Tao Te Ching – Chapter 59

“Everything in moderation,” goes the adage. The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism is described as the “middle way.” A meditation instruction teaches “not too tight, not too loose.” 

The concept of moderation is the foundation of this chapter.

Governing people in alignment with heaven
Is accomplished only through moderation

As with other chapters on governing, I find this most helpful when I think of self governance.

The character for moderation  啬  has components that mean come, from, earth, return. Returning, we are told elsewhere in the Tao Te Ching, is the motion of Tao. There is a cycle of manifestation into form, and a return to formlessness. Like an inhale and exhale. 

The center of this cycle, the liminal space between form and formless, the pause between the inhale and the exhale, represents this concept of moderation. Moderation is the point of balance between one extreme and the other. 

The Tao Te Ching is fond of using a cascading structure in some chapters. Perhaps this aided in remembering what was at one time passed down through oral tradition. 

Moderation means early attunement (or attunement from the beginning)
Early attunement means the accumulation of Te (Virtue)
The accumulation of Virtue leads to mastery
Mastery leads to limitless awareness
Limitless awareness leads to aligned governance
Aligned governance leads to the eternal
The deep roots of the eternal offer infinite perception of Tao

Admittedly, that might be a bit hard to follow. However, if we consider the overall arc of this chapter, especially in terms of self governance, we can see the connection between the middle way of moderation and our alignment with the sacred energy moving between heaven and earth. 

When we swing too far in one direction or another, we lose this alignment. We must then use our energy to maintain this imbalance, or we compensate by swinging to the other extreme. But when we follow this middle way, our steps are effortless, and we are always attuned to the guidance of nature (Tao). 

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." ~Isaiah 30:21

The Cost of Freedom

Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down 
     ~Stephen Stills

For the last few days, I have awoken humming this refrain. It replays throughout the day and rocks me to sleep. Although it was written about war, it sings to my soul about internal war, the one we fight with ourselves, the one that I’ve been fighting for some time now.

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is that human existence is suffering. We suffer because we struggle. We desire things, including ourselves, to be other than they are and we fight to make them conform to our wishes. We fight until we learn that the Borg had it right – resistance is futile.

A series of seemingly unrelated events over the last year and a half has brought me repeatedly to the razor’s edge, the place I’ve written about as where we practice. With each event, I went through the same process of struggle, acceptance, peace. Then I would sit smug in relief, thinking that surely I had passed all my cosmic tests and could now chillax in enlightened equanimity.

But the universe, in its infinite wisdom and with a warped sense of humor, would nod and say, “Okay, well then how about this?!” And off we’d go again.

And so, as my last post said, I return to practice. Marianne Williamson wrote about a series of events in her own life that kept knocking her to her knees. With that good old perseverance that we value so much in our culture, she would pull herself to her feet only to be knocked down again. Finally, she realized, maybe she should just stay on her knees.

“Surrender is the name of the spiritual game,” teaches Adyashanti.

And so it is. Not the surrender of defeat, but the surrender into freedom. On my cushion this morning in meditation, I saw so clearly my struggle of the past weeks, a struggle to avoid pain and uncertainty, a struggle masking grief and sadness with anger and frustration, a struggle not born of courage but of fear.

I realized, in that instantaneous way we sometimes realize the simplest and most obvious things, that I didn’t need to struggle anymore. I...could...just...stop. I could stop listening to the endless spin of stories in my mind. I could act according to my own values and not let someone provoke me to react according to theirs. I could lay my body down and be swallowed up in the loving arms of the universe. I could choose freedom.

And so I did. Freedom is a choice available to all of us. The cost? Giving up everything that keeps us from loving.

I will fight no more forever. ~Chief Joseph

Well, at least for today. ~me

You Should Be Practicing

“When do you meditate?” the interviewer asked the Buddhist teacher.

“I am never not meditating,” the teacher replied.

“You should be practicing.” This is one of the slogans we train with in martial arts. The idea is that we weave practice into our lives as we go through our day. I think this is what the Buddhist teacher meant – not that he was sitting on his cushion all the time but that meditation permeated all aspects of his life.

Our practice becomes how we live. We practice in class or on our cushion to enable us to apply what we learn in the rest of our lives, especially when we find ourselves on the razor’s edge. We find ourselves on the razor’s edge when something has hooked us, churned us up, thrown us off balance. When we have attached ourselves to a narrative and are poised to react to our story rather than to respond to what is. When grief presses all the air out of our lungs until we can’t breathe. When we are hurt and we want to lash out in pain. When fear has clamped our minds and we seek desperately to escape. 

All of those descriptions apply to me at various times. I’ve been teetering on the razor’s edge recently. I have fallen off a couple of times. Okay, a lot. This is part of practice too. In fact this is where practice matters most – when we are tired, angry, afraid, suffering. When we fall off the razor’s edge in a heap and practice is the last thing we want to do. 

So I went to the cabin this weekend. I sat by the creek. I meditated in front of the fire. I danced tai chi in the trees. I belly breathed. A lot. I stepped back from the razor’s edge. And I remembered. 

I should be practicing. 

Pray without ceasing.   ~1 Thessalonians 5:17

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 58

This chapter highlights the folly of thinking that we know what’s good or bad, or that we can control things outside ourselves. It begins with an observation about government.

When government is unobtrusive
People are wholesome and pure
When government is oppressive
People are restless and contentious

The Tao Te Ching’s passages on government are consistent with the view that the “government is best that governs least,” or with the concept of a “servant leader.” This is challenging to apply to today’s world when the more traditional social structures of villages and small communities are missing in much of the developed world. So I prefer to consider these “government” passages in relation to our own individual self-government. Then the message of the text is easier to discern and apply.

When I am overly harsh with self-criticism, or overly strict with rigid rules, I lose my connection with the divine energy that moves all around me and through me. If instead, I remain fluid and in alignment with this energy, then, to borrow from Buddhist terminology, “right action” naturally and effortlessly occurs.

Our loss of alignment often results from judgment, and attachment or aversion. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Good fortune arises from the ashes of misfortune
Misery is held in the folds of joy’s robes

The characters for good fortune/joy 福  and misfortune/misery  祸  have the same radical, or root, meaning to reveal, as in a sacred revelation. This suggests that good fortune and misery are both rooted in holy origin, both part of the divine dance of life.

The chapter goes on to explain that when we impose our rigid standards of judgment (like an oppressive government) on our experience, we become confused and misguided. However, when we drop our judgments of good and bad, our attachment to pleasure and our aversion to pain, we can see everything as it is. We take our place in the divine dance.

Everything shares the same breath. But the movement of the breath comes and goes. It ends only to begin again. ~Wang P’ang