With desire choosing anything, of doing I see no satisfied end.
All under heaven is divine capacity; nothing must be done either.
Doing decays, grasping loses.
In the external world of man, someone leads, someone follows.
Someone snorts, someone blows.
Someone strives, someone wins.
Someone subdues, someone ruins.
Because of this, the wise man leaves the extremes, the luxurious, and the safe behind.
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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/nB-cCLUY09g 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 attendeesā 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:
With desire choosing anything, of doing I see no satisfied end.
All under heaven is divine capacity; nothing must be done either.
With desire choosing anything, of doing I see no satisfied end sums up the whole chapter for me. It immediately reminds me of Buddha’s Second Noble Truth…
The Second Noble TruthĀ is the cause of suffering. The cause of suffering is lust. The surrounding world affects sensation and begets a craving thirst that clamors for immediate satisfaction. The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self entangles us in the net of sorrows. Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain.
The second line, All under heaven is divine capacity, evokes my sense of actual reality. That is, if I suspend my own desires for what I want and don’t want out of life, all I see is the ultimate eternal perfection of nature’s divine capacity. The fact that nothing must be done either is just another way of seeing the universe as perfect.
The imperfections we see in life, the need for things to be changed or done, is simply a projected manifestation of our personal needs and fears. Yet, we generally rush through life too quickly to notice this personal bias. Our biases end up owning us; we are puppets on our biases strings.
Doing decays, grasping loses.
In the external world of man, someone leads, someone follows.
Someone snorts, someone blows.
Someone strives, someone wins.
Someone subdues, someone ruins.
Once we begin to realize that Doing decays, grasping loses, our faith in pursuing desire’s promise of ālasting happinessā fades. Desireās empty promise of contentment after we satiate desire becomes obvious. Quenching desire satisfies us only for a moment until the next desire arises, with yet another promise of happiness.
Of course, this is a natural and universal process experienced by all life, at least at the fundamental need level. The simplest version of this is hunger’s drive to keep life nourished. The unique problem for humans is our imagination’s ability to turn this ‘satiate-a-need’ drive into an unbounded ‘satiate-a-desire’ pressure. The human imagination greatly diversifies and intensifies the objects of desire. Note: it helps to consider the source of desire:Ā Need + thinking = DesireĀ and thatĀ Fear + thinking = Worry.
All this results in the squirrel-cage cyclic-nature of desireā doing decays and grasping loses. To be fair, civilization is largely responsible for this stressful condition, i.e., In the external world of man, someone leads, someone follows. Someone snorts, someone blows. Someone strives, someone wins. Someone subdues, someone ruins. Conversely, life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors was more limited to the much simpler ‘satiate-a-need’ drive. The snorts, blows, strives, wins and such were still part of ancestral life, just not in the extremes we see in civilized circumstances. (see The Tradeoff)
Because of this, the wise man leaves the extremes, the luxurious, and the safe behind.
This comes back to comprehending the deep natural forces at work in life. Such comprehension, over time, forces the wise man (to) leave the extremes, the luxurious, and the safe behind. āOver timeā means that attempting to be wise is at best an idealistic and impossible pursuit of youth. Comprehension, derived from life experienceāof what is actually happening in lifeāmakes the wisdom of leaving the extremes unavoidable; itās not a matter of self-discipline or will, but rather the unavoidable result of knowing.
This deepening comprehension only comes gradually through attending the school of life… for life. Of course, no one can actually get “there”, no matter how long they live. Since we are biological beings and have an imagination, we are inevitably stuck to some degree with this ‘satiate-a-desire’ pressure. Simply put, all of this is a matter of degree. The good news is, the less weāre driven, the less weāre stressed. The bad news is, it takes time for comprehension to arise from within oneās experience. (see We only understand what we already know)
Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truth gets right to the point. Note how the first step on the middle path is ‘Right Comprehension’. Also, note how four of these Truths are related to the mind.
The Fourth Noble TruthĀ is the Middle Path that leads to the cessation of suffering. 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. He who is wise will enter this path and make an end to suffering. Eight steps on the Middle Path are: *1. Right Comprehension, *2. Right Resolution, 3. Right Speech, 4. Right Action, 5. Right Living, 6. Right Effort, *7. Right Thought, *8. Right State of Peaceful Mind.
Ā Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/20_5T5XtLuE
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting