Monthly Chapter 4 (pandemic era)

The way flushes and employs the virtue of ‘less’.
Deep like the ancestor of every-thing.
Subdue its sharpness, separate its confusion,
Soften its brightness, be the same as its dust.
Deep and clear, it appears to exist.
I don’t know of whose child it is,
It resembles the ancestor of the Supreme Being.
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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.)

Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month (pandemic era) 10/3/2020

Archive: Characters and past commentary

Zoom on YouTube Recordings:

https://youtu.be/GUzDGcUSMjc  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

The way flushes and employs the virtue of ‘less’.

This answers a question I pondered yesterday.  I wondered how Jesus or Buddha would feel about the notion that “the end justifies the means”.  I can easily recall numerous debacles throughout history where people used this to justify their actions. Conversely, I have trouble recalling few if any positive outcomes.

If I assume Jesus would reply, “It depends”. This begs for the follow up question, “On what?” With that qualification, “The end justifies the means” sure feels like the gateway to hypocrisy. Thus, I imagine neither Jesus nor Buddha would approve of this notion. Their message aims at the integrity of the moment, not some distant “end” result. Virtue exists in the present, not the future. If we favor the future at the expense of the moment, what good is the future? After all, the current moment is merely the future of past moments. The integrity of the future rests upon the quality of the current moment.

Nature is a totally present process, without concern for any future. Speaking of a future ‘end’, chapter 38 says, Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly.  Unlike humans, nature has no agenda. Thus, the way flushes each moment as it feeds into an unknown future. Unlike humans, nature neither seeks more nor accumulates. Efficiency is an obvious hallmark of nature’s way, which means nature employs the virtue of ‘less’. In other words, it gets the most bang for its buck. Chapter 67 hints at nature’s efficiency. Take lines 9 and 10 for example,

Being thrifty, I can spread out,
Not daring to act before all under heaven acts, I can succeed steadily.

Deep like the ancestor of every-thing.

A sense of this ancestor is one result of seeing life through what I call A Symptoms Point of View. Briefly, this amounts to resisting the natural instinctive urge to “judge the book by its cover”, and instead, consider what circumstances led up to the matters that concern you. This becomes a somewhat intuitive journey into an ever-expanding, ever-deepening web of circumstances that created the matter of concern in the first place. This can eventually leave the mind nearly empty… deep like the ancestor of every-thing.

Subdue its sharpness, separate its confusion,
Soften its brightness, be the same as its dust.

We are all made of stardust. When I first truly viscerally realized that, it blew my mind. It felt like I’d discovered some wonderful secret. That is what any moment of true realization feels like, I find. Then, as the realization settles down in my awareness, the awesomeness wanes… unless I keep it alive by returning to it. That’s easier said than done, of course. Our ancestral hunter-gatherer instinct is always on the lookout for more… the next new thing. This is what makes the virtue of ‘less’ a genuine virtue.

The way flushes and employs the virture of ‘less’ speaks to the importance of consolidation. As the saying goes, “Less is more”. The instinct to seek more would never be a problem for hunter-gatherers in the wild. There was no way to store more, to accumulate… no continuous supply of more… more of anything only lasts a short time. It’s seasonal. The only way to live a grounded, sane and stable life in a civilized setting is by deeply appreciating the virtue of ‘less’. The idea that the way flushes hints at how to approach our ability to store great amounts of mental baggage. I suppose that is one temporary effect of drugs and alcohol. These flush away awareness, briefly producing a simulated version of subdue its sharpness, separate its confusion, Soften its brightness, be the same as its dust.

The more efficient way, of course, is to manage life before it gets out of hand. Chapter 64 hints, Its peace easily manages, Its presence easily plans, Its fragility easily melts, Its timeliness easily scatters. Slowing down to be present with myself parallels the axiom “A stitch in time saves nine”. Of course, life is about action, but the mind and emotions push relentlessly for more and more. Continuous flushing is essential to remain deep and clear.

Deep and clear, it appears to exist.
I don’t know of whose child it is,
It resembles the ancestor of the Supreme Being.

First, let’s remove the caps from the supreme being. Caps easily skews meaning toward the direction of God. Now, when I think of “supreme being” in the context of “be the same as its dust”, “be” stands out. If nature is nothing else, it is “being”. It “is”. Thus, contemplating the ancestor or precursor of nature, of “being”, pulls my mind deeper. Only then can I touch base with the ancestor of the supreme being. On the other hand, the less I’m able to feel that, the more I find myself gathering instead of flushing, pursuing more rather than conforming to the virtue of ‘less’.  Such are the symptoms of being a sharp, confused, and bright somebody rather than the stardust that I in fact am.

Surely, those for whom this chapter resonates must deeply wish to feel it throughout their day. Alas, daily circumstances drag awareness into petty transient matters that overshadow this faint view.  I’ve found that chapter 56 hints at perhaps the only, albeit, partial way out of this predicament. Our only barrier to embracing chapter 56 fully is our deep fear of the unknown. Thinking and its counterparts speaking and believing is the fortress we live behind — a fortress that serves as the barrier to sensing the stardust dust more deeply.

Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know.
Subdue its sharpness, untie its tangles,
Soften its brightness, be the same as dust,
This is called profound sameness.

Video Archive https://youtu.be/GUzDGcUSMjc