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Taoism and the Tao Te Ching: What Does a Taoist Eye See, A Taoist Heart Desire?
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What Does a Taoist Eye See?
A Taoist eye knows 'things as they are'. How do you know when you know 'things as they are'? First, knowing - in the Taoist sense - is a feeling, not thoughts we think. Without such knowing, even the best intentioned and reasoned thought soon fizzles out ? New Years resolutions come to mind. And so, words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice.Thinking is ephemeral and without substance. This is why the whole world says that my way is vast and resembles nothing. It is because it is vast that it resembles nothing. If it resembled anything, it would, long before now, have become small.
Thought, no matter how sound, has no control over emotion. Emotion is what drives action and attention. Only patience can overcome emotion. What is patience? Maybe it is the 'yin' of emotion's 'yang'. Patience is water. Patience is the Taoist approach to life. Patience is the stillness to take the lower position.
This is the irony: the great way is easy, yet people prefer by-paths. However, with patience, 'it' is easy from beginning to end. Lack of patience is what drives us off on to our by-paths. Patience is what the Taoist eye 'sees'.
What Does a Taoist Heart Desire?
Patience! And, what is patience but simply holding firmly to stillness?So, why can no one in the world can understand [this] or put [it] into practice? Desire. Desires smother patience and fill emptiness to the brim. Thus, a Taoist desires not to be full.
Patience isn't 'rational', it is an attitude, an emotion. Attitudes just are; they are beyond, beneath (or some other preposition) logical understanding. Though we can rationally know that patience is a virtue, that knowing cannot by itself make us more patient. We can only be more patient when we feel a 'desire' to be so. It may be very easy to understand, and yet understanding can never bring us to emotionally feel the sanity which patience brings: Patience is the emotional 'image' of simply doing less and less until one does nothing at all, and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone.
So, Now What?
The idea that it is easy, easy, easy, easy, easy comes from the fact that it is easy. It is as easy as taking a breath. The idea that no one can put this knowledge into practice comes from the fact that we never remain still long enough to deal with things while [they are] still nothing.We lack patience. Why? We honestly feel we can 'win'.
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I am confused.
: If desire is what derails our patience, why is it good to deisre patience? Am I simply misunderstanding you? -
- CommentAuthorLynn Cornish
- CommentTimeMar 25th 2006 edited
Forgive me for answering for Carl. It's a dark rainy day waiting for guests to arrive and I have an answer.
Carl puts desire in quotes:
We can only be more patient when we feel a 'desire' to be so.
Maybe, we could substitute the word "willingness" for "desire."
How I experience what he is saying is that patience is returning to stillness. It's more doing nothing than doing something. It isn't a desire like a wanting or needing; it's more like letting go, surrendering, being still.
Does that make any sense? It is truly more of an attitute or an emotion, as Carl says, than a mind thing.
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Lynn Cornish:
Maybe, we could substitute the word "willingness" for "desire."
"Willingness" is an excellent substitute for "desire". Although, in truth, it all boils down to the same thing, i.e., we must feel a "desire" to be "willing" to be "willing". The drive deep within living things - the will to live - is what underlies all that we do, or refrain from doing. Thus, desire is essentially need, which is essentially will.
Oh, my head is swimming in synonyms. The only difference I see is that "desires" are the 'thought-forms' generated by need and the will to survive. Another way to think of desire and need (will), is to compare it to smoke and fire. Thoughts and desires are the smoke. Where there is smoke there is fire - need and will to live. Animals feel needs, feel the will to survive, but don't "desire" anything because they don't think.
As to our "willingness" to be still: Taoist stillness is about our approach to life, to action. In each moment of living, we need to allow ourselves to have desires in order to observe its manifestations, and simultaneously we need to always rid ourselves of desires in order to observes its secrets. The latter is the stillness side of life's coin. It is this side that make the way very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice .
We, like all the myriad creatures, are more naturally inclined to allow ourselves, than to rid ourselves. Why? Life is biased towards a "willingness" to live - the will to survive. For us, this has been exacerbated by civilization. So, we feel a little lopsided throughout life, as we wend our way from the cradle to the grave.
Jillian:
If desire is what derails our patience, why is it good to desire patience?
Ah desire! It has become mostly the bad guy on the block - spiritually speaking. Although, in Chapter 1 and 15 of the Tao Te Ching we are advised to always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations, and to desire not to be full. And Buddha make room for some desire with "whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty".
But mostly desire is a problem as we see in Buddha' Second Noble Truth, The desire to live for the enjoyment of self entangles us in a net of sorrows. Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain. and in Chapters 1, 19, 34, 37, 46, 57, and 64 of the Tao Te Ching, as follows:
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to...
Have little thought of self and as few desires as possible...
For ever free of desire...
And if I cease to desire...
There is no crime greater than having too many desires...
I am free from desire and...
Therefore the sage desires not to desire...I took on the issue of desire awhile ago and wrote a piece, http://centertao.org/buddhismobservations.php]Poking a Little Deeper[/url] over in the Buddhism forum. My mind is churning around on this again, and so it is bound to come up with more stuff.
Speaking of the mind, it is only tool to help us avoid by-paths and the desires that lead to them. This 'tool', like an exceedingly sharp blade, cuts both ways. Much of our difficulty stems from not being as careful at the end as at the beginning of each moment. I say each moment, because that is truly all we ever have. Not to know yet to think that [we] know leads to difficulty. It is by being alive to difficulty [each moment] that one can avoid it..
Well, Jillian, look what you've done by your short question. Now, I feel the desire to take another look into desire. The better we know its nature, the better we can press it down with the weight of the nameless uncarved block - maybe. As the issue of desire is central to Buddhism, I'll continue this over on http://centertao.org/viewforum.php?f=2] Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths[/url]... as soon as my murky mind clears a bit more.
Isn't Taoism wonderful. Where being vacant like a valley; murky like muddy water is actually a 'good' thing.
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