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
