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?
