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

What is it to stand at the edge?

–The gateway opens, and something new emerges:
something really really new.

This breath, right now, for instance:
Not this breath as a ‘breath’.
But this breath.

This breath revitalizes the world.

When I follow this breath down
down
down

I find something that has no bottom
no beginning,

a nothing
that is a force to be reckoned with.

It’s a path of inexhaustible energy,
and deep tranquillity.

When I follow this path
in the next breath, I find myself opening to the Creator
able to ask, “and how is God present here, now?

on this dark, rainy day–how?”

There’s room in me
at the edge of creation,
to turn, and catch creation
in the act.


tao is the center of the whirlpool
empty, it’s never drained
it’s bottomless!

it’s the source

it blunts the sharp
resolves complications
softens discord

unites the world

dark, tranquil, serene
it continues forever

i don’t know how it began
it’s before antecedents
before God’s creative process

— 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

So what is tao anyway?

The thing is… we both can and can’t say what it is.  Because among other things, tao is where we are, who we are, and where we’re going.

It’s about our path. And at the same time as we know that path…
we also don’t know it.

As soon as we think we’ve got it down,
we haven’t.

When we think we’ve got it down, it’s a sign that it’s time to step away from that story about our lives which our desires have laid out 123, and feel the whole big unknowable unnamable vastness that refuses to be contained in any story.

Because if we get attached to ‘the’ story of our path, we’ll end up losing our way. That story isn’t the path, and life will show us that fact very soon.

But on the other hand, if all we do is just contemplate the vast wondrous unknowability of life, then we aren’t going anywhere.  And that doesn’t work so well, either.

But if the story doesn’t work, and not having a story doesn’t work either, how do we know where to go?

By paying attention to our desire before the story.
Not the ‘hooked’ kind of desire, not the ‘I want a piece of chocolate’ kind…
but the deep deep quiet yearning towards…

…something that is more than the words we can say about it.

…something that’s right here, if we make the turn towards it, slow down, listen… feel…

…and then move. –A little, questing, experimental-but-certain move that fits this moment, and this creature which we are…

…a creature that is just what it is, in a world that is also just what it is, at this and no other moment.

I’m a creature before any names for me, capable of experiencing the world before any names for it.  In that before-ness, I’m free.

But also, I’m: kye-who-lives-at-the-corner-of-broadway-and-edgewood. Because without a name and address, how will I get my mail?

that which has become
surely isn’t
the eternal

named names
surely aren’t
that which is beyond names

what comes before being
gives birth to all beings

without patterned thinking
we behold the wondrous mystery

and…

by means of our mental patterns
we can see the intricacy
of its myriad manifestations

beholding the mystery
and seeing its intricate manifestations–

these ways are united
in each being
a gateway to the primordial

— 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