To Tao From Zen

I love the little book of wisdom that is the Tao Te Ching, but sometimes it strikes me as extremely useless. All this stuff about how the sage does this, the sage does that... well, that's fine and good for the sage, but what about the rest of us? If we try to emulate what the book says denotes a master, all we end up with is hypocrisy. We're aping the saints, not a saint ourselves. You need only look as far as the religious right to see what I'm talking about. They're rigid legalists, not Jesus-like Christ figures. They're faking it. A real sage doesn't read in a book how to act, it comes from his or her inner nature, from their oneness with Tao. If a sage lives as an ascetic, it isn't out of self-denial from guilt, or to set an example, or to not pollute the world with reckless consumption; it's because he realized he didn't need all that stuff to begin with. If he is generous and full of kindness to all, it isn't because he should, but because he deep down must.

The Tao Te Ching often just seems not like a how-to book, but more of a snapshot of the sage. Full of lofty sayings and statements that tantalize but don't quite deliver. Interesting, in a way, but not always entirely helpful. What we all want is to know how to actually embody such sagacity. How do I find the Tao? I know it's a ridiculous question to even ask, knowing intellectually that it is all around us (so sayeth the texts and wise ones), it is all that is, as well as all that isn't, we couldn't get away from it if we wanted to.

How do you do without doing? It's a bootstrap problem: wei wu wei, doing non-doing, is impossible to achieve. Attempt it, and you are acting with expectation, forcing things, and forcing is wei, not wu wei. Like in Buddhism, when you accept that desire causes all suffering (dukkha), and go on to desire to end desiring. This is the hypocrisy, and actually dangerous, because you may be deluding yourself, and get the spiritual pride going. You're doing all this religion/philosophy stuff to achieve enlightenment, which is something you (think you) don't have, but want to attain in the future, and thus you're always a seeker, never a finder. You are getting in your own way.

So how does one get out of one's own way so as to flow with the Tao? There is nothing simpler, nor harder; it's always the most obvious thing that gets missed. But as always, I circle around to acceptance in the broadest sense. The only way to act without expectation is to not be in the future, by being in the present. You get there through surrender, surrender to your experience, whatever it currently is, without comment or opinion. In the present, you can't act with expectation, because it's all there, and you're just grooving with it. This is the point of insight meditation

Or perhaps this bootstrap problem is the point, to throw you against your ego's incapability, and knock you sideways into the Void-- a sort of Taoist version of a Zen koan-- Taoism being the mother of Zen (who's father was Mahayana Buddhism). You read the TTC, see how impossible it is to do this, get wrapped up in the dilemma, until the whole thing dissolves in a sort of ego-death or satori, if only for a moment. Sometimes I think this is the main point of sacred writings, from the Law in Judaism, Jesus' teachings, the Tao Te Ching, the Buddhist sutras, and so forth. Not to show you the way, but to prove that the way is impossible for the "i" to attain, thus pushing you into the realization of "I".

This post is also posted on The Rambling Taoists as a guest post.

Night and Darkness

As a poet, I've long been an advocate for night, darkness, silence, etc. Darkness in our culture is associated with evil; an unfortunate development, and untrue. Night represents ignorance, confusion, corruption, the time of terrors, demons, death. But it is also a very spiritual time. You may lie awake in bed thinking about the things that matter most; there is time and space, few distractions, you are able to center yourself. It is the place of intuition, reflection, thought. Lovers meet, philosophers dream, and all things can rest.

Darkness, silence, emptiness, and stasis all seem negative. They ARE negative, in that, to use a phrase out of art, they are a sort of negative space to the positive space of light, sound, form, and movement. But clearly both are necessary.

Even where there is light, darkness remains. Light is a wave, and contains within it the "off" part of the pulse, the trough of the wave. Sound is the same way. I like to think of all existence as being a vibration. Matter is basically energy, in packets called quanta. Such is one theory at least. Another is, "we work with being, but non-being is what we use." (TTC 11)

Lao Tzu is always talking about the feminine (or yin) as the base, saying "know the male, but keep to the female" (TTC 28). And yin was, I read, originally associated with the north side of a hill (the darker, shaded side). It is the dark side of the Tai Chi symbol. (Yang of course being the male, and the south, sunny side of the hill.)

The fact that light contains darkness in its very form, as a necessary condition of existence reminds me of something that Jesus said in Matthew 6, as he spoke about the lilies of the field. After talking about having to serve either God or money, he goes on to say, do not worry about what you will eat, what you will wear. If you serve God above all, the rest will follow naturally.

In Taoist terms, return to the Tao, and the worldly things take care of themselves. Nothing is done, but nothing is left undone. Be at peace with the emptiness, the darkness. Because money, material things, even spiritual things, like aping the morality of a saint or sage, are all part of the busy-ness of life. They come and go, on and off. But the emptiness, the space, the Tao, exist everywhere, foundationally. The infinite surrounds and infuses the finite; darkness dwells within the light, poverty within the wealth.

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.
(TTC 12)

So you see I'm not just trying to be iconoclastic in talking about darkness. Or maybe I'm being iconoclastic, but in a much different and bigger way. In the stillness is born the true moral stance. As I said, poverty within the wealth: one in that mode will not use wealth as a weapon, but as a blessing. If you go for the money, the light, first, and only afterwards go for God and darkness, you're too late. Light sees only light, never darkness, which sees both.

If you start from ego, everything you do is going to have failure in it. If you start from God, from Tao, from darkness and stillness, what you do and what you are will be pure. Which is why I loved the line in Kazantzakis' book The Last Temptation of Christ:

When what is clean touches what is unclean, the unclean becomes clean!

Acceptance

View from my sister's balcony

We are our experience, not the things in our experience. As I gaze upon the sunset, it occurs to me that as the sun dips low and bathes the clouds in a golden light from below, that I am that golden light, I am that cloudscape. It exists in my mind, making me integral to the scene. The scene does not exist anywhere for me but within my mind. I have never known anything outside of my own consciousness-- what would that even mean? The sunset is simply what the inside of my head looks like when I look at a sunset "out there." But no one has ever seen "out there" because whatever they saw, it was "in here," in their mind.

I said that acceptance is important. There are two ways in which acceptance seems to be understood. The first, and most common, is about saying "well, I guess that's just the way it is, nothing you can do about it." It is a form of giving up, the road of despair. We rightly disparage this form; to accept that evil exists, or that a bad thing has happened, seems like quitting.

But that is not all that acceptance can be. The second acceptance is about understanding the truth that we are our experience. The entire world that we know exists within us. We talk about how society is out of harmony with the world, but when looked at from this acceptance, we see that this is false. I look at the sunset, and perhaps mourn all the telephone lines and buildings and the roar of airplanes and traffic that get in the way. But then if I accept, I suddenly see that it all exists as a giant whole. There is no harmony or disharmony, there is only IS. It's all there.

So, okay, now I've accepted (we'll suppose). Now I understand that all is one, including me. It is one experience. This is purely logical. Now I look at the sunset not only feeling part of the happening, but knowing that the telephone lines and traffic are integral too. For now, at least. Change happens when we, still accepting what is, change what is.

Perhaps the whole solution comes down to simple asthetics. We choose sunsets without telephone lines, and find ourselves on a pristine mountainside. Or, maybe in a cleaner, less chaotic city, as she work for change that way. There are many ways to have change, but it is acceptance that first opens the doors, that first illuminates the many paths.

I continually find myself coming back to Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching; it has so much for me. Perhaps one day I'll be able to move on to other chapters, but for now it seems to hold the main lessons for me. I keep reading it more deeply. It ends:

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Lately I've been focusing so much on looking for a job, thinking about money, getting my truck fixed (that's at least done), bills, friends, goals, ideas. I've been busy on the computer, reading, writing like a maniac (and loving it), but haven't sat back and watched sunsets enough, have hardly looked at the trees, have taken no time to simply breathe. I have been forgetting to pause. I keep feeling so low, being surrounded by this urban shit-scape, but that just means I've become too caught up in the "being," not remembering the "non-being;" that is, I've been wrapped up in the things in my experience, and fighting that reality, rather than being one with the experience itself, accepting it.

The roar of traffic as I try to enjoy the sunset seems a bother, but then I realize sound is only existing because of the silence it vibrates within. So I sit back and accept the traffic, hearing the quiet below it. The telephone poles and buildings block my view, but I can accept them, and for the moment let them help form the beautiful moment by framing it. Things like poverty and evil cannot be changed if we continually deny with even part of our minds that it is there. Accept the reality of it, that's step one, but it needn't end there.

We can work the universe like a master craftsman, who constantly checks in with the reality of his art. If he doesn't look at what is before him, he ruins the sculpture. So he looks at his carving, at one and present with its current reality, shaves a little more wood off just here, then checks in again. A dialogue with the world begins this way, and we move towards the beautiful, the good, as a wise man must if he is wise.

Delicate Arch at dawn

As I read and reflect on One Square Inch of Silence, I keep having this nagging thought, a counterpoint to the whole issue, and it has to do with all I'm saying now. If Gordon Hempton is working towards silence and quiet in the national parks, great! It's a better asthetic choice than listening to air traffic while we ponder the age and beauty of Delicate Arch or the stoic strength of an old growth forest. But let us not forget that as the long road toward his goal is walked, we can be enjoying the peace that is already out there all the while. We need not wait. The stars in the city are few, but it's still good to look at the ones that remain.

So. We work with what is, making it more beautiful (one hopes). But it is always important to be rooted in the non-being, which is where the totality of experience, and all of its peace, is realized.

(EDIT: I revisited this post, to readdress some issues. Find that post here)

Life of Subtraction

Having been living a semi-nomadic existence of late, I have had to be able to fit all my stuff into my truck, an extened-cab Ranger, not a very big space. This is a source of pride for me. I, unlike most Americans, am always looking through my stuff to figure out what I can get rid of next. Thoreau said, speaking of possessions:

It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them — dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. ... If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it.

My sister laughs at me, because while when she's standing in line to buy something, she often finds herself picking up one of the "impulse buy" products lining the checkout as well. Meanwhile, I'm standing there fretting about whether I need the thing I am about to buy, half the time leave the line to go put it back, then leave the store with my wallet intact.

Possessions are a burden. You have to take care of them, think about what to do with them, house them, labor for them. They clutter your dwelling. There are people who will break themselves with a too-big apartment or house, just because they have all this furniture and stuffthat they need to do something with. Myself, I feel a relief every time I lighten my load, drop one more thing on the side of the road of life.

I believe one's outer reality mirrors one's inner reality. Possessions can clutter the mind, too. I try to apply this minimalism, this life of subtraction, to my mind as well as my physical world. Simplifying my surroundings helps me to simplify my inner life, and that then helps me to see things I can further simplify in my outer world. It goes back and forth, ideally at least, though more often in fits and starts, with moments of accumulation, and others of dissipation. Sometimes I live amid clutter, my few things in a chaotic jumble all over the floor, and it is at those times that I cannot be bothered to organize it, that I sometimes stop and notice that I'm currently stressed and unhappy, my life in as much chaos as my room.

I try to pay attention to these things. Like in a previous post, where I talked about the body and its messages, one's surroundings are also always are talking to you, giving you clues about your inner states, and often showing the way forward. And sometimes just tidying up can help clear the mind, since the two are basically one anyways.

I'll end with what the Tao Te Ching says in chapter 48:

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.

Wu Wei

You know, I've noticed I breathe very shallowly usually. The last two days, I wake up and notice how very deeply (and slowly) I'm breathing. Yet every other time during the day, I hardly seem to breathe at all. Really shallow, I don't understand it. I used to wonder if I have asthma, but really, I think I just need to work on consciously breathing deeper. Maybe I wouldn't always feel so tired if I did. Also, I notice I tend to clench my jaw a lot. And, I find that when I'm hungry, I'm often touching my lips. It's funny how little attention we pay to our bodies, which are there all along telling us about ourselves. If we'd only pause and take notice.

I mean, think about how much effort is wasted on tension; vast volumes of energy spent in rigidity. Instead of looking at things, we stare. Instead of being attentive, we try to pay attention. In both case, the only difference is the muscle tension. As if you could muscle your eyes into seeing, or your mind into recieving sensations. We only have so much energy at our disposal, and to put so much into wasted effort must take its toll. In the end, not only does it get in the way of these actions, but it is also all the while sapping our energy reserves. We come home, spent.

I remember trying to focus in school, to make myself pay attention. I'd get all tense in my neck, furrow my brow, and generally end up not really hearing the lecture, I was concentrating on concentrating. I always did far better by just doodling all class, relaxed, and letting the words come in passively. That's what sensing really is, after all; passive. The eye sees best when it doesn't get in its own way.

It's all very Zen, all very yin. It always makes me think of one of my favorite chapters in the Tao Te Ching, that little book of Taoism that holds so much wisdom.

11

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Making that void within yourself; relaxing yourself and stepping back and letting things flow, this is the meaning of the Chinese term wu wei, or not-doing. Take the lesson from your own senses: the eye is not a darkness, but neither is it light. It is a void, it makes a space within itself and the light comes in on it's own accord, according to its nature. The ear accepts passively the sound waves, because it waits; to get all tense by trying to hear would block hearing. Thoughts flow of their own accord into the mind, which is like a great void; try to force the thoughts and you'll grow confused and knotted up.

The body is always there, seeming to dangle from the neck, hanging forgotten from the mind. But it's always present with its lessons, and all we have to do is be present with it. Life flows. The body is still one with nature, with life, no matter where our minds have drifted off to. If we can tune in to that, and understand what it's saying to us, we can untie those knots a little bit. Maybe we'll find a lot more energy in our lives.