Tao Te Ching XVII

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to her subjects.

Next comes the ruler they love and praise.

Next comes one they fear.

Next comes one with whom they take liberties.

When there is not enough faith, there is lack of good faith.

Hesitant, she does not utter words lightly.

When her task is accomplished and her work done,

the people all say, “It happened to us naturally.”

Progress has often been the extension of volition to a greater proportion of people.  With great masses of individuals now empowered, with democracy crawling across the earth, entitling billions to live like kings, with names and spiritual prosthetics now comprising the bulk of human imagination, with copyrights and rights the definition of justice, who would there be who chooses to meander down another path, dim and dubiously named, not craving extensions, who views her will as neither more nor less than that of any other object, who does not strut but lurks in shadow, who has removed herself from the elastic of affirmation and rejection, who cannot be taken advantage of for there is nothing to grasp, who aligns herself with the river of bodies, emptying into the sea?

Philosophy has replaced thinking with volition, wisdom with will.  Education has replaced knowledge with certification, thinking with industry.

If no sages remain, it is because we have moved so far from nature that we easily deceive ourselves as to our significance.  We perhaps have moved so far in order to deceive ourselves.  When I can instantly publish every little act I do, every little thought I think, the results of every little survey I take, to a great cloud of babble, how can I not be someone with whom to reckon?  The sage, in an age of eliminated external nature—or, at least, nature reduced to two dimensions—must seek nature within.  The commoner says, Because I seek it within, I can make it whatever I wish it to be.  But just because it cannot be seen does not mean it is subject to our wills.  The sage is intimate with shadowy things, with the elusive and the hidden; she peers into darkness and sees shapeless shapes, imageless images.  She sees the way.

Intimacy’s tyranny is difficult to avoid when humans exist in massive proximities.  When there are millions living and bumping within kilometers of one’s home, who would not divide these millions into those we love, those we fear, those we exploit?  The one whose primary reality is not those millions, but a nature that swirls in distant eddies.

To recreate nature, then, is the sage’s task.  Not to recreate it according to the fancies of her imagination, to the whimsies of desire, but according to the patterns she sees around her—patterns which emulate the ancient routes, still traced with our lives.

The body knows three dimensions.  The mind knows a fourth.  Technology strives for a fifth and in striving achieves two.  So the sage returns to the body and so is less and more than modern man.  The sage follows the body but does not care for time.  In stopping at the limits of the body, she is able to act naturally.

But in a world of artifice, the natural seems artificial and the sage is a fool.  In a world of artifice, nature must be dissected, analyzed, comfortably visited, explained, proceduralized, romanticized, and therapized so that the people can appear to be connected with it.  But once it has been dissected, it is no longer nature and the people are tethered to a corpse.  The sage turns away from manuals and texts, theses and therapists; she turns to the nature she sees and what she sees is the body.

The gods lived in nature and the gods were shadowy.  Now, the gods have receded and nature is shadowy.  Once nature recedes, what will be shadowy?  Perhaps us.

The sage has a task and when it is done, she does not care if no other comes along.  She sits and bangs pots, she makes pies or beds, she walks on silent sidewalks.  She does not stretch her life or power to unnatural limits but stops when stopping makes sense and dies when things are done.

Tao Te Ching XVI

I do my utmost to attain emptiness;

I hold firmly to stillness.

The myriad creatures all rise together and I watch their return.

The teeming creatures all return to their separate roots.

Returning to one’s roots is known as stillness.

This is what is meant by returning to one’s destiny.

Returning to one’s destiny is known as the constant.

Knowledge of the constant is known as discernment.

Woe to him who willfully innovates while ignorant of the constant.

But should one act from knowledge of the constant,

one’s action will lead to impartiality,

impartiality to kingliness,

kingliness to heaven,

heaven to the way,

the way to perpetuity,

and to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.

There are those who debate whether we are formed from nature or nurture; they are pedants.  The sage knows what she came from and where she returns to.  So often do the banker, the comedian, the farmer, the hairdresser, the addict.  This origin and return can be seen as life’s progressive narrowing or it can be seen as the stuff one is made of and one becomes.  Root and destiny, past and future, are the center and circumference of the way.

Yes, there is the great return, the return to earth.  Yes, most spend their lives resisting this return, building structures of resistance which, in turn, follow their creators into earth.  Some of these structures, like bodies, are beautiful; some, like bodies, destroy.

Each creature has a separate root in the earth, a root that allows one to say, That is him, this is her.  Most roots are common, most flowers are common, and while we may take one home and put it in a vase and it thus attains distinction, put beside its kind it is almost indistinguishable.  A few roots are rare, with strange flowers and exotic smells, as if drawing on nutrients from another world.  The sage is rare because she devotes her life to tending her roots, delights in feeling them extend further and further into the earth.  Should they extend sufficiently to the center, where the memory of all roots reside, she is granted a vision of the teeming physicality of all things and she is still.

By placing herself in movement—the movement of rivers, the movement of bodies—while dedicating herself to no specific movement, the sage aligns herself with the constant and from that vantage point of radical stillness—the place where radical movement and radical stillness meet—she sees all claims, all creations, all forms, all movements in their partiality and by doing so does not dismiss them but gives preeminence to none of them.  Hence she is a sage.

Creation only becomes destructive when the creator loses sight of the inevitable destruction of his creation—not by him or others necessarily, but by the gradual decay which is the gift the earth offers to all.

Look at the distance between kingliness and perpetuity.  The commoner views presidents, CEOs, and renowned entertainers as high.  But the sage sees how close they are to earth, how far most of them are from impartiality, how far all of them are from the way.  True regality is the ability to distinguish the botanical forms of the soul, make judgments and walk through life based on these distinctions.

The same circumstances, beneficent and detrimental, surround the sage as others; but to the common person, the rewards are good, the penalties bad.  To the sage, none of this exists; there is only root.  Thus, in being in her root, she meets no danger because there are no dangers.  All dangers have disappeared into the light above the soil.

Tao Te Ching XV

Of old she who was well versed in the way

was minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending, and too profound to be known.

It is because she could not be known that she can only be given a makeshift description:

tentative, as if fording a river in winter;

hesitant, as if in fear of her neighbors;

formal, like a guest;

falling apart, like thawing ice;

thick, like the uncarved block;

vacant, like a valley;

murky, like muddy water.

Who can be muddy and yet, settling, slowly become limpid?

Who can be at rest and yet, stirring, slowly come to life?

She who holds fast to this way desires not to be full.

It is because she is not full that she can be worn and yet newly made.

The sage is tentative, for human society is a thin layer of ice, under which there is the bottomless maw of the human soul.  The sage knows the soul and does not fear it … but why fall into it unless necessary?

The sage is hesitant, for her neighbors are like herself:  shifting, odd, unknown.  But they do not know that they are shifting, odd, unknown, instead thinking they are constant, normal, known; this lack of knowledge is why she approaches them uncertainly.

The sage is formal, for she is always visiting and no particular thing can claim pre-eminent intimacy.  She arrives and dines and laughs, but she is never known.  Even her informality is a mask covering an ancient formality.

The sage is falling apart, for her boundaries, foundations, and identities are always shifting.  Dissolution, re-formation:  these are her friends.  For those who are not sages, such friends cause them to break down; but as the sage’s security is insecurity, her foundation bottomlessness, her identity a slight smile, a vague recognition … she is constantly falling apart yet is never broken.

The sage is thick, for like the way she walks, she cannot be sliced into names; she cannot be identified with whatever might surround her; no particular thought or skill breaks away from the great conglomerate of thoughts and skills and says, “I am supreme.”

The sage is vacant, for otherwise how could she be open to the world?

The sage is murky, for the debris of infinite possibility floats in her.  She is like an infinitely diverse and wondrous wardrobe of masks and fashions.  You enter, try things on, discard them, moving endlessly, never reaching any walls.  Then you realize—I am here in the dim light of the wardrobe; I have become nothing other than this donning, discarding, and moving.  This “nothing other” is why the sage is murky.

She lies calmly or savagely wars, depending on whatever is required, though she knows that few things are required and war rarely is.  Though some manners of the soul are rarely used, all are present and ripe—ready to be put to use.

The sage desires what exists.  What exists is whatever aspect of the soul is manifesting itself at the present.  To be full would be for all the soul’s aspects to be fully manifesting themselves at once and always.  Yet this fullness is restricted to the world in its entirety—and not even then perhaps—never to an aspect of the world.  Why then would the sage desire what will never be? 

Are we not all tentative, hesitant, formal, falling apart, thick, vacant, and murky?  The sage desires what she is and by doing so grows old like everyone but, like the Tao, is always a baby.

Solids, Liquids, and Gas

One of the challenges of being a sadoo is that, if the sadoo is a true sadoo, he doesn’t particularly believe his own words, states, and emotions.  Rather, he believes them, but not as solid states; instead, he believes them as running water or wind.  So the sadoo who knows himself as sadoo refrains from making grand or final statements about himself—he may be presently in a state of exuberance or hermitic withdrawal, polygamy or chastity, wealth or poverty, social favor or disgrace … but these are not his definition, his unalterable future.  They are simply what he is now.

So the sadoo differs from the sadhu and the Christian by making no final choice as to his life and orientation other than to align himself with the wind and wander where he must.  This is what confuses people about the sadoo; the people want to feel safe, they want life wrapped in pleasing understandable packages which quantities of people, regardless of their merit, affirm. 

The people of course wander where they must also; the only real difference between the people and the sadoo is that he knows he is air—he and his words, thoughts, feelings, and circumstances—whereas the people hide the fact of their being air with words and things, which they attempt to affix to their souls with whatever tools of attachment are available to them.  Thus their souls become heavy over time, weighed down with fear of life’s transience and fullness.

If the sadoo flits around, it is not because he runs away (what is there to run from?) but because he desires only to give himself over to the wind and go where it carries him. 

Tao Te Ching XIV

What cannot be seen is called evanescent.

What cannot be heard is called rarefied.

What cannot be touched is called minute.

These three cannot be fathomed

and so they are confused and looked upon as one.

Its upper part is not dazzling,

its lower part is not obscure.

Dimly visible, it cannot be named

and returns to that which is without substance.

This is called the shape that has no shape,

the image that is without substance.

This is called indistinct and shadowy.

Go up to it and you will not see its head,

follow behind it and you will not see its rear.

Hold fast to the way of antiquity

in order to keep in control the realm of today.

The ability to know the beginning of antiquity

is called the thread running through the way.

The one we call confident has names and knowledge; he walks through forms that can be mapped and photographed.  He knows the seven habits, productivity’s formulae, the lineaments of career.  He clearly discerns left from right, progress from regress, solution from problem, balance from upset, truth from falsity, fact from fiction, day from night, dream from reality, fame from anonymity.  He says that is a camel, here is a lion, there a child.  I direct and they obey and everything grows and the projections are fulfilled.

The sage does not do this.  She too looks at the world and sees lions and children.  She sees habits and camels.  Growth is not a word absent from her lips.  She reads the history books.  But as she looks, the lion’s shape does not stay a lion’s shape.  It morphs.  It fades and warps, receding into the scarves of time.

The sage is insecure.  No firm foundation exists for her to stand on.  Maybe she stands on water; maybe she rides on air and sleeps on fire.  Maybe even she is an expert on elephants and can describe their livers, mating calls, and diets in a thousand ways.  But in every shape there are a thousand shapes and none and sunset’s cold farewell.  In every word there is every other word and none and shadow.  Ideas are bubbles, virtue is mysterious.

Unlike the one we call confident, the one whose security rests on security, whose knowledge rests on knowledge, names on names, the sage’s security rests on her insecurity, her knowledge on not-knowing, names on no-names.

Time is not a history book nor even history, but a thread.  A thread changes shape.  It breaks, is tied together, used for many effects, collapses then is drawn taut.  It can form any number or letter, it can ask any question.  It can be a line or a circle.  In an instant, it can disappear.

The sage is about returning to the murky ether that began the world.  For her, this is not a return to some other time but a return to the world that is always in a state of beginning.

Tao Te Ching XIII

Favor and disgrace are things that startle.

Great trouble is like one’s body.

What is meant by saying that favor and disgrace are things that startle?  Favor when it is bestowed on a subject serves to startle as much as when it is withdrawn.  This is what is meant by saying that favor and disgrace are things that startle.

What is meant by saying that great trouble is like one’s body?  The reason I have great trouble is that I have a body.  When I no longer have a body, what trouble do I have?

Hence she who values her body more than dominion over the empire can be entrusted with the empire.  She who loves her body more than dominion over the empire can be given the custody of the empire.

The body rages blue against the fat fact of death.  It grows calm.  Tepid, indolent, against the rage.  Then it is back, tumult and heat, biting life and laughing.  Calm again.  Rage, laughter, insolence, humiliation, exhaustion.  Like reputation, fortune, love—the body jerks and spits, and the people cheer and jeer at its constant spasms.

Who would love this?  Who would love this more than dominion over the empire—the perfect end to endless dreams?

The one who loves the troubles of her body, who tends the troubles like a steward, who cares more about this tending than the usual ascendant dreams, who is not startled by the rage and withdrawal but paddles on them … she might be the one who should be given power.

This entitlement reverses the world’s normal proclivities, which bestow the empire on those who love dominion more than their bodies.  For there are two followers of nature:  the apes with words, who climb the thorny ladders of success—or fall—or envy those who do; and the sage, who reclines on water and allows herself to be drawn along its course.  The people are her body and her body the people; they are not something to rule but to absorb.  This is the government of the way that slips away from names.

Tao Te Ching XII

The five colors make man’s eyes blind.

The five notes make his ears deaf.

The five tastes injure his palate.

Riding and hunting make his mind go wild with excitement.

Goods hard to come by serve to hinder his progress.

Hence the sage is for the belly not for the eye.

Therefore she discards the one and takes the other.

Theology, philosophy, religion, art, science, technology, and the industries of knowledge are for the eye.  What is typically most valued and named civilization and culture is attributed to the eye.  The eye looks at nature, dislikes its stranglehold over humanity, objects to death, its myriad tentacles, and attempts, through physical or mental means, to overcome, transcend, or limit nature’s hold:  to become an eye which looks at nature, a disembodied eye—part of no body—that looks critically at nature and analyzes it as if it were something other than itself.

Civilization draws a historical, ontological, and progressive line from the belly to the eye.  It treats the belly cruelly, sentimentally, as if it had no knowledge of it.  But all funds and fame flow to the eye.

The Tao, however, draws a circle from the belly to the eye to the belly.  For the Tao includes the eye, but the eye of nature which does not say no to nature but yes.

The sage is called to have the Tao’s eye.  Most eyes try to destroy nature.  Thus the sage is for the belly for the people—whose eyes are partial, destructive, infantile, and grasping—but she is for the circle for all.

Tao Te Ching XI

Thirty spokes share one hub.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the cart.

Knead clay in order to make a vessel.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the vessel.

Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room.

Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have the use of the room.

Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.

Scholars, firefighters, the wise, astrologists, businesspeople and priests, prostitutes, bathroom repair technicians, and judges all share one assumption:  that something will lead to something; that a specific act, idea, or attitude—or some conglomeration of acts, ideas, or attitudes—will, more likely than not, lead to another specific act, idea, or attitude.  The Tao does not deny etiology but places empty spaces as the cause of function and movement.  Whether these be the empty spaces of the physical world or the empty spaces of the mind and soul.

The sage is the sage because for her causes transform from solids to liquids to gases … and dissipate.  Uncertainty, agnosticism, doubt are her playthings.  Morality is the weapon of those afraid of the gaseous dissipative world--the world that has shadowy guidelines but no rules, that sees justice, truth, and love as moments rather than monuments.  (But if fear leads to morality, does not this show the sage to be a hypocrite, as even she believes in causation?)

There are empty spaces, there are the ways we respond to them, and there is the stab of emotion between.

The sage does not stay in nothing, but migrates easily to something.  But all do this.  The sage is the sage because she is disinclined to attribute solid names in the ancestries of all specific things.

The Sadoo Corporation

It should appear obvious to even a casual onlooker that the sadoo is a corporation.  While this particular sadoo cannot necessarily speak on behalf of other sadoos, he is vaguely aware that his own corporation—like all—has various executive branches with various responsibilities; these are outlined below.

Sadoo Corporation Division	Title of Head	Function	Analogy in Capitalism
Word	Senior Executive Vice-president (SEVP)	To be constantly receptive to new configurations of words which subvert the commonplace and animate.	Corporate Communications
Vision	SEVP	To experience God and to see God in all that is encountered	Strategic Planning
Flaneur	SEVP	To move his body around the city of the world—avoiding no sight, sound, smell, taste, or feel—tracing his body’s movement on consciousness.	Transportation
Waste Management	SEVP	To transform all solidity, resentment, cliché, seriousness, possession, and death into dance.	Waste Management
Excess and Rebound (formerly the Paint-by-Number Division)	Executive Vice-president	To fully explore all aspects of the contradictory problematic capricious infinite soul.	Risk Management
Input-Output	EVP	To put things in his body and take them out.	Human Resources
Whatever	VP	To oversee the obligations to time, space, and their extensions.	Operations and Technology
Survival	Custodial Engineer	To maintain and increase money, sex, fame, security, reputation, and comfort.	Custodial Operations

Notes

• The Custodial Engineer, Survival reports to the Vice-President, Whatever, who in turn reports to the Executive Vice-president, Input-Output.
• All seven executives (the four SEVPs, the two EVPS, and the one VP) and the one custodial engineer all sit on The Sadoo Corporation’s (TSC) Management Board.

Two distinctions between The Sadoo Corporation and the capitalistic corporation immediately become obvious.

1. The paramount values of the capitalistic corporation (and in this we include for-profits, non-profits, governments, NGOs, and most individuals)—money, sex, fame, security, reputation, comfort—are, in The Sadoo Corporation, made subservient to word, vision, movement, and transformation.  This inversion presents the Sadoo with most of his problems, not only in terms of living his own life but in mingling in normal society, as he finds it difficult to grasp how most view the custodial engineer’s objectives as interesting, worthy, exclusive, and supreme, devoting their lives and conversations to putting everything noble and transcendent (art, imagination, God, nature, beauty) in the service of dust and the custodial engineer.
2. No president, chairman, or CEO exists to oversee and have ultimate responsibility for The Sadoo Corporation; neither do any of the management team have such control.  Rather, the members of the management team routinely disagree with each other and have little comprehension of the others’ objectives.  Board meetings are thus rarely productive but are often stimulating; sometimes the custodial engineer is the only one who says much, despite the fact that he’s the most boring.  If any unifying factor exists, it is the Sadoo’s body, a possibility that the EVP of Input-Output and the SEVP of Flaneur do not hesitate to attempt to exploit—to no effect, however, as the other executives—particularly the SEVPs of Word, Vision and Waste Management—don’t give a damn about the Sadoo’s body.  In fact, the Input-Output and Flaneur executives don’t really either; they just say they do because it makes them feel more important than they are.

And so The Sadoo Corporation—like all corporations—has its distinctions, routine operations, strengths, flaws, and finitude.  

For readers further interested in sadoo management

and administration, we kindly refer them to —

http://sadoos.blogspot.ca/

— where Fukky Risotto graciously

hosts posts from sadoos around the world