dao de jing ii

The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

            Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;

            The difficult and the easy complement each other;

            The long and the short offset each other;

            The high and the low incline towards each other;

            Note and sound harmonize with each other;

            Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.

            The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;

            It gives them life yet claims no possession;

            It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;

            It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.

It is because it lays claim to no merit 

            That its merit never deserts it.

If desire is the orthodox energy—our grid and outlets—beauty is the orthodox appliance.  We plug beauty into desire and feel a strange utility.  We purchase beauty in sleek packaging, according to the prerogatives of marketing and merchandising, from and for desire.  If one lives in a forest of iPods and food processors, a new gadget may be beautiful; but if one lives in a forest of sequoias and brooks, that same gadget may be ugly.

The Tao doesn’t care much for interpretations that grow from the soil of only one forest.  The Tao’s soil is the world—its myriad forests, its diverse ecologies.  What’s beautiful in one environment is ugly in another; what thrives in one system dies in another.  The one given to the Tao sees that all things lead to their opposites, and all opposites are bound to what they aren’t.  How then does such a one affirm anything?  It’s quite simple.  Such a one affirms any thing because it affirms everything.

But whereas most people affirm things and draw the strength of those affirmations from the things they negate—thus depending as much if not more on their hidden negations than their overt affirmations—the one given to the Tao draws her affirmation from the fact of the thing’s existence in the context of all other things.  The former affirmation feels total to the one affirming, for the one affirming stakes his existence and subsequent claims—the very justification of his being—on the rightness of his affirmations over his negations.  But the latter affirmation is never total; the only totality is the sum total of all affirmations—neither an affirmation nor a negation, neither both, but something else.  This is the Tao and the one who lives in such diffused and contradictory ambiguity one given to the Tao.

Opposites do not simply produce each other, they are each other.  They are not each other identically or analogously, but contain each other within themselves as lovers contain each other.  The separation of values—beautiful from ugly, good from evil—is a mental exercise designed to make the intellectual gymnast (though he is often fat) increase his comfort in the face of life’s overwhelming discomforts.  And—let’s face it—the miracle is that the exercise often works.  Who would not then perform it in the armchair of his mind?  The one given to the Tao.  Why?  Because neither comfort nor miracles, beauty nor ugliness, good nor evil, particularly depress or enchant him.  He sees them as children on opposing seats of a seesaw, in endless play and vacillation.

The sage is not the sage because she wishes to be a sage … or, more likely, wishes to be perceived as a sage.  The sage is a sage because she’s a sage.  She was born on the non-action side of the seesaw, looking across the fulcrum of nothingness to the bulging seat of action.  How does one who is born from action and gives birth to it—but is non-action herself—cause her end of the seesaw to rise then?  Ah!  That is the mystery.

The sage describes the great stage of action because that is what she sees before her.  But does she see yet refrain from describing the backstage of non-action because that is what she is?  Ah!  That is a question.

The sage does not become better than others because of her sagacity; she does not become better than others at all; she simply becomes a sage because she is not inclined to act—a lack of inclination not from indolence or fear, but from vision and inclination.  This inclination hardly precludes action but places it in spaces of sensation that affirm and in this affirming multiply action into all things. Others, then, from envy or lack of understanding, equate sagacity and superiority, but if the sage is truly a sage, she denies this equation.  Indeed, she tends to deny or at least sidestep all equations. 

dao de jing i

The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way.

The name that can be named is not the constant name.

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;

the named was the mother of the myriad creatures.

Therefore always rid yourself of desires that you may observe its secrets.

But always allow yourself to have desires that you may observe its manifestations.

These two are the same,

but diverge in name as they issue forth.

Being the same, they are called mystery.

Mystery upon mystery—

the gateway of the manifold secrets.

There is a thing, there is its opposite, and there is a space—a feeling, perhaps—of something—we have no name for it really—behind or above or in those things and their opposites.  The preposition doesn’t particularly matter; what matters is the feeling (or desire) that there is a third thing behind (or below or through) every pair, and that this third thing is somehow the same thing that is of (or beside or out from) every pair.

Not everything has an opposite, but everything contains something or belongs to something that has an opposite.  Opposites may be constructs of human perception, but that does not stop them from being opposites; human perception is what we live within.  The Tao is what we live within and the sense of what we don’t live within and what we don’t live within.

We can think of these three aspects of existence—a thing, its opposite, and the thing throughout the thing and its opposite—as a relationship.  In a relationship there is, say, a woman, her lover, and the relation between them.  The relation between them is both in each of them, albeit differently, and something else, while still not entirely separate from either of them.  If you seek to understand this intellectually, you won’t.  The intellect divides; it thrives on distinctions and systems.  These three aspects emerge from the experience of life, which includes the intellect, but refuse its attempted tyranny.

Life itself, which has its opposite, Death, and that third thing, that relation between them (a relation we might call the human) is neither an easy mentor nor a systematic friend.  Indeed, it may be no friend at all.  But friend or not, it teaches even those who claim to be teachers; it teaches the teachers partially because it does not claim to teach.

The Tao is nothing less than all things, their opposites (whether they exist in fact or fantasy), and that thing that is no-thing that is in everything.  Because it is absence and presence, root and manifestation—as well as whatever is beyond these words and the objects, feelings, and experiences related to these words—it is a totality without being a system, a fullness without being full.

We are reduced to speaking about the Tao by using opposition and contradiction, by using negation and absurdity, because only by understanding—not thinking—this way do we slip through the bars of the mind’s routines into life’s sprays and bubbles.

How do I live without and with desire?  Desire, which seems the marrow and lineaments of life?  Simply, I desire everything, which is nothing other than to desire life.  I desire wealth and poverty, orgies and chastity, fame and obscurity, chaos and calm, melancholy and joy, cruelty and compassion, desire and vision.  How then can I pursue satiation when deprivation holds equal appeal?  I allow the river I am placed in to decide what I am granted and withheld, and whatever happens to me is good.

Christianity, as most systems and individuals, limits desire to particular objects.  Good is better than evil, one lover or structure better than another, restraint better than promiscuity, caution than excess.  Opposite systems—whether hedonism, paganism, or Satanism—may differ superficially (by preferring promiscuity to restrain, excess to caution) but are identical in nature, by preferring certain portions of life to other portions.  The Tao does not prefer and the one who aligns herself with the Tao is subsumed not by any portion of life, but life.  Thus, while the CEO and plebian may be treated differently superficially, according to the requirements society demands of each role, the one who aligns herself with the Tao sees both as essentially the same:  both are necessary, both perform a required role, both are subject to laws—some distinct to their specific roles, some common to the culture they both belong to, some generic to humanity.

We don’t really know why or how things are created.  We can claw our way back to the very border of creation, but never fully enter.  Second zero is always just beyond our grasp.  It is certainly beyond our grasp technically and strangely beyond our grasp spiritually.  The scientists, like the philanderers and artists, crave it, but use improper means.  The mystics may see it—the best we can hope for—and the best scientists, philanderers and artists are mystics.  Creation—particularly human creation (the creation of the human, the human drive to create)—is the gateway and the mystery of the human.  We cannot hope to solve it, for that would mean stepping outside of ourselves … an act that would destroy the object of investigation.  Indeed, we may very well not want to solve it, for the incessant and futile investigation of why and how we are the way we are may be the center of what we are.