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Tao is the Way that cannot be followed faultlessly, nor found precisely in any book or on any map.
Tao is the Way of the Earth and not of the Earth.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao, as no name that can be named is one’s eternal name.
Yet its mystery is the doorway to all understanding.
So here I am, naming names that cannot be named, using words I know are inherently inexact. Forever failing objectivity. A post-modern writer’s nightmare.
What am I doing?
Obviously I’m no master.
“The master teaches without words, nurturing things without possessing them.”
– 2nd Verse, Tao Te Ching.
To start with me is your unavoidable burden at this juncture. Sorry, I’m what you got.
And where Tao Te Ching hits me where I live is in its 7th Verse:
“Serve the needs of others, and all your own needs will be
fulfilled. Through selfless action, fulfillment is attained.”
I’m in complete accord. 100%. But I ask myself: What would happen if everybody else’s needs were already met? No one in my world needing anything first? Where would I be, forever seeking to help others who don’t want or need my help? What then?
Fortunately comes a saving lesson, also from the 2nd Verse:
“Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty, only because
there is ugliness. All can know good as good, only because
there is evil.”
You see? We need the needy. And they will always be here.
We need the ones who are takers first.
We need the balance of them, just as Earth needs the balance of the sliding seasons,
and Heaven needs the balance of Earth.
Heaven and Earth endure because they do not live for themselves alone.
They coexist, soul and soil. It’s the way they’ve grown. Married by air and forgiveness.
“Live in accordance with the nature of things.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
Stand by your word.
Govern with equity.
Be timely in choosing the right moment.
One who lives in accordance with nature does not go against the way of things. He moves in harmony with the present moment, always knowing the truth of what to do.”
– 8th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Life has a purpose, hidden in antiquity; and – distilled – its essence is living in harmony with the “nature of things” while helping others do the same.
But where did the “things” come from, to live in harmony with? Life, death, and rebirth? Sun, stars, and moon? Water, canyons, and clouds? Spiders, bats, and bears? Toil, duty, cause and effect? Universe, universe, and universe?
And how does one even approach an answer to anything like that?
Whose word should one believe?
Believe within yourself.
“How do I know the ways of all things at the beginning?
I look inside myself and see what is within me.”
– 21st Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“To know the Way, understand the great within yourself.”
– 25th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Be yourself. According to Tao Te Ching’s 14th Verse:
“Approach it and there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
You cannot know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Discovering how things have always been
brings one into harmony with the Way.”
Just that subtle and sincere: To be at ease within your life.
The universe and all its things have always been,
either in the form they are, or in some metamorphosis of it.
A harmony of evolution. No Creator originating everything with a bang.
Tell me, now that you are thinking of it.
In this present moment as you have read those words.
Is that not the very understanding that’s within you?
If so, knowing it will set you free of one thing, at least.
You don’t have to search your life trying to understand what some original Creator had in mind for you to do.
Or what some people have claimed some original Creator means for you and your life.
Tao is the Way of Nature’s way, perfectly in tune with it imperfectly.
A way a person knows instinctively.
Then how have the Tao Te Ching and I come into conflict?
It’s in the 5th Verse where my problem begins.
The 5th Verse says:
“To the master none are especially dear,
nor is there anyone he disfavors.
He gives and gives, without condition,
offering his treasures to everyone.”
How is it that Nature can be said to hold none especially dear, when every mammal I know of, and most birds, protect their own over any others? Even to the brink of death.
And love? Is love not natural?
I submit that mere observation alone bears proof that it is.
That for a space of time most people, not unnaturally, bathe in the spring of special love, romantic or otherwise.
That even dogs can experience it – a love for just one person.
Is the Tao Te Ching denying this?
Let’s try it in a different way. Let’s try changing genders:
“To the master none are especially dear,
nor is there anyone she disfavors.
She gives and gives, without condition,
offering her treasures to everyone.”
Any eyebrows raised? Does the 6th Verse help?
“The spirit that never dies is called the mysterious feminine.
Although she becomes the whole universe,
her immaculate purity is never lost.
Although she assumes countless forms,
her true identity remains intact.
The gateway to the mysterious female is called the root of creation.
Listen to her voice,
hear it echo through creation.
Without fail, she reveals her presence.
Without fail, she brings us to our own perfection.”
The spirit that never dies is the spirit of the inner calling within you.
The spirit that guides you to your life’s soul-directed purpose.
The spirit that fills you with the happiness of being alive when you follow your passion.
That’s something I would call natural. And not immaculately pure.
You can’t have it both ways. I mean, would you call a leaf immaculately pure? I wouldn’t.
It’s an envelope of hair, spine, bones, and fragments.
Anything natural is filled with imperfections, and is not “pure.”
Purity is the perfection of plastic. And if anything, it’s not natural, and not “love.”
Love is bending. Love is never constantly the same. Love is imperfect, but thinks no evil.
To desire love to be perfect simply creates barriers of expectation around it.
“Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees only the manifestations.”
– 1st Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Becoming two in one? Is that love? Thinking, and seeing, and hearing, and feeling, and breathing, and dying as one? That is the impossible; and it is not Tao.
Yet, nothing is inherently wrong with a love that directs its attention toward a single individual. It’s only natural. And even if not Tao, it does not impede the way of Tao.
Where problems arise are when feelings create attachment, expectations, and obsessions. Because Tao is definitely non-attachment, and definitely non-obsessive.
Which to me means, to love in moderation with all my heart. Unselfishly.
“When action is selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place.”
– 3rd Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“The master allows things to come and go.”
– 12th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“Let yourself become totally empty. Let your heart be at peace.
Amidst the rush of worldly comings and goings,
observe how endings become beginnings.”
– 16th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“Allow your life to unfold naturally.”
– 29th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Love is a natural consequence of living.
Deny it, deny food and drink. Deny it, deny the child.
Let it be what it will be, without losing the staying power of Tao. Let it change naturally. The importance of love is not how long it lasts, but how you share the moments.
“… carrying bread home from the bakery and feeling its heat gradually diminish.”
~~ The Wind Blowing Through a Tree, Linda Gregg.
“Those who follow the Way become one with the Way.
Those who follow goodness become one with goodness.
If you conform to the Way, your actions become those of nature,
your ways those of heaven.”
– 23rd Verse, Tao Te Ching.
How many a creed works for after-work hours, but not so well on the job.
It’s almost a separate mind that controls our motions working, building, growing, clearing, healing, or teaching for a livelihood.
A separate dream that sustains us in our hours of labor.
A separate sense of existence that fills us amidst the rush of worldly comings and goings.
Home is where our dreams and Tao resonate.
In the peace and appreciation of silence and reflection. In the quiet of love.
For Tao is the union of thought, feeling, and contented calm.
“Stillness and tranquility set things in order in the universe.”
– 45th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“The bliss of eternity can be found in contentment.”
– 46th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Making love with the one you love is fulfilling, and more.
It completes the circle. It completes the feeling of where you are.
How do you know where you are in the circle of life unless you can feel it?
How do you know where you are in the circle of love if you let people, or memories, become obsessions of devotion? If you let them become cravings?
Tao is not for everyone, and isn’t meant to be.
Nor must every second, minute, and day of the year be swum in it to give the benefit of its healing waters. Easy for some. Difficult for others.
“A great scholar hears of the Tao and begins diligent practice.
A middling scholar hears of the Tao and retains some and loses some.
An inferior scholar hears of the Tao and roars with ridicule.
Without that laugh it would not be the Tao.”
– 41st Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Tao is easier for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are absent, everything becomes more clear and undisguised.
When we are unattached we become better able to find the Tao.
Those who follow the Tao always strive to do the best they can, without becoming needy for the success of what they do. They don’t have to be “winners.”
Not having to win is being “detached.” It’s avoiding sinking into expectations.
It’s accepting flaws and outcomes as natural. For what they are.
Unflaw a diamond and unmake it.
In ancient Egypt (of pharaohs and pyramids) there was Tao. Of a sort.
They called it Ma’at; and it represented to them the fundamental order of the universe.
The way things ought to be. Truth, justice, and the cosmic order.
The ideal manner for humans to relate to one another and to the land.
With kindness and compassion toward all. And a goddess to watch over it.
Tao is a very individual practice, where Ma’at was community.
More than a philosophical construct, Ma’at was a community’s way of living.
The essence of many an individual’s goal in life is to find those they love, and love them, and to make their daily experience worthwhile while helping others.
The essence of a community’s goal in life is, first, survival.
Second, evolution to a better state.
And third, preparation for peace and understanding in an afterlife they believe in.
“The energy of the mind is the substance of life.”
– Aristotle.
To a community, love is valuable, but even more so when it operates on a level and constantly calm basis, one member toward another.
When it leads people toward finding their center of supportive living.
When it connects each part of the community, one with the other, in a continual process of giving and receiving, ebbing and flowing.
That kind of love.
The great question of Tao-based living is whether a community, or an individual, can nurture both at the same time – body and soul.
Without ripping their harmony into separation.
Can you give free rein to your temporal imagination without disrupting the spiritual humility of Tao?
Can you understand your human-centered mind without corrupting the comprehension of your Tao-centered mind?
Can you love all people, allowing them to rise to their fullest height, while not diminishing your own stature?
That is the duality at the heart of Tao Te Ching’s 10th Verse.
You must learn to nurture your love and love your own spirit above all else, without losing connection with the needs and values of others.
The self-nurturing of one’s soul is of paramount importance, for we must find the treasures that are there within us in order to give full worth and love when treasuring others.
Give yourself to others. Down to the core of you.
And hold on with dear life and soul to the Self and Community that remain.
For that is you. A person. That is you. A spirit.
That is you, a purpose and force for union and virtue on this Earth.
“Love is the fruit of sacrifice. Wealth is the fruit of generosity.”
– 44th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Wealth ripens, setting free attachment to wealth.
A physician does not benefit herself or the community giving up her skills and training.
She benefits by giving up attachment to them.
Love ripens, setting free attachment to love. Love is the setting free of love.
Setting free possession. Sacrificing the passions of expectation and desire.
“The Tao gives without expecting.”
– 51st Verse, Tao Te Ching.
But. But. But. But…. Isn’t attachment what love’s actually about?
In the final analysis, isn’t loving someone else (particular) Love?
If the Tao Te Ching would speak to this, I would imagine advice along the lines of:
Love are the moments of love’s sharing that don’t attach, but remain forever free.
What a person makes of them is that person’s personal choice.
Which is more important: Touching to the quick my Stoic hidden self, and possibly the Stoic hidden self of you, or living the passion of an Orpheus and Euridice?
“… haunted by Euridice … I think of her loss and crying out as I listen
day and night to the man upstairs whose cries
of pain are like a wounded animal unable to do
anything but suffer. The gods instruct us to cut
the throats of eight beasts, throw in poppies,
kill the jet-black ewe in the beautiful Italian
light so the bees, who have been the real business
all along, will swarm out again under the pliant boughs.”
– The Ninth Dawn, Linda Gregg.
“I would be lying on the bed when I heard his key
in the lock. I would not stand up, would listen…. Perhaps
his voice saying my name, perhaps not. Then seeing
his face, at last for the first and only time, briefly, briefly.”
– The Spirit and What Is Left Behind, Linda Gregg.
The deeper we are drawn into the creative depths between heart and soul, the more real becomes the presence of the sacrifice. And the question. Is the sacrifice made at the initiation? Or the arriving? Exhausting us in keeping what we love of life safe.
“The soul must be experienced to be achieved.”
– God’s Places, Linda Gregg.
“God loves us more because of the dread and seeking we contain.
He loves our lostness because it is by loneliness and sacrifice,
our body and soul together, that the thing God is can exist.”
~~ There Is a Sweetness in It, Linda Gregg.
God is love. Is like saying the great sign “Hollywood” is Hollywood.
We are born with receptors beyond our five senses.
One metaphor, useful to describe three of them, is the Three Pillars.
God.
Goodness.
Soil.
Like our lungs and stomach taking in the environment, the God Pillar takes in God and makes God part of our lives, love falling where it will.
And we don’t all absorb God in the same way.
Just as we don’t all breathe in the same air.
Swiss Alps, to the Sahara, to Beijing.
“There are times when the body
tries to exist on earth by itself. There are common
places left for this. But the spirit must enter
the body. The body must yield to it as much as cows
and palm branches do.”
– The Spirit and What Is Left Behind (after Giotto), Linda Gregg.
“She sits on the stone patio at evening
and does not move or desire speech.
If something moves, it is not she.
It is a bird, dark in the poor light,
flying down the air.”
– The Heart’s White Horse, Linda Gregg.
The heart which connects you to the longing of this life, and the soul which connects you to the next, reside so close together.
Love are the moments. Tao is the Way.
“Eight deer on the slope
in the summer morning mist.
The night sky blue.
Me like a mare let out to pasture.
The Tao does not console me.
I was given the way
in the milk of childhood.
Breathing it waking and sleeping.
But now there is no amazing smell
of sperm on my thighs,
no spreading it on my stomach
to show pleasure.
I will never give up longing.
I will let my hair stay long.
The rain proclaims these trees,
the trees tell of the sun.
Let birds, let birds.
Let leaf be passion.
Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be
between us. Let joy.
Let entering. Let rage and calm join.
Let quail come.
Let winter impress you. Let spring.
Allow the lost ocean to wake in you.
Let the mare in the field
in the summer morning mist
make you whinny. Make you come
to the fence and whinny. Let birds.”
– Let Birds, Linda Gregg.
Don’t worry if you don’t Tao all that well.
It’s more important finding peace, trying not to step on the other’s toes.
TAO ON
Boasting.
“Boasting does not produce accomplishment.
It’s like a pain in the stomach.
– 24th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“After you have attained your purpose,
you must not parade your success,
you must not boast of your ability,
you must not feel proud.”
– 30th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
“When life is simple, pretenses fall away;
our essential natures shine through.
When there is silence,
one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.”
– 37th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Living Without Judging Others.
“The master is aware of the needs of others.
Those who are good he treats with goodness.
Those who are bad he also treats with goodness
because the nature of his being is good.”
– 49th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Living with Flexibility.
“The flexible are preserved unbroken.
The bent become straight.
The empty are filled,
The exhausted become renewed.
The poor are enriched.
The rich are confounded.”
– 22nd Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Dying.
“If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
– 74th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Pollution.
“When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
creatures become extinct,
and equilibrium falls apart – the center cannot hold.
A man’s life adds to less than nothing
unless he lives in accordance with the universe.”
– 39th Verse, Tao Te Ching.
War.
“With the slaughter of multitudes,
we have grief and sorrow.
Every victory is a funeral.
When you win a war,
you celebrate by mourning.”
– 31st Verse, Tao Te Ching.
Overpopulation.
“To keep on filling is not as good as stopping.
Overfilled, the cupped hands drip.”
– 9th Verse, Tao Te Ching.