Concerns about ‘fitting in’, ‘honors’, ‘what others will think’ and so on, can do such damage! It’s especially insidious because dishonor can be mistaken for a loss of your own personal integrity, and not fitting in can be mistaken for not being part of the human community.

But honors are external and are not real anyway. The ‘self’ of self-importance is not your own person.

The student is not the grade they receive, and an athlete is not the Olympic gold. Public office is bestowed–or not–and is easily lost even if it’s gained. If we become deeply invested in any of these, we are setting ourselves up for a constant fear that obscures what really matters.

Anything that happens in the public eye can be like that. What will ‘they’ think of this speech? This act? This sentence? This post? –But have I said what I know in my heart? If I do say it, then I’m untouchable.

This kind of untouchability which will not allow someone to be dishonest with his own person, is what makes someone trustworthy. This kind of untouchability is what we yearn for, in our leaders. We don’t want leaders who are blown about by every change in public opinion. We want leaders who stand true as they respond to world events, who know that sometimes their response will be unpopular and who are swayed by neither favor nor disfavor.

when honor
is bound up with our sense of self
both gaining it and losing it
fill us with fear

we fear we won’t gain it
we dread losing it
because of a limited sense of self

without self-importance
what dishonor can touch us?

if there is nothing
for which he would damage his person
someone might be entrusted with the world

because he cherishes his person
the world can be given to his care

— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

Comments?  Burning questions? Leave them here

This post was written as part of the tao together project.  Would you like to join us?

©2010 Kye Nelson

A skilled archer knows when he’s pulled the bowstring back just enough, but not too much. He knows if he pulls it too far, he may injure himself or the bow–and the arrow will not fly as true. The practiced archer knows with ever greater precision where to stop, because he’s devoted to the art of archery.

Where is the stopping point, though? How does he find it?

–He discovers it via his interested care for the effect of his action. He practices a restraint that doesn’t feel restrained, but attuned.

Writing’s like that too. I’m attuned to what this chapter invited me to say, and sensing ‘it’, I remove any excess that isn’t it.

Now I feel the point approaching where I’ve said it.  It’s time to stop.

overfilled,
a bowl will spill

oversharpened,
a blade won’t last

too much gold and jade
can’t be guarded

and worse,
you start defining yourself
in terms of an excess
that’s doomed to be lost

when it’s completed, stop!
that’s Heaven’s way

— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

Comments?  Burning questions? Leave them here

This post was written as part of the tao together project.  Would you like to join us?

©2010 Kye Nelson

The word devotion is sometimes misunderstood as meaning that you have to be less authentic in order to ‘be there’ for the other person. This chapter makes it clear that that is not what is meant.

No, what we’re exploring here, is how one goes about living the most meaningful life possible.

A meaningful life is not a choice between ‘them’ or ‘us’. It’s something magical where our very being, allowed to flow freely, nourishes the life around us. Then our doings are intrinsically meaningful ‘both directions’: they do something significant in the world, and our own natures are fully in play.

So how does that happen, in practice?

Going into my own experience here, I’m noticing that working on this commentary is a good example. I’m devoted to it in a special way that comes from having said I would write a new chapter every week. But that’s no hardship because it’s so satisfying to work on. I don’t even feel like I’m working, exactly. It’s enjoyable.

The commentary pulls me toward itself. I’m in flow. I follow the text searchingly, like water following the land. I’m deeply interested in it, and the more closely I attend to it, the more interested I get.

This is what I meant when I used the word devotion, before. This is how it is for a mother with her child. The mother has an interested care that keeps deepening, the more she engages with her child.

You can’t pretend interest–that is, not on the inside where you actually live. You really are interested, or you’re not. If you’re not, then the thing you’re doing won’t feel meaningful.

What’s being talked about here is not ‘me’ doing good things as an object in an out-there world cut off from my own experiencing. No: it’s the feeling I have at this very moment, a feeling of the good effect of my being, in the world.

the very most meaningful life is a lot like water

water is good at benefiting everything
but it doesn’t fight against itself to do so
it’s content to flow in its own natural path
it doesn’t disdain its path just because it’s ‘low’
it flows wherever it naturally flows
even if that’s where the ‘lowest’ people are
in this way it’s very much like Tao

in building a dwelling, what matters is to sense the solidity of the ground and the structure
in things of the heart and mind, what matters is to sense yourself diving into your depths
in human relations, what matters is to sense your own humanity in the relating
in speaking, what matters is to sense yourself speaking faithfully
in leading, what matters is to sense the way that
all these ingredients can work together to make a harmonious whole
in serving, what matters is to sense what you in particular can contribute
in acting, what matters is sensing the right moment

but above all, what matters is to sense that you’re not going against nature
don’t fight your own nature, and you won’t experience resentment

— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

Comments?  Burning questions? Leave them here

This post was written as part of the tao together project.  Would you like to join us?

©2010 Kye Nelson

Often the Tao Te Ching seems to be skipping around all over the place.

Chapter 5 was the ‘straw dog’ chapter. There, heaven-and-earth are said to be ‘inhumane’. Then comes a detour to ‘valley spirit’ and ‘Great Mother’ in chapter 6, which is often translated so it seems the whole life-process turns on ‘emptiness’. In chapter 7 we’re back to heaven-and-earth again: this time, heaven-and-earth are said to be ‘not self-interested.’

In this common reading, ‘inhumane’ and ‘not self-interested’ are uneasy bedfellows and the Valley Spirit chapter seems to be stuck in between them arbitrarily.

But there’s actually a nice sequence to the chapters starting to show up when I stay strictly with how the text can make sense from inside the experience of my own life process. Read this way, ‘inhumane’ could actually be an invitation to a heartfelt, near-instinctive reverence for the natural world and human beings as part of it, instead of the rule-based ‘goodness’ (see chapter 5 commentary) implied by the word ‘humane’. The core quality of the ‘Great Mother’ could be ‘devotion’ instead of ‘emptiness’. We’re beginning to uncover a different, more heart-centered way of reading the Tao Te Ching.

And chapter 7 builds so easily on this! The chapter tells us that the sage acts without self-interest and thereby has himself.  I know that experience of acting without self-interest, and having myself more fully in those moments.  So how does that happen? -what’s going on there?

Immediately I get right back to devotion! When I’m devoted, my whole being is acting for the sake of something that matters; something I care about in a sustained way. And that devotion is self-sustaining. It feeds on itself. I’m energized by my devotion.

I think about the mother Inca dove I watched feeding her two fledglings in my windowsill a few weeks ago…  And the trees pumping sap up to the new buds, a few weeks before that. This beautiful world is fueled by devotion, if you look just below the surface!

Turns out we may actually need the valley spirit chapter in between ‘inhumane’ and ‘not self-interested’: with it, the whole thing opens up beautifully.

heaven is eternal
earth endures

why? what is their secret?

because they don’t live for themselves
they are long-lived

thus the sage puts his self in the background
and yet finds his self in the foreground
treats his self as incidental
and his self is safe

is this not because
he has no thought of self?
thus, he has the power
to realize himself.

— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

Comments?  Burning questions? Leave them here

This post was written as part of the tao together project.  Would you like to join us?

©2010 Kye Nelson

Surely the power of the Great Mother is something more than emptiness!

In many commentaries and translations of this chapter, what’s emphasized is the emptiness of the valley, and its lowness. It’s even been said that the Valley Spirit is immortal because in its emptiness it doesn’t really quite exist!  I protest.  Even though I know that emptiness can be very fecund indeed, still…

I think what’s being talked about in this chapter is something that does very much exist–but on a different and more subtle level than the purely physical.

The text does say (depending on how you translate it) that the Valley Spirit is the Great Mother–and the spirit of the Great Mother findable in each of us, by us ourselves.  But what exactly is that spirit? In other words, what is this active principle which we can access any time?

I’m a mother. So I’m pausing here to contemplate my experience as mother, for clues.  I’m noticing how it is to be intimately related to a bit of the unending flow of life, a bit which has passed through me.  Raising children, giving birth, all of that was a lot of work! Still, in another way, there is an effortlessness to my relation to that flow of life.

As I sit here with the feel of this, suddenly I begin to be viscerally connected with the Valley Spirit. I feel myself as Valley, changed by the action of the water over time.

But at the same time, there is something that doesn’t change. I can feel its presence in me, working powerfully. What is this that doesn’t change?

It’s what nurtures. It’s got love as its foundation. It’s a special kind of love which is primal… instinctive… powerful… neverending. It cradles life.

It’s devotion.

the Valley Spirit never dies
she is the primal spirit of Woman

she is the very first dwelling place
she is creation’s root foundation

her spirit is like a neverending gossamer thread of silk
nearly invisible
very strong

it’s ready at hand
never exhausted

— Kye Nelson: translation and commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

Comments?  Burning questions? Leave them here

This post was written as part of the tao together project.  Would you like to join us?

©2010 Kye Nelson