What we look forward to does not exist;
What we chase after will not prevail.
Seeing self is not honest;
Of course, this is not evident.
Attacking self is without merit;
Self pity does not endure.
Such ways are called surplus food and superfluous forms.
Such matters of the outside world are perhaps loathsome.
Hence, one who has the way does not dwell in them.
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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.
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
(Trump era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/Tv9-JAk2Pgo 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:
What we look forward to does not exist;
What we chase after will not prevail.
What we look forward to does not exist exposes a problem caused by our uniquely fertile imagination. First, visceral needs and fears kindle our imagination. Then, any goals arising from this inevitably steer thought to look forward to realizing the goal. We are so caught up in our cognitive ‘virtual reality’ that we fail to perceive any downside of this approach to life.
One certain downside we all experience, at least subconsciously, lies in how chasing the future diminishes our full engagement with the present. Another downside lies in the fact that What we look forward to often turns out to be disappointing, especially if it is fueled by high expectations. (see Science Proves Buddha Right!) And then there is the extremely fleeting aspect of What we look forward and What we chase after. As soon as we achieve the goal, we are soon trapped by the next imagined What we look forward and What we chase after. All this commotion, fueled by a belief in our sense of agency and free will, robs us of being fully present within the eternal moment, unlike other life on earth… as far as we can tell.
Because we experience much of life in the realm of imagination, we miss out on what lies beyond our imagination. Our imagination is something of a cognitive prison masquerading as a life fulfillment center. Our ability to imagine doing something creates a free will belief that we can do it. This is not to say, don’t imagine! The horse began leaving that barn as we gained our cognitive prowess. This is to say, simply realize the emotional and mental processes that are in play. That alone helps one avoid becoming a prisoner of looking forward to and chasing after.
Note: My initial introduction to the first lines of this chapter was via D.C. Lau’s translation which reads, He who tiptoes cannot stand; He who strides cannot walk. I usually saw this as saying if one goes to the extremes, one misses the ‘normal’ way of doing life. While this is true, it isn’t what the actual Chinese characters are saying. So which version is better, D.C.Lau’s more poetic one, or this more literal one? It may be a tossup here, but in other chapters, I find the literal more useful than the poetically beautiful. As chapter 81 reminds, True speech isn’t beautiful, Beautiful speech isn’t true. The attempt to make something beautiful produces unavoidable biases.
Seeing self is not honest;
Of course, this is not evident.
When I read this I had to ask myself, what is honest really mean? At the fundamental level, honest must mean to encompass the whole picture. For example, the news (or gossip) is essentially NOT honest because it reports only the interesting aspects of an occurrence. Of course, this is natural. Novelty stimulates emotions and attracts observers. This appears to be true of many, if not all, animals to some degree.
An intuitive sense of self is part of the survival mechanism of all animals. Human cognition, driven by this sense, fabricates an idea of self. The “illusion of self” that Buddha notes in his 2nd Noble Truth comes to mind. Thus, Seeing self is not honest because we are seeing a mere slice of the whole picture, of the whole self. This Seeing self is not honest because the self we see is a narrow projection of the needs and fears we harbor, as well as a lifetime of accumulated personal memory—what we ‘cleave to’. Such a reflection is terribly skewed and not honest.
Seeing self is not honest, looking forward to and chasing after are not evident, naturally. This is due to the abiding trust we place in our imagination and the thoughts it spawns. In a way, this causes us to see ourselves as the center of the universe… emotionally anyway. Chapter 71 calls out the serious downside of trusting our thoughts: Realizing I don’t’ know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease.
Attacking self is without merit;
Self pity does not endure.
Attacking self and Self pity can only occur if there is an “illusion of self” field. Seeing self creates this field, where emotional needs and fears play themselves out, sometimes indefinitely for some unfortunate people. So why does this say, Self pity does not endure? First, I return to the character for pity—矜. While the most direct meaning now is pity, it also means “sympathize with, self-important, and conceited”. These are connected in that you can’t feel pity without some degree of “sympathize with, self-important, or conceit”. “Self-importance” does not endure may be easier to picture.
Such ways are called surplus food and superfluous forms.
Such matters of the outside world are perhaps loathsome.
Hence, one who has the way does not dwell in them.
The line Such ways are called surplus food and superfluous forms threw me at first. What do the psycho-emotional matters raised in this chapter have to do with food? Then I realized, What we look forward to and the rest is a form of emotional sustenance not that different from what we look forward to in food. Actual food of course, is not superfluous. Without food we die. Not so with any absence of looking forward to, chasing after, attacking self or self pity. Indeed, just the opposite. A life lived mostly in the present is only possible if one realizes how imagination and all it creates traps us in a virtual reality.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/ZYRhAdRVEok
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
P.S. The movie we are discussing at the end of the meeting is “The Man from Earth“. For me it does a good job of portraying the relative and conditional nature of knowledge. As human animals, much of our reality is a virtual experience taking place in the mind’s knowledge base, so to speak. Putting trust in such a conditional realm causes us much joy balanced by much grief, the likes of which no other animal on earth experiences. Our cognitive ability to build knowledge and use it to manipulate nature has brought humanity to the pinnacle of survival. Naturally then, the cost of this profound benefit has been the rift from nature we experience, and we’ve been seeking to connect with the way ever since.