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Chapter of the Week: #49
Essence 'gives rise to' forms. Individuation is a part of the completion of the tao, through heaven, earth and man. It is the part of te (manifestation) with which we are inherently most familiar and most able to talk about. The first chapter and all the others tell me of this temporal process that is manifested by and apparently somehow for the non-temporal, the supra-formal.
Rationality is far from the whole of our perceptions or tools or actions, just as man is far from the whole of earth, or heaven, or tao. None of these however are separate from any or all of these. All of these we are told by the Tao Te Ching and our personal experience, are parts of a process of a completion that we will never understand with the tiny fraction of our eye that is logic.
For me the useful, reality loving, tao embodying, bodhisattva delivered dismissal of attachment is the dismissal of any attachment to a separation of form and essence, or any other separation.
The essence is indeed to be found by us in the experience of our own spirit.
That any of this is mysterious seems to me to be a product of clinging to the rational when one is aware of the formless, that being the non-temporal part of our realities that the rational can only summarize, cartoon, and only very badly. It is that clinging that I identify as an obsfucating attachment. The harmony of our lives is not hidden from us by nature, but by the attempt to reduce it to form and logic.
Speech is a temporal form. That doesn't mean we have another way to talk about the formless, at least not over the net, give or take the allusions of art which may or may not be received with any of the essence we may try to convey with them. We can only be that awareness, and trust that whoever we communicate with through the temporal world of forms and abstracts is also comfortable with an awareness of the play of the formless and the formed in all the ten thousand things.
As Laotzu says repeatedly, words, forms, just aren't an adequate tool to share the wordless and formless, even between beings who are formed by the formless and know that to be our case, as we all do. Nonetheless, it's how we talk amongst ourselves.
Also nonetheless our organic forms impose misperceptions of duality and worse, as the images our thinking minds have to consider. Accepting that as part of the balance and form that our minds are, recognizing how the formless and our spirits have manifested in just this and no other form as humans, is a great path, our gateway, to filtering our attempted perceptions from the reality they can only cartoon, the reality we experience directly.
Rationality is far from the whole of our perceptions or tools or actions, just as man is far from the whole of earth, or heaven, or tao. None of these however are separate from any or all of these. All of these we are told by the Tao Te Ching and our personal experience, are parts of a process of a completion that we will never understand with the tiny fraction of our eye that is logic.
For me the useful, reality loving, tao embodying, bodhisattva delivered dismissal of attachment is the dismissal of any attachment to a separation of form and essence, or any other separation.
The essence is indeed to be found by us in the experience of our own spirit.
That any of this is mysterious seems to me to be a product of clinging to the rational when one is aware of the formless, that being the non-temporal part of our realities that the rational can only summarize, cartoon, and only very badly. It is that clinging that I identify as an obsfucating attachment. The harmony of our lives is not hidden from us by nature, but by the attempt to reduce it to form and logic.
Speech is a temporal form. That doesn't mean we have another way to talk about the formless, at least not over the net, give or take the allusions of art which may or may not be received with any of the essence we may try to convey with them. We can only be that awareness, and trust that whoever we communicate with through the temporal world of forms and abstracts is also comfortable with an awareness of the play of the formless and the formed in all the ten thousand things.
As Laotzu says repeatedly, words, forms, just aren't an adequate tool to share the wordless and formless, even between beings who are formed by the formless and know that to be our case, as we all do. Nonetheless, it's how we talk amongst ourselves.
Also nonetheless our organic forms impose misperceptions of duality and worse, as the images our thinking minds have to consider. Accepting that as part of the balance and form that our minds are, recognizing how the formless and our spirits have manifested in just this and no other form as humans, is a great path, our gateway, to filtering our attempted perceptions from the reality they can only cartoon, the reality we experience directly.
Comments
Chapter 49
The sage has no mind of his own. He takes as his own the mind of the people.
Those who are good I treat as good. Those who are not good I also treat as good.
In so doing I gain in goodness. Those who are of good faith I have faith in.
Those who are lacking in good faith I also have faith in. In so doing I gain in good faith.
The sage in his attempt to distract the mind of the empire seeks urgently to muddle it.
The people all have something to occupy their eyes and ears, and the sage treats them all like children.
Read commentary previously posted for this chapter.
Read notes on translations
Now, do it too at Wengu!
In having no mind of our own it becomes easier to notice the world ‘outside the box’ our mind puts us in. I suppose we can’t truly have no mind of our own. However, as we become more [chref=15]tentative, hesitant, murky and vacant [/chref] of mind, we [chref=56]soften the glaring[/chref] reflection of our own agenda in what ever we see ‘out there’. Interestingly, this allows us to better notice the [chref=65]hoodwink[/chref] at play.
I’ve long ‘known’ that people are all children in various stages of maturity. Even more simply has been the knowledge that we are all animals. I always wondered why that ‘knowledge’ couldn’t better defuse the interpersonal emotional issues I experienced from time to time. The answer: [chref=8]Contending[/chref], plain and simple. How much my mind ‘knows’ makes no difference in the end. Resolution lies much deeper and only comes slowly with [chref=51]maturity[/chref]. Nevertheless, ‘knowing’ is better than nothing (although, knowing [chref=40]Nothing[/chref] may be best of all
Note: The slightly awkward way my translations turn out can be helpful to prod the mind to see the chapter from another angle. After all, [chref=81]truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful.[/chref] Words that ‘roll off the mind’ easily are often preconceptions reflecting an agenda (cultural or otherwise). Hopefully the awkwardness helps one read between the line more.
First, with a dash or two of poetic license:
The wise person without mind uses the mind of the people.
Of the friendly I am friendly.
Of the unfriendly I am also friendly, at heart friendly.
Of the true I trust.
Of the untrue I also trust, at heart trust.
The wise person lives inhaling all under heaven,
Being all under heaven, simple and natural his heart.
The multitude, all concentrate on taking sides,
The wise person, all as children.
Now the most literal, in all its synonymic glory:
wise person without heart (mind, intention, feeling).
use (take, in order to) common people heart (mind, intention, feeling).
the good (friendly; be good at) I of good, friendly; be good at).
not good, friendly; be good at) I also good, friendly; be good at) virtue (heart, kindness, favour) good, friendly; be good at).
the true (trust, confidence) I of true (trust, confidence).
the not true (trust, confidence) I also of true (trust, confidence) virtue (heart, kindness, favor) true (trust, confidence).
wise person exist( be living; rest with; depend on) heaven under inhale herein,
do (act, serves as, be, mean) heaven under muddy (simple and natural, unsophisticated, whole, all over) its heart (mind, intention, feeling).
numerous family names all pour (concentrate, fix) its ear (on both sides, flanking, side),
wise person all (each and every) of child.