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

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)

The Macrocosm Lies Within the Microcosm

The further you travel, the less you know (Tao Te Ching). Discuss! I think this means that covering big distances, physical or mental, has nothing necessarily to do with knowledge. And pilgrimage nothing necessarily to do with attaining wisdom. Nirvana can be an instantaneous thing - not necessarily the result of years of diligent effort and pursuit.

It's how you filter, deal with and learn from experience that counts - not just having more and more random experiences. Though personally I love random experience - in a Jack Kerouac kind of way.

To echo Dylan - when younger I felt so much "older" (more pretentious?) than when I read the Beat writers now. Perhaps I'm just journeying towards a profound simplicity? Any thoughts, anyone?

Negative Capability

After considering Keats yesterday, and his poem To Autumn, my mind now turns to his letters. In a famous letter dated Sunday 21 December 1817 he invents the term "Negative Capability": ...that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...

This idea, this state, appeals to me a lot.

The Tao Te Ching says of the hollow space inside a cup or of the empty spaces in a house or room: Without their nothingness they would be nothing.

St John of the Cross writes about The Dark Night of the Soul, the state into which he plunged when he could no longer feel God's presence, and prayer could no longer inspire him.

The Via Negativa of mystical theology approaches God from a position of ignorance rather than one of knowledge.

Perhaps not-knowing is a necessary state of mind for learning.

Rain Does Not Last

Use words sparingly,

then all things will fall into place.

A whirlwind does not last a whole morning.

A downpour of rain does not last a whole day.

And who works these?

Heaven and Earth.

What Heaven and Earth cannot do enduringly:

how much less can man do it?

(From the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu)

And yes, the sun came out today...