2007 - Introduction to the Tao

A new year, although for me, years really run on the academic cycle. But this calendar year also marked a shift in my thinking, and contained some remarkable spiritual breakthroughs which began with the reading of the Tao te Ching that I had gotten out for Jim to read.

January 22, 2007
Here’s a thought – I’ve been reading the Tao te Ching on smoke breaks, but why don’t I begin using it as a journal entry prompt? It isn’t meditation, but its something. So, what are they called in Chinese? Not sutras or suras, but I can’t remember. I’ll just call them chapters.
The first one seems a reminder that just calling something “the Tao,” or “God” doesn’t mean you understand it.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The Truth cannot be taught in words. It’s a good way to start; all of the words that are to come are just pointers, and no amount of writing and thinking in words is going to get me living in the Tao.

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.

In the West, we put a lot of faith in the naming of things. Create a category, put stuff in it, and there it stays. Mastered, taken care of. Maybe that is a human thing. I can name my father's sin: betrayal. I can name Jim’s problem: unemployment. Does that help me understand those issues? Or is it a way to stop thinking about them?
And when applied to god – how angry I have been (and will be again) when people claim to know the mind of God, or when they picture someone I disagree with. But how often do I myself revert to an image of a grandfatherly patriarch, denying me something I desire, or issuing judgments, or even loving me? Every time I do so, put God in a box, I am acting out of desire, and seeing only the manifestations. When I am able to look past my own will and remember that God is not in a box I’ve made out of words, I get a glimpse of the mystery.

Yet mystery and manifestations
Arise from the same source
This source is called darkness

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

So it isn’t that looking at the manifestations is wrong, its just simple-minded. Its missing the larger point. It is the darkness I need to enter. When I realize that I don’t know why Jim can’t find work, or why I am in such pain, I move closer to where I need to be.
Let go of the words, the names, for things. Don’t cling to them as explanations, don’t believe phenomena can be bounded by such tactics. Let all of it blend together in the darkness and just let it be there. So hard for me to do. My impulse is to pull things out and analyze them to death. Okay. Aside from my work, the job for today is to not believe in naming things. Let them all be, in the darkness where I cannot understand them.

January 23
It’s 7 am and I need to get my head in a good place for the day, so here is the Tao te Ching’s offering, chapter 1. Oh, it is one of my favorites, and a good reminder every day.

When people see some things as beautiful,
Other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
Other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
Before and after follow each other.

I teach this all the time. In linguistics, in identity formation, etc. But it is so incredibly difficult to behave as if it is true, even when I know it is. How hard to accept things as they are without labeling them, without sorting them into what I like and what I don’t like. It is all about desire and attachment, isn’t’ it? We are attracted to Jim having a job, we desire to pay off our bills. What if I were able to not label his state as desirable or un? What if I could respond to each student fully, without one answer being ugly and another beautiful? Well – I am concerned with their answers, but I shouldn’t be with their persons. Here is the Book’s description of doing it right:

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 does not possess,
Acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Oh, to be like this! I want so much to be this person. Can you imagine if I could let the pain come, and not react? Not hate it, not fight it, not call it ugly? And whether Jim has a job? And whether my students like me? I’m going to really try. Try to be mindful and conscious of my responses. Try to begin to let them be. And do it without letting Jim’s despair stop me and drag me down, but also not be smug if I pull any of it off.
Okay, a huge challenge. But a long journey beings with a single step. And already my pain is less insistent than when I was describing it as unjust.

January 24
It’s getting late, so I need to switch to the Book. Hmm. This is a little more difficult to apply to my life. Maybe to the state of our nation, though, and my part in that. Here goes:

If you over-esteem great men,
People become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
People begin to steal.

This seems straightforward enough. What to do, though, when one’s society has done these things? How do we step back from it?

The Master leads
By emptying people’s minds
And filling their cores.

This is so what I’m going for as a teacher! Not that their heads should be utterly empty, but empty of misconception, false theories, and the diet of junk they are fed each day by the media. Empty the heads of all that, and fill the core with interest, passion, hope, willingness, generosity, etc. And it goes for me, too. Why do I let my head get filled up with worry over all the small things? I need to empty my head and fill my core, too.

By weakening their ambition,
And toughening their resolve.

Let go of my ambition to be full professor, chair of anthropology, wealthy; and toughen my resolve to do a good job of teaching, research, mentoring, etc.

She helps people lose everything
They know, everything they desire,
And creates confusion
In those who think that they know.

Well, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing in my classes so far.

Practice not-doing
And everything will fall into place.

Okay, I’ll try. I guess I’m not sure exactly how, but I have a general sort of idea. Do the work well and forget it. Empty the mind, fill the core. Act out of the core, not the silly mind.

January 25
The Tao te Ching has a short message for me today, and not as helpful at first glance as the next one promises to be. The first:

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.

I guess it is helpful to have a reminder that we aren’t talking about God. This is more in line with my belief, expressed and explained elsewhere, that the gods of man exist, if they do, in an already-present matrix. There was a “place” for them (or Him) to arise in, and that space/place is governed by the Tao. The Tao is just the “way things are,” and maybe, the “material of life” – the stuff gods and men and universes, etc. are made of.

I’m thinking of my heretical idea (shared with some Gnostics) that the god of the Jews and the gods of India are so human, and particular that they sometimes appear to be petty and selfish and whimsical and unjust. Contrast that with the Tao.

Five
The Tao doesn’t take sides;
It gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn’t take sides;
She welcomes 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.

As I wrote out this past summer, it is impossible for me to believe in a God that is wholly good, who could somehow create evil. Either God has to be both, or there is something bigger than God that contains both. Might as well call that something Tao.

Point, of course, is not to initiate theological squabbles, but to practice accepting both saints and sinners. Very difficult not to take sides in the polarized world I live in. I’ll have to keep working at a different level – not on issues, but people. All people should be welcome in my life. Like love, like “life force,” the more you use it, the more there is. No need to worry about running out.