dao de jing i

the way can be spoken of but it won’t be the constant way

the name can be named but it won’t be the constant name

the nameless was the beginning of the myriad creatures

the named was the mother of the myriad creatures

hence constantly rid yourself of desires in order to observe its subtlety

but constantly allow yourself to have desires in order to observe what it is after

these two have the same origin but differ in name

they are both called dark

darkness upon darkness

the gateway to all that is subtle

dear ones,

dao de jing is written as a text for human survival and excellence in the context of all things in a transient universe. while assembled over 22 centuries ago humans have increasingly erected a dam in its flow, afraid to live as one species among a myriad, without ascendancy, living in the spontaneity of themselves

dao de jing is a practice that includes the lost arts of anonymity, haplessness, desolation, solitude, and notknowing. it is a manual, but one that provides instructions on its own terms – morphing, combining without regard acute mysticism and political precision, interiority and exteriority, female and male, language and silence, many other seeming counterpoints, and even (quite nonchalantly) death and life

these transformations, this combining, this psychospiritual alchemy, here, in vignette one, are called dark. dao eschews light, flowing with heaviness, darkness. dao is root and root is in vermiculous earth

language – as more capriciously in the chuang tzu – is mistrusted – but only in a context that apotheosizes it, reifies, as today, to the ecstasy and necessity of communication, that experiences human relation as primary, superior. dao places things – whether names, desire, humans, language – in their place. and this place is dao. so language (now a subsidiary of that transnational conglomerate, Communication) is not some divinity, panacea, salvific exuberance and clarity, healing, but a transport (like rivers, mycelium, wind, electromagnetic field quanta). designed to carry things without prejudice, it carries, including prejudice, as prejudice is too a thing. so humans have no particular privilege and become themselves precisely as they inhabit dao’s vast flows

words – like humans, desire, things, transports – root in subtle darkness. not perhaps an ineffability, numinosity. not a knowledge outside. but also not a knowledge restricted to or predominant in visibility, scientific measure. the artificial separation of these combinings – a spiritual fission humans seem disturbingly addicted to and supercilious about – might be a fear of subtlety, the no-desire in desire, desire in no-desire

i descend from names, names from no-names. if i am ignorant of my ancestry, if i do not devote good measure to exploring my genealogies, how then can i use language with any authority – an authority that is none, for it too descends?

origins and ends, gateways and constancies – aren’t these our lives? dao neither immortalizes nor mortalizes but rather does both through the relentless relation, union, and separation of specifics

in life one hears myriad conflicting voices (in society and social media, polyphonic threads). dao does not choose but listens. and in listening includes all. and in including all negates all. and in negating chooses

so. speak human, for you must. but let your speaking be rooted and let these roots root in the wormy darkness of many, of two, of one, of nothing