Therefore the good person is the teacher of the bad person
The bad person is the resource of the good person
TTC 27 (Lin)
I want to help people; I really have a desire to help people. Because I needed a great deal of help, other people’s service saved my life. I believe in teaching people to fish, not giving them fish; unless they are starving and need to eat first before the lesson.
I start by saying I want to help people because I find myself in a situation where the person that exemplifies all the ways in which I find myself qualified to help in this world, completely blocking me from helping them. Yet, they ask for me to help them, but only how they want to be helped.
It is infuriating to know so much better and to know that they know better, yet they do not do better out of their own unwillingness to save themselves. So, as they are free to do as they wish, I am stuck with the weight of my own inability to help in the way that I want to help.
It sounds like I am doing the same thing as the person that is unwilling to accept my help. Ram Dass said in a lecture, “my need to help people created a space where I needed people around that needed my help.” I can create the helpless people in the world by deciding that I need to be identified as a helper.
This is the meaning of “the bad person is the resource.” Even though I don’t think of people as bad or good, it is simply a sense of me looking for moral superiority.
“Can’t you see that the way I am living is THE WAY to live and the way you are living is for rats and other sewer dwellers?”
By me identifying as a helper, I am seeking out those that need help, but not just seeking them out I am creating them, in that no matter how they are, I can not see them as perfect as they are because if they were already whole, I could not be the helper I identified myself to be, so now I am trapped, and they are trapped with me.
“Good speech does not seek faults,
Good reckoning does not use counters
Good closure needs no bar and yet cannot be opened
Good knot needs no rope and yet cannot be untied.”
TTC 27 (Lin)
The great path is wide, means that all the ways in which people choose to use their consciousness and live their lives are entirely up to them. That is their freedom of choice.
Good speech and good knots, to me, mean loving as is. This is how my Dad (and yes, I am talking about my dad) chooses to live. He wants me to help him in the way he wants; it is not my place to force help on him that he does not want. If I can love him as is, I can be again with the Tao, as the nature of all things, even the nature of how he is living his life, are a part of the whole.
I wanted to write today about how I am “the good” teacher, and he is “the bad person,” but those labels are bullshit.
In reality, he teaches me how to accord with the Tao and the nature of all things by not labeling it good or bad, right or wrong.
The one who wants to learn does, the one who doesn’t teaches.
Forcing my will to help is no better than him forcing his will to not accept the help I want to give. I don’t need to try so hard to make things work the way I want them to. I also do not have to keep putting myself in unhealthy situations.
I have the choice to keep myself healthy and allow him to go the way he needs to go, and still love him as is.
Now it doesn’t mean I like this reality, but I can accept it.
The truth is it is freaking irritating dealing with someone that you know you are like in so many ways and watch them fall apart when you know their salvation is within their power.
I don’t have to like reality to accept it; I can focus on becoming the person that is better able to accept the reality of other people’s free will.
I find it hardest with those most like me. Because if I have to watch them fail to reach enlightenment, to attain peace and infinity in this lifetime, it means that I might not either, and that scares me.
I don’t like being scared.
So I will live in the way that I believe is best, and if it is so, maybe he will follow suit, or perhaps I’ll have to wait till we come back round again.
Who we are is a question of what we do. Or maybe who we are is a question of what we’ve done. No, perhaps it is a question of what we strive to be, our intentions, and not our actions. No, that isn’t it either. Maybe who we are is a question of what we question.
Take the question, how do I become a better father? In that question lies my desire to be a good dad, therefore who I am is a good dad, or at least that is what my self is identified as. Or if I question why people are jerks. Well, then I am recognized as something opposite of jerk. Because if I was a jerk, I could understand why other people were jerks.
How about if I question everything? Nothing is safe from the “why” that awaits the reality that lay before me. If I question everything, it is because I am identifying as nothing. Because to question the nature of something or the how-to of a thing, I pull into question my being, as the thing in question is what I believe it to be (i.e., Jerk) from my perspective. So, then to question everything would be to make me the opposite of everything, which is to say that I am then in that moment nothing.
To trust everything and question nothing is to be everything. Why would I question what I, myself, am? I wouldn’t. That would be nonsense.
So then we can see that to put into question anything is to separate ourselves from the very thing itself. Yet, we question to better understand the thing, possibly in hopes of becoming more like the thing itself. But this questioning defeats itself because it calls into question the very nature of what we are, and not knowing what we are, we somehow believe by understanding something outside of us, we will find a clue to ourselves.
To question is to divide, separate, make numbered the whole. Why number a whole? It is already whole? We subdivide the world to make better sense of it, but in so doing, we confound our own minds by creating 10,000 things. How many filing cabinets do you want labeled vegetables?
Where is this coming from, you may be wondering? Well, it is coming from observation of myself. When I look within, I see that all things have their own place, space, and way. Yet all these things are still me in every sense, they are all working towards the same exact end which is to keep me breathing and seeding, (I know pretty archaic).
Looking within, should I question my blood cells as they travel through my circulatory system? What if I questioned my heart every time it beat? Or, more to the point, what if I asked each electrical signal that transmitted thoughts from neuron to neuron in my brain? I would be a crazy sumabitch. This is the nature of Dualistic thinking, and it is absolute madness.
Because dividing one whole once leads to another division as it only makes sense that if one told us X, then two will tell us Y. But if that is the case, we should never stop dividing. And if we never stop dividing, then we will never stop. And so we will always have something to find that isn’t quite us because we can divide it again. We were looking for the whole all along—oneness, union, Universality, and it is already here within us; it is us. We have only to stop questioning, stop dividing.
Your joy, peace, contentment, and happiness are already a part of you. It does not need to be dissected, isolated, and reproduced; it already exists in its purest, most complete form without any further extraction.
Not accepting things as they are, we dissect our lives from the ones we wish we had and create ones we don’t want because we think there is something to find. What if, as you are right now, with exactly what you have is all you will ever need? Because it is, at this moment. We question to find more resources. We don’t need more resources. We need more resourcefulness.
I remember a time in my life when I was first getting sober that I thought getting out of bed to brush my teeth and shower was the most significant accomplishment any human could ever reach.
Three years later and my overall hygiene is at an all-time high. I only stink some days, and my teeth are gold star certified by my dentist. And as the accomplishment of hygiene by a man that could barely get out of bed because of his alcohol addiction is excellent, I find my life has become more complicated.
Today my problems include writing a long or short blog post and whether or not I am going to the best school to receive my master’s degree in addiction counseling.
You see, when my choices were limited to cleaning myself up and not drinking, life was simpler. It was hell for sure, but it was more straightforward. Now that I have so many incredible blessings in my life, I am stuck trying to choose the best blessing, which is such a great problem to have, and one that I am so thankful for.
But it reminds me to check myself. The Tao Te Ching reminds me that having all these blessings can leave me confused, and in my confusion, I can remain stuck, not wanting to make a wrong decision. Well, as Justin Timberlake sings, “What goes around comes back around, I thought I told ya, hey.” You can check my source on that one, good song. If it’s the wrong choice, it will come back around, and I can choose again.
Anyway, my fear of making a wrong decision from the plethora of resources I get to choose from today is forgetting the fact that I am here in this incredible place after making a million terrible decisions. It’s like God said, “Well Matt, you flunked all those classes you applied to, so I am going to remove them from your record and let you take them again, as long as you promise to apply your self.” And I said, “Absolutely God, I will.” That is the gift of grace and forgiveness; as long as I do my part to clean up my side of the street and I’m not dead, I have another chance.
So, why do I think this next decision will break me? Why am I so afraid that I won’t be taken care of?
Because having much makes me confused. But I am confused based on the idea that this next decision is my anchor and it’s not. My anchor was a decision I made when I decided to get up, throw away the vodka, brush my teeth and go to a meeting. I chose to trust in something much greater than my knowledge.
I decided to put my faith in something greater than me, or a billion Google searches. I put my trust in the Tao, or The Universe, Or God, Or Higher Power. I don’t have a specific name for my higher power, as you could see from two blogs ago, Fuck Names.
This faith in something greater than me ensures that whether I choose one college or another, I will be ok, and I will learn exactly what I need to learn from the experience of the decision I make. Because belief in my higher infinite power also assures me that nothing ever ends, and all the fear that we feel is a calling to pull us by faith towards it. I do not have to fear failure anymore because failure no longer exists. The only things that exist for me today are Lessons and Blessings, as one of my old sponsors liked to say.
I will learn from my experience if I have an open mind, but if I also have an open heart, I will receive the blessings that are all wrapped up for me in the experiences to come.
“If I have a little knowledge
Walking on the great Tao
I fear only to deviate from it
The great Tao is broad and plain
But people like the side paths.
TTC 53 (Lin)
I will stick to the broad and plain path. I will remain with little knowledge and a great anchor.
The Sun shining through the trees above my head at the river.
We went to the river today. The weather in Georgia has been hot and cold; today has been a cool and pleasant day. It is nice to get out in nature, be amongst the trees, the rocks, and the water. It speaks in a way that no person could.
Nature gives instruction with out uttering a word.
“The Sage teaches with out speaking, accomplishes without action.”
TTC
I learned so much simply by being in the presence of a great teacher: the outdoors.
While taking a break from walking, I found myself staring at the water in the river as it rushed by moving over the top of the rocks in its glossy flow. The sun shone overhead as trees hung their new spring leaves over my head and reflected in the water.
I noticed the way the water reflected the trees as it rushed by. A distorted image of the trees emerged in the water, and an idea blossomed in my mind.
As I sat there peacefully, taking in the view, my mind went to how insane I felt yesterday and how the world seemed off to me—watching the river, I realized where I was yesterday.
The mind is like a mirror, and when my liquid mirror is in disarray moving and rushing in every direction, it reflects life in a distorted way. It is not that life is wrong or harmful, or even not as it should be; it is simply that my mind is moving too fast in some direction to reflect life as it truly is.
When I allowed myself to calm down, go to a meeting, vent my insanity, meditate, talk to other people working through their insanity, my mind was able to settle.
“Can you let your dust settle and allow action to arise naturally, Letting things settle every thing finds its place.”
TTC
My mind calms and settled; I was once again able to reflect on the world as the perfect assembly, all its pieces in their proper places. All people moving and doing just as they should. Every player, playing the part they are to be playing in this moment.
The river taught me that.
And it also showed me that sometimes we move faster, and sometimes we move slower. Sometimes we reflect the truth of reality, and sometimes our perception can be distorted, but the fact remains, we are still flowing to the same place. It is the nature of things.
I am not sure if Lao Tzu was ever speaking of a person when he was referring to the Sages in the Tao Te Ching, part of me is starting to believe that Lao Tzu was speaking of nature. Maybe one day, I can be in harmony with my true nature and allow it all to flow as easy as a river on a cool summer day.
Either way, the peace I found sitting on a rock watching the water was the lesson I needed, and the teacher did not say a word and did not act, but I understood every word and every movement.
What limitations I place on Tao are the same limitations I place on my existence. To name anything is to lose the essence of the thing.
“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” Chap. 1
Right from the start, we are warned not to name this eternal power. We are given explicit instructions that to name it is to lose it.
Yet, I name. I name. I name. I name. Dammit, I limit all that could be by my fear of the unknown.
My fear of the mystery leaves me caught up in the known reality of my little life.
“What do you do,” someone asks?
“Oh, I am a writer,” I reply.
“Awesome, what do you write?” They say.
“I write about spirituality and also fantasy.”
“Whoa, that’s cool.” They kindly respond.
Then I sit there wondering, is that me? Is that all I am, someone who simply writes about spirituality? Someone who only writes about magic or fantasy?
And I hate myself for it because I know I have taken the Tao’s name in vain. Can you see it?
I am a writer, is blasphemy to what I really am, to what Tao really is.
I am the unnamable.
You may be thinking, “take it easy, Matt, it’s not that big of a deal.”
Nay, I say to you. Nay, like a horse in the house.
As soon as I speak this little story of what the nameless is, it becomes named and therefore fixed. Being fixed, it will only manifest itself in this way, the way I chose to bring its nameless name to life.
Why is that important? Why is it important? Why?!!!
Because what if the desires of my heart are not in line with the reality I am naming? Meaning, what if I say I am a writer, but the Tao is trying to bring something else through me, something more?
Why do I continue to limit infinity in this way? The Tao is flowing towards perfection constantly, yet here I am telling everyone which way my Tao is supposed to flow as if I somehow know or can even direct its flow. I feel myself swimming against the current when I name.
I believe this is at the heart of my addiction for more. I name something I want, and knowing I have just limited myself, I scrape and scream for every drop of anything else I can get my hands on because I just cut myself off from infinity.
We are trapped here by false rituals, rituals empty of heart, producing only more rituals.
“Ritual is the husk of true faith.”
TTC
This can mean rituals are the trash to be thrown away and keep us from the fruit of faith, or that the husk is the guardian and the doorway into the fruit of true faith. Either way, the meaning will be derived from the application of the ritual.
Our rituals are empty, so they make more rituals (mess). I have a pattern for making money; it’s called a job. This ritual only serves itself. As my way of making money eventually traps me into the ritual act of doing more work to produce more money to have more of what I want more of. The ritual increases itself and enslaves me to its process so that I believe I can not make money unless I have a job and work XYZ amount.
The same can be said for anything we do. Have you seen those people that have coffee mugs that read, “don’t talk to me, I haven’t had my coffee yet.” We have rituals for talking to other people. We need be fully stimulated before engaging.
Do you see this madness? We are then ritualistic about naming. “This is a thing I see, so I must name it.” Because how can anything in a dualistic world exist unnamed?
“The 10,000 things all have names; they don’t need anymore.”
TTC
So, we name it as a ritual to feel secure in our knowledge, and in our security, we create the prison for which we live bound by our fear of the great mystery. Led by empty rituals that are means to no end, yet they are familiar, so we keep them.
Fuck that.
However, if I speak the names and practice the ritual from my true nature, that is honoring the Tao. That is how the Sages lived.
“Can you let your dust settle and allow action to arise naturally?”
In this way, we are not trapped by contrived action but free to live the way we were created to live, in pure connection with the Tao.
Such elegance with which this prison has been constructed. Look at it with all its space and depth. Its variety and beauty, the scents and textures of a truly remarkable heaven.
It is all that it is because I have created it this way. A heaven with so much variety, yet only a few of the 10,000 things are used. Only that which I am familiar with I allow to become familiar with me.
My named termanel life,
With its fixed positsions
illusions of ideas, and novelty.
Touch the sun, can you?
Go anywhere, do you?
Have anything, will you?
No,
They are ruled by the named one,
The judge of all judges, the masked faces of all things.
I am trapped because I name,
I name because of this trap,
I think identifying my cell will help me escape.
There is no escape; the opposite of the way things are is still the way things are; the only ones who are free have left this ritual of naming and go within.
I even require inspiration for my inspiration. Does anything come from the original source, or is it all ping pong balls bouncing off rocks at a rodeo?
Happy day.
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In and out, effortless motion like the ocean meeting the beach. That effortless place is magnificent in so many unspoken words. It is a place of true tranquility. What more is needed in the space between in and out?
What a gift it is to experience this union with life. The perpetual in and out of giving and receiving. The sweetest breath out of life gives to life that which it requires to be a part of life. Holding on to the life inside of us keeps us from life.
So all we must do is give freely and in freely giving we are able to continue our natural process of recieving. By holding on we shrink our own ability to recieve more. By giving more, we receive more; this is how breathing works. If we wish to expand our lungs we must constrict them by pushing all the air out, in so doing we create a greater space to reicieve the air that we need, and on and on it goes.
This is true for all things in life; all life is energy. Energy can come in forms that we perceive physically or in a nonphysical form, such as a thought; when we have ideas that are difficult to accept or process, they hold an energetic resonance close to that of a large rock or boulder.
I am sure you have experienced this phenomenon before, where an idea or the thought of something impossible comes into your mind’s eye. It is like running into a great wall, dense and seemingly impossible to digest or get past.
However, it is just an energy, like a mountain would be. If I had to overcome a mountain, I would not focus on the mountain’s peak for which I had to climb or the mass of the mountain of which it was made. Instead, I would focus on the energy given to me by the density of the mountain. The density allows me to scale it.
The wind has no density, so it is much more challenging to climb. Yet, the wind can be just as impeding as a mountain.
The wind has no density, so it is much more challenging to climb. Yet the wind can be just as impeding as a mountain.
-M. W.-
Think of what you can give to the obstacle inside of you, because believe it or not, what we see as a great stopping force or block is the same as if we felt the most positive thought, imagine a beautiful flower or someone you love. They are both only giving the energy that they are made of.
We are gifted in this way as humans that we can see that we are in a relationship with all things and move accordingly. What is it the dense energy is trying to give to me, maybe a place to put my feet so that I may move? So, I must only be willing to give back to it. I match its hardness with my softness; I am not as brutal as this mountain, yet I am more flexible and capable of movement, so I give it my flexibility and agility; it returns my gift with its gift of a solid foundation, and we help each other in this way.
It then becomes no challenge, no obstacle, but only a loving relationship.
“If one wishes to shrink it
One must first expand it
If one wishes to weaken it
One must first strengthen it
If one wishes to discard it
One must first promote it
If one wishes to seize it
One must first give it
This is called subtle clarity
The soft and weak overcome the tough and strong
Fish cannot leave the depths
The sharp instruments of the state
Cannot be shown to the people.
TTC 36 (Lin)
What in your life feels like the waves being held back from the beach? What energy are you dealing with that you may be unwilling to see how you can be in a relationship with it?
I have done this a lot in my life, fighting the gifts given to me because they do not appear as the relationship I would like them to be. They show up in the way they need to show up to meet me as I am now.
If I can meet life as I am now and be in loving union with the way things are, I can see that I am given everything I could ever want or need, and my only problem is I am not letting go of who I was to make room for who I am becoming.
Imagine your life as a room you live in, and in this room are all the things you have loved. The room has become extremely cramped and full, and even though it is full of all that you love, it is still uncomfortable to be in the room because there is no more space left. So, we have to make more space, and to make more space, we have to allow the room to be broken down and for the things inside of it to be moved out, so they do not get destroyed in the process. When we move all that we hold on to out of this room, the room can be expanded, so that we can live in a much freer way.
Do not be afraid to empty the room and begin tearing down the walls to build new ones; what you hold dear holds dear to you and will return if we allow it.
Again we must only allow this eternal flow of in and out to happen, and all else will take care of itself.
We are already gifted with all we need.
What gift will you give to your life today?
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Have you ever had a day where it felt like you were damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t? Shit, I know I have. Today feels like one of those damned days.
The interesting thing about these days is that they look on the outside like every other day. It is filled with all the same rituals and practices that make up every other day, except on these damned days, something important is missing.
Something that many of you already probably have a sense of what I am talking about. It shows up like this—-
Coffee doesn’t give you the pep it usually does.
The morning routine feels flat or even labored.
No song, radio station, or podcast sounds good.
And no matter what the weather is outside, it is the opposite of what you wish it were.
Can you dig it? Do you know this day?
I think if you are human, you do. I believe this is the essence of what the human experience is.
It is the day of mud, grime, and overall blandness. It is the paradoxical unity.
Days like today for me are a testament to what the eastern teachers like Lao Tzu taught. Our humanity is half of the cosmic puzzle to this crazy game we are in.
The Western world of religion teaches that the way to God is through our divine nature. Meaning we must push away our shortcomings, we must not give in to temptations, we must be perfect to reach an ideal heaven.
The Eastern teaching is about reaching Tao, or God, through our humanity. It is in our impossibly imperfect nature that we meet our divine nature. There is no other way around it in the teaching of Taoism, Buddhism, and others.
We are human, and some day’s we are so human that we would miss water throwing a rock off a boat. That is the nature of what we are, and it fucking sucks.
I feel lost at sea these days, uninspired, unmotivated like there is no reason to do anything like God has left me. As if the Tao would flow through a sad sack like me.
However, I find that these are the days that it flows at the deepest levels of our experiential life. When we are entirely lost is when we are most ready to be used. When we can not see past our nose for the darkness that surrounds us, we have no choice but to surrender to what it is that is carrying us.
So like Kent M. Keith wrote in his book “Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments,” “We do it anyway.”
Because that is the paradox, is it not that we humans of such weak and smashable material are made from the same stuff as stars and planets.
We little humans formed in the image of something that loves us even though we exist in this flawed form.
That is the Paradoxical Unity that all of creation Tao is also us. It doesn’t make sense, and luckily it doesn’t have to make sense.
Think of our existence here, so infantesmel in the context of the Universe surrounding us, yet we thrive on a planet with an invisible life-giving force that has no limit (oxygen).
It is incredible that on days like today, I could be without faith or doubt that what is happening the only thing that could be happening; if it weren’t, then something else would be happening.
Lao Tzu gives us this indication of a paradoxical unity in the very first chapter of the Tao Te Ching.
“These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders“
TTC 1 (Lin)
Two names—
Divinity
Humanity
The mystery is the paradox. Why from something so immense and magnificent is something made that is so small and faulty?
However, one does not exist without the other. The greatness of everything is only happening inside the meagerness of that which is me.
I am only happening because of the magnificence of the Tao. This significant disparity creates all that is. We contain all that is in something so weak and little, and we are supported by all that is in all its majesty.
What a paradox; it is no wonder some days, Hoobastank just doesn’t cut it. A lot is going on in here.
But as Kent said, “do it anyway.”
Happy Day.
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Each moment strung up, like shoes on a power line,
Hanging with innoncent composure
Dust filled gusts, sway the line.
Now is all we have,
In all we need we spare a dime
To the Innocent one’s hung up on time
Given no thought no passing mind
Are we more than shoes tied forever to a power line?
I have been debating my existence for quite a while now. Constantly in question over whether who I am, what I am doing, is all for the true purpose of my life.
Being in constant debate with oneself can lead to many neurotic tendencies in one’s life. “Is this the highest good? Should I do this instead of that? Is what I am doing now, going to put me in a better position in the future?”
Constantly questioning, means that I am never truly at peace with myself in the moment. I never truly trust that what I am doing is the Perfect thing to be doing.
And there is the operative word, Perfect. Because I somehow still exist in a world where being perfect is possible. This is one of my oldest and most difficult programs to unravel and rewrite. It keeps showing itself in my life over and over again. All I can think to do is call it out as the lie that it is.
I am not perfect, nor will I ever make the ideal choices, leading to the perfect life. It just won’t happen. What will happen is that I will live with Perfect forgiveness and Love at this moment, allowing it to be whatever the hell it wants to be.
How can I forgive and love perfectly, easily? I do this, by letting go of whatever is happening at this moment and accepting it as precisely what it is supposed to be, and trusting that it could be no other way. I say it is easy jokingly, but I know that it is possible.
I am not a fortune teller, so I can not predict future outcomes. I can only control me in the here and now, and to get to the here, and now I have to accept it, warts and all, as it is.
Lucky for me Lao Tzu comes through again, with wisdom on how to reach such a state of acceptance in chapter 28
Know the masculine, hold to the feminine
Be the watercourse of the world
Being the watercourse of the world
The eternal virtue does not depart
Return to the state of the infant
Know the white, hold to the black
Be the standard of the world
Being the standard of the world
The eternal virtue does not deviate
Return to the state of the boundless
Know the honor, hold to the humility
Be the valley of the world
Being the valley of the world
The eternal virtue shall be sufficient
Return to the state of plain wood
Plain wood splits, then becomes tools
The sages utilize them
And then become leaders
Thus the greater whole is undivided
TTC 28 (Lin)
Lao Tzu sets out a few ways to bring ourselves to this space of accepting the Now.
1. Holding to the Feminine means holding to being receptive to what the world is doing, being open. The masculine is assertive, the feminine receptive
2. Return to the state of an infant- an infant is unknowing of any outcomes. They exist in the present, acting without contrived intent. Knowing the white means understand the fixed reality but hold to the black, which is an eternal reality, an infinite creative space.
3. Returning to the state of plain wood means dropping who we think we are and the usefulness we believe we hold and allowing a new type of usefulness to arise in us.
I sometimes forget that in the book of Genesis, the story of “The Garden of Eden,” there was another tree aside from “The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.” The second tree in the garden was called “The Tree of Life.”
You may be wondering what this has to do with the Tao Te Ching, an Eastern Taoist philosophy. Well, I will tell you. It has everything to do with it.
The similarities between what Lao Tzu was teaching and those which are in the Old and the New Testament is, in my opinion, eye-opening.
Eye-opening, because as a westerner born into a Catholic family, but with more profound Christian beliefs, my lens sees through this vail of the Bible as the great Holy book.
Good or bad, that is just the way it is for me.
However, a significant revelation has come to me because of this lens.
The Garden of Eden story always left me feeling rather sad, as if we were destitute and without a saving grace once we ate of the Tree of Knowledge. And in the lens of Catholicism or even Christianity, we were, that is, of course, until Jesus showed up and whammed all that crap into the grave, right?
Here is the amazing thing that came to me. Jesus taught forgiveness, letting go of our anxious lives, and living with faith and trust in a loving creator. That we are the source and the creation. We are sons and daughters of God. To forgive because, we were all in need of forgiveness. Because we all ate of the Tree of Knoweledge. We all knew right and wrong and because we judged the many things we would then be judged. Having to be judged we needed ultimate forgiveness, a clean slate. So that was the saving grace of Christ.
Lao Tzu taught something very similar. He put it like this.
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and nonbeing produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other1
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other2
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
TTC 2 (Lin)
The long and short of Chapter 2 is the story of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” And what follows about the Sage’s is an account of, if you look closely, how Jesus went about teaching.
But, it doesn’t stop there. Lao Tzu teaches us precisely how to get back to the Garden of Eden, so to speak.
I find that I continue to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, day after day. Because I believe this knowledge will allow me the ability to do only good and produce in my life all the things I desire. Yet, the opposite is true.
Because I plan to do Good, Evil arises, and thus I have done nothing but bring about judgment, which entraps us back into a moral cage. One in which many religious people find themselves.
The Good news is that I do not have to continue to eat of the “Tree of Knowledge,” knowing what its fruit bears— being thrown from The Garden and living in a dangerous wilderness.
So, here is what Lao Tzu says on how to get back.
End sagacity; abandon knowledge1
The people benefit a hundred times
End benevolence; abandon righteousness
The people return to piety and charity
End cunning; discard profit
Bandits and thieves no longer exist
These three things are superficial and insufficient
Thus this teaching has its place:
Show plainness; hold simplicity
Reduce selfishness; decrease desires
TTC 19 (Lin)
Here in Chapter 19, Lao Tzu tells us how to put down the fruit of The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil and pick up the fruit of The Tree of Life.
When we again become like little children in a mindless state of unknowing the outcomes of any actions we live once again in the Garden, to be in the Garden is to be directly connected with The Source of all or The Tao.
He didn’t just leave us there tho, in chapter 20, he continues to tell us how to put down our finite ways of life and pick up eternal life.
Cease learning, no more worries1
Respectful response and scornful response
How much is the difference?
Goodness and evil
How much do they differ?2
What the people fear, I cannot be unafraid3
So desolate! How limitless it is!4
The people are excited As if enjoying a great feast
As if climbing up to the terrace in spring
I alone am quiet and uninvolved
Like an infant not yet smiling5
So weary, like having no place to return
The people all have surplus
While I alone seem lacking
I have the heart of a fool indeed—so ignorant!
Ordinary people are bright
I alone am muddled
Ordinary people are scrutinizing
I alone am obtuse6
Such tranquility, like the ocean
Such high wind, as if without limits7
The people all have goals
And I alone am stubborn and lowly
I alone am different from them
And value the nourishing mother8
TTC 20 (Lin)
I hope anyone reading this can appreciate the full beauty of this in context with Genisis in the bible.
We eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and we are thrown from immortality and into disgrace away from the loving source of all creation. We scrutinize and analyze life now in this way and become cruel and discerning, thinking we have everything, treating one another as though we are higher or lower.
But Lao Tzu speaks in poetic language about what it looks like to be fully connected to the source. It looks different than all these intelligent people. It looks different than adults, busy with a judgemental and analyzing life. It seems more like that of a life of a child. Not knowing that what they are doing is good or bad, it just is—not knowing that they should feel that they need to do something to help them grow better. They just grow.
The last line says’s “And value the nourishing mother.” I see this as I eat willingly from the tree of life.
Thus we have a superb choice upon us. We can live in the harsh wilderness, full of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Or, we can pick up the nourishment from the Tree of Life and live once again in the Eternity that was always available to us.
This is why the Tao Te Ching also says, “In acquiring knowledge, each day something new is added. In learning of the Tao, each day, something is lost.”
We unlearn so that we may live in the eternal now. There is a Zen saying, “do not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.”
Meaning we live in a perpetual state of The Unknown, which is the truest state of faith in something greater than I. To remain there is to live again in the Garden of Eden.
The only way to unknow anything is to do the opposite of what you know to do.
I heard Alan Watts say, “In the zen teaching of “Wu Wei” (The way of no way), we do not make plans; making plans is like telling the Devil what we are going to do. Never tell the Devil your plans.”
The Devil, in this context, is seen as Self-awareness; when we are aware of self, we are aware of the Good and The Bad of things. Thus the Devil can be seen as the lower power telling us all the reasons as to why our plans will not work.
Sure, we can use a powerful self-will to push through these lower self issues. However, I have found in my own experience, being overly self-aware because of the way we understand knowledge leads only to misery, as the outcomes we strive for come to fruition in the ways we could have never imagined.
For instance, let’s say we want to write a book, so we go about writing the book. Still, underlying writing a book is the purpose of writing the book, which is to become rich and famous, and so what we write is not of service to anything other than a means to becoming rich and famous. We are attached to a certain outcome and because of that attachment we can not be grateful for the incredible accomplishment of writing a book that transformed us and may help others.
Because, we knowing anything of anything can not make a right or good decision, because there is always the inverse in that right or good decision. So, we must make decisions without knowing that we are deciding anything and that there is no outcome of our knowledge as a child or a dull person would. Not knowing that we are producing an outcome is the only way to produce a truly virtous outcome, and to do that is to unlearn everything we have ever known.
We must become again like naked children in the garden and choose this time to remain eating from the Tree of Life.
What does “favor and disgrace make one fearful” mean?
Favor is high; disgrace is low
Having it makes one fearful
Losing it makes one fearful
This is “favor and disgrace make one fearful”
TTC 13 (Lin)
I see the deceit in the many things produced by life. The lies that are told without words or intentions. I see them as they tell me they are more than me.
The value in all those things that lay outside of myself are without names, but they are everything that is named. The 10,000 things, as the Tao Te Ching calls them.
How can I place more value on them than on myself? I think little of me and much of them. I am insignificant, and they are with great significance—the many, the anything other than me. Yet, I can only see myself concerning them. I can only see my meager way in light of their greatness. My self-delusion blinds me. I think of me too much and we too little.
Think of the person you love the most in the world. Think of the thing that holds the most significant value to you, that if you lost it, you would lose yourself. Or the person or thing that you would do anything for, even die.
Can you see this person or thing? This is our disorder, our sickness.
We see that there are so many things in this world we love so much we would spend our lives in a broken crawl towards them, and only for the hope to get closer, not even to have.
Because we never really Have anything. We fantasize that we do, but we don’t; that kind of longing for a person or thing only means that it has us and that we are empty because we spent a lifetime making a space for it.
Because we value anything above OurSelf, we will never have anything.
What does “the greatest misfortune is the self” mean?
The reason I have great misfortune
Is that I have the self
If I have no self
What misfortune do I have?
TTC 13 (Lin)
This then is what Lao Tzu means, we do not value ourselves as much as we value the world, so we lose constantly, always in loss we think we don’t deserve, but only because we chase things outside of ourselves.
Our chasing the world around us is a sign to “Life” that we do not value ourselves, so the Universe, in turn, does not match great value with little value. We tell the Universe every day what we are worth, by what we chase.
Are you chasing a certain amount of money? Well then, here is your worth. Are you pursuing a particular person? Well then here are the people that also see you as unworthy.
Noone dictates our worth but us, we set the price, and many of us find ourselves disgusted for what we sell ourselves for, I included.
How could I think of myself so little? Am I not worth more than chasing material wealth? Or superficiality? What am I worth? Do I even know?
I see Chapter 13 in a brand new light today, as today has shown me that all things pass, all of life moves on. My suffering comes from holding to finite things that exist outside of me and to which I name and give value. If I did not value things, then I would not have such suffering.
Yet, I do value things, and I value myself, so the only thing then to do is to love myself on equal footing to everything outside of me. Not to hold positions for things greater or lesser to me, but to see all things as equal.
It is the only reprieve from the suffering of this condition. And to see myself as equal, I have to accept myself with the truth. Which is that we are all created from the same source, and not a single one of us exists separate from the other, so to hold me in any other regard is to disregard the truth.
Seeking Purpose Today 