Friday Abide Chapter 1 (Putkonen)
In May of 2013, Amy Putkonen began “Tao Tuesday” on www.TaoTeChingDaily.com. She would post a chapter from her excellent version of the Tao Te Ching, give her commentary on the chapter, and invite readers to do the same, and linked all the ‘Tao Tuesday” comments together. If you have any degree of interest in the Tao Te Ching, I Ching or Taoism, I encourage you to visit her site to explore it all. They are up to chapter 61 I think.
The summer being what it was, I dropped out of “Tao Tuesday” for a while, and it looks like Friday will be the day I can spend a little time with the topic. My general plan is to back up, restart, and re-visit the Tao Te Ching chapters in order…and then continue where I left off last spring. After exploring Amy’s version, I may repeat the process with my other favorite version, the Victor Mair translation. We’ll see. That is a LOT of Tao Te Ching.
I’d also like to explore what I call “one thing” topics…like the “one thing” from the City Slickers clip we talked about last Friday. These posts will really touch on the mind / spirit aspects of holistic health. That is the realm where stress does the most damage, and the realm that also holds the antidote to stress. My one thing, I’ve learned, is that there is no one thing other than the one I create…I have a weird shaped peg that doesn’t quite any existing holes. So my “one thing’ is actually a bunch of duct taped things that have proven themselves true to me over the past almost-50 years. In other words my “one thing” is that I have the ability to recognize truth, and do what is right for me, with or without anyone else’s approval.
Friday Abide is where I want to explore all sorts of abstract concepts and philosophy that might give us all something to lean on when it’s just one of those days. Or maybe even when things get really serious.
But let’s start with the easy stuff first: my commentary to Chapter 1 from Amy Putkonen’s version of the Tao Te Ching via her Tao Tuesday challenge from 5/13.
The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name.
Nothingness is the Origin of Heaven and Earth.
Beingness is the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things.
When you are free of desire, you will understand the Essence of your life.
When you identify with your desires, you will observe the manifestations of your life.
Both contain the deepest secrets arising from the dark unknown, the Doorway to the Mysteries of Life.
Language is a wonderful, miraculous, essential thing, but it is not everything. There are some things so profound, so large, that they escape words. They are even beyond pictures. Some things are only accessible through direct, wordless experience. Some things have to be seen with our heart looking with our mind’s eye.
And so it is with many of the ideas held withing the Tao Te Ching.
The old Zen example is the best one: think of someone pointing at the moon.
Desires, things, hopes, memories…they are all symbols. There is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with any of them, any more there is anything wrong with fingers, or pointing at pretty things. All those words, things and mental energies that are outside of the here-and-now are no more the larger reality than the finger pointing is actually the moon.
Even the moon is just a manifestation of the greater indescribable being of the universe – it is part of the larger cosmos, as are we.
The Tao is beyond the words describing it just as the moon is beyond the finger pointing at it…but it is not beyond our ability to see. Look up, and you can see the moon for yourself. Point to it for yourself, if you like. Just don’t start staring at fingers and miss the moon altogether.
