Be True To The Law Of Your Being

TAO's presence in this world / Is like valley streams / Flowing into rivers and seas. Tao Te Ching 

I'm reading Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard at last and much enjoying it. When Matthiessen first came across the following passage from Jung it was a joyful and significant moment for him. I also found it wildly exciting when reading it yesterday:

The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing . . . He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths . . . There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. 'You are no different from anybody else,' they will chorus, or, 'there's no such thing', and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as 'morbid' . . . He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. 'His own law!' everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law . . . The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realisation — absolute and unconditional — of its own particular law . . . To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being . . . he has failed to realise his life's meaning.

The undiscovered vein within us is a living part of the psyche; classical Chinese philosophy names this interior way 'Tao', and likens it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao means fulfilment, wholeness, one's destination reached, one's mission done, the beginning, end, and perfect realization of the meaning of existence in all things.

Today's mantra: Resist not Tao, follow not the crowd but your own inner voice, be true to the law of your own being.

Tao Te Ching (10)

The Tao Te Ching is uncategorisable but, if I may call this ancient, classic Chinese text a poem, it's the wisest poem I know. There are more than a hundred translations, and I've only read a fraction of them; but I do have an affinity with the one by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo, published by the Hackett Publishing Company of Indianapolis. This version has a terse clarity, an easy flow, a 'rightness' that I love. What can I say about the Tao Te Ching? Nothing, I think; and even nothing will hardly come close to its essence. The first section explains Tao, in poetic riddle and sage paradox, far better than I ever could:

1

Tao k'o tao fei ch'ang tao
TAO called TAO is not TAO.

Names can name no lasting name.

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth.
Naming: the mother of ten thousand things.

Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.

These have the same source, but different names.
        Call them both deep —
                Deep and again deep:

The gateway to all mystery.

I have no favourite sections in this graphic guide to life and death, in this concise, profound, gnomic yet translucent commentary on earth, heaven and the universe. All parts of the whole work are equally important to me, and I immerse myself in them time and again. All of the world's accumulated wisdom is here — in just a few pages.

44

Ming yü shen shu ch'in
Name or body: which is closer?
Body or possessions: which means more?
Gain or loss: which one hurts?

Extreme love exacts a great price.
Many possessions entail heavy loss.

Know what is enough —
        Abuse nothing.
Know when to stop —
        Harm nothing.

This is how to last a long time.

75

Min chih chi
People are hungry.

        When rulers tax grain
        People are hungry.

People are rebellious.

        When rulers are active
        People are rebellious.

People ignore death.

        When searching only for life's bounty
        People ignore death.

Only those who don't strive after life
Truly respect life.

80

Hsiao kuo kua min
Small country, few people —
        Hundreds of devices,
        But none are used.

People ponder on death
        And don't travel far.
They have carriages and boats,
        But no one goes on board;
Weapons and armour,
        But no one brandishes them.
They use knotted cords for counting.

        Sweet their food,
        Beautiful their clothes,
        Peaceful their homes,
        Delightful their customs.

Neighboring countries are so close
        You can hear their chickens and dogs.
But people grow old and die
        Without needing to come and go.

LAO-TZU

The Pilgrim's Way (10): Tao And The Journey Within

Zen pond.

How many times now

have I crossed over hill crests


with the image


of blossoms leading me on —


toward nothing but white clouds?

FUJIWARA NO SHUNZEI 

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

WALLACE STEVENS

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the pond.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

Perhaps the truth depends.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

Perhaps the truth does not depend.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

The longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.

ANON

The longest journey is the journey inward.

DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

But in the end, the journey is all within, isn't it? Perhaps that is why the emotions elude us when we most think they should be present. So much of why we travel is actually to learn about ourselves . . .

AMANDA from Travels with Persephone

Funny that we tend to bracket events with 'beginnings' and 'endings'. Perhaps this is just another illusion. Perhaps everything is fluid and boundless, insuring that our tiny brains will never understand the mysterious concoction of energy that we call 'life'.

GEORGE from Transit Notes

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

PROUST

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. 

PROUST 

Banish learning, discard knowledge: people will gain a hundredfold.

LAO-TZU

Knowing others is intelligent. Knowing yourself is enlightened.

LAO-TZU

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. 

PROSPERO

Ain't talkin', just walkin'.

BOB DYLAN

The rest is silence.

HAMLET

The bright road seems dark,

The road forward seems to retreat,

The level road seems rough.

Great TE seems hollow.

Great purity seems sullied.

Pervasive TE seems deficient.

Established TE seems furtive.

Simple truths seem to change.

The great square has no corners.

The great vessel is finished late.

The great sound is scarcely voiced.

The great image has no form.

TAO hides, no name.

Tao yin wu ming

Yet TAO alone gets things done.

LAO-TZU

Meditation on the Far and Near / 'What Is Beyond?' Koan

What is beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond unreason, beyond feeling, beyond emotion, beyond words, beyond music, beyond poetry, beyond art, beyond birds, beasts and flowers, beyond river and rock, beyond hill and valley, beyond plain and mountain, beyond travel, beyond exploration, beyond talking, beyond walking, beyond desire and regret, beyond hope and expectation, beyond pain and pleasure, beyond memory, beyond life, beyond death, beyond silence? If love is beyond these things, what is beyond love? Is TAO beyond and before and within all these things?

THE SOLITARY WALKER

This concludes my exploratory 10-part series 'The Pilgrim's Way'; I hope you enjoyed the journey.

Growing In Stillness

Like Henry Miller, I'm convinced that the meaning of life lies in this world, not in the next world or in other worlds. Other worlds can take care of themselves. However, this kind of spiritual secularism, this faith in the saving grace of the here and now, is both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because one can learn to relax and trust in the present moment; terrible because it entails an existential responsibility not to screw up. No stored karma; karma is being used right now. No deathbed conversion; the only conversion is a continual conversion of perception: to see a better world in the actual world, to find the miraculous in the day-to-day, the eternal in the temporal, the infinite in the finite.

For me, life has been a search, a quest, a becoming rather than a being, and perhaps it will ever remain so. The next person I meet, the next book I read, the next piece of music I hear, the next bend in the road, the next brow of the hill — always hold out such promise. This promise is rarely completely fulfilled. But there's always a new minute, a new day, a new landscape, a new philosophy, a new dream, a new sonata. This makes life exciting, fascinating, compelling; the prospect of the novel and the unexpected gets one up in the morning. Yet there's always a lurking feeling of disappointment, a suspicion that there must be something more, something better, something different; something deeper, more multi-layered and more satisfying.

How to reconcile acceptance of the now-as-all-there-is with the very human desire for betterment, for increased knowledge, for change? Can there, paradoxically, be a state of permanence in change, of stasis in motion, of stability in flux, of harmony in disharmony, of being in becoming? The nearest I've approached an answer to this is in Buddhism, Taoism and other related Eastern philosophies and religions.

Things grow and grow,

But each goes back to its root.

Going back to the root is stillness.

This means returning to what is.

Returning to what is

Means going back to the ordinary.

LAO-TZU Tao Te Ching

Translated by STEPHEN ADDISS and STANLEY LOMBARDO

Rediscovery

Sphinx, Capri

Primavera, Naples



Painted doorway, Palermo



Glad-Eyed Lady of the Midlands: photo portrait taken in the Valley of the Temples, Agrigento

The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is called the Mysterious Female.
Shih wei hsüan p'in

The entrance to the Mysterious Female
Is called the root of Heaven and Earth,

Endless flow
Of inexhaustible energy.

LAO-TZU Tao Te Ching

(Translated by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo)