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Chapter of the Week: #52
Much as I prefer heresy, and agree with much of yours, I do have some differences.
Somewhat shockingly in any human conversation, these will bring me BACK TO THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD!, which should probably be retitled as 'Four Taoists and their Divorces'.
I'm in the first separation in a thirty year marriage, which, with my cooperation(?), is tearing big parts of me to bits. Quite a few other overlaps with Eegad and Mr. Minor's stories, too.
Carl said:
harmony = reality = life = question = contentment = ebb&flow = growth/return
disharmony = illusion = dying = answer(?) = fear = stagnation = clinging
Answers can be resonant with the flow, so I'm not sure they always belong in the disharmony area. Granted they're necessarily near-lifeless cartoons (verbality) of best-fit rationalizations (right brain story telling) of best-fit emotional tones (memory and mid-brain filtering) of whatever gets in through our tiny little empathy circuits and sensory reductions, but they can reassure, and inform and even improve the accuracy of how we react to the big flow around, amongst and within us. ( I sure would like to hear of the neuropsych basis of question generation.)
I think we do have free-will choices in the area of how our actions, attitudes and affections resonate with the shared te harmony in our worldly ways: the 'how you're walking' of the path. Our affection for anybody or thing feels to be an expressed form of the deep harmony we share. Such active affection helps us feel good; we respect it socially and internally.
There's no finality or withdrawl for me in the ebb of a wave or a life, no loss of identity, only a transition, not a regret.
The only 'pain' involved in waves is to resist it, to be stagnant against its flow, sinking your toes into the sand and getting stubborn against it. The water then effortlessly pushes and pulls tons at you, while easily changing to a new lesson of dancing, resonant current and spray around you. And you get tired, and maybe dragged out to sea. All I see growing there is knowledge of disharmony.
Marriage, of any kind that is heartfelt, is an affirmation, social, emotional, volitional, devotional, and on and on, affirming that two (or more) have come to see and share deep harmony, with all its marvelous splashings and breakings and recedings, in their personal connection. Belligerantly against a static culture that claims life is only of separated, contentious outer shells, the married joyfully, calmly and powerfully announce that their shared inner lives are very real to them. Together they become an expressed manifestation of the truth we all live within us, and love having affirmed.
Separation and divorce declare that deep awareness defeated, rejected, released, leaving shallow lives of egos in conventional contention.
Accepting such an emotional death as fated, accepting stagnation in a world of balanced flow, seems to be where divorce begins and ends, not how we should react to it or any other real thing. I know in my marraige the stagnations left in us from our childhoods, that we then did nothing about, were what objected to the trust and love we had become. If we don't choose to address them, then our marriage will end.
What's to learn from forced separation from shared harmonies: maybe the cost of unresponsive stagnation in our dynamic inner lives, or that a paired view requires both to move along somehow in a way that continues to share perspectives.
How to weather the unwanted changes without massive, deep disharmonies: find new harmonies within or without us, I guess. For me now that answer is only of abstract design and hope.
Somewhat shockingly in any human conversation, these will bring me BACK TO THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD!, which should probably be retitled as 'Four Taoists and their Divorces'.
I'm in the first separation in a thirty year marriage, which, with my cooperation(?), is tearing big parts of me to bits. Quite a few other overlaps with Eegad and Mr. Minor's stories, too.
Carl said:
I disagree with some of this. First I'm not a big heaven and hell guy, those being too Holy Whichever Empire, Confucian and/or Disney for me, so let me change those two to harmony and disharmony (te & pu te) to start with. My version of your correlations then:heaven = reality = death = question =contentment = ebb = return
hell = illusion = life = answer = need = flow = growth
harmony = reality = life = question = contentment = ebb&flow = growth/return
disharmony = illusion = dying = answer(?) = fear = stagnation = clinging
Answers can be resonant with the flow, so I'm not sure they always belong in the disharmony area. Granted they're necessarily near-lifeless cartoons (verbality) of best-fit rationalizations (right brain story telling) of best-fit emotional tones (memory and mid-brain filtering) of whatever gets in through our tiny little empathy circuits and sensory reductions, but they can reassure, and inform and even improve the accuracy of how we react to the big flow around, amongst and within us. ( I sure would like to hear of the neuropsych basis of question generation.)
I think we do have free-will choices in the area of how our actions, attitudes and affections resonate with the shared te harmony in our worldly ways: the 'how you're walking' of the path. Our affection for anybody or thing feels to be an expressed form of the deep harmony we share. Such active affection helps us feel good; we respect it socially and internally.
There's no finality or withdrawl for me in the ebb of a wave or a life, no loss of identity, only a transition, not a regret.
The only 'pain' involved in waves is to resist it, to be stagnant against its flow, sinking your toes into the sand and getting stubborn against it. The water then effortlessly pushes and pulls tons at you, while easily changing to a new lesson of dancing, resonant current and spray around you. And you get tired, and maybe dragged out to sea. All I see growing there is knowledge of disharmony.
Marriage, of any kind that is heartfelt, is an affirmation, social, emotional, volitional, devotional, and on and on, affirming that two (or more) have come to see and share deep harmony, with all its marvelous splashings and breakings and recedings, in their personal connection. Belligerantly against a static culture that claims life is only of separated, contentious outer shells, the married joyfully, calmly and powerfully announce that their shared inner lives are very real to them. Together they become an expressed manifestation of the truth we all live within us, and love having affirmed.
Separation and divorce declare that deep awareness defeated, rejected, released, leaving shallow lives of egos in conventional contention.
Accepting such an emotional death as fated, accepting stagnation in a world of balanced flow, seems to be where divorce begins and ends, not how we should react to it or any other real thing. I know in my marraige the stagnations left in us from our childhoods, that we then did nothing about, were what objected to the trust and love we had become. If we don't choose to address them, then our marriage will end.
What's to learn from forced separation from shared harmonies: maybe the cost of unresponsive stagnation in our dynamic inner lives, or that a paired view requires both to move along somehow in a way that continues to share perspectives.
How to weather the unwanted changes without massive, deep disharmonies: find new harmonies within or without us, I guess. For me now that answer is only of abstract design and hope.
Comments
Chapter 52
The world had a beginning
And this beginning could be the mother of the world.
When you know the mother
Go to know the child.
After you have known the child
Go back to holding fast to the mother,
And to the end of your days you will not meet with danger.
Block the openings,
Shut the doors,
And all your life you will not run dry.
Unblock the openings,
Add to your troubles,
And to the end of your days you will be beyond salvation.
To see the small is called discernment;
To hold fast to the submissive is called strength.
Use the light
But give up the discernment.
Bring not misfortune upon yourself.
This is known as following the constant.
Read commentary previously posted for this chapter.
Read notes on translations
Now, do it too at Wengu!
Go back to holding fast to the mother brings to my mind the wisdom of consolidation. Desire keeps driving me forward and sooner or later I discover I'm out, way out, on a limb. Truly, ‘two steps forward - one step backward’ is the only way to [chref=69]advance[/chref] in life and maintain a sane balance. The illusion of solutions easily grabs hold, and off I go [chref=16]willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant[/chref]. Of course, less so now that I’m older and wiser… or is it that I’ve just burned up much of my youthful energy. Either way, hooray!
To see the small (discernment), use the light, but give up the discernment brings to mind the saying ‘like water off a duck back’. Observing the nature of things is one of the joys of consciousness, until I get emotionally entangled, become [chref=57]meddlesome[/chref] and help affairs. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. All I can do is patiently [chref=56]untangle the knots[/chref] as best I can. ‘Patiently untangling knots’ is a superb metaphor for living life, unless of course I'm in the process of actually untangling knots.
First, the literal with some kinks smoothed over:
All under heaven had a beginning; consider the origin of all under heaven.
Since you have this origin, use this to know its seed.
Since you know its seed, abide close by the origin.
Sinking into this, live without danger.
Stopple the exchange, shut the door; to the end, life is easy,
Open the exchange, help affairs; to the end, life gets in the way.
Seeing the small is called clarity, abiding by the soft is called strong.
Use the light, and again return to clarity, without leaving behind a life of calamity.
Correctly, this serves as practice of the constant.
Now, the literal kinks and all:
heaven under have beginning, think (consider, believe) heaven under mother (origin).
already (since, now that) get its (that) mother (origin), use (take; because of; so as to) know its (that) son (child, seed, egg).
already (since, now that) know its (that) son (child, seed), duplicate (again) observe (abide by, close to) its (that) mother (origin).
sink (submerge, rise beyond, disappear, die) body (life, oneself) not danger.
fill in (stuff) its (that) exchange (convert), shut its (that) door, end (finish, death, after all, whole) body not diligent (frequent).
open its (that) exchange (add), aid (relieve, help) its (that) matter (affair, involvement), end (death, after all, whole) body not rescue (save, help).
see its (that) small say (call) bright (clear, honest), observe (abide by, near) soft (supple, yielding) say (call) strive (strong, better).
use (employ, apply, need) its (that) light (brightness, honor), duplicate (again) go back to (return, come together) its (that) bright (clear, honest), without lose (omit, leave behind) body calamity.
correctly act (serve as, do, become) practice (review, habit custom) ordinary (normal, constant, invariable).