Tao Te Ching Day 2: The Master (with audio link)

Click Link for audio https://anchor.fm/matthew-whiteside/episodes/Tao-Te-Ching-Day-2-The-Masters-euh0pq

Day two and my mind is bent to hell. I think it has arthritis. It feels brittle and disorganized, I feel like understanding this text is realigning my DNA, and maybe it is. Maybe, I will be a different person than when I started, transformed by simple Universal Truths. I would love for that to be the case, and of course my desire for that to happen will be the only thing keeping it from happening.

Day two of my study of the Tao Te Ching, brought up Master’s, The Master, a Master. I don’t know exactly, but the text speaks very highly of the old teachers and those that have mastered, living one with the Tao.

The text says things like, “The master does nothing, and leaves nothing undone.”

“The master teaches, without speaking, accomplishes without action.”

Personally I love the part about doing nothing and nothing being left undone. I imagine my apartment spotless, as I sit there and read. The dishes do them selves, the laundry folds itself, and the bills pay them self. (Some times that does happen as I have an incredible girlfriend that does do a lot of those things, a lot of the time. But, I am not her master and I don’t believe that is what the text was referring.)

I do not believe the text was speaking of someone that had servants to do all the things they didn’t want to do.

I do not believe the text was referring to a teacher that manipulated their pupils into doing the work for them.

What I believe is being said is that mastering the Tao, is to master one self. To be completely at peace with the flow of the Tao means that we stop doing anything and we simply are.

Like, the moments when we drive from one place to another and completely lose track of time. We stopped doing the act of driving and simply drove. We were more “Being” in the moment than coming from the past into each moment.

A master, as is described in the Tao Te Ching, is not someone that practices the Tao, as practicing the Tao is also said to not be possible in the, Tao Te Ching. It is explained in a more binary way. You are either one with the Tao, or you are not.

The master therefore has found a way to be completely with the Tao, and in the Tao all the time.

This reminds me of Ram Dass, “Be Here Now.” If we can not practice being in the moment or the Tao, we must allow ourselves to slip into the Tao, almost by accident. The Zen philosophy of the only way to hit the target is by not trying to hit the target.

The more I try and hold on to the concept the more it feels as though its slipping away, like a dream after waking it just flows out of existence yet we know it is always there just out of reach and will come back at the least likely moment.

Becoming a master of the Tao is this such thing. It means for all of us to stop trying so damn hard all the time.

We are perpetually attacking life from the past never quite catching up because the target is perpetually where we aren’t.

It means to me that life is really only as difficult as we make it out to be. Sure, crazy things happen, cars break down, people lose job’s, loved ones, life savings. But, even in all of that we only lose ourselves because we had our eye on some illusory target. A target we created and never truly existed.

The “Tao Te Ching,” says that, “the Tao welcomes all things, and gives life to all thing, in this all things honor the Tao.” Then later on it says, you cannot offend the Tao or honor the Tao, and that you can’t practice the Tao. I am paraphrasing a bit on the last one, but the point is, the Tao can be confusing if we are looking for an answer.

The master, is not in search of any answer or out come, therefore every answer and every outcome is welcome.

When we become like the master we strip away all of our past stories and our future desires and see all of life in this one perpetual infinite moment. The infinite moment that is full of every potential imaginable x 2 infinity, that is a freaking lot.

The master does not concern them selves with the worrying of the future because they know that every end is a new beginning, and in each new moment is a limitless possibility for the full array of creation.

I won’t sugar coat this for you, these masters seem to only exist in the text of books. They didn’t have traffic back then, I suppose.

Yesterday, I got up from meditation and felt like I had, spent an hour with God in an Infinite realm of light. Twenty minutes later I was at a stop light and someone came up behind me and squeezed by to go right at the red light. My mind was so offended, that they possibly could have honked at me, which they didn’t, and that I am a good person just trying to go make a living, why are people in such a hurry? That’s right, I was in an argument about absolutely nothing, with no one after feeling enlightened for an hour.

Maybe not everyone has these incidents, but I know that I do on a daily basis. Which is when the “Tao Te Ching” say’s, “the Tao, forgives all” I feel thankful. I am also reminded that it parallels what Jesus said in the Bible. That any person that has impure thoughts has sinned in the eyes of God, but that we are to forgive one another as we are all sinners. I don’t believe he just meant all those people besides himself, I believe he was including himself, and I include him as a master.

Jesus was saying, look, it is impossible not to have these thoughts, because these thoughts are a part of all of creation. You are not broken for having them. You are simply the creation and the creator, you are one with all of it. So, let’s forgive ourselves these things and love one another as we are all the same thing.

This is what the master knows we are all the evil and the good, the light and the dark. We are every ounce of every negative and positive in the entire universe. To get hung up on either is to lose sight of the Tao. Which is to say, to no longer be one with it.

The “Tao Te Ching” says that one can not practice the Tao and that the concepts taught by Lao Tzu are simple and easy to understand, that a superior person that hears these teachings lives them after hearing them, and not superior person tries to practice the teachings, and that a idiot laughs at the teachings.

So here is what I want every one to do. Try all three, see which one feels the most like you and then forget you ever read this and instead sit quietly with yourself and listen to your heart the true master of you.

I know this was a long one thanks for sticking it out with me. I swear the more I read this book the more the words pour out of me, the connections seem to be coming more and more.

If anyone has any question’s related to the Tao, feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to answer you in the most confusing way possible, as is customary with the Tao.

Happy Day.