 60

Ruling a large country is like cooking a small fish

Using the Tao to manage the world

Its demons have no power

Not only do its demons have no power

Its gods do not harm people

Not only do its gods not harm people

The sages also do not harm people

They both do no harm to one another

So virtue merges and returns.

Commentary

I have given two versions of this poem to give me some inspiration, because what the poet is getting at is somewhat hard to unravel.  I use the word "unravel" intentionally, as the above poem needs to be contemplated deeply as it does not render forth its meaning easily, but that is often the case with mystical, and certainly with Zen-like, poetry.  So, therefore, let me here state clearly that I am offering a very personal and tentative interpretation. 

Garden, Glenview Hotel 1

Who would want to be a politician?  For me the answer to that question is crystal clear, a most definite, "No, certainly not me!"  Politicians put themselves up for election and stand before the judgement of the people at regular intervals. Once elected they have to put in amazingly long hours at the service of the State and of fellow citizens. Sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes they achieve much. However, they often get vilified by some sectors of the population for one decision or another.  All too often, they will fail to get re-elected because they must face their electorate at the end of their political term. Further, their moral and daily personal affairs are an open book as far as the media and the public are concerned. Who would want to be so much in the eye of a very judgemental public?  That's one reason why I admire politicians  because quite simply they have the balls to stand up and be counted, express their vision for the improvement of society and work towards achieving their goals.

Garden, Glenview Hotel 2

Now that I have expressed some of my ideas about politics and politicians and the governance of any state, I must now turn to where the above Taoist poem touches me.  What lines spring off the page?  The image of "frying a small fish" offers itself vividly to the mind of this reader, and poking it too much will certainly break it up into little pieces on the pan. That image courts another image in my mind, an image which is also culinary, namely "too many cooks spoil the broth!" The wisdom of this saying is obvious.  Someone has to be the main chef or cook.  Someone has to make the decisions or be the leader; otherwise there will be chaos and the big fish of State will break into little pieces. There has to be order in society. And yet, the realists among us know all too well that this is the very reason that politicians of Right and Left are often caught in verbal fights most of the time. However, verbal fights are far superior to fist fights and, God forbid, wars between nations. Moreover, the realists among us become aware all too quickly of the virtual inevitability of wars. Another image that springs to my mind here is a famous phrase uttered by the great wartime U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill: "Jaw, Jaw, not War, War!"  

Garden, Glenview Hotel 3

What makes this interpreter of the above poem pretty much lacking in hope, but certainly not despairing, is that our writer is so impractical, so unrealistic, so thoroughly positive that he or she appears to be a totally dyed-in-the-wool idealist who believes that our politicians can be motivated by being steeped in the Tao or in the Still Point of Being. Yes, indeed, like any of you reading this post, I should dearly like that such would be the case, that all the politicians that lead my country, Ireland, should be centered in the Tao and that "evil will have no power."

And yet, it is so right that the Scriptures of any religion, that the ideals of any belief system, theist, atheist or agnostic should propose values which we should, of necessity, strive to achieve.  Otherwise, we would be so much poorer in being bereft of some guiding star, some goals and hopes to reach for.  

Garden, Glenview Hotel 4

Our poet does underline the fact that we will always have evil out there in the world, and often, unfortunately, even in here in our hearts, but he tells us that if we ground ourselves in the Tao we will be able to avoid such evil.  Meditation and mindfulness do help us ground ourselves in the essence of life, in the Still Point of Being, in following the path of the good in our lives and in avoiding evil.  The final two lines are very hopeful, even if they smack of wishful thinking and a positivity that does not seem to allow for the jagged edges of existence and the seeming deep-roooted-ness of evil in the world to rear their ugly heads. 

Yet, such is the challenge of spirituality and all spiritual reading, no matter what its provenance, that we must read and re-read, contemplate and re-contemplate its words and be challenged to the core of our being with the truth of the lines such as the ones with which our writer challenges us by way of concluding the poem:

Give evil nothing to oppose

and it will disappear by itself.

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 54

Poem 54

Whoever is planted in the Tao

will not be rooted up.

Whoever embraces the Tao

will not slip away.

Her name will be held in honor

from generation to generation.

Let the Tao be present in your life

and you will become genuine.

Let it be present in your family

and your family will flourish.

Let it be present in your country

and your country will be an example

to all countries in the world.

Let it be present in the universe

and the universe will sing.

How do I know this is true?

By looking inside myself.

Commentary

Random stones on a random street, Prague, February, 2016

One of the abiding questions that has always intrigued me is how progress is measured.  As a teacher I am well used to setting examinations and correcting them.  As a student myself of one thing or another for the most of my life I have obviously subjected myself to such assessments, too.  Further, most workplaces insist on certain levels of self-assessment these days.  It can be quite easy to measure specific things without a doubt, like temperature, air pressure, blood pressure, water pressure, traffic speed, acceleration and so on.  Likewise, our measurements of such forces have become more refined and more precise as society progresses.  We can ask many questions with respect to progress and measuring it.  One such question, among many, we can ask is whether we can accurately measure intelligence? The answer is in the affirmative, but first we have to agree on what we mean by intelligence. With the ground-breaking psychologist, Daniel Goleman, most educationists and psychologists agree that traditional IQ tests are pretty restrictive and restricting and are only measuring a very narrow range of native intelliegence.  Goleman and others now recognise some nine forms of intelligence, and indeed there may be more.  Furthermore, there have also been many geniuses who failed miserably at school, not because they were unintelligent or stupid, but essentially because they did not learn in the restricting ways most school systems require.

That leads us on to whether we can measure our emotions and feelings.  How can we measure compassion and loving kindness, or even our love for one another or for a particular friend or sweetheart or our attraction to this, that or the other piece of art or sculpture or architecture or music?  There are so many immeasurable things - indeed, we often call them priceless as we cannot fix any monetary value to these works of art, to these cultural entities - that we humans are caught up in by the sheer accident of our birth. 

Girl with here dog, Prague, February, 2016

The further question, a big existential question for this writer here, is how do I measure my spiritual progress at all?  I have read many philosophy, theology and spiritual books in my time - certainly since I was 18 and went to college - and am still reading them, and yet at a certain level I feel as far away from my goal as I ever did at the age of 58.  Progress along the spiritual path is often very hard for me to measure at all.  Sometimes I wonder if I have really made progress at all? One day I feel that I have comprehended this or that deep truth, experienced this or that spiritual delight, and then, to my utter disappointment, these small comprehensions and minute illuminations seemed to have slipped away overnight into the ether upon waking the following day.  It's as if I was back at the beginning again and had to struggle on and find new and more compelling experiences and insights. (I am, of course, here reminded of T.S. Eliot's great spiritual insight that "We shall not cease from exploration//And the end of our exploring//Will be to arrive where we started//And know the place for the first time." In other words, I often take a little encouragement from these profound words, and realise that my knowledge has deepened rather than increased! "Little Gidding")

Classical Musician, Prague, Feb, 2016

As I sit here now I remember all the people who impressed me in my life with their spiritual commitment or  insights.  I think of my mother for her spiritual strength, a woman who never let life get here down, who quite simply was willing to begin again and again everyday, literally to start the struggle to survive and to provide for her family over and over on a daily basis.  Further, I think of the kindness of the old people I knew as a child who lovingly gave us a few coins for doing this or that message for them and I recall their kind words. I remember the older boy, Lar Cranny, who brought me to the children's hospital when I was badly bitten by a dog when I was a boy of 6 or 7 years.  Poor Lar, who became a teacher like myself, is now dead, R.I.P., having been tragically killed in a motor accident some years ago. I remember how my father refused to be victimised by the illness of polio through which he lost the use of his right arm and how he kept going for us his children.  I recall the wisdom of our teachers at school and college.  Those who influenced me spiritually I can list here as Rev Dr. Paddy Wallace, a wonderful visionary and prophet, and Rev Dr. Michael-Paul Gallagher S.J. who taught me how to meditate, Rev. Dr. Brian McNamara, S.J. who taught me how to wrestle with even the most complicated of theologies and Rev Dr John Macken who taught me to appreciate the way of "wise ignorance" or what St Augustine called the "docta ignorantia."  John had that gift in abundance and his gentle scholarly soul led me through many intricacies is post-graduate theology.  I tried to internalise all the lessons these wonderful people have taught me in my life, and yet as I go on, I find life is still somewhat of a struggle, that the journey continues.  I recall here, Robert Frost's famous answer to the question as to what he had learnt from life as being simply, "It goes on!"  Yes, life goes on, and that is surely both its beauty and its challenge at one and the same time.  All we hold dear would be so much superficial dressing were it not for suffering and death, two realities which raise the value of human life in its fragility to the nth power as it were.

Love is.... Prague, Feb, 2016

What keeps the heart going?  What keeps us from giving up? Each of us must, of necessity have some aim or a goal in life; have some reason to get out of bed in the morning; have some courage to keep going no matter what the cost; have some hope in the face of despair - maybe that's what Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he said that life begins on the far side of despair?; have some reason to live and some reason to die. We have to put down roots somewhere, otherwise we will wither and die all too quickly.  That's why commitment to values, to religions, to deeply held beliefs even outside the religious fold, to goals and visions to give us courage to keep going are so important in the human prject of making sense of our little brittlr lives.  That's why our Taoist poet above calls upon us "to be rooted in the Tao," to work at getting a spiritual centre, a Still Point of being to give us focus in our lives so that we can carry on.

It often seems to me that spiritual progress can be somewhat cyclic and that it can lead us further down (depth psychology or depth spirituality) into the profundity of mystery or further up (height psychlogy or height spirituality) into the sublimity or heights of mystery. In that cyclic journey it can seem that one is returning to the same place. (See quotation from T.S. Eliot above)  I think here of the analogy of the spiral staircase - as one is either going up or down, it can often seem as it one is going around and around in the same space and yet that is the deception.  One is in fact moving - either up or down - while all the time on the journey, it may seem as if no progress is being made.

Here, I would like to finish with a very siritual poem - one of my all time favourites by a contemporary Irish poet, whom it has been my privilege to meet many times in my life, namely Brendan Kennelly - which sums up for me the heart of all great spiritualities and in our particular sense what our Taoist poet has been expressing so well in the above stanzas.  

Once again, I invite the reader to read the above Taoist poem as reflectively as possible and then do the same for this equally beautiful and equally spiritual modern poem:

Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,

begin to the roar of morning traffic

all along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls

the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal

bridges linking the past and future

old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

begin to wonder at unknown faces

at crying birds in the sudden rain

at branches stark in the willing sunlight

at seagulls foraging for bread

at couples sharing a sunny secret

alone together while making good.

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending

that always seems about to give in

something that will not acknowledge conclusion

insists that we forever begin.

— From The Essential Brendan Kennelly

Swans, Prague, February, 2016

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 47

Poem 47

Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,

sees the light without looking,

achieves without doing a thing.

Commentary

Windvane on the lungomare in Catanzaro Lido, January 2016

It is becoming increasingly hard  to come up with new insights with respect to the Tao Te Ching and consequently avoid boring the reader unduly by too much repetition.  I have referred to the balance of opposites many times here already.  However, a central pair of polar opposities that springs to mind is that between Inner and Outer. Indeed, this polarity is quite common in early philosophy and theology in general.  The great early Christian scholar St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430) was one of the scholars within the early Church to highlight its importance.  Augustine was a restless seeker who sought the meaning of life both in the outside material world and also in the inside spiritual world.  According to his own account of his quest for meaning which he delineated in his wonderful classical biography The Confessions he found the former, while sensually stimulating, to be spiritually stultifying:

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you.  And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged in to those lovely created things which you made.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.  You were radiant and resplendent - you put to flight my blindness.  You were fragrant, and I dew in my breath and now pant after you.  I trusted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.  You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

Admittedly, Augustine went on to condemn the material things of this world, most especially those related to the body as vitiated with evil and to elevate the spiritual realm to a rather esoteric stratosphere.  In other words, I believe he did not manage to hold the two poles in a healthy balance.  However, whatever about our criticisms of Augustinian philosophy and theology, we cannot overlook his insight that a spiritual dimension inheres within us.  In fact, Augustine spoke of his community of fellow friars as being on a shared journey to God and that this same God could be met in their code of practice (moral behaviour), the priciples they subscribed to (the Christian creed) and in their cultic practices (what I mean here by the word "cult" is any particular system of religious practice or worship: religious ceremones like Mass and so forth). He aslo recommended a life of prayer and meditation that followed a process which he called "interiority," namely that it was by a process of "going within" in prayer that one communed with God.

Now back to poem 47.  Our Taoist author is in essence doing exactly as St Augustine recommended above, namely that he suggests that we can be open to the Tao without physically opening our door and going outside.  Even without doing that, we can open our hearts out to the whole world.

Again, the idea of humankind's ignorance is an old epistemological tenet dating back many years.  Socrates encouraged his hearers to continually declare their ignorance as they sought out deeper and wider knowledge.  That knowledge could best be discovered by a process of asking tough questions to elicit ever clearer answers.  Augustine built on Socrates through Plato by recommending what he described as a "docta ignorantia" or "learned ignorance." This is the sense of the second stanza which declares that "the more we know, the less we understand." If one imagines a sphere as being the amount of accumulated knowledge learned by humankind then as knowledge grows the sphere obviously grows and while we have amassed more knowledge and wisdom there is a gowing surface of knowledge over against an ever-expanding universe of unknown knowledge and wisdom.  In that very same sense, it is often said that the more we know, the more we know what we don't know. This is, in effect, the epistemological thrust behind the lines of the second stanza.

Sometimes we need to rest and to cease from all activity to be open to life.  To be busy is a great pastime but it can often lead to mindlessness and drift on the one hand or an obsession with work or with pleasure on the other.  It is in this sense that we must read the lines of our final stanza:

The Master arrives without leaving,

sees the light without looking,

achieves without doing a thing.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 20

Poem 20

Stop thinking and end your problems.

What difference between yes and no?

What difference between success and failure?

Must you value what others value?

Avoid what others avoid?

How ridiculous!

Other people are excited

as though they were at a parade.

I alone don't care,

I alone am expressionless,

like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need;

I alone possess nothing.

I alone drift about

like someone without a home.

I am like an idiot,

my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright,

I alone am dark.

Other people are sharp,

I alone am dull.

Other people have a purpose,

I alone don't know.

I drift like a wave on the ocean,

I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.

I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.

Commentary

Elsewhere it is written that the reality of the Tao transcends the human power of reason and simply has to be grasped or apprehended intuitively: "It is beyond words, beyond all differences and distinction; it is the unchanging, permanent reality of constant change; it is the ground of being and non-being; it is akin to the Hindu concept of the Brahman" (See HERE). Hence, when we read a poem from the Tao Te Ching or any work of perennial philosophy or spirituality we must rely on our instincts, our intuition and our inner wisdom or heart to guide us.

The opening stanza repeats an old gem of wisdom, namely that too much thinking is very bad for us.  With too much thinking we can create a problem that was not there in the first place. People who are stressed or under pressure and those who are depressed or suffer from some mental illness most times fail to go to sleep at night because their minds are so over-wrought that they simply cannot turn their thoughts off.  Often people drink or take drugs to attempt to shut their over-wrought and troubled minds down.  Beginners especially, but also improvers and skilled practitioners can and do experience difficulty in shutting out distracting thoughts.  That's why the books and experts all recommend returning to concentrating on the breath or a simple mantra to dispel such distracting thoughts or at least to minimise them as far as possible. 

Once again the writer of the Tao Te Ching proceeds by way of paradoxes and seeming contradictions and by equating opposites; by suggesting that there is no difference between a yes and a no.  He even sees no difference between success and failure.  This is all the stuff of koans; in the wisdom tradition of Zen, it is akin to asking the meditator to listen to the sound of one hand clapping. Somewhere in these paradoxes, in these enigmas and koans there lies a deep, deep wisdom that stretches beyond our ken.  Yet, there is a truth within them that draws us ever onward in contemplation like a powerful hidden magnet. 

Once again, here I would like to return to the wisdom of that wonderful American President Abraham Lincoln who endured much failure in his life as a prelude to his successes.  He was able to see failure as that which helps us put things in perspective.  He was granted a philosophical mind and a spiritual insight that helped him gain from such real failures, failures he could see contained within them the seeds of his later success.  Moreover, I love the Irish wit and wisdom of one of our famous international novelists, the great James Joyce, that his intention in life was "to fail bettter."

The "I"  and its voice in the poem are, of course, that of the Tao himself/herself/itself.  The Great Mother, mentioned in the final stanza, is also the Tao.  She(he/it) is "expressionless", the very countenance of a baby before it can smile, possessing nothing, with an empty mind, dark and mysterious, drifting with the ease of a wave and blowing as aimlessly as the wind.  She/he/it is the quintessence of mystery itself.  To reflect on this twentieth poem is to dive into the mystery of mysteries.  Don't expect to be enlightened.  Just ponder and wonder at the very darkness of the mystery.

Conclusion:

Finally, I invite the reader to ponder the above poem contemplatively and let any line, phrase or word suggest itself to you as a mantra for a ten minute meditation.

Namaste, Friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 19

                                                                              19

Throw away holiness and wisdom,

and people will be a hundred times happier.

Throw away morality and justice,

and people will do the right thing.

Throw away industry and profit,

and there won't be any thieves.

If these three aren't enough,

just stay at the centre of the circle

and let all things take their course.

Commentary

The Tao Te Ching, like all serious books of wisdom, works by way of paradoxes and the setting up of oppositional tensions between ideas.  Why? Well, quite simply, wisdom, like truth,  is "rarely pure and never simple.” (That quotation on truth comes from The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde).  John Keats implies this same understanding when he says that we humans must make sense of life's deeper mysteries by what he termed a process of "negative capability" that he described quite paradoxically as that attitude of mind "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."  One could say that this encapsulates something similar to what Eastern spiritualities and practices, especially Zen, mean by the practice of contemplating koans.

Sand on Donabate Beach, summer 2015

With that simple introduction, let us reflect on the above stanzas of Poem 19.  Holiness and Wisdom which parade themselves as proclaiming the answers to big questions are mere sham and pretence.  Real wisdom and holiness don't parade themselves in front of others and belong to a natural and real humility.  Morality and Justice, when likewise paraded before others inasmuch as they signal a superficial application of both virtues, are also mere sham and pretence.  A society where "industry" and "profit" are all that count will inevitable invite more people to commit crime out of sheer frustration at being at the bottom of the heap.

The writer of these stanzas calls the reader back to the centre point or the still point of being where the meditator, the contemplator or the disciple will achieve a state of equanimity, an attitude of mind that is untroubled by life's vagaries.

I will finish this brief post with my usual invitation to the reader to reflect on the above stanzas in a meditative way and allow a phrase or word from those stanzas to stir the spirit within.  Happy meditating.

NAMASTE