dao de jing viii

that which is most good is like water

it is because water is not only good at benefiting the myriad creatures but also vies to dwell in the place detested by the multitude that it comes close to the way

in a dwelling it is the site that is valued

in quality of mind it is depth that is valued

in giving it is being like heaven that is valued

in speech it is good faith that is valued

in government it is order that is valued

in affairs it is ability that is valued

in action it is timeliness that is valued

it is because it does not contend that it is never at fault

dear eights,

the most good is not power or beauty or pleasure or comfort or virtue but a kind of slipperiness, an out-of-the-wayness, a struggling not for the common aspirations of the human, a thing that doesn’t present itself as most or good

water, sometimes solid, often evaporating, accepting all manner of things within its very being including more of itself, disturbs our hierarchical preferences for the superiority of solidities

look at the table of elements. is zinc better than bromine? gallium than argon? barium than flerovium? and yet it is the way of the human to prefer solid things. perhaps as a significant majority of elements are solid, so humans, and as things prefer themselves, so solidity reigns. but a world without flow, without diffusion, without plasmatic resonance and quirkiness would not be a world

solidity is good for solidity but when it extends its reaches to what it is not and attempts to impose its own constituent qualities on what it is not the world degrades. and this is what we are seeing

depth of mind is hardly important in a home’s construction. order is not necessarily desirable in giving. the site of talking is less important than its integrity. and so good government – if it could exist – would take what things are for what they are and not presume with an evangelistic dogmatism that the codes of some – even if a majority, even if with force – should dominate

what kind of leader could effect such style? water. flow and vastness and flexibility and no need to do much but fit into the forms that present themselves

water may occasionally kill. it may sometimes carry disease. it is indifferent and often cold. water is not the way for nothing is the way but the way and even the way is not the way. water is not the only tangible thing that comes close to the way – so too the baby, the shadow, the valley, confused wandering, silence, …

i see the images of humans pass through me like a grammar of incomprehensible dreams. i do not fight my decay, my enemy, my humiliation. they are only the gurgle of the charismatic stillness of my forgetting what shape i am meant to be

dao de jing vii

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?

dao de jing vi

the spirit of the valley never dies

this is called the dark female

the entry into the dark female

is called the root of heaven and earth

tenuous it seems as if it were there

yet use will never exhaust it

dear sixes,

dao is not a descent and ascent or ascent and descent or ascent or descent, a season in hell, a mountaintop experience, a retreat, a place or system or status or argument, a destination or map, an i can help you or take you there, a self-denial, even a here or there, an escape or virtue, a process particularly, certainly not a product or tribe or people or religion or movement or a thing (though it too is a thing, though indistinct, a substance in crepuscular dimness). it might be a moving and a moving and movings

it acknowledges all and sides with all and simultaneously and mostly prefers valleys, darkness, roots, heaven (no christian or otherworldly heaven), not meddling, certain constructions of muliebrity, suppleness, nonharm, stillness

one of the legends of the birth of laozi relates how an old woman becomes pregnant after drinking a drop of sweet dew. she carries the baby for 80 years but only during the daytime … at night baby leaves the womb to study dao. when he is finally fully born (through his mother’s armpit some say) he already has a long white beard and is able to walk. seeing this strange old child (laozi means old master but homophonically & metaphorically suggests old child) the mother takes fright and dies. thus in this genesis of laozi – from gender neutral divine being to woman to child, there is no father

dao is not very comforting. it puts everything at risk. we pile others and things and words around ourselves and forget the world is much more threatening than we want to admit. everything is always at risk and one of dao stays still in this everything. we could say this staying still in this everything is entry into the dark female

again, so soon … it seems as if it were there. and watch for these repetitions of phrases, words, themes as they move and morph through the 81 poems, appearing and disappearing in varied contexts, even as do our varied selves and shapes in lives

she is not this or that. heaven in its compassion or earth in its barbarisms. both are present but they do not battle. in not the valley but the valley’s spirit. in not a woman but the darkness of an entry

so the sage dies, not from exhaustion. a loved body is over. an ambivalent life ends. a sage dies, as all, and the spirit of the dark valley, root and unusable, continues as it is, seeming

dao de jing v

heaven and earth are ruthless; they treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs

the sage is ruthless; she treats the people as straw dogs

is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?

it is empty without being exhausted

the more it works the more comes out

to hear much will lead only to a dead end

better to hold fast to what is within

dear fives,

in contrast to reward and punishment mythologies, moralities of good and evil … in contrast to any sentimental gods or god who assume goodness, compassion, love – offsetting cruelty, hate, malice to other forces … in contrast to the childish capricious powers of many – forceful infants of the heavens …  shrugging at ideas of benevolence and ritualistic conformity (whether the rites are prescribed institutionally or in the heave of society), dao doesn’t even posit a god (or at least a god more than a common tansy or brinjal masala). here are heaven and earth – the way of dark virtue and the way of simian prescribed rites – the people, the sage

the sage, who is later dismissed as unworthy and risible. the people, who are routinely presented as a pulsing conglomerate of necessary followers. the impossible way of heaven. the pervasively enforced expectations of earth

here heaven, earth, and sages form a strange alliance, of which the people are not a part, contractually bound by ancient models to a dna of indifference. the people though get excited or discouraged by constructions of amorality, immorality, blood and barbarism, difference, the vestments and scripts of hierarchical power and status, their passions expressed in moral systems, tedious schadenfreude and its organized siblings (government and war), integrity and transgression

and what is this indifference  – detachment or fate or enlightenment or geometry or discernment or silence or intelligence or something else or puerility?  – a magnificent disdain for the mores of a species which has consistently demonstrated through its nightmare, history, that it cannot act except through severings, genocides, rapaciousness, and an alert purposiveness?

love is mentioned few times in these 81 vignettes and when it is always in a way that subverts our common orientations. dao doesn’t say love but ruthlessness. not a ruthlessness apart from love as it is not apart from anything. dao does not do apart. (to not take this word or text or any and raise it to an all)

not that ruthlessness of presidents and entrepreneurs that is called expediency and pragmatism, not that squabbling fortress of mothers and fathers and lovers and spouses that is called love, not that ruthlessness of a member of the myriad creatures as it goes about its entertained scrimmage of a life, a ruthlessness called whatever it is called, but some other kind that is not defined by the images in your mind but by dao, undefined, in its inexplicabilities

love, that drippy word, may be destroying us. for the way we practice it is not large. it does not reach beyond our little interests of self and species, around the earth and out to heaven, past the breathing of the infinite spaces between, and further still, something at hand, a vital emptiness

dao acknowledges the paths – of reading all the books, collecting all the lovers, helping all the poor, responding to all the messages, listening to all the podcasts and videos, amassing all the wealth, assuming all the power, knowing all the references and magic tricks, displaying all the beauty … and of holding assiduously to that vitality

and where are the measures and graphs and peer-reviewed articles to show the how and what and why of this? how do i tell that one holds fast to that?

by means of dark virtue, by means of old paths, by means of confused turnings, by means of muddledness and listlessness, by means of this