Hold the great image and all under heaven come toward you.
Coming toward you yet without harm, its quiet equanimity greatest.
Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop.
Of the way passing through the mouth, tasteless its non-flavor.
Of watching, not enough to see.
Of listening to, not enough to hear.
Of using, not enough already.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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/zmIafk5t2Io 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:
Hold the great image and all under heaven come toward you.
Coming toward you yet without harm, its quiet equanimity greatest.
Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop.
‘…all under heaven come toward you’ put into those few words my sense of consciousness. I feel the moment to moment “ticking away”, or really leaking away into the past. This has been partly framed as “flow”, which is characterized by absorption in the present. But, these few words capture the moment opening up toward us. I find my calmness in life is directly related to how well I let the future come toward me, rather than me rushing forward into the next moment. In a word, that’s living ongoing patience.
Happily offering enticement, passing visitors stop is what steers my patient awareness off track and rather than letting all under heaven come toward me, I reach out to grab at the enticements. Naturally, this is good survival biology at work. One problem now is living in an environment that we (humanity) have created to circumvent the circumstance that biology has adapted us for. Thus, it is far too easy to get those enticements, with far less difficulty than would be the case were we still living as our distant ancestors. That is destabilizing and now profoundly increasing. Was the tradeoff worth it? Anyone who avails themselves of modern dentistry would say definitely. On the other hand, most of the ills of civilization are a result of that tradeoff. Of course, evolution doesn’t care. Misfortune, genetic mutation or maladaptive response, is the meat and potatoes of natural selection, which runs on the errors a species makes during its time on Earth.
Of the way passing through the mouth, tasteless its non-flavor.
Of watching, not enough to see.
Of listening to, not enough to hear.
Of using, not enough already.
The first three “Of” statements describe the inseparable quality of consciousness. Of course, this sounds like it is referring to “the Tao”, but no. Remember, The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name. I mean, this is just an important disclaimer that they wrote it twice! I suppose the next question is whether the text points to something beyond experience alone. From where I stand, all this can ever be referring to is the qualia of consciousness. In fact, we are most perplexed by our self-awareness of consciousness, and each newborn has to come to terms with that ‘ghost’ throughout their lives. Indeed, all knowledge is at its root, stories we’ve made up to capture as closely as cognitively possible the subjective experience of living. The Tao Te Ching just does it better than any other I’ve seen or heard.
Of the way passing through the mouth, tasteless its non-flavor. This line strikes me as particularly visceral. Passing through the mouth is what does it, I imagine. I find this image very helpful in how it tells me what to be on the lookout for. I must listen to what can’t be heard, look for what can’t be seen, feel for what can’t be touched. This highlights the difficulty we face in, of using, not enough already. It is all too easy to be enticed by that which can be seen, heard, and touched. And keeping a daily, hourly, moment to moment sense of this trap helps avoid being drawn in so deeply.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/Sx6tdXi5Wis
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting