Tao Te Ching Verse 2
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and non-being produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other
Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away —
This one seems universal, I can’t remember not knowing this. In one form or the other it appears everywhere with more or less depth. Knowing this doesn’t mean I can do as the “sages” but I do know the truth of it.
The skepticism I have, or perhaps what I struggle with the most, is whether this bi-nary opposition is a construct of the world or of the human mind. It’s harder to separate, for me at least, than it would appear. I can never get past the observer tainting the observation.
An oversimplified and perhaps not very apt analogy; you take a picture of a bunny. You are a good photographer and have captured some aspect of bunny that when others see it smile and know bunniness. The photograph is a true object but the further it is removed from the bunny, the further the bunny is from true. We perceive time in a linear way, but, for a moment let’s perceive it circular; the bunny is only true once in the circle and never true. The bunny was never flat, and yet the camera didn’t add falsehoods, traps, misdirections.
I know this is a question of how I look at it, and yet I am me, and though I have several ways of looking at a thing I am limited by my nature. I also know it’s a poor example for the verse, but it’s sort of what I think I’m shooting for. Both things that are true and things that are real are fluid and as the verse says, when you make something true, like beauty, you make ugly real. And again, is that you or the nature of the world? In my poor analogy the bunny is the world (not you) and you are the camera (not world).
To me this doesn’t speak to creation but to perception. The verse doesn’t say when you create a bunny you create a predator, just that if you look on a bunny and call it beautiful you will notice, say, a tortoise and call it ugly. Bad example. I used those two because they are very different in appearance. Perhaps a flowering branch and a naked branch. Huh. I think the naked branch as ugly because of it’s potential.
There are thousands of interpretations of the Tao Te Ching, verse by verse. I’m not trying to do that or even read them. I will never be a Taoist monk. In 1976 I had a mustang fastback. It was the last car I owned that I worked on myself. It was the last car I owned that I knew how to work on myself. I have owned, sold, crashed and given away several cars since then. I don’t believe I’m a better or worse driver due to my lack of understanding the mechanics. I could be mistaken, but I am consistent. I’ve been driving my body and energy the same way. Sure, I know bits and pieces of how it works, I know too bits and pieces of how it is supposed to work according to real experts and self proclaimed experts. I still manage to my own satisfaction, most of the time, and, too, most of the time am admittedly culpable for miscalculations.
I could be doing this same exercise with the KJV. It’s too verbose for me, but if I were attempting I would know it was not to become a minister and would avoid the thousands of interpretations.
In this second verse of the tao are concepts I’ve come to know on my own. I might not have written them as such, but they sound like the musings of a man. It’s hard to open the KJV and not find a lecture or a directive. It’s not a criticism and I don’t understand either book well enough to be anymore than a rank novice. I am, however, an expert at being a Haredawg. I have walked through the woods here heavy with water and the rain forests light with water and I have seen beauty and ugly, high and low, being and non being. If I could learn one zen discipline it would be to see such things without ego.
My ego I strong and in most instances that is a good thing. It does limit me to being the camera. The only tool I have to see things otherwise is a modestly developed empathy and even that is not kind, just objective. Flawed too, I would like to see a bunny as a bunny is, not as my camera sees it or as I see it in your shoes. Empathy is not really walking in your shoes so much as it is walking with your ego.
The last half of this verse, everything past “sages” is the sort of language that detracts from the lesson, draws in the curious, turns away the impatient. It reads like the old saw of the sound of one hand clapping. One possible way of describing the sound of one hand clapping is listening to the world without interference.
Although I think most all of it is straight-forward though not an explanation. Manage the work of detached actions, however, I’m not able to address. I know, I don’t seem to be worrying much about how or why I approach things in these rough writings, and rough writings is all they are, I’m trying to lay a foundation for how I would go about using these for meditation. To manage the work of detached actions is a flag for meditation, something I need to think on.
With the exception of writing, I have no intent of action; not at this point. My relationship to these entries and the tao, at this point, are like my relationship to my car; the verses are there so I read them, the keyboard is there so I pound it.
The car is mine because the car and I go on the same journeys. When I cop pulls me over I need another way of demonstrating the car is mine. These are both true, but, in a sense, I’m showing the cop that the car is not someone elses and the journey belongs to the car I’m just suggesting a direction. It’s also true that I don’t have a more enlightened relationship with my car than you do with yours. My intent is not to untangle the “truth” from those three ideas, so much as integrate what I know with what, for instance, the Tao Te Ching knows, and meditate on the parts that anchor the world to me or me to the world. I also mean you by me in that we are not bunnies and for all the differences we find in one another, there are similiarities — both true, both obvious, both dependent on one another.
Wow. I’m going to keep doing these things until I do one that shows me how I want to do them. It means as much and as little as flash Fridays; another way of experiencing the world simply.
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