dao de jing x

when carrying on your head your perplexed bodily soul can you hold in your arms the one and not let go?

in concentrating your breath can you become as supple as a baby?

can you polish your dark mirror and leave no blemish?

in loving the people and bringing life to the state are you capable of not resorting to knowledge?

when the gates of heaven open and shut are you capable of keeping to the role of the female?

when your discernment penetrates the four quarters are you capable of not resorting to knowledge?

it gives them life and rears them

it gives them life without claiming to possess them

it is the steward yet exercises no authority over them

such is called dark virtue

dear tens,

isn’t the answer to all six questions, no? and how could there be a yes other than among those anachronistic gurus and enlightenment charlatans, who uphold a light virtue, a knowable goodness, a complete knowledge, an effective practice. we are all dao and one and two and three and many. we are polypolar, each of us, and those who process their innumerabilities into a mask of monism walk against dao and even if their names are nailed to some wall of honour yet they will not survive in the coded dream. true, some are more of dao or one, some more of two or three, some more of many and dao, and such is diversity

but show me the one who holds the one and does not let go. not the one who claims but the one who does not. not the one who manages appearances and performs that magic but the one in its everythingness, in all its unseenness. anyone with a bit of practice can become supple for a moment, maybe a day. but suppleness held becomes a rigidity. the act of polishing is itself a blemish and the dark mirror shows nothing – that ruse. loving and governing are actions. the role of the female has been rolled. we now don't know and know enough to know of the knowing of not knowing and the not knowing of knowing. i play with words you say. words play with me. there is no other play. and even the stages of cruelty and absurdity and gesture are plays of words, words bare and marrow, spurting their ruthless truths

yes i am capable. yes i can hold and become. yes i can not know and keep and love. even as i play a fool of dirty energy and cast the shifting cast of my wandering breath, unfocused and confused, across the mirrors of myself

for the only one is the one we cannot grasp, being too many ourselves, possessing myriad hands at diverse purposes, having become comprised of a limitless knowledge bound by flesh's merciless spherical court, its shadowy walls, gloamed lighting, its axe

the river rushes faster as it nears the ocean. and who could stay still in the current? who could be silent in the ever-open theater of words? 

oh you of daoless dao – for dao is too far from us now (and was as soon as it was uttered) – who slips and doesn’t resort, whose blemishes are uncountable and unmeasured … we cannot see your virtue, we do not know your name, we cannot walk your way