Pursue knowledge, daily gain
Pursue Tao, daily loss
TTC 48 (Lin)
We live in a fickle world, with fickle people and fickle ideas. The word fickle is fickle. I am fickle for writing it and it rhymes with pickle. Can you see the insanity in this.
We the people believe in gaining more an more from a material world whether it be through knowledge or any other form of accumulation. What I see here in chapter 48 is a truth bomb.
Lao Tzu is showing us truth at its purest core. When we pursue knowledge, or any other thing we are accumulating more and more of the thing we are seeking, in so doing we find there is a never ending pursuing of ideas and images, thoughts and theories that we must take on as our selves.
When we pursue the Tao we begin to shed away all these constraints of ideas, of boundaries of thought and theory. We shed away who we are. We shed away what we are. We shed away why we are. Because the truth of the Tao is a refining fire that burns away all the false stories of this world.
“Loss and more loss
Until one reaches unattached action
With unattached action, there is nothing one cannot do.”
TTC 48 (Lin)
When we acquire the knowledge we so desperately seek, the practices we desire to help us become something, we attach ourselves to a certain pattern of living, a fixed construct of life that has a clear yes and a clear no.
Bend in this position, pray in this way. Don’t swear to God. Ask for forgiveness on your knees, while holding rosary beads. We become dogmatic in our beliefs and not just religious ones but every day beliefs, like you must go and find a job when you leave college and work at it no matter how much you hate it because that’s what responsible adults do.
You must hide your feelings and not show weakness because men are not weak.
When we attach ourselves in this way to any knowledge or belief system we cut our selves off from the source of creation. We lose the ability to see straight because we can only see in one direction when we hold to our hard fought knowledge.
What happens if we are looking for something that is behind the wall but we can’t see past the wall to the bend in the hallway because we can only see in the direction we have learned to see?
The Tao Te Ching, is expressing the virtue of letting all beliefs, all knowledge fall away so that we are not weighed down by it and so we become truly unlimited.
“Take the world by constantly applying noninterference.
The one who interferes is not qualified to take the world.”
TTC 48 (Lin)
We can see that in our actions based on decisions, stemming from the accumulation of knowledge to make the RIGHT decision we interfere with the natural unfolding of things and thus keep things exactly as they have always been without even realizing it.
Then we fall into a state of despair unable to understand how we could feel so lost even after we did the thing we Thought we were supposed to do.
Because, there is nothing to do.
We live in a holographic universe, sending electrical signals to our brains that turn these signals into what we call reality, which in turn elicits a wave of emotions that tell us what is happening is either good or bad, positive or negative. When the truth is, it is neither.
The truth is, we could sit perfectly still in meditation and experience all the incredible feelings we spend a life time chasing by simply allowing them to come forward from inside of ourselves. Everything already exist inside of us.
It is a false belief that we need to acquire anything to attain something. We already are everything.
Let the Tao cut through the knowledge we hold so dear and release you from the prison of Knowing.
Be unknown and everything will be miraculous. In this eternal Now.
Happy Day
Seeking Purpose Today 