Category: Haiku and Beyond

When I began this review of the Taoteching in preparation for reading the Jesus Sutras, I purposely didn’t go back and review what I’d previously written as I wanted to see if I would come away with new perceptions. Not so much, as it turns out.

When I looked back today, I found that I’d chosen several of the same verses, and I’d said much the same thing, though in different words. Although I like to think of myself as open to new ideas (after all, I have read all those books on the sidebar in the last five years, almost all of them for the first time) after a certain age the tracks seem to get a little deeper, and you find yourself drifting back into them without even being aware you’re back where you started. Of course, I might also attribute it to my INTP personality and my tendency to evolve a consistent philosophy throughout my life, even if that philosophy seems quite different from most of those people who I have grown up with. The fact that I was drawn to the Taoteching in my early 30’s and keep returning to it suggests that I am, indeed, drawn to the kind of life it extols and have been most of my life, even before I knew it existed.

There is, of course, the element of Nature in it that I’ve always been drawn to from my early experiences on Puget Sound and fly fishing in the backwoods. Probably even more important than that is the meditative aspect of Taoism. That, too, may have stemmed from early fishing adventures when my father passed his love of nature on while sitting quietly for long periods of time while fishing. Perhaps it was nourished by long hours spent reading in California when it was too hot to be outside doing anything besides visiting friends’ swimming pools. Heck, if my parents had been wealthy enough to have our own pool I might have never been drawn to those quiet times in my life.

I do know I was drawn to the lifestyle as early as college because I instantly fell in love with Emerson and Thoreau when I took my first college-level lit class. I instantly agreed with Emerson when he said, “Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.” Needless to say, I thought Thoreau’s Walden was one of the greatest American books ever written.

It should come as no surprise then that I am also particularly fond of verse 47, in this case as translated by John C. H. Wu:

Without going out of your door,
You can know the ways of the world.
Without peeping through your window,
You can see the Way of Heaven.
The farther you go,
The less you know.

Thus the Sage knows without traveling,
Sees without doing,
And achieves without Ado.

with its obvious parallels to Walden, and even to Blake’s famous grain of sand. It’s not only my frugal ways that keep me from traveling. If it weren’t for the Army and relatives, I would probably have been happy to spend my vacations in the Cascades and at the beach for the rest of my life. Heck, if I’d stayed in Seattle instead of moving to Vancouver, I probably would have been happy spending my vacations visiting the San Juans and the Cascades.

Of course, if you’re not even going out your door, then you’re probably going to have to rely on meditation to discover the essence of the universe, as suggested in Wu’s version of Verse 56 :

He who knows does not speak.
He who speaks does not know.

Block all the passages!
Shut all the doors!
Blunt all the edges!
Untie all tangles!
Harmonize all lights!
Unite the world into one whole!
This is called the Mystical Whole,
Which you cannot court after nor shun,
Benefit nor harm, honour nor humble.

Therefore it is the Highest of the world.

Like much of the Taoteching, or any poetry for that matter, the lines suggest two different interpretations. The first two lines suggest that the Sage who knows the Tao “does not speak” because as we’ve already been told the Way cannot be named, so whoever gives it a name, who speaks, does not understand the Tao.

How, then, does one learn about the Tao? “Block all the passages! Shut all the doors” seem to suggest turning inward, not outward, there to experience the “Mystical Whole.” For me, at least, that suggests silent meditation, which, Google assures anyone who cares to check, is a major aspect of Taoism.

I’d like to say that I remembered section 2 as well as I remembered section 11, but I’m afraid I’d be lying if I claimed that. In fact I didn’t remember it all, probably because in grad school I was so busy learning the best way to judge what is good or bad that this idea had no chance to register.

2

All the world knows beauty
but if that becomes beautiful
this becomes ugly
all the world knows good
but if that becomes good
this becomes bad
the coexistence of have and have not
the coproduction of hard and easy
the correlation of long and short
the codependence of high and low
the correspondence of note and noise
the coordination of first and last
is endless
thus the sage performs effortless deeds
and teaches wordless lessons
he doesn’t start all the things he begins
he doesn’t presume on what he does
he doesn’t claim what he achieves
and because he makes no claim
he suffers no loss

It should be obvious to anyone who reads my blog that I occasionally, perhaps more than occasionally, make judgements about the world and what I see. To do so seems human nature, at least part of my nature. It’s certainly part of our culture, and a large part of what I learned to do in the nineteen years I attended school.

I’d like to think that carrying my camera around and looking at the world more closely has helped me to be less judgmental, to see the beauty in all things if I can but see them in the proper light — at least that seems true in the natural world.

Perhaps when I’m a little further along toward self-enlightenment I shall become less judgmental on other matters. At least I’m far enough along that I can see the wisdom in several of the wise men’s comments on this passage that Red Pine cites:

LU HSI-SHENG Says, “What we call beautiful or ugly depends on our feelings. Nothing is necessarily beautiful or ugly until feelings make it so. But while feelings differ, they all come from our nature, and we all have the same nature. Hence the sage transforms his feelings and returns to his nature and thus becomes one again.”

WANG AN-SHIH says, “The sage creates but does not possess what he creates. He acts but does not presume on what he does. He succeeds but does not claim success These three all result from selflessness. Because the sage is selfless, he does not lose his self. Because he does not lose his self, he does not lose others.”

SUNG CH’ANG-HSING says, “Those who practice the Way put an end to distinctions, get rid of name and form, and make of themselves a home for the Way and Virtue.”

I first read the Tao Te Ching in a graduate class more than twenty years ago and section 11 made such an impression on me that I still remember it today. Like all great poetry it made me see the world in a different way, in a way I had never considered before. Here’s Red Pine’s translation of section 11 of Lao Tzu’s Taoteching:

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it’s the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay
but it’s the hollow
that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces
that make a house work
existence makes something useful
but nonexistence makes it work

And here are three of several different interpretations of this passage that Red Pine cites:

LI-JUNG says, “It’s because the hub is empty that spokes converge on it. Likewise, it’s because the sage’s mind is empty that the people turn to him for help.”

WU CH ‘ ENG says, ‘All of these things are useful. But without an empty place for an axle, a cart can’t move. Without a hollow place in the middle, a pot can’t hold things. Without spaces for doors and windows, a room can’t admit people or light. But these three examples are only metaphors. What keeps our body alive is the existence of breath in our stomach. And it is our empty, nonexistent mind that produces breath.”

TE-CH’ING says. “Heaven and Earth have form, and everyone knows that Heaven and Earth are useful. But they don’t know that their usefulness depends on the emptiness of the Great Way. Likewise, we all have form and think ourselves useful but remain unaware that our usefulness depends on our empty, shapeless mind. Thus existence may have its uses, but real usefulness depends on nonexistence. Nonexistence, though, doesn’t work by itself. It needs the help of existence.”

When I first read the passage I was struck by the same ideas that Wu Ch’Eng begins with. It is the hub that holds the axle and makes the wheel useful, and yet we ignore it. We admire the color of the China, but it’s the empty shape that is most important. I suppose I paid less attention to the last line “nonexistence makes it work,” or, if I did, I cannot remember what I thought it meant.

After several years of reading Asian literature and practicing meditation, though, it’s the last line that seems most significant. On one level, perhaps, the Tao itself is “nonexistence,” and it is the Tao that makes existence work. If you’ve spent much time meditating, you can begin to believe that “empty mind,” makes the rest of your life work. Empty mind leads to awareness, and awareness makes everything else possible.

Before Rick and I agreed to meet for breakfast this morning we agreed to read, or, in my case, to re-read the Tao Teh Ching, this time translated by John C.H. Wu. Of course, I tended to skim large parts of it, paying particular attention to passages I’d marked as liking in previous readings.

As I read, I was again struck by chapter:

53

If only I had the tiniest grain of wisdom
I should walk in the Great Way,
And my only fear would be to stray from it.

The Great Way is very smooth and straight;
And yet the people prefer devious paths.

The court is very clean and well garnished,
But the fields are very weedy and wild,
And the granaries are very empty!
They wear gorgeous clothes,
They carry sharp swords,
They surfeit themselves with food and drink,
They possess more riches than they can use!
They are the heralds of brigandage!
As for Tao, what do they know about it?

Know any politicians who seem to â€?”prefer devious pathsâ€?”? Any who wear â€?”gorgeous clothes,” â€?”carry sharp swords?” Any who â€?”possess more riches than they can use?”

Is it any wonder that â€?”brigandage” pervades the Republican party when party leaders are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder in order to ensure their re-election?

Do you really think they’ve insisted on cutting taxes for the wealthiest one percent of the population without extracting some benefit from the betrayal of the democratic dream of equality? I’d love to hear an argument that tried to prove that the multi-millionaire executive who runs the company and a the laborer who earns $10, 712 a year, the amount working a full year at minimum wage for that company are EQUAL in any real sense of that word.