The Tao Te Ching is at least 2500 years old, and is the basis for Chinese Taoism and is the conceptual language initially used in Chinese Buddhism. The text is steeped in Mystery, which gives rise to frequent new translations. Several in the English language are here, here, and here. Originally written by Lao Tzu (”grand old master”), the Tao Te Ching can be seen, on one hand, as the response to economic, social, and spiritual conditions in China over two millennia ago. On the oter hand, the contemplative truths within the text provide a contemplative feast for those of all faith traditions who are seeking enlightenment, further knowledge, or a simple set of triggers to abstract thinking.
I read it as a follower of Jesus. And, I think, I am a better follower of his because of it. This translation is a recent one by Stephen Mitchell.
#1
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
The Tao is the Way, the Path, the Journey itself..into that which is both mysterious and eternal. The Tao Te Ching enables the reader to begin to see the differences between that which is eternal and temporal, mundane and divine, real and not real. We are, according to the very first line, learning about something which, if we can speak of it at all, is not the thing of which we speak.
It is Mystery. But it is Mystery we, if we’re honest, spend much of our time within. If we are unaware it is Mystery, we will flounder. If we know that it is Mystery- the Tao- through which we and everyone else are journeying, then it can be a revelatory, liberating, exciting and never-ending encounter.
Here’s a tiny part of what I know from the Tao Te Ching: What I call “God” is, by the very definitions of myself, “not God.” I am so limited in my ability to think about and explain God that, when I do, I am denigrating God by my words, no matter how extolling I might consider those words to be. My understandings of who God is represents (for instance) 1/1,000,000,000th of what God really is. If I tell you God is blue, I am unable to help you see that God is also chartreuse, magenta, gold, white, brown, and pink at the same time. And I am locking myself into a reality of God’s blueness.
It is imperative that I not stop at blue, or any other color, or any other attribute, in thinking about or describing God. That’s one “for instance.” Anything I can describe, or definitively name, is a particular thing, with measurable and predictable characteristics. That from which a particular thing arises, or is given form and substance by, is the Tao. It is not able to be described. It can only be talked around, in unfinished sentences, by groping for words that do not exist and definitions that are still unfound.
Go ahead, try to describe Love or Beauty or Justice. Take all the time you need- years if necessary. No matter what you describe, there will a five year old somewhere who will legitimately be able to ask, “What else is it?” And those three concepts are easier to describe than the Tao, because they have arisen from the Tao!
At this point, some might feel panicky about their impotency to capture or control the Tao. As soon as they release that panic (which is nothing more than their frustrated desire to hold onto and define the Tao), then they will have the opportunity to move further and deeper into it, where it becomes darker, and darker, even in the midst of the (en)light(enment) which has begun to fill their being.
Confused? Good! We’ve begun..
#2
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad…
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
To say that I love the Tao Te Ching, is to implicitly say that there is some other text or texts I do not love. Up is a part of down; left is fundamental to right; and good is vital to bad. The Tao gives rise to those individually perceived and sometimes agreed-upon definitions, but none of them define anything specific about the Tao. And I do intensely dislike reading stock market analyses and anything by Danielle Steele. The texts I love or don’t love are my texts to love or despise, and while you might agree or disagree with me about them, nothing about the Tao is affected by our discussion of them. My cultural, intellectual, emotional, and temporal preferences cannot be yours. They may be similar, but they will never be the same. We are each pregnant with an always-growing body of variables for such perfect agreement to ever happen.
That’s where a Great Teacher can make a difference. And each of us, even within our own particular set of recognized limitations, can be a Great Teacher to someone else. We can all be a Master, for a moment or many moments, in the life of another who is learning. Each person has the opportunity, many times in a lifetime, to affect the evolutionary flow of humankind in the universe, and to be agents of enlightenment for others along the way.
To wit:
Remember your favorite teachers. It might have an instructor at school, a parent, a friend, even someone- given the times in which we live- on television. Did those Great Teachers instruct you, or allow you to discover on your own? Did they you give you a point by point analysis and defense of their opinions, or did they tell parables and allow your mind to be shaped by your observations of the object under study? Don’t tell me your answer; I already know.
Great Teachers recognize the Tao; they understand something about God that enables them to trust their students in presence of the Source of All. Great Teachers make introductions, then back out of the way so a true relationship between the student and that which is being studied, can begin. Great Teachers are bridge builders, never ditch diggers or constructors of barriers. They are not afraid of revelation, even when it differs from what they themselves might believe.
And Great Teachers don’t have to worry whether or not they have taught rightly or wrongly, correctly or mistakenly. The Tao itself has a certain remarkable, however unspecific or unpredictable way of bringing forth in a person exactly that which needs to be brought forth.
#3
If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
The Master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.
Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.
Jesus taught with parables- little stories that had the potential to bend the mental framework of those who were listening, into shapes of God.
He didn’t hammer home the point he was making. He didn’t didactically demand that his disciples conform to his image for them. He simply spoke the story, and trusted the words to find a new home.
Say “No” to a child, and she’ll wonder about “Yes.” Build a fence, and watch the other side of it become paradise. Tell a story, and allow imaginations to run free.
Does this matter? The Master would answer such a question with silence. Because he knows the answers that are already in us; and he knows it may take some time for us to find them. But when we do (he knows this, too), we will follow him.
#4
The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
Most followers of the Abrahamic faith traditions will bump up against this statement about the Tao. But think of it this way:
Everything we know about God has come after an eternity of God’s already being. What we know, is what we talk about, write about, exegete, and argue over. All that was before “In the beginning” and all that we don’t know today and will never know, is the Tao. We could, as we have done with God, try to define, reveal, and expose the Tao, but we would be doing the Tao an injustice- just as we do God an injustice even when we speak of God in exclamatory terms, by what we are unable to say.
The Tao will always be more unknown to us than known. Because it is filled, and always filling, with God.
But it’s what I haven’t said about all of the above, that is infinitely more important than what I have.
#5
The Tao doesn’t take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn’t take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.
The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
Hold on to the center.
When we fall into the clutches of judgement, we fall away from the embrace the Tao. As we seek the image of ourselves in others, we turn our backs on the Image of God in everyone.
It is there: in the confusion of Love, the misperceptions of Beauty, and the ignorance of Truth, the Source of perfect Love, universal Beauty, and unfolding Truth, is still to be recognized. We can perceive it. We can, even if it is only a hunch, be assured of its Presence. We can begin to be embraced again, and we can be healed of ourselves.
Our tethers to the heart of God are those who live in wonder, whose questions outnumber the answers they’ve found, and whose lives are lived in perceptible and widening circles of inclusion. In those persons, and in each blade of grass and every towering oak, we can touch the Tao.
#6
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
Nothing about us, not a single atom on us, in us, or around us, is new. Everything about us was born in the Great Radiance which set light, heat, and all matter into the eternal dance of the universe. It is our lot- yours and mine- to host, for a little while, some of the music in which that always- beginning dance is happening. And each of our songs is unique, but harmonically pitched in perfection with the Source of all music, and with each other’s music.
Hear it? The next note, part of an already building crescendo, is being born in you, even now. It will resound within the chords of an aria that is incomplete without you; an aria that- right now, this instant- is being sung and without which, the universe will be incomplete. Stifle those notes, and the smallest parts of the world will not miss them, even as the Tao does.
It is always our choice to sing, or to dance, or to search for the colors when the monotones of our circumstances seem to overwhelm the Tao’s infinite vibrancy. We can give birth to new creation; the Image of God in us is our womb that propels us toward doing so.
****
How can one be bored when there are pecans to be gathered, shelled, and eaten? Or when there are dogs and kittens who need a home?
How can anyone turn away from a sunset, a loon on the lake, or the old man who is walking toward you with stories he’s never told?
Or how is it possible to sit still and wait, when you own a set of colored pencils?
#7
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
God, the word, is finite. It’s meanings stretch only so far as the metaphors it gives rise to can carry it. There was a time and place where those meanings began, and there will be a time when the word is so laden with definition, that it will mean nothing.
It is the Tao within which the word God is enfolded. When the need to speak the word first arose, however it was spoken, the Tao was ready to contain it. When the word is spoken for the last time, its formlessness will be transcended by the Tao.
The Tao is. Always is.
To approach God within the confines of a metaphor is to immediately limit God. The Tao cannot be contained by such comparisons. To reach for God beyond the words God is contained within- Lord, King, Father, Abba, El Shaddai, Allah, Krishna- is to reach ourselves into the infinite and eternal. To ponder God-with-no-name is to begin to know how little we know about God. And how very very much we do know.
#8 The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.
In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself
and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-8), tells of builders on the plains of Babylon who wanted to build a tower that would “reach into the sky. This will make us famous..”
Built with bricks (not stone) and tar (not mortar), the tower was doomed from the start. Every inch of its increasing height bore down more heavily on its less than adequate foundation. The plans the builders had for both their achievement and the fame it would bring were folly. Instead of fame, their half-baked plans brought them derision, and a mess to clean up.
To simply be oneself is not a simple task. Caught in the onslaught of culture, the worship of false idols, the fragility and care of bent egos, and others’ definitions of success, it is a difficult process to discover, or re-discover, who we really are. The ancient truths of the Tao are invaluable it that quest:
Humility, fairness and generosity, cooperation, joyfulness, and presence are qualities that can be practiced; they get easier and more natural over time if they are not part of one’s life now.
Where and when to begin? Here and now. The Tao is. Here and now, as are we all.
