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- CommentAuthorLuke Abbott
- CommentTimeSep 14th 2005 edited
Each week we address one chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Chapter 6 was originally featured on the 2nd week in September, 2005.
Note: The Tao Te Ching can be obscure, especially if you think you're supposed to understand what it's saying! We find it easier and more instructive to simply contemplate how the chapter resonates with your personal experience. Becoming more aware at this fundamental level simplifies life. This approach conforms to the view that true knowing lies within ourselves. Thus, when a passage in the scripture resonates, you've found your inner truth. The same applies for when it evokes a question; questions are the grist for self realization.
Chapter 6
The spirit of the valley never dies.
This is called the mysterious female.
The gateway of the mysterious female
Is called the root of heaven and earth.
Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there,
Yet use will never drain it. -
[Note: I italicize phrases I borrow from the chapter, and link to phrases I borrow from other chapters to help tie chapters together. While making it more tedious to read,
the Tao Te Ching is best pondered in the context of the whole.]This calls to my mind the dynamics of success and failure. Success correlates, with obvious, mountain, male, now; failure correlates, with dimly visible, valley, female, never. I feel a mysterious relationship between now and never - when I sink deeply into now, I sense never - eternity.
Eternity?? On the surface, I think of now and never as opposite: now is active and changing; never is passive, not-ever changing, and eternal. How can I sense one - the never never land of eternity - by sinking totally into the other - now. This suggests to me that my usual perceptions of difference are most likely a neurological illusion which life has evolved to 'get around' in the world - to survive. The opposites that I sense are, in truth, the same - or I should say, mysteriously the same. Experiencing this mysterious sameness brings deep contentment. This raises two questions. (1) How am I able to experience something outside the neurological illusion? (2) Why can't I experience it continually, especially if use will never drain it?
Well, duh
. Question (2) is easy to answer. I am biological - neurological illusion goes with the territory. To be otherwise continually would imply that I ceased to be biologically alive. Actually, death solves this issue. My death simply means that my biology won't be getting in the way anymore. Now that is ironic, because in death the 'I' also dies so there is no 'I' to worry about its illusion. It's a non issue. Being alive means living out the biological illusion of difference. Upon death the illusion is extinguished. But,... groan... what about in the mean time?Okey, now the tough question. How is it possible to sense any reality outside the one which the nervous system is capable of producing? It isn't
This suggest to me that biology is rooted in the mystery. I just tend to spend a lot of my waking moments up here in the twigs and branches. It is only when I hold firmly to stillness that I can even begin turning back. This happens to be one great advantage of growing older; stillness becomes much more attractive 
. The mountains have been climbed, the successes won, the male known. You finally realize that success, no matter how great, is exceedingly fleeting; only to be replaced by another 'quest', and another, and another. Round and round. Feelings of success subside and you are back in the valley where you started. Yes indeed, the spirit of the valley never dies. The same applies to life itself. We are born, we scurry about, but soon end up back at the gateway of the mysterious female. On the practical side, there is a third question. If I can't 'live' continually in mysterious sameness, how can I at least maximize my time 'there'. The greatest barrier is instinct driven preconceptions. I am biologically set up to view strength and success as the path to happiness and contentment. Left unexamined, such preconceptions rule my world-view, and keep me reaching for the brass ring.
Long ago I sensed something fishy about this 'normal' world-view. This view proclaims that strong male success is 'good'; weak female failure is 'bad'... and so on. The more I examine life the more hollow this 'normal' view becomes. Thus, I find the 'anti-instinctive' Taoist preconceptions remind me where to look for contentment. I am using Taoist preconceptions to neutralize instinctive ('normal') preconceptions. Furthermore, I must confess that writing these commentaries to the Tao Te Ching helps remind me to recall what I know...
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- CommentAuthorLittle Dragon
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2005 edited
Carl
Just to pick up from the end of your last post about success and drive, the constant search for goals/achievements etc. This attitude has become endemic in our western industrialized society throughout the 20th century. Everyone must be dynamic, know where they're going, what they want to do.
We must work hard, achieve bigger and better qualifications so that we will be more marketable in the modern, dynamic, thrusting marketplace. Just as you achieve one level, it appears that this wasn't the peak but merely a foothill or lesser range and that there are still mountains to climb.All the time we are looking forward to where the goal is; the journey to the goal is a mere irritation, necessary to get there but not, really, important. Worst of all, once we've achieved that goal, we rarely take the time to sit down and admire the view, look back on the journey we have undertaken, with all its' pitfalls and small achievements along the way; nor do we look all the way back to our starting point, truly understanding and appreciating how far we have progressed.
And you're right about how much this has become linked to a dynamic (male) view of success. Most of the words used to talk about success are words that could be linked to the Yang, active side of human nature; Yin qualities of nurturing, quiet contemplation, going with the flow of the water, don't tend to be linked with success in the same way.
The problem is that coming to this type of understanding can take a long time; some people will, perhaps, never realise where this path takes them. Constantly shifting goals, adding new achievements, more mountains to climb can and, in my opinion, often does lead to despair as the tasks appear to be as mountainous at the end of life as they were at the beginning.
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- CommentAuthorAllandnone
- CommentTimeSep 15th 2005 edited
You can have all the goals that you want, the key point is to enjoy the journey, and be aware of this goal accomplishing activity and its effects on your life. If you are not enjoying the journey to the goal, you are probably not in the NOW and may wind-up a very disappointed individual in a supertribe. In fact I think your final experience will be a disappointment at a subtribe level, if all your interested in is accomplishing goals.
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