All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.
Hence existence and nothing give birth to one another,
Difficult and easy become one another,
Long and short form one another,
High and low incline to one another,
Sound and tone blend with one another,
Front and back follow one another.
Considering this, the wise person manages without doing anything,
Carries out the indescribable teaching.
Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk.
Give birth to and yet not have,
Do and yet not depend on,
Achieves success and yet not dwell.
The simple man alone does not dwell,
Because of this he never leaves.
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Word for Word
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.)
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/8zFtFHhFPZk is a link to unedited Zoom video of this month’s Sunday meeting. The shorter first part of the meeting begins with a chapter reading followed by attendees’ commentary, if any. A little later on begins the longer open discussion part of the meeting when those who wish to discuss how the chapter relates to their personal experience.
Corrections?
None this time
Reflections
All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.
Hence existence and nothing give birth to one another,
I regularly look out upon nature… the trees, the clouds, the rain, the insects, etc. I’ve never observed any hint of beauty or wickedness, goodness or its opposite. Nature is an awesome process that spans my entire awareness. Sure, when I see a colorful sunset I might feel beauty. But, do I feel what we describe as beauty when I am sick with the flu? Of course not, I’m just miserable. Clearly, beauty is actually a projection of what pleases me, what I like. That good and beauty are simply projections of what we like, rather than an external reality, can be a hard pill to swallow for many, from old Plato to the present. That speaks to how strongly the Bio-Hoodwink shapes perception and any subsequent naming and labeling.
That existence and nothing are utterly entangled is one of the most profound open secrets of the Taoist view. This reminds me of what the last lines of chapter 1 allude to…
These two are the same coming out, yet differ in name,
Dark and dark again, the multitude of wondrous entrance.
Chapter 40 puts this view even more bluntly, and if considered carefully, gives a hint at which came first, the chicken or the egg. That is, if you can determine to which poles the chicken and egg Correlate.
Naturally, this view runs counter to the paradigm virtually all civilizations hold dear. Here, nothing is the main event, the ‘queen’ of reality. That very notion blows a hole in every cultural story. Why? Because, if nothing is the ‘main event’, that diminishes the importance of anything that nothing brings about. Note, entropy is another way to think of what nothing means, which is simply another aspect of loss through death, of course. Because we place such high value on life, loss through death of the way uses is hard to appreciate. We fear loss, death, failure, more than anything, thus we easily fail to appreciate how profoundly vital these various facets of nothing are.
Jesus hints at this contrary point of view when he says…
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. [Matthew 16:25]
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. [Matthew 16:19-20]
Obviously, one needs to interpret the “for my sake” and “heaven” as implying the Taoist nothing rather than the something that Christian culture takes this to mean.
Difficult and easy become one another,
Long and short form one another,
High and low incline to one another,
Sound and tone blend with one another,
Front and back follow one another.
The more I viscerally know (realize, appreciate, love) the interconnection between all apparent opposites, the more real immortality feels. (See You are Immortal!) The profound sameness of chapter 56 puts this even more explicitly. All differences, long vs. short, beauty vs. wickedness and indeed life and death are illusions produced by our biology, and more explicitly, our imagination.
Deeply perceiving this entangled reality helps me to see life appear more like a game than the reality my emotions feel it to be. Indeed, life to me feels like an illusion compared to the reality of death—as chapter 40 says, having is born in nothing. As chapter 50 hints, Of people, aroused by life, in death trapped, also three in ten. Why is this so? Because they favor life. And again in chapter 75, Only the man without use for life is worthy of a noble life. Perhaps chapter 7 puts it best,
Considering this, the wise person manages without doing anything,
Carries out the indescribable teaching.
The more acutely real I feel this entangled reality, the more life feels… well, like a puppet show, or a game show. Not that this lets me off the hook mind you; I still feel pain, pleasure, and everything in between. Even so, I do find it easier to disregard my expectations (i.e., the disease of chapter 71), which helps me better manage without doing anything, Carry out the indescribable teaching.
It is important to note that without doing anything, does not mean ceasing to act and just passively remain idle. It means that “I” and “other” cease to feel as separate as they once did. In a sense, all action becomes duty. That is, duty as Buddha’s 4th Truth describes it: … There is salvation for him whose self disappears before truth, whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty.… This is natural duty; the duty that all of nature operates from to carry out the indescribable teaching. Certainly, this is not the common notions of duty characterized by cultural standards and demands. In short, duty here is not about what you do; it is about how you do it. The Bhagavad Gita offers a few hints.
And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than an other’s, even if it be great. To die in one’s duty is life: to live in another’s is death [3:35].
A harmony in eating and resting, in sleeping and keeping awake: a perfection in whatever one does. This is the Yoga that gives peace from all pain [6:17].
The perfection referred to here is, like duty, not the common notions of an objective perfection characterized by cultural standards. I think of this as a perfection in the flow of the moment—watchfulness. This is about the flow, the process, not about any final result.
The reality of nothing and loss through death of the way uses is why in the final analysis, all we can do is carry out the indescribable teaching. The reality that the Tao Te Ching points to is not truly describable through words because words are still relying on the illusion of difference. The dipolar nature of words can never capture the profound sameness. The closest we have come to this is the observations of quantum non-locality. See What can Schrödinger’s cat teach us about quantum mechanics?
Chuang Tzu’s concise Duke Huan and the wheelwright story may also help shed light on Carries out the indescribable teaching.
Duke Hwan, seated above in his hall, was once reading a book, and the wheelwright Phien was making a wheel below it. Laying aside his hammer and chisel, Phien went up the steps, and said, “I venture to ask your Grace what words you are reading?” The duke said, “The words of the sages.” “Are those sages alive?” Phien continued. “They are dead,” was the reply.
“Then,” said Phien, “what you, my Ruler, are reading are only the dregs and sediments of those old men.” The duke said, “How should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book which I am reading? If you can explain yourself, very well; if you cannot, you shall, die!”
The wheelwright said, “Your servant will look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. In making a wheel, if I proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the workmanship is not strong; if I proceed violently, that is toilsome and the joinings do not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither too gentle nor too violent, the idea in my mind is realised. But I cannot tell how to do this by word of mouth; there is a knack in it. I cannot teach the knack to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. Thus it is that I am in my seventieth year, and am still making wheels in my old age. But these ancients, and what it was not possible for them to convey, are dead and gone. So then what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!”
This demonstrates why each generation must relearn the indescribable teaching for itself. In other words, wisdom cannot be taught or learned externally. It only comes through one’s personal life experience. That is why Buddha insisted that people not believe in his teachings but rather verify them through their own personal experience. Simply put, We only understand what we already know!
Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk.
Give birth to and yet not have,
Do and yet not depend on,
Achieves success and yet not dwell.
Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk closely corresponds to a sign I saw outside a church in Japan long ago. It said, “We all do the best we can”. Interestingly, that struck me as true, despite my belief in free will at the time. These two notions are completely irreconcilable. If we all do the best we can, free will is irrelevant… a complete oxymoron. Yet, back then, I was able to entertain both ideas comfortably. The mind has many windows I suppose, and connecting them enough to realize their inconsistencies is difficult to say the least. If it were easy, who would be a hypocrite?
Insects are an excellent tool to use when considering Don’t all things on earth work and not shirk. As a tool, they are invaluable for challenging one’s illusion of self (ego). They are excellent because they are wild animals, yet available to ponder most anywhere you happen to be. By sincerely and rigorously observing the similarities—the profound sameness—between you and them helps reduce the illusion of self. Insects, like humans, vigorously work and not shirk, give birth to and yet not have, do and yet not depend on, achieve success and yet not dwell. Perhaps these lines describe insects a bit better than they describe us, so you might say insects are ‘taoists’ (see Small ‘t’ Taoists). For us, these lines are more aspirational than actual, as the final two lines below suggests by the mere fact that it is a declared goal, i.e,. from a symptom’s point of view, declaring such a goal reveals the innate lack of same. Nature designed our brain’s mind to dwell to some extent. The degree to which we overdo this is the problem, the disease.
The simple man alone does not dwell,
Because of this he never leaves.
Dwelling on the past, present or future is the way we leave our biological reality and drift away in a virtual imagined reality—our dreams, aspirations, plans. The more present I am in the moment, the more likely I’ll never leave to chase or dwell in any imagined reality. Nevertheless, it is always a matter of degree. After all, my brain has a mind of its own.
Naturally, all this is easier to say than do. Nevertheless, if this is not acknowledged and remembered, there is no chance it will ever be managed to any useful degree. The first two steps of Buddha’s Middle Path, Right Comprehension (to acknowledge) and Right Resolution (to remember) bluntly state the minimum one needs in order to begin to carry out the indescribable teaching.
Video Archive https://youtu.be/8zFtFHhFPZk
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