Chapter 45

I can be content with simple life when it feels dynamic enough. So I suppose dynamic is not such a bad translation for chong or chong cao. Of course that begs the question; how to make a simple life feel dynamic? Certainly not by impetuous behavior, although that is the by-path people often prefer. Like Great perfection, contentment is something that is created  in the eye of the beholder.

Third Pass: Chapter of the Month (pandemic era) 4/3/2021

Zoom on YouTube Recordings:

https://youtu.be/7ocS9gPsF78  is a link to unedited 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

Great accomplishment seems incomplete, its use doesn’t harm.

Great accomplishment and what seems incomplete are two points of view. The first is an objective spectator-like perception; the latter is from a subjective-like ‘in the mind of the doer’ perception. When one is striving to accomplish, the inner vision of that goal—where ‘I’ want to be—pushes one toward that ideal. Thus, in the mind of the doer, the action will always seem incomplete. On the other hand, a spectator observing the action is not limited by internal expectations of what the action should be, so they more easily see the Great accomplishment side of this coin.

Intention is what moves life, whether an ant searching for food, or a professional musician perfecting his/her skill. The innate sense of entropy (fear) creates this hunger, this intention to accomplish, to evolve. I suspect this is also the underlying impetus for natural evolution at every level, and so naturally, its use doesn’t harm. Altogether, I’d imagine all this is beyond the ability of science to scrutinize deeply enough to prove.

Great fullness seems dynamic, its use doesn’t end.

Translating this line was a little tricky. Chōng (冲) has two slightly different meanings, differentiated by tone. High tone chōng means: pour boiling water on; rinse; flush; charge; rush; dash ; clash; collide. Falling tone chòng means: with vim and vigor; with plenty of dash; vigorously; (of smell) strong; facing; towards; on the strength of; on the basis of.

To me, they convey much the same feeling: vigor, clash, toward, collide all correlate (see Tools of Taoist Thought: Correlations), and dynamic sums that up for me. In other words, ‘Small’ fullness seems stuffed, without room for dynamic ‘vigor’. ‘Small’ fullness would be like sitting on ones laurels, as the saying goes. Great fullness only appears full from the outside looking in. From the inside looking out, it is dynamic.

Great straightness seems bent.
Great cleverness seems clumsy.
Great debate seems slow in speech.

When drawing an ostensibly straight line, the more aware one is of the potential or real bent-ness, the straighter one is able to approach great straightness of line. The five Greats denoted here only reach that point by shadowing their opposite quality, i.e., ‘tiny’. How ironic it is that only through feeling dissatisfied with one’s accomplishment can one create great accomplishment.

That is what I call natural justice—balance. The only way to move forward is to feel you are moving backward. If you are utterly content, you are stagnant. Naturally, stagnancy is an impossible condition for life. Life must feel less than content to push itself forward toward what is actually an illusion of contentment. The Bio-Hoodwink  is the fundamental pull that keeps all living creatures striving, and striving is the instinctive impetus necessary to counteract entropy…  and entropy is THE fundamental threat to survival for all life.

The value in knowing that this is how nature works doesn’t offer you an opportunity to manipulate, outwit, or control nature overall. The subtle blessing here may be that knowing how life’s game plays out enables you to take the game somewhat less seriously. Meaning, when you know an activity is actually a game rather than ‘serious life’, you are able to move more freely in the game. Why?… You can’t help experience somewhat less fear simply because you see life as a game. That ease makes freezing up in the game less likely. You are more able to go with the flow, as they say. The trick here is intuitively (viscerally) recognizing the hoops biology is putting you through to keep you keen to play the game.

Such intuitive knowing will go up against the primal instincts you were born with… particularly, the ‘more is better’ instinct. This instinct in natural wild settings is always healthy and balanced. Civilized circumstances allows the instinct to drive us far beyond the point of balance that happens in nature overall. More and more comfort, security, and variety ultimately leads to more and more stress. It’s too much of a good thing. The more is better instinct (drive) is so powerful that I imagine it will be a long time before humanity overall realizes the unintended consequences of getting what you ask for, so to speak. Essentially people need to be able to live long enough to begin to see beyond their bio-hoodwink. (See The Tradeoff for a deeper look into this situation humanity has created)

Aging is responsible for deepening my intuitive realization of this problem. In my youth, I understood and was drawn to the spiritual aims (e.g., yoga, Buddha, Tao) but I could not viscerally embody them. Only through living a natural life chasing ‘more is better’ dead ends have I slowly, unavoidably, and viscerally realized the nature of this game I’m playing.

Realizing the ‘dead end’ nature of pursuing desires leaves me with only one balanced option:  Take care of today, today… now, now. The only thing left is to strive on diligently. Buddha on his death bed, when his disciples pleaded for his parting advice, he said, “All things created pass away, strive on diligently”. As much as I value his Four Noble Truths, they are in some ways more inspirational and aspirational than realistic. I mean, in the end, we are who we are despite what we aspire to. Thus, I reckon these words of parting advice are the truest words ever spoken, by him or anyone. Truest that is, not counting some of the key facets of nature that the Tao Te Ching points out.

Still surpasses impetuous,
Cold surpasses heat.
Quiet keeps all-under-heaven honest.

I think of absolute zero, the temperature at which all movement, energy, stops. The hussle and bustle of creation comes to a standstill. It seems like what preceded the big bang, which was heat as hot as it got, but seemingly had no upper limit on how hot it could ‘aspire to go’.  In other words, still, cold, quiet have a bottom line below which nothing happens. Conversely, their opposite, movement, heat, noise, have no apparent bottom line… or top line. I suppose they increase until the chaos burns itself out… and then everything descends back towards ‘zero’.

I find life conforms to this model. Some days are ‘good’ and full of energy and movement, then I hit a ceiling of sorts, and unwind. This still, cold, quiet period lasts anywhere from an afternoon to a few weeks and then life rekindles. It is one of the rhythms of life. One thing through the years is the constancy of this cooling off period. It is always the same, and that makes it always honest.

Video Archive https://youtu.be/7ocS9gPsF78

Second Pass: Work in Progress 1/14/2014

Issues:

Line 2: chōng (冲) has two slightly different meanings, differentiated by tone. High tone chōng means: pour boiling water on; rinse; flush; charge; rush; dash ; clash; collide. Falling tone chòng means: with vim and vigor; with plenty of dash; vigorously; (of smell) strong; facing; towards; on the strength of; on the basis of.

To me, they convey much the same feeling: vigor, clash, toward, collide all correlate, and dynamic sums that up for me. In other words, ‘Small’ fullness seems stuffed, without room for dynamic ‘vigor’.

Line 8: Quiet keeps all-under-heaven honest replaces Clear and still keeps all-under-heaven honest. Each character in the dual character qīngjìng (清静) means something slightly different: Qīng (清) unmixed; clear; distinct; clarified; completely; settle, and Jìng (静) still; quiet; calm — basically ‘clear’ and ‘still’ respectively, but together they mean quiet, so I’ll go with the combined meaning this time.

Commentary:

I’ve come to enjoy so much the view that Great perfection seems chipped, Yet use will not wear it out. That Great accomplishment seems incomplete, its use doesn’t harm may be closer to the literal doesn’t make it better. Of course, that goes for so much of this. The meaning you take away is the meaning you give to it. The particular words used are merely go-betweens. Even so, it helps to consider other ways of interpreting meaning. Only a Taoist could truly appreciate President Clintons statement, “It depends on what the meaning of is is”.

Great accomplishment seems incomplete speaks of nature to me. Nature is great accomplishment or great perfection, and it is never finished accomplishing—the process is perfect. You could say nature is a work in progress. If nature is this way, isn’t everything within nature’s realm also a work in progress? The great accomplishment or great perfection that can be described in terms of what it is (or isn’t) symbolizes human hierarchical needs and fears, and our desperate need to ‘pin it down’, have it done with and move on. To paraphrase chapter 1, The Great accomplishment possible to think, runs counter to the constant Great accomplishment.

Great cleverness seems clumsy and Great debate seems slow in speech because they take place at the edge of the unknown. Where known meets unknown is the land of the beginner, not of the ‘accomplished’. An infant learning to walk and talk displays this edge nicely. No other human experience compared to the transition from infancy ‘knowing, yet not thinking one knows’ to the adulthood ‘not knowing, yet thinking one knows’… Like an infant, not a child; Breathing in and out with a place to return to. I find it always fascinating to weigh the discrepancy between who we think we are (superior), and who we actually are (just another of nature’s myriad creatures who happens to be able to think).

Cold surpasses heat puts me in mind of the eternal nature of cold… absolute zero perhaps. The big bang was a hot, hot firecracker, but ‘soon’ cooled and is headed to zero, or? Perhaps from absolute zero the firecracker pops again and off we go. The Taoist word view attempts to see nature as it is. It is ruthless, in an impartial fair-and-balance way, I should add.

I like the idea that Quiet keeps all-under-heaven honest. I’m a little foggy on what that implies, beyond the obvious. The saying, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” takes the misdirection of speech to the extreme. Seeing anything out-there as anything other that the way will always be something less than completely honest. As chapter 56 puts it,  Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know.

Suggested Revision:

Great accomplishment seems incomplete, its use doesn’t harm.
Great fullness seems dynamic, its use doesn’t end.
Great straightness seems bent.
Great cleverness seems clumsy.
Great debate seems slow in speech.
Still surpasses impetuous,
Cold surpasses heat.
Quiet keeps all-under-heaven honest.

First Pass: Chapter of the Week 05/15/2010