against the backdrop of a sleeping heaven

starlight and moonlight mingled like lovers

well, the first verse speaks for itself ... if any words of the tao are known to the wider public, then it is these.  The nameless Tao ... something that can only be experienced, hinted towards; much like a piece of great music, words can only etch out the faint outlines, the thing is of another quality altogether.

the second verse reminds me a little of Plato - "Naming is the origin of all particular things" - referring to the world of Ideas, which are ethereal, and out there, and the Forms, which we see here on Earth, and are tangible, existing.  The next verse expands on this.

skipping to the last verse, "Darkness within darkness.  The gateway to all understanding."  A very mysterious, enigmatic couplet.  Open to interpretation.  My reading of it compares the Path of Understanding to the Fool Card of the Tarot; before one can learn anything, one has to accept the current state of ignorance, which is a hard thing to do.  The Fool knows his own weaknesses, and so can move beyond them.  "Darkness within darkness" ... the lack of knowledge in our inner mind ... the abyss of understanding and comprehension.  Once we move into that dark space, then we can start learning true wisdom.

love and light

ps for those interested to know what happened to the Wanderer Series, I decided to take a short break.  It happened rather suddently, and I think yesterday's summary post triggered a bit of introspection and pondering about what I had achieved thus far, and where I might progress towards.  So a bit of a time-out; the series is definitely not over!  Think of this Tao Series as a short hiatus.  :-)

the first verse here is a beautiful play on the nature of perspective in our thinking.  It also brings in the notions of duality; of knowing one thing in terms of its opposite.  One's individual perspective, and the notion of duality; two key concepts in the spiritual progress of any pilgrim.

the middle verse is just a long riff on the aforementioned duality; think of it as an ecstatic guitar solo in the middle of a pop song; exuberance and joy at being at able to play free.  In short, opposites create each other.  We could easily add Democrats and Republicans into that tempestuous stew; they feed off each other, constantly.

which brings us to the closing verse ... the opening statement is a thing of beauty.  I repeat it here - "Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything."  Just ponder on those words for ten seconds.  Miraculous, no?  Just by being around, merely existing, the Master exerts an influence on his surroundings; through his exemplary life and character; he doesn't need to try and teach; his whole life is a shining example of the principles he admires and strives after.

The rest of this verse is the tao itself; in free-flowing action.  Not possessing, not clinging, just doing what needs to be done, and then moving on.  The cosmos will balance itself out, has it's own debit and credit columns; the little guy here on earth need not worry about things like that.  What comes comes, what doesn't doesn't.  Don't fret is the message here.  Just do your best, and if it is in divine accordance, then the actions will bear their due fruit.

now you know why I preferred the poetical form; with prose, I just run on and on, and on!

blessings, and love and light.

the first verse speaks to envy, and how it works in the mind of man.  Start placing people on a pedestal; and they will want to worship.  Hoard things; and others will want what you have.  Share the common weal, be part of the community you are in; there are individual differences, but you are all spirits to begin and end.

"The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores" - what an opening salvo in the next verse!  bliss!  beauty!  before we can reform who we are, we have to let go of a certain amount of our past, the little lingerings of who we were.  And once we have seen the untruths, we need to have truths to take their place.  The 'Master' here, of course, is no specific person, or teacher, but rather the learning process itself; you interacting with the divine cosmos in real-time.

this magnificent second verse continue on with the developmental process; how we become more transcendent individuals; "He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire" is more poetical bliss.  Very buddhist in thinking.  And then the Master "creates confusion in those who think that they know"; there is nothing quite like the cocksure person in this life; in terms of close-mindedness they are sealed tighter than a vacuum jar.  Think Richard Dawkins, or Christian Preachers.  Those that THINK THEY KNOW, know nothing at all.  Be open to all viewpoints, all the time keeping your own centredness.  Life is multifacteted; like a beautiful gleaming diamond, splintering the light in all directions.  Diversity is the rule of nature.

and we close with the zen couplet ... don't do, and things happen!

love and light my friends

ok, we get into the mystical Tao here ... enigmatic, terse, almost incoherent ... many competing, almost contradictory ideas at play.  Let's dissect.

"The Tao is like a well: used but never used up" - so the Tao is something like a life force; it persists, and continues on through the generations (like a mother giving birth to another mother) ... eternal, existing, powering.  The Tao IS what drives life and motion, creativity and dreams; it is in us, in nature, in the cosmos itself at the deepest level.  Could the Tao be the mysterious Aether of old?  that's for you to decide.

"It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities" - modern quantum mechanics sheds great light on this statement.  I don't know if the translation was done with this concept in mind (I am using the Stephen Mitchell translation from 1988) but it definitely sounds like he is referencing this idea.  The "eternal void" and "infinite possibilities" definitely point to a vacuum state where the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is playing rampant; ie random fluctuations around the zero point.  If the past two sentences made gobbledegook to you, then don't worry, modern physicists don't understand it either.  Just know that the forefront of modern physics in the 1930's realised that things couldn't be measured with an infinite precision; there was always something missing.  That missing something was the blurred edge of nature itself.  Chaos.  Randomness.  Creativity!

getting onto the last verse ... "It is hidden but always present" - sounds like the aether to me! ...

"I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God" - and Lao Tse graciously confesses that he doesn't know EVERYTHING.  The Tao is old, even older than god.  It is the matrix, the prime source for everything that is, was, and will be.  One can only marvel at it's timeless fertility.

love and light my friends.

well, this first verse could seem quite controversial to some.  "The Tao doesn't take sides; it gives birth to both good and evil" continuing on from the last piece of analysis, the Tao could be likened to a life force, to the Mothering Principle.  And just like a mother can give birth to sons and daughters that take different paths in life (some good, or positive, and some less good, which could be construed as negative) the Tao here is giving birth to "both good and evil".  And like the ever gracious, loving Mother the tao "doesn't take sides".  This can be truly hard to stomach for some people; and I fully understand.  But know that in any conflict there are always two forces in opposition, and neither can claim the eternal side of justice.  Such causes just do not exist in the world.

The next metaphor ties into the aether principle again.  "The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable".  It can be read in many ways; the tao is just an instrument, not a thing in itself; the tao is a focusing force; the tao is energy in the hands of those that wish to use it properly.

The next two lines of this second verse are just sublime.  "The more you use it, the more it produces" ... lovely!  you get more and more out of it!  not like oil or coal, this is a principle that extends into infinity!  and "the more you talk of it, the less you understand" ... ummm, maybe I should go silent right here :-)  But seriously, what I think Lao Tsu is referencing here is the contrast between the talkers about things (the so-called theorists) and the doers of things (the practitioners).  Think of the gulf between the baseball player who does, and the baseball analyst who talks.  Different things, no?  The Tao is most effective when integrated into your everyday actions, and becomes a seamless part of your worldview.  That is the ultimate goal of any wisdom school of teaching.

and we finish with a little piece of advice: "Hold on to the center".  Don't let yourself be drawn into the oppositional sides of any conflict (they each exaggerate their own positions) ... try and see the truth as it truly as, as it presents itself unfiltered.  Stay centred in yourself, and in your own experiences; the things that you have ACTUALLY LIVED THROUGH.  All else is just speculation; everything must ultimately be compared to your unique perspective and life path.

love and light

well, this promises to be a short exercise; but as we all well know, sometimes the shortest statements of truth leave the most left out.  The opening line reconfirms the mothering principle of the Tao, "empty yet inexhaustible" just like a womb ... and "gives birth to infinite worlds" is the creative fecundity.  This first verse doesn't appear to present too many difficulties, in light of the previous analysis we have done.

moving on ... "It is always present within you" which is something nice to know, and you "can use it any way you want" which is empowering to the core.

umm, not much meat here in these two verses ... and nothing overly profound or new.  Lao Tsu must have had a bad blogging morning that day (we all suffer from it from time to time).

how about I improvise a little tao?  let's see what the wanderer can dredge up -