Monthly Chapter: 35

Hold the great image and all under heaven come toward you.
Coming toward you yet without harm, its quiet equanimity greatest.
Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop.
Of the way passing through the mouth, tasteless its non-flavor.
Of watching, not enough to see.
Of listening to, not enough to hear.
Of using, not enough already.
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Limits: Translations, even the nearly literal one above, lose some of the original meaning due to the cultural context of contemporary words. Studying the numerous synonym-like meanings of the Chinese characters in the Word-for-Word translation mitigates this. (Click graphic at right for on-line Word-for-Word.)

Third Pass: Chapter of the Month 7/6/2019

Archive: Characters and past commentary

Corrections?

None this time.

YouTube Audio Recordings:

Go to Kirk Garber’s YouTube channel for audio recordings of our monthly Sunday meeting. These come in two parts for each chapter. The shorter first part is a chapter reading followed by attendees’ commentary, if any. The second longer part is an open discussion among attendees’ on how the chapter relates to their personal experience.

Reflections:

Hold the great image and all under heaven come toward you.
Coming toward you yet without harm, its quiet equanimity greatest.

These first two lines remind me of the first half of chapter 16. Take a moment to let the first part of chapter 16’s sink in.

Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness.
Everything  ‘out there’  rises up together, and I watch again.
Everything ‘out there’, one and all, return again to their root cause.
Returning to the root cause is called stillness;
this means answering to one’s destiny.
Answering to one’s destiny is called the constant;
knowing the constant is called honest.

Chapter 16’s emptiness and stillness corresponds to quiet equanimity and 16’s watch again corresponds to hold the great image. The clear difficult is always finding sufficient stillness within to watch the great image coming toward you.

Years ago, I noticed that when I fully and honestly acknowledged this roadblock, I was able to move on naturally. The greatest barrier we face in life is denial. Our solution to our troubles tends to be rushing to the fix it stage of the problem. That approach only works well for obvious matters. For example, when we have a flat tire, we utterly realize, fully and honestly, our problem and proceed to do what is necessary to fix it. Not so with the existential difficulty we face.

Existential dilemmas have no clearly apparent cause, and so we easily fall back into finding scapegoats that we feel to be responsible. We are biologically hardwired to fix problems. For obvious problems, like a splinter in the foot, I pull it out. For existential problems, the first step is to realize the fact that ‘the problem’ is an everlasting constant whereas ‘the solution’ is a fleeting response to ‘the problem’.

Alas, this reality doesn’t jive with our bio-hoodwinked perceptions. We ‘know’ it is simple a splinter somewhere and all I need do is find a way to remove it. Accepting the reality that this is a bio-hoodwink, and that the ‘question’, the ‘problem’, the ‘mystery’ is eternal, liberates us at least somewhat from the futile hope for true solutions. That, ironically, goes a long way toward being a solution for our existential problem.

Truth be told, fully and honestly realizing the problem is not a solution, but the end of the beginnings of a solution… as #16 put it, Returning to the root cause is called stillness; this means answering to one’s destiny.  Until then, I simply go around in futile circles, tilting at windmills until I have the courage of self-honesty to face the deepest roots of the problem. What are those roots?

Ponder the myriad forces that predate your birth. The evolutionary interplay of genetics and circumstances that influence your life and, as #16 puts it, ‘Everything ‘out there’.  Allowing yourself to first fearlessly confront and then appreciate the root cause nudges your perception closer to the great image.

One barrier to answering to one’s destiny is the persistent belief/story of free will. The myth of free will is the primary scapegoat we employ to judge others and ourselves for what they and we should and shouldn’t do. Our denial of the problem, whatever it may be, begins with succumbing to the certainty of free will. Simply put, if you can’t see the true roots of the problem, you inevitably end up like a dog chasing its tail.

Note: I suspect the root cause of the free will sense is similar to desire, i.e., desire = need + thought. Similarly, free will = mirror neurons + thought. We can easily ‘imagine’ ourselves doing something and project that ideal’s impression onto others and ourselves.

Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop.

I ‘know’ every person, every living thing, no… everything, senses the great image. Thinking animals like us in a moment of emptiness when the mind is still, can Hold the great image and all under heaven come toward [us]. Coming toward [us] yet without harm, its quiet equanimity greatest. That sense is the Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop. But in the next moment we are off rushing to solve our problem in the hopes of returning to ‘its quiet equanimity greatest’. Chapter 71 bluntly outlines the roots of our rush to perfect solutions: Realizing I don’t’ know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Simply put, we believe there is a perfect permanent solution out there, and if we could only find the ‘secret’, we’d succeed. Belief essentially depends on our certainty that we know what we know. Belief is the disease.

Of the way passing through the mouth, tasteless its non-flavor.
Of watching, not enough to see.
Of listening to, not enough to hear.
Of using, not enough already.

This chapter ends with a beautiful way of describing part of the solution I’m referring to. Think of it this way. If you discount all that your senses can identify — the sweet or sour, the loud or soft, the obvious or the murky — what remains to perceive? What do you notice? All that remains is the great image, that cannot be named, thought, or spoken of because you have left all the criteria for definition by the wayside. Naturally, this can only be experience briefly by a thinking mind. The disease we have is endemic and part of the downside consequence of evolving a brain with a mind that can ‘divide and conquer’ nature. The mind’s blade cuts both ways. I call that Nature’s justice!