Tao Te Ching X

When carrying on your head your perplexed bodily soul can you embrace in your arms the One and not let go?

In concentrating your breath can you become as supple as a babe?

Can you polish your mysterious mirror and leave no blemish?

Can you love the people and govern the state without resorting to action?

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 knowing anything?

It gives them life and rears them.

It gives them life yet claims no possession.

It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude.

It is the steward yet exercises no authority.

Such is called the mysterious virtue.

Imagine a Cosmopolitan quiz entitled, “Are You Really a Sage?”, with the above six questions comprising the inquiry.  Who would answer Yes?  What criteria could be applied for verification?  What constitutes a pass?  Where is the governing body that adjudicates disputes?  How many would receive scholarships to Sage University and become professors of Quantum Suppleness or Postcolonial Perplexed Bodily Souls?  Would you take the quiz?  Would you post your results on some social network service?  Would you quantify the soul or even—yes—the body?  When would be the reckoning that resolves egregious methodological and historical injustices?  Why, in an age of knowledge and precision, would one even remotely care about a virtue or wisdom that had no definition?

As you approach Question One, might you think—“The bodily soul is given to perplexity, especially when carried on the head.  The bodily soul definitively feels as if it knows what to do some of the time but this feeling is no good guide to consequence.  And when it doesn’t know what to do, this also is no good guide.  What One is there that I might hold tightly that might guide me through the continual perplexity of my having a body?  Might it be the sum of all feelings of definiteness and ignorance plus the sum of all feelings?  Might it be a sum that I don’t know but is beyond perplexity?”?

As you approach Question Two, might you think—“To be supple as a babe:  is not this the opposite of nature, which dictates that one becomes specialized, that life is linear and cumulative?  But a babe!—does not a babe disregard convention? defecate in unruly places? relate strangely to language? depend unnaturally on others? drop and bounce more readily than adults? accept her surrounding circumstances such that what is her reality is indistinguishable from what her reality ought to be? laugh when she needs to laugh and cry when she needs to cry and sleep when she needs to sleep? Should I become like this when I’ve devoted so much effort to becoming not like this?”?

As you approach Question Three, might you think, “Surely it is good to have a clean mirror” … and leave it at that?

As you approach Question Four, might you think, “If I am to treat the people as straw dogs, how can I love them? If I am to govern the state, how can order be established and maintained if I do nothing? Don’t the people need a model and is not that model I?”?

As you approach Question Five, might you think, “Am I some actor that I should keep to a role and, if so, where is the script of the female hidden that I might read it?  When all hell breaks loose and passion trumps reason and birth and death permeate the air, am I still—even then—to maintain the play?  Is not this the ultimate artifice?”?

As you approach Question Six, might you think, “Is the shift from can to are you capable significant?”?

As you complete the quiz, might you think, “My birthday approaches and my children shall celebrate it with me”?

Definitions of God

God is surely dead, according to any traditional notions.  But "god" continues to live as a word; consequently, it is up to those of us dedicated to capricious semantics to usurp the word for our own delight and future transformations.  So, below, sadoo diaper offers some new definitions of God, in his attempt to re-create divinity in his own image.

1. God is that which most fully can not and never be described; that which most fully has not, does not, and can never exist.

2. God is desire, the waiting for that which may never come.  That which we desire, but do not obtain--the ever-present unknown--is God.

3. Each moment judges the other and finds it wanting; the collection of all these moments is the judgment of God.  Stories are formed from the two gaps that define the human:  the gap between the least a person is able to achieve and the most, and the gap between what a person achieves and what that person longs for.  The first gap is a subset of the second gap.  The second gap is God.

4. In our nightmares, we live our fears of losing what we have.  In our daydreams, we live our hopes of gaining what we do not have.  The union of our nightmares and daydreams, of what we possess and lack, is God.  We stand between, forever in the same position, at the midpoint of fear and desire--the opposite of God.

5. God, from a psychoanalytical perspective, is nothing other than the male fear of female beauty organized into a deity.  But psychoanalysis is only one lens in the fly-eye of God, even as each definition is only one lens in an eye of infinite lenses.

6. Everything can kill us--restraint, abandon, prudence, whimsy, intelligence, stupidity, solitude, society, justice, injustice, religion, atheism, thought, emptiness.  We tell stories about what has killed or might kill, but these are attempts to order the chaos at the guts of life and death.  God is this everything.

7. The artist’s call is to directly experience beauty and pain and to transform this dual experience into a unified work.  This experience is the experience of God.

8. One can only be in relation to two things:  zero and infinity.  The first is the mystic, the second the philanderer.  Meister Eckhart and Don Juan.  Everyone else—the majority—deny the fact of the choice of these two relations and thus exist continually in no relation:  ones in relation to ones.  Here is the hope, the messianic hope, the hope of both physics and poetry:  the one who would be in equal relation to both zero and infinity continuously.  In short, God.

9. God is cabbage soup on a cold day.

10. The nameless wants to be named, for the nameless perceives that to be named is an increase in power; but the nameless moves at its peak power the closer to namelessness it remains; energy is most concentrated in the nameless.  The more something is named, the more it repeats itself in its addiction to remain named.  God is that which is not tempted to become named.

11. God is what is created from the sight of the gap between our attitude toward the universe and the universe’s lack of an attitude toward us.

12. God is that which muddles yes and no.  As that which is perpetually creation and apocalypse--never that thing in-between:  time--God scatters and melds the categories, without intent.  Humanity is the intent.

13. God is that which overcomes passion by means of passion, offering justifications for this overcoming.  We call these justifications myth.  We are now myth’s partially conscious co-creators; hence, our present potency and malaise.

14. In music and sound, there are pitches below and above human capability of hearing; so in painting and color, there are portions of the spectrum invisible to the human eye.  God is that which, in literature and language, falls outside of human thought.

Tao Te Ching IX

Rather than fill it to the brim by keeping it upright

better to have stopped in time.

Hammer it to a point

and the sharpness cannot be preserved forever.

There may be gold and jade to fill a hall

but there is none who can keep them.

To be overbearing when one has wealth and position

will bring calamity upon oneself.

To retire when the task is accomplished

is the way of heaven.

Because nothing lasts, should one attempt nothing?  Because power is given to abuse and ponderousness, should one avoid it?  When greatness and beauty have frequently emerged from stretching capability and resistance to and past known limits but have as or more frequently destroyed and torn, should one walk some tepid middle way?  Because the Tao is natural and human nature is excessive, is this not a contradiction?  Does not that sage of the imagination correlate wisdom and excess?  Did not an older suffering sage destroy the correlation between morality and justice? 

These are the questions of one who doesn’t walk the Tao, who forgets the sage is ruthless and the body is neither to be succumbed to nor negated (though sometimes it is to be succumbed to or negated) but accepted.  Who neglects the Tao’s contradictions, both internal and external, and systematizes, simplifies, verbalizes what cannot be systematized, simplified, verbalized.  Who translates transience into apathy, the perversions of wealth into poverty, and the proclivities of power into cheap victimization and hermitic retreat from the world’s bloody scrimmage.

Why is there poverty and wealth, male and female, wisdom and foolishness, moderation and excess, full and empty, blunt and sharp, calamity and calm?  The Tao includes all and denies none.  So the sage includes all, denies none.  Whereas the one who is moderate requires excess external to him, even as the wealthy require the poor, and calm calamity, the sage, by including all within herself, is able to stop when it is time to stop.  She mirrors the totality of the world within herself.

Does she attempt to create more sages?  Does she evangelize?  Does she strive to expand enlightenment and share heaven’s wisdom with those of earth?  Why should she? 

The Tao Te Ching is not a guidebook for CEOs, bums, bakers, programmers, strippers, or fools, but for sages.

To retire when the task is accomplished might be the way of heaven:  however, we are on earth and on earth the task is never accomplished.  The sage, however, walks the way of heaven.  Not because she is superior, but because she is a sage and this is what sages do.

Tao Te Ching VIII

Highest good is like water.  Because water excels at benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way.

In a home it is the site that matters.

In quality of mind it is depth that matters.

In an ally it is benevolence that matters.

In speech it is good faith that matters.

In government it is order that matters.

In affairs it is ability that matters.

In action it is timeliness that matters.

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

Water is not a specialist.  Construction, scholarship, alliances, oratory, politics, business, and war—dentistry, golf, web design, advertising, prostitution, poetry, trafficking, and bishopry—are.  In each specialty, there are specific attributes and forms of knowledge that are required to excel in that trade; there are, as much in the so-called anti-social trades as in the so-called proper ones, social protocols that comprise entering and remaining in that trade.  It is true—water has attributes and so in that sense can be considered a specialist, in the way that everything named is in some sense a specialist, so fulfilling its name.  But water, unlike the standard specialists, has no objective, no ambition, no resentment; it is full of life, creates primarily but does destroy, and is acquainted with worms and mud.

The one who is close to the way is also acquainted with worms and mud.  So, like worms, she is not unacquainted with the arts of enriching, aerating, decomposing, circulating, and transforming the putrid decay most avoid into the blabby light most desire.  So, like mud, she is not unacquainted with providing habitats, sustenance, and hiding places.

She is close to the water and not unacquainted with its methods.  She spurts and froths, calms and eddies, quenches and nurtures, and on occasion destroys—often for good reason, sometimes for none.

Water’s goodness is unlike the common good—the good that trades in perks and prestige, comforts of all kinds, and evil.  For the common good has evil as one of its trading interests, but the highest good—though including its lower forms—does not keep evil at a distance, across its borders, but knows it well, even settling on its muddy wormy bed, close to the way, hidden from fault.  The highest good does not need to trade, as elements and creatures naturally embed themselves in it and trade emerges from deficiency.

Water goes anywhere and is found everywhere.  So the sage.  She does not distinguish between hotspots and cold, between renowned banks and anonymous ones, between wide and narrow, shallow and deep, torrential and still, turbid and clear, populated and empty, nutritious and unpalatable, complicated and sparse.  All of life is fascinating and good—and who is she to say that one aspect is better than another, that she is destined to only exist in one milieu?  Is she so small?  If she is, she is not a sage, but a specialist and she has a name and she contends to maintain it.

Tao Te Ching VII

Heaven and earth are enduring.  The reason why they can be enduring is that they do not give themselves life.  Hence, they are able to be long-lived.

Therefore the sage puts her person last and it comes first,

treats it as extraneous to herself and it is preserved.

Is it not because she is without thought of self that she is able to accomplish her private ends?

The cosmos, while not eternal, in comparison to us is eternal.  Certainly the cosmos is indifferent and unconscious.  How then can that which is passionate, conscious, and very transient emulate that which is cold and long-lasting?  Why should it?

The sage does not become heaven and earth, even as she does not become the Tao.  Nothing becomes the Tao; the Tao becomes.  The sage loses herself in heaven and earth to become herself.  This loss is no Christian kenosis, though it is not entirely antithetical.  It is no subjection of the individual will to some larger will; there is no larger will, there are simply many wills.  The sage still has her private ends; she still comes first; she is preserved.  How can this be if she is hidden in the infinite folds of the universe?  It is because she is hidden in the infinite folds of the universe.

The sage does not lack a will; she simply directs her will to the becoming of the Tao, which is to say the becoming of all creatures.  As this is her becoming, why should she not accomplish her ends?

The universe is the only thing that truly and endlessly affirms; it affirms by not speaking and that which speaks—no matter how large, how historic, how numinous, how affective—is always only an aspect of the Tao.  The universe affirms, but it is no cuddly affirmation; it is an affirming that provides brief space for your existence and that is all.

Western dualism posits egoism against selflessness, good against evil, male against female, transience against permanence.  But the Tao, while nodding toward the existence of these categories and affirming them, at least in speech, is not inclined toward separating them.  If you love your daughter and she dies, her death is a negative act.  But if you also love the Tao—or perhaps more aptly are inclined toward it—you know that her loss is the gain of something else.  That the earth—flowers, beetles, squash—benefits from her decay and so, in turn, all creatures on the earth benefit.  Death always includes love and gain.  And who is the sage to say she is the only one that matters, the one that matters more?  It is not that she does not mourn her daughter, but that she does not equate her own place and feelings with the universe.  Everything is in its rightful place.  She mourns but like Chuang Tzu she may very well be singing, drumming, and dancing within days.  Society might be shocked—propriety is broken—but society is not the sage’s master.  Society continually strives to give itself life, maintain and increase it.  Whereas the sage turns her will toward that which looks at life and death, smiles, shrugs, and walks along.

The Sadoo, Walking

the sadoo walks. it walks and walks, walking through walls of talk (what a magician!), wearing out its socks (where will it get new ones?), listening to its cock (what a blabby flabby thing!), death's clock tick-tock knock (how calm! how turbulent!). why does it walk, this doo-doo dao face? just to listen and wear out and wonder? if it were just these things, wouldn't that be fine?  but the sadoo is not as evolved as it sometimes wants itself to be--being human and mortal and not much more--so it also walks for other things.  it walks to dissipate its desolation, to laugh at its haplessness, to place its solitude on the wings of the sun and watch it burn. walking transplants the false roots in the sadoo's controlling mind, in its greedy heart, in its hungry ticky-cock, into the movement of its feet, the stillness of its eyes. what grows in such transplanted soil? walking, wearing out, listening, walking

Tao Te Ching VI

The spirit of the valley never dies.

This is called the mysterious female.

The gateway of the mysterious female

is called the root of heaven and earth.

Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there,

yet use will never drain it.

Who lays claim to the eternal, especially these days of transience and time?  Who proclaims the hidden, especially in an age of explicitness and fame?  As the female morphs into the male and the male into the female, as the cumulative noise of monuments and those who would be monuments crowds the air, who would defend anonymity and silence?  When only the visible, the sensuous, the testable are granted credence by the pomp and powers, the texts and tyrannies, who would whisper to the valleys of night that only the invisible never dies?

Who would confound, not clarify?  Who would lose, not find?  Who would seem dim and ungraspable, not bright and held?  Who would nonchalantly refuse the world’s towering laurels, preferring to rest in the obscure shade of some unnamed cave?  Who would walk through doors not to get somewhere but to go through them?

Is this a timeless woman who has no name?  A woman shrouded in the inarticulate arts of subtle negation?  Or is it no woman, but some epicene who refuses definition?

The questions hover on elusive portals, and are gone.

The Tao removes itself, and removes again.  Doubly removed, for it is not just valley but the spirit of the valley; not just female but the mysterious female.  Then again, not just the mysterious female, but the gateway of the mysterious female.  Not just one name, but two.  Secret, yes, but manifestation and secret; desire and root.

If you would know yourself, the world around you, the arching panoply of power, and the origin of all things, you would remain detached from the myriad specific forms of knowledge and desire.  You would not climb, you would fall.  When you found the valley has no bottom and sex no ground, would you not rest in the dim light of this newly discovered land?  Would you not sing?