Monthly Chapter 70 (pandemic era)

Our words are very easy to know, very easy to do.
Under heaven none can know, none can do.
Speech has its faction, involvement has its sovereign.
Man alone is without knowing, and because of this I don’t know.
Knowing self is rare, following self is noble.
Because of this, the sage wears coarse cloth and yearns for noble character.
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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.

Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month (pandemic era) 5/5/2023

Archive: Characters and past commentary

Zoom on YouTube Recordings:

https://youtu.be/4OooJGMj04Y  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?

Nothing this time.

Reflections:

Our words are very easy to know, very easy to do.
Under heaven none can know, none can do.

The evident inconsistency of these first two lines alludes to the profound difference between knowing and understanding. Human cognition—words—allows us to make distinctions between the myriad aspects of nature, and as a result ‘conquer and divide’ nature to a significant extent. Yet, words are also incapable of describing any deeper level of innate ‘knowing’, as it were. Our cognition’s unique survival asset comes with a steep price given that such dividing and conquering of nature blinds us to nature’s intrinsic whole. Moreover, the mind and its thoughts can’t help but do this. That appears to be all the brain’s frontal lobe evolved to do. This is a good example of the ‘too much of a good thing’ problem, at least in its effect on human emotion. Simply put, we understand the words, but not the deepest reality they symbolize. This leaves our awareness feeling somewhat disconnected from nature. This disconnect drives us to grasp onto our tenuous “understandings” (i.e., beliefs) even more firmly. (See also We only understand what we already know.)

I assume that our ancestors truly believed their origin myths and their countless speculations on a host of other matters. For example, in Hindu mythology, the earth is supported by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle. Then we have the Christian mythology, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Unlike origin myths, many “understandings” can be very harmful, like how people throughout the ages “knew” that mercury-containing products could heal various unrelated ailments, e.g., melancholy, constipation, syphilis, influenza, parasites, to name a few.

In hindsight, we can see how mistaken they were. Yet, a few thousand years from now, our descendants are going to look back at the quaint erroneous beliefs we hold to be true currently. That convinces me that no one truly knows. All our beliefs—understandings—are made up to explain current circumstances… In the end, we’re making it all up. Obviously, we feel safer knowing “something”—even if it’s false—than to allow the unknown to remain unknown. Any certainty of knowing offers the mind a false sense of security… of that I’m certain 😉

The Tao Te Ching aims to corroborate the eternal unknown we sense and fear… and even dread. As D.C. Lau translates this eternal unknown at the end of chapter 1, Mystery upon mystery, The gateway of the manifold secrets... or more literally, Dark and dark again, the multitude, of wondrous entrance. This is the only solid way to describe ‘it’. Isn’t that ironic and paradoxical, and yet as straightforward as it can be conveyed? Straightforward words seem paradoxical, as D.C. Lau translated chapter 78. Less “straightforward”, yet perhaps more accurate is the literal, Straight and honest words seem inside out.

Speech has its faction, involvement has its sovereign.

These two aspects—speech and involvement—remind me of the saying, “Follow the money”. They both indicate deeper forces at play. I suppose faction is the social (tribal) root of speech and involvement is the action. The sovereign represents the social ties, expectations, and pressures we feel from our culture.

Man alone is without knowing, and because of this I don’t know.

This line simply and bravely acknowledges our human reality, the disease referred to in the next chapter. Our species alone seems to have this ‘big brain’ cognitive handicap. Our big brain evolved through cooking food and hunting. Cooking makes it easier and quicker to consume and digest food. This improved nutrition allowed the brain to enlarge, which made us cleverer at hunting and gathering. The better at hunting and gathering we became, the more nourished the brain… and so on. As civilization began supercharging this hunting and gathering process, our enhanced cognitive ability became a true disease… one of our own making. Understanding could easily outpace intuitive knowing; chapter 16 describes the problem all this eventually creates, Not knowing the constant, rash actions lead to ominous results.

Knowing self is rare, following self is noble.

This goes back to the first line, our words are very easy to know. Through culture and language, we ‘know’ a precooked version of our self. Culture teaches us from the cradle onward our “understanding” of the world, and who we are or ‘should be’ in it. That ‘knowledge’ in turn becomes a security blanket to hide a curious mind from the awesome and raw unknown.

Truth be told, our perception of any ‘out there’ reality is only a reflection of our ‘in here’ reality. How we are determines what we see. For example, if you’re angry, you will perceive an angry world; if you’re insecure, you will perceive risk—both real and imagined—more keenly. Breaking free of this circular-knot in order to see life impartially is surely the ultimate Catch-22.

If, as it appears, nothing can be nailed down as objective truth, what is one to do? Taking to heart the old maxim, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ points us in the right direction. Still deeper, realizing that ‘reality is in the eye of the beholder’ really hits the nail on the head. Of course, no animal, including humans, evolved to accept this, let alone keep it in active awareness. We all evolved to regard our perceptions of the great ‘out there’ as an objective reality. For most animals, that causes no problems at all. It is otherwise for humanity. Our cognitive abilities allow us to dwell on—and fully believe—what we “objectively” perceive. And thus we suffer a particularly human disease. As chapter 71 reminds, Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease.

In addition, ‘reality is in the ear of the beholder’ as well. Heck, it is in the nose, skin, and mouth also. All sensory organs are set up to sense the environment, but how we interpret those sensations is entirely subjective because our internal emotional environment determines this. Specifically, need and fear are the primary emotions that influence our perception’s ‘take home message’. Yet, unaware that we are the determinant factor in our sense of the world, we react to our perceptions as if they were an objective reality.

Clearly, the mind must—at least briefly—set aside and discount all the known stuff it has inherited through language and thought before it can see what lies behind the curtain of preconceptions. This is difficult because it feels safer and easier to trust in what we ‘know’. Not knowing we don’t know is a big part of our difficulty as a species. Knowing and following self then must mean looking inward to perceive the original self at the indescribable core of being, of consciousness, beneath the comfortable cover of language. (See Tools of Taoist Thought: Correlations for one way to peek beneath the comfortable cover of language, and perhaps manage this disease more efficiently.)

Because of this, the sage wears coarse cloth and yearns for noble character.

The coarse cloth and noble character are all that can remain when you scrape away all your cultural baggage. When you realize you are an ignorant animal, what does it matter what clothes you wear, or what accomplishments you achieve in life. Honesty is the root of noble character, and it is the only quality worth living for I feel.

Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/gLLoMkStB4k
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting