Tao Te Ching – Chapter 81

This is it, the last chapter of the Tao Te Ching. I began this series on the 81 chapters of this ancient text almost five years ago. Wow, that is hard for me to believe. The intention for the series was to share some reflections on each chapter based on my decades long love of this wisdom teaching, which led me to spend several years delving into the mystery and beauty of the original Chinese characters. What I’ve tried to offer is not another translation of each chapter – there are already so many of those – but rather some insight or application that has arisen in my own life through my engagement with the text. 

So here we are, at the end which does not feel like the end. The motion of Tao is cyclical, manifesting and returning, rather than linear. It ends where it begins. This is the way. 

With that in mind, I’m drawn to the very end of this chapter, which, at least to me, sums up the arc of wisdom throughout the Tao Te Ching. 

Heaven’s Tao benefits yet does not interfere

Sage’s Tao acts yet does not contend

Here is our model for living in awakened moments. The energy of the universe is like the sun, providing light and warmth to all without regard to merit, without judgment, without manipulation. The ten thousand things of creation evolve and unfold according to their nature. We don’t have to look far to see how interference, no matter how well intentioned, often leads to unexpected and undesired results. This, in turn, requires more and more manipulation, layers upon layers of course correction to restore balance, which is never truly achieved and must be artificially maintained. 

We can think of examples in our communities and in our own lives where we sought to make some improvement or to bestow some benefit that did not turn out the way we imagined. Think kudzu. For more entertaining examples, think of all the science fiction tales based on time travel that wreaks havoc with history’s trajectory, or medical breakthroughs that unleash unanticipated devastation. It’s no accident that Star Trek’s “prime directive” prohibited interference with the natural development of alien civilizations. (And yes, some of the best storylines in Star Trek involved the violation of the prime directive!)

Yet non-interference does not mean non-engagement. The sage acts. The key is in the absence of striving or contending. Appropriate actions arise naturally and effortlessly when they are in harmony with the movement of Tao’s intrinsic energy. Ordinary people sometimes act in extraordinary ways, and we call them heroes. When asked about their actions, they often say that they didn’t think. They just instinctively responded to a perceived need. I’m thinking of a man I read about recently who, in the moments after his outside wedding, saw a boy drowning in a canal. Leaving his bride and the photographer wondering what was going on, he raced to the water’s edge and without hesitation jumped in the water and pulled the boy out. 

Not all examples are so dramatic. I’m thinking of a friend who baked cookies for me when I was having a really bad day. When presented with the cookies, I burst into tears of gratitude. Her gesture was perfect and exactly what I needed. She thought nothing of it, but to me it changed everything.

When we self reflect, we can often see that most of our effort and striving happens in our thinking minds, when we are struggling with what is, wanting it to be something different, wanting someone else to be different, wanting ourselves to be different. When we contend with reality, we will always lose. But when we loosen our rigid grip, when we release our insistence, when we allow awareness to open unimpeded, our way becomes clear in its own time, and we follow its path with effortless energy. 

Thus we come full circle in this ancient wisdom teaching. The first chapter of the Tao Te Ching ends with the character for doorway or gate, inviting us into the mystery of an awakened life, lived fully in harmony with the natural expression of creation. This last chapter reveals how life unfolds when we walk through the door.

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. ~T. S. Eliot

I hope you have enjoyed this series. You can access the entire series by clicking on the label Tao Te Ching chapter series below, or over in the right column under the list of labels.

The Liminal Space of Possibility

 

Sitting by the fire

In the dark early morn

Watching out the window

As shadows emerge from blackness

Shadows becoming trees

As light seeps into the forest

The sun will be here later

Now is the time of in between

The liminal space of possibility

The secret taste of sweet unknown

It Is Done

 

It is done

All efforts have failed

"Effort" will inevitably fall short

In our quest to contain the infinite

Embracing Yin

Summer is the season of pure yang energy. Its element is fire. Its organ is the heart. Yang energy is active, hot, rising, powerful. When someone is wildly successful, driving forward, dominating the competition, unstoppable, we might say, “Wow, she’s on fire!” 

Our western culture highly values yang energy. Idle hands do the devil’s work, make the most of every minute, increase productivity, we can rest when we’re dead, time is money, move up or move out – these are just a few familiar sayings that reflect this preference.

There is nothing inherently wrong with yang energy. On the contrary, it is a necessary and natural aspect of life’s rhythm and harmony. It is the manifesting energy of all creation. But it is not the only energy. Its complementary energy is yin. 

Yin is still, receptive, dark, nurturing. It is the womb from which creation emerges. It is the fertile earth. It is the energy of gathering, returning to the source, the energy of harvest. Its season is fall. 

This year in my area of the world, wildfires are racing across the land. Nature’s expression of yang energy is exploding with the hot dryness of a rainless summer, ignited in unstoppable fires scattered up and down the west coast. Smoke hangs thick over my house, keeping me inside, while friends not far away have had to abandon their homes to take refuge from the inferno.

We sometimes describe such fires as raging. I can’t help but wonder if these fires in particular, and global warming in general, aren’t reflections back to us of the imbalance we have created by such a devoted enslavement to yang energy. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the yin organ of fall is the lungs, the organ most directly vulnerable to the fire and smoke.

Nature seeks balance. First the pandemic kept us home, and now the smoke keeps us inside.*  Growing still, turning inward, where yin energy welcomes us, and encourages us to rest, to contemplate, to listen, to receive. The fires won’t last forever. Hopefully, neither will the pandemic. When we emerge on the “other side” of all this, may we find a more sustainable balance in our lives and in our world. 

*I write this post as one who has the luxury of sheltering in place, in a safe home with plenty of food and water, and lots of time to sit and wonder about the questions I raise here. This is not true for everyone. The circumstances that give me this opportunity for reflection call firefighters to the flame, risking their lives, and cause others to flee to safety, while volunteers step up to serve. Heroes of all kinds abound in crises such as the ones faced this year with the pandemic and the fires. I am not one of them, and I am humbly grateful to those who are.

Entering the In Between

 

Arising in darkness

As summer's light fades

Entering the in between

Where mystery beckons

"Come"

Please in Kind Prevail

                                                                

You think you know yourself until things start happening, until you lose the insulation of normality. ~Robert Wilson

The photo above shows a label on the side of a jigsaw puzzle box. I was immediately intrigued. 

“Specification colors and contents may yary from illustration, pls in kind prevail.” [sic]

If I consider just the first part of the sentence, does that mean that the puzzle inside the box might not be the one illustrated? Could it be a different puzzle altogether? Maybe the same picture but with different colors? Or could it possibly not even be a puzzle? A total surprise? Not  at all what I thought I was buying?

This year might have well come with such a cautionary label. I laugh now at my January post about 2020 being the year of perfect vision. I suppose in some way it is that indeed, showing us with sometimes shocking clarity some things we may not wish to see. But that is not what I meant when I wrote that post. I thought I was “buying” a very different type of year, a year of insight, wisdom, enlightenment. And above all some peace, especially after the intense last two years in my personal life. 

Instead, this year has, for many of us, stripped away the insulation of normality. And we are discovering that perhaps we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought we did. The year of perfect vision has brought us face to face not only with the world around us, but with ourselves. And who is it that is staring back? 

Perhaps our reflection varies in “specifications, colors, and contents” from the illustration of ourselves that we have painted and displayed to others, and most importantly to ourselves. What do we find when we open the box and take a look inside?

Maybe this is where the second part of the label comes in. “Please in kind prevail” could mean lots of things. I’ve had a fun time exploring some of the possibilities. But I this context, I like to think that it means to have an attitude of tolerance, acceptance, forgiveness, and kindness, when things or people, including ourselves, are not what we expect or want them to be. 

This might involve venturing beyond our comfort zone, questioning our underlying assumptions, willingness to tolerate uncertainty, humility to surrender to the unknown, courage to keep our hearts open when fear wants to shut them up tight. 

Perhaps this little puzzle box label is all the wisdom we need in this year of perfect vision. If we can see and manifest kindness in the midst of chaos, then surely we will prevail. 

My religion is kindness. ~the Dalai Lama

Live the Seeing

I cannot tell
What I now see
I have not words
It matters not
It matters only that
I live the seeing

Heard Only in the Heart

The words are spoken in silence
Heard only in the heart
Do not doubt what they reveal
More real than any heard in mind
Trust the truth of what is known beyond knowing
And do not be misled by thought
That seeks to hold illusion
Be thou thus ignited 
With what has always burned
Deep 
Deep

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 71

Understanding that we do not know is wisdom
Believing that we know the unknowable is suffering

First year law students often arrive expecting that they are going to be told all the answers to legal questions. After a few weeks of hearing professors say, “That depends on ...,” they begin to suspect that the professors know the answers but for some pedagogical or sadistic reason are keeping the answers a secret from the students. It takes a while to convince them that legal analysis does indeed rest on a number of factors and variables.

Oprah Winfrey’s magazine always ends with a column titled “What I Know for Sure.” I used to joke that I was in awe of Oprah because she knew something for sure at least twelve times a year. 

Buddha understood that attachment or desire is the root of suffering. One of the things our brains are wired to desire is unchanging certainty. So strong is this craving, that our brains will grasp onto a false answer rather than tolerate the discomfort of not knowing. Once securely attached to an answer, the brain resists the trauma of releasing it even when a better answer is presented. I have seen my own brain do this. It’s kind of amazing. 

And it leads to suffering. Because on some level we know that we are floating in an ocean of mystery paddling a leaky raft. Our soul swims lazily alongside, beckoning. “Come on in; the water’s fine.” And we just paddle harder. 

Until we don’t. Until we are so tired of the suffering we cause ourselves, that we are willing to dive into our fear because we are less afraid of the murky depths than of staying where we are.

And guess what. The water is fine. And so are we. 

You know nothing, Jon Snow. ~Ygritte, Game of Thrones

Light in the Darkness

Darkness darkness, be my pillow 
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your dream

Darkness darkness, hide my yearning
For the things that cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning 
Towards the things I cannot see
     ~Stephen Stills

Today is the first day of winter, the season we associate with darkness. The song lyrics encourage us to rest, to cease our struggle, to accept what is, to enter the mystery.

In the Tao Te Ching, darkness is the metaphor for mystery, the essence of the Way. It is the origin of all creation. The Bible tells us that in the beginning, “the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” From this darkness, God brought forth the manifested universe, beginning with light.

It is within the darkness of this deep mystery that the light begins to return. After today’s winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, the light stays just a minute longer. And then another. We hardly notice its gradual approach as we wake in the darkness, shivering in the cold.

Then one day we notice the early morning sun sparkling on the frost. The light calls creation to awaken once again and we know that spring will come.

But for now, we prepare for the time of quiet, the time of unknowing, the season of stillness. The darkness is the gate to mystery. And it stands open, inviting us in, allowing us to sink deep inside ourselves, to listen...and wait...and watch. Within the darkness, if we are patient, we will see the light of truth, first as a tiny glimmer, then growing into a blazing light, consuming all illusion and doubt.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait.... So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. ~T.S. Eliot

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 65

Like other chapters which address principles of governance, this chapter applies just as well, and perhaps with more relevance, to how we govern ourselves.

In ancient times rulers who followed Tao
Did not teach people to be clever
But rather encouraged people to follow their true nature
Governing by manipulation brought ruin
But governing in alignment with Tao brought good fortune

I have taken great liberty with the translation here because the use of certain characters in this particular chapter seems atypical in the context of the Tao Te Ching. I hope I have captured the essential meaning. I think the point, expressing a theme throughout the text, is that nature has its own wisdom that we cannot improve on. And when we try, our interference causes chaos and suffering.

To know the difference between these two (the natural way vs interference)
Is called mysterious Virtue (Te)
Mysterious Virtue reaches deep and far
Linking all things to the Source
In perfect harmony

As I’ve noted before, the “Te” of the Tao Te Ching is often translated as “Virtue.” However, this does not mean virtue in any moralistic sense, but rather means the expression of Tao in the manifested universe. I think it is comparable to the fruits of the spirit in Christianity, which are not moral rules but rather the natural expression of being filled with the holy spirit.

Maybe I’m just getting too tired as I get older to expend a lot of energy trying to force things to be a certain way. I find more and more that when I allow things to run their natural course, everything turns out all right. In hindsight I see the wisdom of how things unfold, even if at an earlier stage it seemed that everything was going the wrong way. “Wrong,” of course, according to me and my limited vision and anxiety at the time. I’m learning to suspend judgment and take the approach voiced by a friend. “Let’s just see what happens.”

When I’m able to do that, all the moving pieces do indeed seem to settle into harmonious resonance. And it is perfect.

Trust the process. ~Kyle Cline

The Place We Never Left

Each moment
Is a doorway
An open door into the infinite
An invitation to enter 
The mystery of eternity
Time -- an endless hall of doors
Each moment
We walk through ... or we don't
Either way there is another door
Until we leave time altogether
And see all doors as one
Disappearing as soon as we step through
Into the place we never left

Everything – No Matter What – Is Perfect

I’m reading a book titled “What is Mysticism” by Jon Mundy. Yesterday I read this passage:

Mostly, it’s a profound inner knowing and an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things – a sense that everything is perfect just the way it is.

When I read it, I got chills because I was blessed to experience this perfection once. Some of you know this story, but I haven’t written about it in a while, and reading this book has brought it back to the forefront of my consciousness.

I have a cabin in the mountains, my little forest retreat, with no phone, TV, or internet. It nestles under huge evergreens, on top of a small but steep rise overlooking a creek. One time, years ago, I left my kids with a trusted friend, and went up to the cabin for an overnight respite.

For some reason, I decided that I needed to clean all the little branches and pine needles off the roof. I stood on an extension ladder and raked the debris to the ground. After moving the ladder all around the cabin, I was on the last section. The base of the ladder was on the deck. There was one branch stuck further up on the roof. I leaned forward over the top rungs of the ladder and reached as far as I could with the rake. And then I felt the ladder slip.

My first frantic instinct was to grab for something. But there was only the slanted roof, with no gutters. In the next instant, I knew I was going to fall. And that is when everything changed.

I will try my best to describe what happened, knowing that I can’t. There are no words. So I will try to fail well, using words to do what words can never do.

The moment I understood that I was going to fall, the world changed. I did not leave my body. Indeed, I was very aware of being in my body as it bounced off the falling ladder. I felt my back land on the edge of the deck, and experienced the disorienting tumble as I flipped off the deck and rolled head over heels through the brush down the hill.

But that is not the story. The story is what was going on as all this was happening. At that exact instant when I surrendered to the fall, all fear evaporated. Arms of angels embraced me in peace and light. No, I didn’t see them, and “angel” is not even the right word, but I felt surrounded by unconditional love beyond anything you can imagine. Everything that I knew or thought I knew fell away.

Surprisingly, I did not sense that I was being protected from bodily harm. On the contrary, as I felt my body crash and tumble, I was quite sure something was going to break. The blow of my back on the edge of the deck might leave me paralyzed. I might even die. At the very least there was going to be a broken bone somewhere. And I was there by myself with no way to get help. All of this was floating through my mind, but totally, completely without fear.

Because none of that mattered. It didn’t matter because I was being held in the absolute certainty that whatever happened was perfect. I understood, not with my mind but with my entire being, that everything is perfect. That was the word I “heard” from the angels, or beings, or energy that surrounded me – perfect. Always. No matter what. Perfect. Just let that soak in for a minute.

Everything is perfect. Always. No matter what.

The sublime peace and exquisite joy of that moment was...ah, I can’t even try to express it. All I can say is that I knew it was real. That it was the only thing that is real.

I would like to tell you that this moment of awakening or enlightenment or whatever you want to call it lasted forever. At the time, it did seem like forever because time was suspended while I was falling. But I returned to the “ordinary” world. After my body came to a stop, I lay there on the side of the hill, fearing to move in case some part of me didn’t move! I started with my toes and moved on up, reassured that everything was functioning. Scraped and bleeding, and not yet feeling the bruising and soreness of the days to come, I crawled back up the hill and sat on the deck trying to process what had just happened.

As my thinking mind started to rev back up, all the “what if” thoughts started to dance a frantic, fearful dance, playing out scenarios that never happened, yet seemed real in my imagination. But I stopped them with a quick rebuke. I had been given a priceless treasure and I was loath to toss it aside in favor of worthless mind trinkets.

So I sat there, looking at the ladder lying innocently on the deck, tracing with my eyes the track my body took from the roof to the bottom of the hill, and giving up any effort to make what had happened make “sense.” I breathed in the smell of evergreen and listened to the creek, humbly grateful for this glimpse of...what? Heaven, truth, reality? The word doesn’t matter.

I might not have become an enlightened being that day, but I had an enlightened experience. Since then, especially in challenging times, I have drawn on the memory of what happened, reminding myself of what I learned that day. That things are not what they seem, that I understand very little, and know even less. And that no matter what happens, even if I can’t understand it, everything is perfect.

Nothing real can be threatened
Nothing unreal exists
Herein lies the peace of God
    ~A Course in Miracles

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 56

One who knows does not speak
One who speaks does not know

Upon reading these opening lines, our first instinct might be to be quiet, to show that, or at least hope that, we are among those who know. But then, after a while, we want to talk about it, either to share what we think we know, or to question whether we know anything at all. Even Lao Zi, the purported author of the Tao Te Ching, acknowledges in the opening lines of the first chapter that the Tao is beyond understanding and identification . . . and then proceeds to use roughly 5,000 characters to describe it!

Our minds operate in the realm of thought, and we communicate using language. Yet these two functions by their very nature take us a step away from the direct and unfiltered experience of reality, of truth. That doesn’t make thinking and speaking bad. It just means that they, like Moses, will inevitably fail to take us into the promised land they point to. With that in mind, our aim in thinking and speaking might be, as Adyashanti says, to fail well.

Two sections follow these opening lines, each with a repeating pattern. The first section sets forth what might be practices for finding entry to the mystery.

Seal the openings
Close the door
Blunt the point
Unravel the tangles
Soften the brightness
Become one with the dust
This is called mysterious union

These lines highlight the idea that entering the promised land, so to speak, is not achieved by effort or force. In fact, it is not “achieved” at all, but rather “allowed” or “released” into. The nature of the universe, as described in the Tao Te Ching, is to manifest into form, and return to the formlessness of Tao. It is a natural process, one that we neither create nor control.

The last section follow a pattern of transcending opposites, a theme throughout the entire text.

Thus it is beyond attachment
Beyond aversion
Beyond gain
Beyond loss
Beyond honor
Beyond disgrace
Thus harmonized with everything under heaven

Our brains seek to understand, to know, to categorize and file away. Negative or apophatic theology teaches us that that is all well and good, but it is not how we enter into the mystery of divine relationship or union. “Not this, not this” is the refrain of those who know truth.

Or, as St. Augustine said, “If you can understand it, it’s not God.”

You Got Me.... Do You?

When I’m sparring with my martial arts teacher and somehow manage to get him in a hold, he will pause and look at me. “Oh, you got me.” And just as I’m feeling smug, he simply melts away like smoke. While I’m left holding nothing, he says with a twinkle, “Do you?”

This year has been like that. A series of revelations that whatever I think I know or understand, I don’t. I thought I understood a situation. I didn’t. I thought I was being helpful. I wasn’t. I thought I had a particular relationship with someone. I didn’t. I believed something to be true. It wasn’t.

It was like the universe taunting me, teaching me.

Oh, you got this.... Do you?

Each revelation allowed me to release something I held onto. Each one went deeper, layer beneath layer. Then the big one, the one I had held onto my whole life. Still working on releasing that one. Whew, I thought. It all led up to this. When I work through this, I will be done. That was the grand finale of releasing.

Was it?

Recent months brought yet another deeply held belief into question. Really? I have to release even that?

Even that.

Then what’s left? Oh.... I get it.

Do you?

Go Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, 
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
     ~Wendell Berry

As we passed the equinox in September, I wrote about the season of darkness, about entering the mystery of darkness. As the days grew shorter, I did not mourn the light but instead embraced the darkness, accepting the invitation to dance in the unknowing.

At my cabin this weekend, I walked with the dog as the winter sun slanted through the trees. The cabin faces south along a creek, and across the creek a forested ridge rises. As we approach the darkest days, the sun barely clears the ridge in the morning and drops out of sight by mid-afternoon, leaving the cabin in shadow most of the day. Twinkly lights and a fire keep it cozy and cheery, but I step outside before bed to breathe in the cold darkness.

At home and at the cabin, I have been trying something new with my meditation practice. Since I awake early, my morning meditation is always before sunrise. I’ve been turning out all the lights to meditate in the darkness. And I’ve added a before bed meditation, again in darkness. I’ve been surprised by how much I like it. I’m much less fidgety, and my mind is calmer. It’s like I “go dark” inside, in harmony with the darkness outside.

In a few days, winter solstice will call back the light and the days will start to lengthen. But I will hold onto the darkness a while longer, embraced by the night, resting in deep stillness.

Darkness darkness, be my pillow
Take my head and let me rest
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your dream
Darkness darkness, hide my yearning
For the things that cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning 
Towards the things I cannot see
     ~60s song by The Youngbloods, lyrics by Jesse Collin Young

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 53

This chapter paints an accurate picture of the human experience.

If I have even a little knowledge
I will walk on the path of the great Tao
Straying from it is my only fear

This path is very smooth and easy
But people love to veer off on side roads

While the palace courts are splendid 
The fields lie fallow
And the granaries are empty

People wear elegant clothes
And carry sharp weapons
Eating and drinking to excess
Hoarding their wealth and possessions

This extravagance is robbery
The opposite of the great path of Tao

I can’t help but notice the relevance of this chapter to today’s world. However, before we “veer off on a side road” talking about current politics or world crises, remember that this was written at least 2,500 years ago. This chapter has always been relevant because it speaks to the timeless human condition. The first Noble Truth of Buddhism is the fact of suffering. However, that is not the end of the story. As the saying goes, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.”

All spiritual wisdom teachings offer a way to understand and engage with our human experience. (“Tao” actually means “way” or “path.”) All address this fact of suffering, and provide a framework for changing the way we relate to it, with the result that our suffering is eased if not eliminated.

A necessary component of this framework is an honest inquiry into the nature of our existence, and a recognition of our own participation in the reality that we perceive. Regardless of different concepts or vocabulary, the key is not so much the “answers” but our “willingness” to inquire honestly and listen.

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

It’s Not Complicated

I have on occasion had folks tell me, in the nicest way possible, that my writing and speaking about the Tao Te Ching are sometimes – hmm, how do they put it – dense, obscure, inaccessible. 

Oh dear.

I want them to be wrong, but of course I must admit that they are right. How can words describe the indescribable? More words, different words, cannot explain what the thinking mind cannot label or categorize. The very first line of the Tao Te Ching says “The Tao that can be understood is not the eternal Tao.”

So how do we talk about this mystery, what a Christian monk writing in the 14th century described as “the cloud of unknowing”? Even the author of the Tao Te Ching expressed this dilemma in Chapter 70.

My words are very easy to understand
And very easy to practice
Still, no one in the world
Can understand or practice them

(That passage always makes me smile.)

So why try? Because when we glimpse the beauty of that dark mystery, when for a moment we pierce the veil of the infinite, when the miracle of a single breath astounds us, the strings of our soul are set to humming, and we seek to share this music in harmony with each other in a cosmic jam session.

Yes, I admit that the efforts to share oftentimes obscure as much as they reveal. That is perhaps the nature of the endeavor. We complicate with our words what is simple, so very simple. Here is a conversation I had with one of my teachers last year.

Me: Does it really have to be so complicated?
Him: No.
Me: Can we talk more about this?
Him: No need to. The answer is no.

Ha! 

Yet here I am, still talking about it! Imperfect as it is, there is delight in the trying, even though we recognize that our attempts to capture what will remain ever elusive and free, will fail.

As Adyashanti says, our goal is to “fail well.”

It's all good.

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 51

This chapter is a dance between Tao and Te – Tao as the source of all things, and Te as the life force that sustains all things. Many chapters focus on one or the other, so it is enlightening to see here the interplay between the two fundamental concepts of the Tao Te Ching. It is a chapter that delights the ear in the original Chinese because you can hear the rhythm and cadence. It sounds like a dance!

Tao gives birth to all things
Te nurtures all things
Matter forms all things
Environment completes all things

This is a brief story of creation. Tao manifests as the universe through the creative agency of Te. What is undifferentiated and unlimited potential in the infinite emptiness of Tao springs forth and divides into what the Tao Te Ching calls the ten thousand things. It is like light shining through a prism and making rainbows on the wall.

I love prisms, by the way, and recently gave one to my grandson. We had so much fun finding sun coming through windows to create dancing rainbows on walls, floors, curtains, and our hands. But I digress....

Thus the ten thousand things revere Tao and honor Te 
Not because it is commanded of them
But because it is their true nature to do so

I love this passage because it reflects the divine relationship between the creative energy and the created. The Ten Commandments demand honor of father and mother, but here the honor is a natural inherent response, requiring no effort.

Likewise, it is Te’s nature to nourish and sustain all things as they move through the life cycle.

Thus Tao gives birth to all things
As Te nurtures them
Raises and nourishes them
Protects and matures them
Sustains and shelters them

This passage reminds me of Psalm 91:4. “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.” So beautiful.

The last four lines are repeated in other chapters. This last section reminds me of Kahlil Gibran’s passage about children. 

Giving birth yet not possessing
Acting yet not claiming credit
Rearing yet not controlling
This is called profound Virtue (Te)

To me this chapter reflects the rhythm of breathing, the exchange between the inhale and the exhale. As we breathe, we dance our own creation, connecting ourselves as individuals to the universal energy that gives us all life.

So beautiful.

Tao Te Ching – Chapter 50

The chapter opens with an observation on dualism.

Going out into life, entering death

What causes this cycle of life and death?

Because attachment to life is intense

The character for intense has additional meanings of thick, solid, lavish. This contrasts with the description in the second part of the chapter, which is one of my favorite passages in the Tao Te Ching. The English translations cannot convey the rhythm, beauty, and poetry of the Chinese, but still there is a sense of wonder and intriguing mystery.

Those who sustain life well
Go forth without fear of wild buffalo or tiger
Enter battle without armor or weapons
Wild buffalo have nowhere to thrust their horns
Tigers have nowhere to sink their claws
Weapons have nowhere their blades can pierce
Why is this
Because there is no death place

The character for “place” means a literal place or location.

What could this mean, to have no place for death to enter? When I contemplate this passage, I’m reminded of the story about the young woman who wants to study martial arts but is afraid of getting hurt. The teacher stands across the room from her and asks, “If I’m standing here and you are standing over there, can I hurt you?” No, she says. He moves a few steps closer and repeats the question. Still no. This goes on until he is standing right in front of her and asks her one more time, “If I’m standing here and you are standing there, can I hurt you?” “Yes!” she exclaims. The teacher looks at her and says, “Then don’t be there.”

Does it mean that we should avoid danger and cower in a locked safe room? I don’t think so. The person described in this passage is not afraid, but walks boldly through life’s challenges with courage and joy. There is a sense of freedom, not fear.

This seems quite different from the solid thickness of an intense attachment to life portrayed in the first section. Does this mean that if we figure out how to live free of attachment, we will never die? There are Chinese legends of immortals, but I’m pretty sure that none of us will avoid the death of our physical bodies. All that manifests into form will return to formlessness. Our death is assured the moment we are born. This is the nature of duality.

There is a Buddhist practice of contemplating death and our own mortality. Our acceptance of the cycle of life and death allows us to live in freedom, without futile resistance to reality. Death has no place to enter, not because we won’t ever die but because we live in harmony with the movement of creation.

Like the monk, who sat serenely as a warrior brandished his weapon. “Why aren’t you afraid? Don’t you know I can run you through without blinking an eye?” demanded the warrior. The monk smiled and replied, “And I can be run through without blinking an eye.”