Gaia Community: Gray Raven's Blog

The Philosopher: Find Your Way: Draft chapter 4

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:13:06 GMT

"The value of philosophy is… to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find…that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect." Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy, p. 157

What is a philosopher? A ‘true’ philosopher is not a seeker of wisdom, is not a thinker about wisdom, is not an expert in wisdom, is not a writer about the subject of wisdom, is not one who analyzes data – a true philosopher may be involved in all of these tasks but that is not her true essence. To understand what it means to truly be a philosopher we must consider the words origin.

The word itself is of Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), a compound of φίλος (phílos: friend, or lover) and σοφία (sophía: wisdom). The term has been considered to be one coined by the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras. Although Socrates did not coin the term he is who I associate with as embodying the meaning of the word – he is and was a lover of wisdom.

A philosopher is first and foremost a lover. A lover is someone who is passionate about her beloved, and in this case the beloved is wisdom. Wisdom is imagined as and is personified in human form as: Sophia. The word philosopher metaphorically ascribes the relationship of love between two human beings to that of the relationship of a person with wisdom.

A true philosopher is one who loves with both the mind and a body consumed with the passion and desire to be with, understand, share, know, touch, taste, join with and be consumed by her beloved. For Socrates, as Plato presents his thoughts, love, the Greek word he uses is Eros, is a continuum of emotions and responses. According to Socrates one could be passionately in love with someone and yet not desire to physically / sexually consummate that relationship, a love of a friend or comrade could be a non-physical / non sexual but passionate loving relationship. For Plato’s Socrates Eros is in its underlying essence the attraction of and the desire for Beauty. Through the pursuit of and the finding of Beauty one discovers also the True and the Good. The passionate and physical consummation of that Eros can give birth to the beautiful in the form of a child, and that passion can also give birth to a metaphoric child in the form of the artful expression and manifestation of beauty.

To know if you are in the presence of a true philosopher listen to her metaphors – do you hear therein the metaphors of love – sexual and the non-sexual language of love? Another way to know if you are in the presence of a true philosopher is to inquire into her sex and love life. Does she even have a lover? How does she treat him/her? A true lover, honors, cherishes, respects, cares for, shares with, longs for, desires, etc., their beloved. A true lover listens to their beloved and learns to see the world through their eyes, and very soul. A true lover is a unity of two people in the most intimate and most profound manner possible between human beings, although as Plato/Socrates noted, this Eros need not be physically consummated, but it will be physically expressed.

A thinker, whose metaphors are those of the mind alone, detached from and devoid of references to the body can not be a lover. One can not truly love another without a body. A lover is one who joyfully and fully embraces their body and the feelings and emotions it stirs. Lovers connect through their bodies with their beloved – that contact is a continuum from the chaste touch, holding, embrace and kiss, to the more ardent touching, holding embracing, kissing, suckle, caress, fondle, gaze upon, and ultimate joining with the other in that bliss of full intimate physical union.

One can be a lover and be celibate. For example, there are nuns and monks who have been labeled mystics – their love and passion posses them – but they do not and have not consummated that love and passion. Their words speak out with the metaphors of love and passion – they feel it to the depths of their soul – these are rare individuals who manage to be lovers without the physical consummation of that love.

But, there have been many who claimed to be, or are said to be philosophers – but these are passionless and disembodied beings, men and women cut off from their bodies, their feelings and emotions - those who are mere pretenders. They are thus not truly capable of being passionate lovers and thus are not truly philosophers. Be wary of the words and teachings of passionless thinkers.

Tags: Philosophy, world view, Taoism, Wisdom, Lover, Life

The Way of the Gnostics: Find Your Way: Draft chapter 3

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:09:13 GMT

Hans Jonas wrote: ‘the common secular culture was increasingly affected by a mental polarization in religious terms, leading finally to a breaking up of the former unity into exclusive camps.’ Do his words strike a chord? Do they seem to be describing the times that we are currently living in?

Actually he was writing not about our time but about conditions in Western Civilization that lasted throughout that period of time that saw the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It all started with the conquest of Alexander the Great, when the culture of Greece was exported to the entire Western world. One culture became the dominant worldview; Greek cultural influences were all-pervasive. This was a time of large urbanization and pouring into those urban settings were the displaced millions, due to war and conquest. So many people were uprooted from their place of birth, physically and spiritually. The old ways were failing or so it seemed, since old nations and old religions failed to protect. People felt a need for a new sense of meaning to fill the void that once was filled by their prior lives that had been shattered.

What happened back then was called the Hellenization of the Western World. What has been happening in our times is a comparable set of circumstances. We are experiencing the ‘conquest’ of our planet by one culture and this is resulting in a Corporate-Market-Driven-Americanization of the world. The response to this cultural conquest in our times is similar to the response people had in their time to the conquest of Alexander the Great.

Jonas states in his book that the turmoil caused by the Hellenistic conquest gave rise to the Gnostic answer: the Gnostic religions that were prevalent across the Western Hellenized World.

The word Gnostic is from the Greek word for knowledge. In this context it is being used to describe a special kind of knowledge concerning a view of the world. This special knowledge is of a secretive revelation that brings salvation. The gnostic map described the world as one filled with chaos, confusion, uncertainty, despair, pain and unrelenting suffering in large and small ways; a world that did not feel right, a world in which those values and beliefs of childhood that once made sense and felt right, no longer did. A world without the feeling of certainty and the comfort of one’s childhood beliefs and values was a world without meaning. The Gnostic view of life described the world as being a place of Hell, a place of entrapment that one has been thrown into.

The Gnostics believed they saw ‘life as it is’ and called it a Hell that they were trapped in. They did not believe that one could conceive of a ‘life as it should be’ – there was no hope for the ‘reality’ of life as they believe it to be. They could only imagine one alternative to the life they envisioned. They wished for release from this life through abandonment and escape from this Earthly and material coil.

I wish to offer an alternative to these ideas of withdrawal, escape and abandonment.

Tags: philosophy, Gnosticism, world view

Life as it is: Find your Way - draft - chapter 2

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 18:06:51 GMT

To see life as it is.

In the play Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, Wasserman recounts the life of Miguel De Cervantes who created and wrote Don Quixote. There is a moment when Cervantes, who is imprisoned and awaiting trial by the Spanish Inquisition, recounts his earlier life. He recounts that he has seen it all: pain, suffering, cruelty and hardship. He was a soldier and one who with his comrades had been captured by the soldiers of Islam. He describes his comrades as being those who have seen ‘life as it is’ – who have witness first hand the harshness, chaos, brutality, cruelty, pain and suffering of the world as real as it gets. He says of them when they were dying that they seemed to be asking: Why?

‘I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams – this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is, and not as it should be.’

Life can be a living Hell; a place of despair, confusion, anxiety, fear, and turmoil. It is most certainly this way for those caught in the midst of war - be they soldiers or civilians. But even so called ‘ordinary’ circumstances and places can seem hellish. On the streets of your neighborhood, in your classrooms, almost anywhere, it is quite possible, and it happens all too frequently, that someone comes along with a gun and starts shooting – at that moment you have encountered a harbinger of hell. People die in those moments ‘senselessly’ – before their expected time.

Or consider the daily and ordinary death administered in small doses of alcohol or drugs – taken to dull the pain of daily life without meaning. How many of us indulge in television, movies, sports, video games, music, dance, chat rooms, the list is endless, for those things we take up, if we are being honest with ourselves, not merely for fun and pleasure but to dull the pain of truly facing the reality of the meaningless monotony of our life.

So many of us are lost but we won’t or can’t admit it. For to admit it, to see life as it is, would mean to awaken to the truth: I am in Hell.

Viktor Frankl lived through Hell and survived to write about it. He was one of the many who were taken into the concentration camps, the Hell on Earth, the empire of Hell created by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning chronicles his life at Auschwitz and other camps. He has seen life as it is at its worst. He and the other prisoners of those camps have lived in Hell.

Living in that Hell was a daily struggle to survive, survive the arbitrary brutality, the starvation, the cold, the utter despair and senselessness.

Frankl wrote: ‘Does not man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?...The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability, suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stresses.’

‘Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it became clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally…any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

‘We who have lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

Frankl was a psychiatrist before he entered the camps and when he was liberated from that Hell he returned to that profession. His writings chronicle his understanding of human suffering and survival, not merely the physical survival but as he notes the more important psychological and spiritual survival of individuals. Frankl concludes that those who found their way in and out of that Hellish life were those who had within them a reason to live. Those individuals searched within for meaning and they found it. The key to their survival was grasping onto a belief that their life even in Hell had meaning and purpose – hence the name of Frankl’s book: Man’s search for meaning. Finding a way is a search for finding and seeing life not as it is but as it should be.

Our lives may not be the extreme Hellish existence that Frankl faced, though it can be one of pain and suffering. Or as I said before it can be also simply be one that seems to suck away our vitality through monotony in a job which you can not associate value or purpose. Such a life bleeds us slowly. Like the torture of dripping water, drip, drip, drip, it strikes us on the head, each single drop not enough to harm us at all, but the relentless and continues dripping can wear the body, the mind and the spirit down into distraction and despair.

Daily we can read and hear through the news media about poverty here and abroad, about war, murder, robbery, rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, sexism, racism, religious intolerance, sectarian violence, the predications of how humanities technology is changing our planets physical environment for the worst – global warming, climate change, oil spills, poisons and toxins in our water and air.

This is life as it is. Is it any wonder that so many of us choose to drown ourselves, to turn to so many things, so many sources of distractions, to flee from facing this glimpse of life as it is?

Is it not madness to see our life as it is and not as it should be?

Perhaps your just overwhelmed by the claims of ‘experts’: politicians, scientists, theologians, or neighbors, friends, family or ones own spouse/lover/partner. They all seem to be saying things that make sense but you don’t know what path to choose, what or how to decide. Or you try to do what you think is ‘right’ but can’t seem to actually get there and you don’t know why. You try to listen, understand and explain yourself but they and you don’t seem to hear each other – at least judging by the outcomes.

I generally will not offer much in the way of guidance in to what to specifically think and believe but this book will be a guide offering you new ways to think and to choose. I will help you to ‘Know Thyself’ and thus to gain insight into knowing others. Offer you ways to perceive the maps you have been given and thus using so far in life’s journeys. Knowing that you have been given a map and you have been following its marked out routes of provided by Nature, Nurture and Culture – will make explicit what has probably been implicit and hidden from you conscious awareness – you have been living in a Matrix all along. This book offers guidance to avoid the traps and pitfalls – how to spot and avoid those bogs, those patches of quagmire, quicksand, thickets of weeds and entanglements.

I hope to help you way your way in your wanderings.

So do not despair of forever feeling lost and unsure of where you are headed in life no longer. There are those who have found their way. They only outwardly seem to wander through the meaninglessness of life that we see around us but they are not lost. You too may become one of them. You too can find your way.

Tags: philosophy, Taoism, Life, Living, searching, Truth, Journy, Map, Territory, meaning of life

Find your Way - draft - chapter 1

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:46:36 GMT

Find Your Way

By
Gary M. Jaron
June 10, 2007
------------------------------------------
‘Not all those who wander are lost’
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 230, Unwin Paperback, 1982 edition.

‘Know Thyself.’
Inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece.

[A note on the use of the third person pronoun in this book: I will use the words ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to a generic human being. Those who have trouble with this will have to adjust their thinking.]
-------------------------------------------
My Journey

At age eight, or nine, I had an experience similar to a mystic vision. It came to me in a sudden insight and I was illuminated. I felt at that moment that time ceased to move. That I was at the center of everything and all the veils had dropped. I felt connected to everything. I felt at peace. I felt complete. I could see into the heart of human reality. I felt the essences of Truth and it was a gift from the Divine.

It all started with a recognition that I desired more than anything to understand the nature of things – how and why things were the way there were. But to truly and completely understand the workings of the world was a monumental task. I realized that I could never read enough and learn enough to fully understand the nature of reality.

Then it came to me, what I needed to do. To be able to describe how things in the physical universe worked was beyond the ability of any one single mind to encompass in all its detail and richness. No single mind can do it – the Territory is so vast that it requires a multitude. But there was a task that was within the grasp of a singular mind. The knowledge and wisdom I sought was to understand people: the hows and whys of their thinking. This was a singular goal and a singular task that one person could accomplish. And there was a singular key to this task. I did not need to understand the workings of the universe. My life’s journey was about understanding how it was that people came to believe the things that they believe. By understanding how people were shaped I would understand human reality. This task I could undertake. I knew in this visionary eternal moment that the key to humanly conceived reality was simple and elegant.

I have spent my life following this grail. This book is the culmination of that quest. In this book for the most part you will not find proof. In this book you will find inspiration and maps to use on your own journey, exploration and quest. If you wish to find proof then go to the pages of my bibliography and begin your own journey through the maps that have guided me.

My vision will not provide you with answers. My vision will provide you with a set of tools for you to explore the Territory of life. I realized that before you go off and explore the unknown you need to orient yourself, you need to know where you are starting from. If you venture off without knowing where you are to begin with you will get lost. If you venture off without a compass you will get lost.

If you venture off without a set of maps you will get lost. Conscious awareness of your point of origin, compass and maps: these are the things I can give you. Where you end up I can not say, but those will help you from getting lost.

Tags: philosophy, Taoism, Life, Living, searching, Truth, Journy, Map, Territory, meaning of life

What can we know: a brief examination of Immanuel Kant’s maps.

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:57:14 GMT

Jan 30 2007
Gary Jaron

Let me begin with the premise that Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason is basically right, the maps he in detailed described are correct. What does this mean?

First off Kant posited a ‘Copernican Revolution’ which is the following. Before Kant’s Critique philosophers, scientists and all the rest of us believed that we could know the external world of the things around us. Those things of the external universe were the center of our perspective and focus. Kant said ‘No, this is not correct.’ Kant’s revolutionary idea is that we are the center of our experienced universe. We know our own experience of the universe and the things in it. All we can know is the ‘Phenomenon’, the appearances, and that is it. We can never know anything, directly or indirectly of the ‘Things-In-Themselves’, the ‘Noumenon’, the stuff that makes up the universe. Period.

Next Kant goes on to explain that there are certain ideas that we know, and additionally that we can not and did not deduce them from experience. These ideas we have to have in order to have any sense of the universe and to in any way comprehend the incoming sense data that we are experiencing. These ideas he called ‘A-Priori’, these include Space, Time and Causality.

Now what? Where are these ‘A-Priori’ ideas, are they in some Platonic realm of ideas existing in the ‘ether’? Kant never says.

But I will.

First off I will acknowledge an important point overlooked by Kant. That point is the central key to unlocking knowledge. This point is that we have an intimate connection with a very specific ‘Thing-In-Itself’ which we call our human body. Our human body is made up of the same stuff as the rest of the Universe. We are a ‘Thing-In-Itself’ that is trying to understand ourselves and the rest of those ‘Things-In-Themselves’. The A-Priori ideas are inherent in the very structure of our human body. It is because we are so intimately aware of our bodies that we build the ideas of Space, Time and Causality out of the experience that we have of having a body. Kant acts like he is a disembodied mind. Hence his failure to be able to say where and why the A-Priori ideas are real. Once we acknowledge that we are an embodied mind then the A-Priori ideas become the metaphoric results of our experience of having a mind within a body.

To further understand the significance of this embodied perspective let me use a metaphor of maps and territory. The Territory is Alfred Korzybski’s label for Kant’s ‘Things-In-Themselves’. The Map is Korzybski’s label for our creative efforts to understand and explain our experience of and our exploration of those ‘Things-In-Themselves’. The Territory is Kant’s Noumenon. The Map is Kant’s Phenomenon. We, humans are map makers and map users.

Now, we can not have direct knowledge of the Territory but we can have indirect knowledge. This is where Kant got it wrong. It is because we have a body, we are a mind inside of a Thing-In-Itself’ that we can know the A-Priori ideas. We know that the Territory is mapable! We can make reliable maps! Hence we know indirectly that the Territory is ordered and has structure. Our knowledge of the A-Priori ideas is indirect knowledge of and stems out of this order and structure that all ‘Things-In-Themselves’ possess.

Korzybski also noted that the word is never the thing, but it can be a useful tool to map out and point towards those ‘Thing-In-Itself’ when we communicate with ourselves or others. Words and things, maps and territories, these are two sets of relations that Korzybski uses to explore and understand what Kant calls the Noumenon, to indirectly learn something about that pre-verbal and beyond verbal existence of the ‘Thing-In-Itself’.

Lao Tzu also said it well when he began The Tao Te Ching:

“The Tao [Map/Phenomenon] that can be spoken is not the True Tao [Territory/Noumenon/Thing-In-Itself].

The name [Word/Appearance/Phenomenon] that can be named is not the True Name [Noumenon/Thing-It-Self].”

Bibliography
1) Sebastian Gardner, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, 1999
2) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, 1999
3) Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, 1933, 1957.
4) Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Translators: Jonathan Star, Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English, Lok Sang Ho, Wing-Tsit Chan, R.L. Wing, and Red Pine.

Tags: philosophy, reality, religion, theology, Truth, opinion, beleifs, god, life, living in harmony

Infinite Divine and the finite human mind: Christian Mystics pt 1

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:17:34 GMT

Source: The Essential Writngs of Christian Mysticism edited by Bernard Mc Ginn, 2006.

From “The Life of Moses” by Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 – 395) Christian Mystic.

From Chapter II The Second theophany: the ascent of Mount Sinai (EX 20: 18-21)

[Note: The emphasis added to a passage was not denoted in the original text.]

However, the further the mind advances and the greater and more perfect its attention to, and knowledge of, the realm of reality becomes, the nearer, in fact, that it draws close to contemplation, so much the more is it aware of the unavailability of the divine nature to human knowledge.

The mind leaves behind all that appears, not only what the sense grasp, but also what the intelligence seems to behold and ever seeks to move further inward, until it penetrates by reason of the activity of the intelligence to what is unseen and incomprehensible and there sees God. For it is precisely in this that true knowledge of what is sought consists, and precisely in this seeing consists, that is not seeing, because we seek what lies beyond knowledge, shrouded by incomprehensibility in all directions, as it were by some cloud. Hence the mystical John, the same who penetrated into the shining cloud, says that ‘No one has ever seen God’ (John 1:18) By this denial he insists that the knowledge of the divine nature is unavailable not only to men, but also to all rational creatures.

It is only when Moses has increased in knowledge confesses that he beholds God in the cloud, that is, that he knows that the divine is by nature something above all knowledge and comprehension. For Scripture says, ‘Moses entered the darkness where God was’ (Ex 20:21). Who is God? ‘He who,’ as David says, ‘made the darkness his hiding place’ (Ps 18:12. for David also had been initiated into the secret mysteries in that very same shrine.

Once arrived there he is once again taught by reason what he had already learned through the cloud. The reason for this is, I think, that our conviction on this matter might be more firmly grounded once it had been assured by the divine voice. What the divine word above all inhibits is human assimilation of the divine to anything that we know. Every thought and every defining conception which aims to encompass and grasp the divine nature is only forming an idol of God, without declaring him as he truly is. Religious virtue may be distinguished in the following way. Part deals with the divine, part deals with moral behavior, for part of religion is purity of life. To begin with we must know how we are to think of God, that knowledge entails entertaining none of the ideas which are derived from human understanding. The second part of virtue is taught by learning by what practices the life of virtue is realized.’

Tags: divine, god, mystics, mysticism, limits of knowledge, Infinie, Truth

Infinite Divine and the finite human mind: Christian Mystics pt 2

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:16:03 GMT

Source: The Essential Writngs of Christian Mysticism edited by Bernard Mc Ginn, 2006.

From “The Life of Moses” by Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 – 395) Christian Mystic.

From The Third Theophany: Face to Face Vision (Ex 33:7-23)

For, he declares, ‘My face you shall not see, for no one shall see my face and live’ (Ex 33:20)

Scripture makes it plain that it is not the vision {of God} that is the cause of death. For how should the face of life be the cause of death to those who draw near to it? But since the Divine is naturally life giving and, further, that it is the special character of the divine nature to lie above all definitions, whoever supposes that God is one of the things he knows, is himself without life, having turned aside from The Really Real to what is supposed to be grasped by a concept. For The Really Real is the true life and is inaccessible to our understanding. If, then, the life giving lies beyond our knowledge, what we have grasped cannot be the life. And what is itself not life is powerless of itself to communicate it. Moses’ desire, therefore, is satisfied precisely in so far as his desire remains unsatisfied.

Moses is instructed through what has been said that the Divine is of itself infinite, circumscribed by no limit. For if the Divine could be thought of as in some way limited, it would be absolutely necessary to consider what comes after it along with it. Whatever has limit has a boundary…

Tags: divine, god, mystics, mysticism, limits of knowledge, Infinie, Truth

Journey into Tao Te Ching: Four:1

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:00:36 GMT

Four: 1

Jonathan Star, 2000
Tao is empty
yet it fills every vessel with endless supply
Tao is hidden
yet is shines in every corner of the universe

D C Lao, 1963
The Way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002
The Way (Dao) is like water that simmers slowly,
Perpetually emitting its energy without boiling over.
It is like a deep, deep pool in the mountains,
Unfathomable yet could well harbor the origin of all life forms.

Commentary
The first thing I notice is that Lok Sang Ho fleshes out the abstract metaphors of the Chinese Characters. He gives a descriptive image; he makes concrete the abstract metaphors. His water simmering metaphor is unique. Most translators use the image of bowl or a well.

The metaphors all point to the idea that the Dao is an abundant source that one can draw from without depleting it. When this image is combined with the second line you get a cosmological image of creation. Using modern cosmology, the Dao would be the primal source out of which the Big Bang burst forth and thus filled the universe with existence. The Dao would be the primal stuff of the universe – as Carl Sagan had said: we are all star stuff. Lao Zi could be imagined as saying: we are all Dao Stuff.

Bringing these lines into more abstraction – the Dao is the source of creativity and creation. The ancient Greeks imagined nine goddesses who were the Muses – those deities who assisted and helped artisans to create. The Greeks conceived of inspiration and creativity in embodiment in the concrete imagery of divine feminine beings, where as Lao Zi’s conception was an abstract embodiment of fecundity.

Jonathan Star’s translation of the Dao as ‘hidden’ seems to spin out of the metaphors hinted at in the meanings of the Chinese character which could be and has been translated as the deep, bottomless, profound, and vastness. And Jonathan Star is harkening back to the first chapter with the references of emptiness as being associated with the nature of the Dao.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into Tao Te Ching Three: 4

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 18:25:54 GMT

Three: 4

Jonathan Star, 2001
When action is pure and selfless
Everything settles into its own perfect place.

D C Lau, 1963
Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002,
Because the Sage does nothing but following
the law of nature
Nothing will deviate from their natural and orderly places.

Commentary
Jonathan Star’s adjectives of ‘pure and selfless’ have a semantic reaction differing from the others who have translated the text, his translation seems to me to moralize, something I’ve not read in the other translations of this and the previous verses.

The others who translate this verse translate the Chinese characters of Wu Wei in their familiar English form of ‘non-action’, ‘acting without doing’, ‘taking no action’, ‘not doing’, ‘not acting’, etc. Lao Zi has presented these characters and this idea before. Lok Sang Ho overlays this concept as being the ‘law of nature’ – the way the Dao manifests, is what I understand Lok Sang Ho to be saying. The Dao acts without disruption, force or aggression – the Dao is like the flowing of water.

Order is thus seen as the way of the Dao – the process of how the Dao manifests itself. The Sage teaches this way and those who learn it will live in harmony with that Order, in harmony with the Dao. This is the action without coercive force, the action that does not disrupts, the action that is simplicity. The way of the Dao is not the way of extremes. There is no best in the Dao. There are no finalities. There are no preferences, one thing over another. The Dao is a continuum that flows as an endless simple process.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into Tao Te Ching Three: 3

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:32:49 GMT

Three: 3

Jonathan Star
With the people so pure
Who could trick them?
What clever ideas could lead them astray?

D C Lau, 1963
and ensures that the clever never dare to act.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002,
In so doing the clever people will learn
that their contrivance will not work.

Commentary
These lines present the idea of human creation as contrasted with natural creation. And that those humans who have so created are the ‘Clever’ who are actively doing something to cloud the nature simplicity that exists for all to realize. ‘Cleverness’ is an artificial and human construct and not existing in nature, and thus is not truly a part of the Dao. The Dao is elegant simplicity, complexity without complications. We humans create something artificial which we proudly offer as worthy of consideration, this is our cleverness but the Dao is natural simplicity.

Lao Zi, as the translator’s presented his words, frames the picture that the Clever are tricking, meddling and interfering. This creation of cleverness is present as a form of deception.

But we can ask, are the Clever really deliberately trying to hide the simplicity of the Dao? To do so means that they are aware of this true nature and are trying to keep others from recognizing it? What if the Clever lack the conscious realization of the simplicity of the Dao? What if they can not see and experience consciously the Dao’s true nature? If this were so, then their action is not one of intended distortion, but the distortion of the Dao’s true nature is only the unforeseen results from their own misguided understanding.

What if all the Clever is deliberately doing is being egotistical and thrusting their own inventiveness onto others; acting as a child frantically wanting to get their parent’s attention and approval. If the Clever do not consciously realize the Dao’s simplicity then they can not attempt to hide it from others.

What I am here suggesting is not what Lao Zi’s words are suggesting, but we are capable of our own independent thought on this and other matters. We can be inspired to consider alternatives. Lao Zi is not presenting dogmatic truth of an all or nothing nature. We can ask and answer our own questions inspired by Lao Zi’s teachings.

What I am saying is that Lao Zi’s understanding of the Dao is filtered through his own preconceived perceptions and biases of humanity, society, and the natural world. Lao Zi sees and experiences the Dao through the tinted glasses that he has been given and he has shaped himself consciously and unconsciously during the experience of his life up to the time that he put these words to paper.

I am not saying that Lao Zi is ‘wrong’ and that I am ‘right’, that would be very un-Daoist. I am offering a yang to Lao Zi’s yin, to use that metaphor. To understand the Dao is to realize that we humans can only get a fragmented, static understanding of a thing that is a vast dynamic interactive continuum. The Dao that is spoken is never the complete Dao, as Lao Zi teaches us. The Dao we speak of is only a partial vision of the Dao.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into Tao Te Ching Three: 2

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:48:24 GMT

Three: 2

Jonathan Star, 2001
Thus the Sage rules
by stilling minds and opening hearts
by filling bellies and strengthening bones
He shows people how to be simple
and live without desires

D C Lao, 1963
Therefore in governing the people,
the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies,
weakens their wills but strengthens their bones.
He always keeps them innocent of knowledge and free from desire,

Lok Sang Ho, 2002
Thus the Sage’s governance
Satisfies the real needs of people,
While emptying their minds of desire;
Builds up the inner strengths (bones) of people
While weakening their vain ambitions

Commentary
Lao Zi uses the metaphor of bones – the skeleton, as Lok Sang Ho notes in his translation, for the inner source of strength. Lao Zi also uses the metaphor of the belly and later Daoist traditions expand upon this metaphor.

Lu Nung-Shih [1042 – 1102, a High court official] “The mind knows and chooses, while the stomach doesn’t know but simply contains.” [From the commentary collection compiled and translated by Red Pine, 1996]

As explained in ‘The Gold (or Yellow) Pavilion’, Huang-t’ing Ching, a Daoist treatise written by Wei Hua-ts’un/Wei Huacun), by a woman Daoist priest living in around 330 C E at the court in Nan Jing, which was then called Jin Ling “Gold Hill”; there are three centers of the body. These are the three cinnabar fields. The lower cinnabar field, hsia tan-t’ian/xia dantian, is the true center of the body. It is the seat of yin and thus intuition, wisdom and direct awareness of reality not filtered through the mind and the heart – the locations of the other two cinnabar fields. The location of the lower cinnabar field is found two or three inches below the navel and two or three inches inward.

The lower cinnabar field, the belly, is thus the seat of yin. The belly is the receptacle of the body; things of nature physically are put into the body through the mouth and come to reside in the belly. Thus the metaphor of “filling the belly” is to fill the mind/body with the wisdom of the Dao by receiving it into oneself – hence yin.

The heart is the middle cinnabar field, chung tan-t’ian/zhong dantian. Here resides yang, considered the source of will, desire, hatred and love. Here is the conceptions of the mind get translated into assertive action and reaction to the outer world.

The upper cinnabar field, shang tan-t’ian /shang dantian, is one aspect of what we in the West would describe as attributes of the mind, the location in the brain for this field is the pineal gland – and synchronistic note – in the West Descartes in his mind and body split, his separate duality system, choose the pineal gland for the point of connection between his physical body and the non-physical mind. This upper cinnabar field is where Qi/Ch’i resides. This is one’s mental energy, thought, discernment, imagination, judgment, and many other activities associated with the mind in the West, take place.

Michael Saso, offers a translation and commentary to this Daoist treatise of the Lady Sage Wei Huacun in his book “The Gold Pavilion: Taoist Ways to Peace, Healing, and Long Life”, 1995, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.

I offer this summary of the three cinnabar fields:

Upper cinnabar field = Qi/Intellect/processing into words/mind
Middle cinnabar field = Yang/Will/outer assertive actions and reactions/heart
Lower cinnabar field = Yin/Intuition/inner receptive actions and reactions/belly

We have a question to ponder Jonathan Star in line 8 refers both to minds and hearts, while D C Lao and Lok Sang Ho refer only to mind.

Actually the problem first arose in line 6 where the word first appeared and was translated as ‘mind’. The Chinese word is hsin/xin. Which is it, heart or mind? The Western/English translators used the term ‘mind’ while for Lao Zi the word xin would be the anatomical/metaphoric word ‘heart’. As we learn from Wei Huacun the heart is the Middle cinnabar field, the dwelling place of Yang, will and desire.

Therefore in this line Lao Zi is describing the ‘emptying’ and ‘stilling’ of the heart. What does this mean’? The answer is found in line 12 referring to being simple or innocent of knowledge and free from desire. It is in innocent knowledge, simplicity and lacking desire that the heart can be stilled or emptied.

The continuum seems to be innocence/simplicity at one end and at the other sophistication/complex recognition. Our level of desire increases according to Lao Zi with increase in our discernment of complex recognition and sophistication. We desire things when we choose and evaluate them as being best. When we keep it simple and fail to make final judgments such as what is best, then we dwell in simplicity and we will still our desires and our ‘vain ambitions’, as Lok Sang Ho translated.

The themes of chapter three recall those in chapter two.

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Journey into Tao Te Ching Three: 1

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:58:43 GMT

Three: 1

Jonathan Star
Putting a value on status
Will cause people to compete
Hoarding treasure
Will turn them into thieves
Showing off possessions
Will disturb their daily lives

D C Lao
Not to honor men of worth will keep the people from contention;
Not to value goods which are hard to come by will keep them from theft;
Not to display what is desirable will keep them from being unsettled of mind.

Lok Sang Ho
The wise ruler treats able men
The same as he would treat others.
In so doing he avoids strife.
He plays down precious goods.
In so doing he discourages thieves.
He makes an effort to stem the emergence of objects of desire.
In so doing he ensures that his citizen’s minds
Will not be thrown into disarray.

Commentary
Here Lao Tzu as the sage is instructing the wise ruler how to govern in accordance with the Tao. The key again is the recognition of duality as unity – one gives rise to the other. The key is to realize that duality manifests as ends of a continuum which flow outward one towards the other, the two exists as an inseparable union and unity.

The starting point is the mind’s recognition of a thing. Then it is the mind’s evaluation of that thing. Out of this act of evaluation stems the potential for divisiveness. Only when one end of the continuum is labeled as having more worth than the other does contention arise. Putting to much worth on one end of the continuum creates strife.

By focusing on the extreme ends one fails to recognize the flow of the journey between the two. Contentment and wisdom is found in the harmony of the flow in between the two end points.

Wisdom is found not solely in knowledge.

Better is not the same as Best. Better is a direction, a journey, a goal. Best is a fiction that leads to strife.

Beauty resides everywhere. Wisdom resides everywhere. Truth resides everywhere. Goodness resides everywhere.

It is only folly and foolishness to declare that “Only this is good.” Or “Only this is beautiful.” Or “Only this is true.” The folly is the statement: “Only this…”

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Journey into the Tao Te Ching, Two: 5

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 16:28:21 GMT

Two: 5

Jonathan Star
All things flourish around him
and he does not refuse any one of them
He gives but not to receive
He works but not for reward
He completes but not for results
He does nothing for himself in this passing world
so everything he does ever passes.

D C Lao
The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;
It gives them life yet claims no possession;
It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;
It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.
It is because it lays claim to no merit
That its merit never deserts it.

Lok Sang Ho
No ownership is claimed, though Nature begets all creation.
Humility is maintained even as achievement is made.
No credit is claimed, even as work is done.
Because no credit is claimed, so no credit is ever lost.

Commentary
Lao Tzu’s Sage exhibits wisdom and modesty – Humble, not seeking praise, not seeking glory – the Sage acts for the sake of acting, teaches and achieves with the sole purpose of benefiting others and thus merit never leaves the teachings of the Sage.

The Tao freely gives, brings forth everything and lay claims to nothing – a shining example of unconditional love and selfless giving.

Wang An-shih, 1021 – 1086, one of China’s most famous prime ministers, wrote: ‘Because the sage is selfless, he does not lose his self. Because he does not lose his self, he does not lose others.’ [From Red Pine’s collection of commentaries on the Tao Te Ching.]

Interesting translation by Witter Bynner, he translates the first line of this section as “Takes everything that happens as it comes.” To which I read as saying that the Sage accepts what happens, what happens just is, one deals with it and goes with the flow of it, reacting without overreacting.

Ursula K. LeGuin translates the final few verses as ‘to do the work and let it go; for just letting it go is what makes it stay.’ I take this as point toward the futility of possessiveness – by grasping a thing tightly you can crush it and destroy – thus you lose it in the end. You truly keep what you are willing to lose, force used to grasp and possess, creates the reaction of resistance in equal measure to your efforts – be it a person, place or thing.

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Journey into the Tao Te Ching, Two: 4

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 16:59:42 GMT

Two: 4

Jonathan Star
and teaches without talking.

D C Lao
and practices the teaching that uses no words.

Lok Sang Ho
He teaches the unspoken teaching.
No word is ever spoken, yet living things thrive.

Commentary
Lao Tzu returns to describe the Sage, who as Red Pine and Thomas Cleary translates, offers ‘effortless service/deeds’ and ‘unspoken guidance’ and ‘wordless lessons’.

I wonder if the teaching of Lao Tzu the Sage is more about the unspeakable? Clearly, it would seem to be both. The Tao is discovered in the silence of the non-actions of the Kosmos, the flowing of all things through their true nature to accomplish what they need to do to be. To study the silence of the Kosmos is to study the unspoken teachings of the Tao. To realize that one’s words clutter up and approximate the reality of the Tao is to recognize the unspeakable reality of the Tao’s nature.

We experience the world on the unspoken level in silence. As Alfred Korzybski wrote in his 1933 book Science and Sanity, p. 399: ‘The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we shall never reach this level.’’ The word is not the thing. The map is not the territory.

The Tao itself acts without action in silence – it is the teacher who does not speak.

We, through words divide up the Territory and can create an almost infinite amount of differing maps – as many as there are humans to make them. But our maps, our words, are not the Territory. The Territory which is our teacher is silent, is before words and ultimately beyond words and maps.

Yet we must as to be true to our Tao nature, ever make maps – for we are map makers.

To acknowledge that the maps, our words, are our own and not the source, is to possess wisdom and to teach wisdom – to be the Taoist Sage.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into the Tao Te Ching, Two: 3

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:58:54 GMT

Two: 3

Jonathan Star
The Sage acts without action.

D C Lao
Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action

Lok Sang Ho
Thus the Sage would not act as if he could act on his will.

Commentary
This section of the chapter begins Lao Tzu’s vision of a Tao filled human, one who knows the way and lives the way – the Sage.

Let’s start with some basics – like what is Lao Tzu saying. What does it mean to say that a Sage acts without acting? What is no action – the Chinese characters are Wu Wei.

Wu translates as non/empty/without
Wei translates as action/doing/activity/effort

When you translate the two together you get ‘non action’ or ‘empty effort’ or ‘without action’ or ‘without effort’, etc. I find the way to understand this is to recall the dualistic harmonic concepts of yin and yang, which can be translated as receptive and assertive – Yin is allowing things to enter within, while yang is pushing things outward – the primal images of the female and male sexual organs being used as the key to the metaphoric meaning of yin and yang.

The concept of action/doing/effort is to make or create an outward manifestation and the extreme of action/doing/effort is the assertive, aggressive, forceful transformation of the thing subject to the act, the deed and the effort. Violence and coercion are the extreme form of yang action and yang effort.

What would yin action/doing/effort be like? This is the question that Lao Tzu answers with the term Wu Wei. Wu Wei is yin action/doing/effort. Red Pine translates Wu Wei as “effortless deeds” The effortless deed is the receptive, taking in, allowing in, inward transformation not of something outside the self but turning one’s activities inward to alter the self/the doer/the actor. It is containing the yang effect to a minimum.

Sanderson Beck translates Wu Wei as ‘without interfering”. To act without acting is to act non-aggressively, non-violently, non-assertively, non-destructively, to act with the intent of minimum impact. To act to change not the outer aspects of a thing acted upon but rather to act to change the inner nature of that thing.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into the Tao Te Ching, Two: 2

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:57:52 GMT

Two: 2

Jonathan Star
Life and death are born together.
Difficult and easy
Long and short
High and low –
All these exist together
Sound and silence blend as one
Before and after arrive as one

D C Lao
Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
The difficult and the easy complement each other;
The long and short off-set each other;
The high and the low incline towards each other;
Note and sound harmonize each other;
Before and after follow each other.

Lok Sang Ho
Existence and Emptiness are concepts
that make sense by comparison.
Similarly, long lends meaning to short, and high to low.
Harmony is produced when sounds combine in unison.
Because the fore goes, so the back follows.

Commentary
Each pair of the duality is recognized not as conflictual opposites but blended unities. They flow one into the other and it is only when the dynamic flow is momentarily stopped, in that static instance, then one is recognized as being different than the other, but once the moment is no longer held – what was seemingly static returns to the dynamic flow and the two blend as one – a harmonious unity that describe the totality of possibilities.

The Seeds of wonder every blossom and grow – we harvest them into words.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

A Journey into the Tao Te Ching, Two:1

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 15:57:55 GMT

Two: 1

Jonathan Star
Everyone recognizes beauty
only because of ugliness.
Everyone recognizes virtue
only because of sin

D C Lao
The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly;
The whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

Lok Sang Ho
People under heaven see beauty in what they call “beauty”,
that way they know of the “ugly”.
Similarly, people see good in what they call “good”,
that way they know of the “bad”.

Commentary
Here again Lao Tzu plays with duality. This time focusing on the common idea that pairs of concepts must be opposites.

Beauty / Ugly
Good / Bad

But as we saw before when Lao Tzu presents a pair he is hinting at a complementary unity of the two things.

Here we are being told that one gives rise to the other. One is recognized to exist because we can perceive the other.

Author Ursula K. LeGuin used this notion of pairs giving birth one to the other in her Science Fiction novel ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’. She wrote these verses which in the context were suppose to be part of this culture’s sacred text:

‘Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death,
lying together like lovers in kemmer [sexual union which brings about conception],
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.’
[From chapter 16 of LeGuin’s novel: The Left Hand of Darkness]

Blackness is the absence of all light and White is the presence of all light – they are opposite ends of a continuum. Between them both – when there is some presence of light and darkness mixed together it is then that we can perceive all the infinite shades of gray and the wondrous presence of the myriad abundance of colors. The two are one, hands joined, lovers in rapture giving birth, the first step onward and the journey’s end.

LeGuin’s verse is the muse flowing onto the page through the inspiration of Lao Tzu.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into the Tao Te Ching, One:5

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 15:18:31 GMT

One:5

Jonathan Star
How deep and mysterious is this unity.
How profound, how great!
It is the truth beyond truth,
The hidden within hidden.
It is the path to all wonder,
The gate to the essence of everything!

D. C. Lau
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery –
The gateway of the manifold secrets.

Lok Sang Ho
A mystery within a mystery,
Such is the gateway to all versatility.

Commentary
A summation of what came before – the unfolding of the Tao.
This opening chapter lays the foundation for the metaphysical theories of Lao Tzu. This chapter is the gateway to all the insights that follow.

These words are the path to all wonder and the gate to the true essence that lies beating in the heart of all things – The Tao.

The Tao is the mystery, the container of secrets, it is the Infinite Divine beyond human comprehension as the mystics of the world first state it, just before they, being human, have to go forth and try to name it – to take the infinite and try and cast it into a finite container of words.

The Tao offers us unity.

Witter Bynner offers this insight: if we need to name what we have encounter, let us call it ‘wonder’ – from wonder into wonder all things unfold before us and within us.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god, Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Journey into the Tao Te Ching, One:4

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:47:57 GMT

One: 4

Jonathan Star
Tao and this world seem different but in truth they are one and the same
The only difference is in what we call them

D C Lau
These two are the same but diverge in name as they issue forth

Lok Sang Ho
These two, Emptiness and Existence, came from the same source.
Though they bear different names, they serve the same mystical cause.

Commentary

These opening verses are the first presentation of the Taoist concept of Unity and oneness.

Lao Tzu is presenting that two things although recognized as being different are inherently a underlining unity while still being acknowledged that they are distinct and opposite modalities. This is a presentation of duality that is not antagonistic. This is a presentation of a duality which is necessary unity, a non-antagonistic duality.

Niels Bohr set forth his formulation of this principle based on his study of Eastern Religions in 1928, he called it the Principle of Complementarity. The principle was offered to resolve the nature of photons and other components of the atom, the description of a photon as having wave properties and as having particle properties was seen as no longer being contradictory – a antagonistic duality, but rather as two ideas that were necessary for a complete understanding of the phenomenon. The duality complements each other and together explains more fully how the thing actually occurs under all conditions.

This concept of complementarity, a non-antagonistic duality is presented in Star’s translation of stanza 2 “The Tao is both Named and Nameless” and in this stanza “in truth they are one and the same.”

Here in this chapter is the source for the Yin and Yang circular symbol associated with Taoism – the black and the white half circles are shown as distinct and yet blending, and each have a part of the other within them – this is the visual symbol of Lao Tzu’s idea of unity composed of a duality.

Here in this verse the duality is acknowledged by the words we choose and not in their source and inherent nature. As Red Pine translation points out the names are the thing that is different but in actuality they are the same. Bynner in his translation refers to this unified duality as “the core and the surface”. As D C Lao phrases it they diverge when we humans name them. As Lin Yutang translates these two are the “secret” and “manifestations” which acquire differing names when they we are able to apprehend them through our senses – when they become manifest. These translators are pointing out that we humans are the true source of the distinction of differences by our needs and requirements of naming things.

Lao Tzu is saying that just because we can create distinct names does not mean that the true nature of thing is distinct, opposite, conflicted, or contradictory. Naming is a process. Naming is a tool. Once again Lao Tzu is implying the ideas that Korzybski presented that we must not confuse our map with the territory, we must not confuse our words with the thing.

Tags: god, life, philosophy, reality, reality, religion, taoism, metaphysics, Tao, cosmos, divine

Journey into Tao Te Ching One:3

http://grayraven.gaia.com — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:53:48 GMT

One: 3
Jonathan Star:
A mind filled with thought, merged within itself, beholds the essence of the Tao.
A mind filled with thought, identified with its own perceptions, beholds the mere forms of this world.

D C Lao
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets,
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.

Lok Sang Ho
Appreciate Emptiness, that we may see the nature of the Dao’s versatility;
Appreciate Existence, that we may see the extent of the Dao’s possibilities.

Commentary:
Here we are comparing two aspects of the Tao and thus of the Territory of Experience. On the one hand there is the true nature, the true essence, the secrets of the Tao and the Territory. On the other hand there is the perceived forms, the observed manifestations, and the sensory processed possibilities of the Maps that we make from our encounter with the Tao.

We can experience the true essence of the Tao in the initial nonverbal encounter.

We come to understanding of what that was when we process our nonverbal experience and put it into fixed and finite words.

Lao Tzu is reminding us that we can observe the manifestations through our words, but this is not the Tao’s secret Essence. The True Nature of the Tao is its dynamic versatility that can only be realized in silence.

In the nonverbal encounter which takes place before our desires, our own world views, our own perceptions, and our collections of belief – there is the experience of the Tao through our own words. Once we try and process that experience our desires, our hopes, our beliefs come into play and we get the manifestations of the Tao – the words that we create.

Here we perhaps have instructions on what to focus our awareness on and the results of our focus?

When we focus inward – the mind awareness pointed back onto awareness itself then we reach the place of the essence of the Tao. When we focus on our own process of perception – the perception of our inner bodily experience and on the world outside our mind/body then we reach the place of the forms of the world – that is how the Tao takes form and shape.

Tags: Tao, taoism, reality, cosmos, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, life, god