dao de jing vii

heaven and earth are enduring

the reason why heaven and earth can be enduring is that they do not give themselves life

hence they are able to be long lived

hence the sage puts her person back and it comes to the fore

treats its person as extraneous and it is preserved

is it not because she is without thought of self that she is able to accomplish her private ends?

dear sevens,

my book. my name. my will. my reputation. my things. my children. my home. my partner. my job. my ideas. my assets. my lover. my art. my feelings. my video. my dreams. my power. my story. my friend. my land. my body. my brand. my style. my self

hence here flows from the daoical orientation toward humanity as just another species: unprivileged, ungraced, ungoded, unsmarted … while skilled in a number of sectors, not overall superior or inferior to others. and so death is not something to be sought or spurned, hastened or avoided. and so too life. and so too all

what is a human doing as it clings and promotes and subjugates and kills and asserts and knows? what are its assumptions and fears? what has changed among us since one who thought weeping wrote the fairest universe is but a heap of sweepings poured out aimlessly?

dao is the most subversive intelligent witty thing i know

extraneous, external, strange, outside, unknown, alien, curious, without, distant, separated, foreign, surprising, other.

the average person is insulted when you criticize his ideas, his tastes, feelings, body. he identifies his self with his identity, thoughts, worth, life. he finds himself in resentments and seeks retreat or revenge. but the sage is uncertain of identity, this worth – not in those cheap psychological ways of worthlessness that are simply the same notions of worth positioned differently … the loci of the emotional and cognitive flows that many say occur within the self seem difficult to place, the self that many say should be valued, protected, loved, known, even defined, is instead more of a gift of a plaything, highlighting humanity’s greatest and most abused attribute – what we could call consciousness or a shapeless image

some 2500 years ago as humans navigated certain early spasms of language, a nascent potential to dominate this planet, seductions of instrumental reason, dao might be a dark blueprint of an intuition of how to deal with these notable challenges in creative, contextual, intelligent ways that would assert humanity not through assertion, that would show humanity not through conspicuousness, that would distinguish humanity not through distinction, that would empower humanity not through instrumental reason and domination, that would dissolve disputes not through disputation

but instead we have become rabidly assertive, grossly conspicuous, pathetically distinct, hyper-rational and forcefully dominant, argumentative to no effect. and through these gargantuanly clever and comprehensively stupid

dao is nothing, a point, circular, spherical, hyperspherical …

before and after follow each other

the way that leads forward seems to lead backward

what is put in the back comes to the fore

but not a fore in that sense of a midden of twitter followers. these are different fores, backs, ends, different selves. and how do we find them if not in the classroom, the pecuniary therapist's chair, the youtube, the research grant (yet they are there too)?

would we not in our hard selves desire to learn of the intelligences of the many things? for has not the human already been tried by time’s ruthless court and not been found worthy of the earth and the gifts it finds on it and in itself? does not even the regretful colonizer conform in new ways to its presumptuous ancestral patterns? and where the manual to move in these twitchy days? and what the aims and why the shadows?

dao de jing v

heaven and earth are ruthless; they treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs

the sage is ruthless; she treats the people as straw dogs

is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?

it is empty without being exhausted

the more it works the more comes out

to hear much will lead only to a dead end

better to hold fast to what is within

dear fives,

in contrast to reward and punishment mythologies, moralities of good and evil … in contrast to any sentimental gods or god who assume goodness, compassion, love – offsetting cruelty, hate, malice to other forces … in contrast to the childish capricious powers of many – forceful infants of the heavens …  shrugging at ideas of benevolence and ritualistic conformity (whether the rites are prescribed institutionally or in the heave of society), dao doesn’t even posit a god (or at least a god more than a common tansy or brinjal masala). here are heaven and earth – the way of dark virtue and the way of simian prescribed rites – the people, the sage

the sage, who is later dismissed as unworthy and risible. the people, who are routinely presented as a pulsing conglomerate of necessary followers. the impossible way of heaven. the pervasively enforced expectations of earth

here heaven, earth, and sages form a strange alliance, of which the people are not a part, contractually bound by ancient models to a dna of indifference. the people though get excited or discouraged by constructions of amorality, immorality, blood and barbarism, difference, the vestments and scripts of hierarchical power and status, their passions expressed in moral systems, tedious schadenfreude and its organized siblings (government and war), integrity and transgression

and what is this indifference  – detachment or fate or enlightenment or geometry or discernment or silence or intelligence or something else or puerility?  – a magnificent disdain for the mores of a species which has consistently demonstrated through its nightmare, history, that it cannot act except through severings, genocides, rapaciousness, and an alert purposiveness?

love is mentioned few times in these 81 vignettes and when it is always in a way that subverts our common orientations. dao doesn’t say love but ruthlessness. not a ruthlessness apart from love as it is not apart from anything. dao does not do apart. (to not take this word or text or any and raise it to an all)

not that ruthlessness of presidents and entrepreneurs that is called expediency and pragmatism, not that squabbling fortress of mothers and fathers and lovers and spouses that is called love, not that ruthlessness of a member of the myriad creatures as it goes about its entertained scrimmage of a life, a ruthlessness called whatever it is called, but some other kind that is not defined by the images in your mind but by dao, undefined, in its inexplicabilities

love, that drippy word, may be destroying us. for the way we practice it is not large. it does not reach beyond our little interests of self and species, around the earth and out to heaven, past the breathing of the infinite spaces between, and further still, something at hand, a vital emptiness

dao acknowledges the paths – of reading all the books, collecting all the lovers, helping all the poor, responding to all the messages, listening to all the podcasts and videos, amassing all the wealth, assuming all the power, knowing all the references and magic tricks, displaying all the beauty … and of holding assiduously to that vitality

and where are the measures and graphs and peer-reviewed articles to show the how and what and why of this? how do i tell that one holds fast to that?

by means of dark virtue, by means of old paths, by means of confused turnings, by means of muddledness and listlessness, by means of this