Deeply contained integrity is comparable to a child’s sincerity.
Poison insects don’t sting it, fierce beasts don’t seize it, birds don’t grab it.
Its bones are weak, its muscle supple, yet its hold is firm.
It doesn’t know the joining of female and male, yet its work and spirit perfect.
Endlessly it can howl, yet not become exhausted, of harmony, also the most.
Knowing harmony is called the constant.
Knowing the constant is called clear and honest.
A beneficial life is called lucky.
Mind employing life energy is called striving.
The powerful ruling the old is called not of the way.
That which is not of the way ends early.
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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.
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/2FkYTVOFRTA is the link to the 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
Deeply contained integrity is comparable to a child’s sincerity.
Poison insects don’t sting it, fierce beasts don’t seize it, birds don’t grab it.
Deeply contained integrity is perhaps only possible in the very young, biologically speaking. This is the time before adults have had a chance to pass along the cultural stories concerning what children might well desire and/or worry over. At this early stage, children emotionally respond to circumstances spontaneously and unselfconsciously… moment-to-moment and empty of preconceptions.
In this state of innocence, they have no fears triggered by cognition. There is no concept of bad insects, beasts, and birds vs. good insects, beasts, and birds. If a scorpion crawls over their hand, there is no fearful reaction—at least until the moment a scorpion stings it. And in displaying no fear, there is a better chance the scorpion won’t sting it. After all, insects are not hunting for people to sting. They only sting something for defense… or for catching prey.
Simply put, our overreaction to events causes many of our life sorrows. The drama snowballs and down we fall. Deeply contained integrity is merely dealing with events as they actually are without preconceptions skewing perception and steering fear. Of course, that is extremely difficult for any thinking human to pull off! One must genuinely realize they don’t know before any degree of deeply contained integrity becomes possible. As chapter 71 advises, Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease.
Its bones are weak, its muscle supple, yet its hold is firm.
It doesn’t know the joining of female and male, yet its work and spirit perfect.
Endlessly it can howl, yet not become exhausted, of harmony, also the most.
The deeply contained integrity of an infant allows it to respond to life completely naturally, without thought of self or consequences. There is no second-guessing, and so its work and spirit perfect. In this period, an infant is a full-fledged animal without intention or pretense to be other than its natural self. Until thought establishes itself in the mind, a child conforms to nature (ziran 自然) fully. In other words, it is self so, i.e., (zi 自 self) + (ran 然 so)
Chapter 24 alludes to this primal state, and to what overwhelms it…
Knowing harmony is called the constant.
Knowing the constant is called clear and honest.
Personally, knowing harmony is the sense of balance I feel when I’m not emotionally pulled to either side, left or right. Harmony is like a sense of home, or a returning to home when I’ve been knocked off balance for a time. Harmony—balance—has the quality of the constant. The constant is not something that can be named or explained as chapter 1 points out, i.e., The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name. Rather, the constant is more a “dynamic” quality that applies to any balancing situation. One of our primary difficulties lies in our attempt to find the perfect something that can be named, remain stable and balance life, and as a result, we constantly attempt to pin down the constant.
Only in a state of cognitive harmony am I able to be clear and honest. Such is only possible when my mind is balanced—impartial. On the other hand, emotion certainly didn’t evolve to embody such neutrality. Emotion being out of harmony and off balance is how nature keeps the pot of life stirred, as it were. Nature requires its myriad creatures to interact with each other and the environment throughout life. And the striving to rebalance life’s imbalance, to harmonize life’s disharmony, accomplishes that perfectly… and continuously! That is why life is a constant work in progress! Why else would knowing harmony be so difficult?
A beneficial life is called lucky.
When I plant seeds in the garden, the bell curve of beneficial life soon becomes obvious. Some plants are weak and easily over shadowed by the more fit plants. The lucky seeds just do better, under those particular circumstances. However, if circumstances change, there is a slight chance that being the “weaker” seed will then turn out to be beneficial. The same principle applies to all life on earth, i.e., evolution doesn’t put all its eggs in one basket. As chapter 5 begins, The universe is not benevolent, and all things serve as grass dogs (‘sacrificial lambs’). It just feels very unjust vis-à-vis our social fairness sensibilities.
Of course, those same fairness sensibilities are by no means impartial and balanced. In the end, we favor that with which we identify, and far-off from any Deeply contained integrity. That’s why chapter 5 goes on to say, The wise person is not benevolent, and the people serve as grass dogs. Such honesty is unbearable for most “normal” people to stomach. People naturally yearn for a benevolent power (“God” or some such) to care about and look after them.
Mind employing life energy is called striving.
This line echoes the key point Buddha made in his Fourth Noble Truth, 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. Indeed, when his followers pleaded for advice as he lay on his deathbed, he reportedly replied, “All created things must pass, strive on diligently“. This is truly life’s bottom line. All living creatures are impelled to strive on diligently… to the best of their natural ability. That some appear to strive on more harmoniously than others is called lucky.
The powerful ruling the old is called not of the way.
That which is not of the way ends early.
I’ve now come to consider the old as not referring to old people or things, per se. In truth, nature and the old are fundamentally synonymous, and now our powerful ruling pervades every aspect of the old—of nature. In fact, human activity overall has been a powerful ruling bent on controlling nature, or at least, circumventing the aspects of nature that we don’t like. We use our power to make life more comfortable and secure… and naturally so. It is just that we are excessively adept at wielding our power, which results in unforeseen and unintended consequences, like global warming for example.
As I detailed in The Tradeoff, our transition from a hunter-gatherer old way to civilization resulted in an exponential increase in our ability to have a powerful ruling effect on nature. Essentially, civilization concentrates, filters, and distills human ability. As a result, society ends up with a range of individuals from the best of the best (e.g., Buddha) to the worst of the worst (e.g., Hitler) all of which have an unbalanced and outsized impact on every aspect of life on the Earth—on the old. Chapter 16 describes this outcome perfectly… Not knowing the constant, rash actions lead to ominous results. Put simply, we shoot first and ask questions later, or as I like to say, this is what you get when you give monkeys machine guns.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/Eo-Lg_kJ2xo
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
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