TAO TE CHING IV

The way is empty, yet use will not drain it.

Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.

Blunt the sharpness;

Untangle the knots;

Soften the glare;

Let your wheels move only along old ruts.

Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there.

I know not whose son it is.

It images the forefather of God.

Does the Tao exist or does it not?  Is it the deluded creation of someone detached from the brute exigencies of reality or the elusive center and circumference of existence?  These are the questions of someone not walking the Tao.  In this sense, the Tao is like any way.  For those who walk the way of money, the way of money is real; for those of Christ, Christ is real; of family values, the same holds true.  And the list of ways is manifold, though the list of ways many claim is not long.  These ways, in theory or practice, explicitly or subtly—sometimes both, sometimes all—war against each other, each proclaiming the supremacy of its way.  But the Tao does not proclaim; it neither negates nor affirms each proclaiming way, though it can negate and affirm each way.  The Tao includes all ways, all myriad creatures, ideas, institutions, values, dreams; this is why it does not need to proclaim:  each specific way, each specific creature, each specific institution does the proclaiming and negating for it.  The sum of all proclamations and negations is the Tao.

We say the Tao is like … it seems … it’s the image of … for we can never see the whole, we can only intuit it.  Just as we can never see our entire body at the same time, so we can never think all thoughts, believe all values, and walk all ways simultaneously.  But we know the world—in all its teeming contradictoriness—is the one true thing.  So we walk the way of the world, which is the way of all ways, which is the Tao.

To reach the Tao, one walks the way of dismantling the ways that proclaim.  The light shines too clearly; all is not clear.  The truth pokes too incessantly, tradition stridently tangles, novelty creams its sticky honey.  The one who aligns herself with the Tao acknowledges the shining, the poking, the tangling, the creaming, but one is not blinded, stabbed, entrapped, or stuck.  For such a one walks in the empty darkness that, without speaking, says yes to all.

The Tao exists prior to the myriad specific ways, which are our great projections, veils on our fear, mutes on our trumpeting desires.  The one who follows the Tao neither veils her fear nor mutes her desires but by becoming the original fear and desire allows the Tao to enact fear and desire for her.  This does not mean she neither flees nor acts; it does not mean she does nothing … but she feels she does nothing for she does nothing but follow the Tao.  And the Tao is the force that gives birth to the gods and goes wherever it goes to whatever end.

It’s been said that life’s a dream; likewise it’s been said that unfortunately or not, it’s not—it’s the only reality.  Yet both these feelings are true:  life seems real, life seems a dream; life is real, life is a dream.  So with the Tao, for the Tao and life are like cousins in some obscure mythology.

The more life is categorized, technicized, visualized, analyzed, and verbalized, the more these methods of knowledge are trusted—that which is sensually objective—and the less the oneiric functions are, instead being viewed as the ignorant pastime of dilettantes and flakes—as they indeed often are.  But those categorizing, technicizing, visualizing, analyzing, and verbalizing are no less ignorant; it is simply that their ignorance is the accepted ignorance, the ignorance that masquerades as knowledge.  The Tao mysteriously unites the two modes and the one who follows the Tao walks the tightrope of strange unity, avoiding the silliness of excessive cognition and excessive fantasy.

So the Tao sometimes is glimpsed on a hazy night down a long corridor in a mirror, as the clouds wisp across the moon and a cool specter drifts though some window, effortlessly reaching for the glass, filling it with dim memories.

Of Merdia III

I cannot create from the power of myself, for what am I but the extension of my mother?  Yet when I look at the perfect brown spirals curled happily in the tranquil waters awaiting their fate with dignity and silence, I know I too am capable of extensions as holy as my mother’s.

TAO TE CHING III

Not to honor men of worth will keep the people from contention; not to value goods which are hard to come by will keep them from theft; not to display what is desirable will keep them from being unsettled of mind.

Therefore in governing the people, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones.  He always keeps them innocent of knowledge and free from desire, and ensures that the clever never dare to act.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

The root of reality is the body, thus the body is at the center of the Tao.  To know the body is to know the world.  When one is scared of the body, when one is scared of the world, one reverts to violence—against oneself, against others; by means of the body, by means of the mind.  The body is truly the one and only thing to be afraid of; even death is included in the body.  But the body includes so much more than death:  contradiction, vulnerability, beauty, unpredictability, hunger, amorality.  To counter the body, many build fortresses against it:  homes and wars, morals and systems, ideologies and philosophies, institutions and analysis.

The one who follows the Tao does not build a fortress against the body, but deals with her fear of the body by entering into the body’s center and using that center as her strength.  That center is the Tao.

If the people have as much food and sex as they want, if their needs for comfort and pleasure are easily gratified, if they are not given the opportunity to dream of impossible structures and otherworldly schemes, then why would they rebel?  Such easy gratification is, of course, difficult for some and impossible for a few.  But for many, this is all they require … and, in human society, the many is the boat, the leader the rudder, the Tao the sailor, and nature the elements.

The evolution of a life, a culture, or a species seems to follow a line.  And in some ways it does—stretching forward in time, reaching for dreams and ideas, extending to attach words and objects to itself.  Monument and temple; masterpiece and system; script, plan, and story.  As the line thickens and lengthens—ossifying, cracking, swirling, yet continuing—it whips the minds of individuals and cultures, scourging them with incessant urgent calls to decisively unambiguously add to the line’s thickening and lengthening.

The line is mind and will; flesh is a circle.  The Tao doesn’t dismiss the line but if it were given tokens to lie on the nearest shape, the circle would mostly be nearer.

Existence is a fearful jewel.  To deal with our insignificance alongside this jewel, we cover it with dirty rags, build strident taunting structures that mirror splinters of the jewel, boast of our supremacy, and proclaim ourselves—directly, indirectly, subtly, surreptitiously— knowledgeable and powerful.  But the greatest of our structures are neither strident nor taunting but rather calm attempts to straightforwardly remove the rags and polish the jewel, revealing it for what it is.  So existence is a small circle and our greatest efforts large ones and the Tao the breath that expands and contracts and does nothing.

Of Merdia II

In the low is the high, in excrement are mansions.  Every artist and homosexual knows this.  Art swirls in the toilet.  Sewers give birth to visions.  Should I ignore Merdia, my life will be a suburb, smelling only of Mr. Clean and Lysol.  Merdia is my fire for another world, a world I create to set against the power of my mother.