Before my sons were even born I could feel that they had different natures. In the moments after their births I experienced those differences much more precisely. The oldest looked at the world with a hungry intensity.  His muscles were also held more tightly. The younger was softer in the way he held his body and also in the way he gazed.

Giving birth to these two who were already so different at the moment of birth, showed me vividly that people really are born with different natures. The different ways we be are not only a product of different experiences: if you strip away ‘conditioning’ there is still someone. Every person, any moment, is there. Even in advanced dementia you can see this vividly. The person is still in there looking out. Even though they may no longer be able to speak with words, those eyes speak in that person’s own language.

Born with my own nature, my nature is also recognizably human just as the tree outside my window is recognizably a pecan, and my tabletop is recognizably granite. Each is its own something, and different in its very nature, from anything else that ever was. Each is also something which is, in its very nature, very much ‘a’ tree, or ‘a’ slab of granite. And I am ‘a’ human being.

These are not arbitrary classifications. If I am a gardener and know these seeds to be tomato seeds, that tells me some things I can do to help the plants thrive. Likewise with people: there are certain things one can do for a person. For example, to help a tiny new person thrive, we hold it, and nurse it.

From the inside, I can feel my own nature. When I act in accord with it in my present situation, it feels natural, unforced, without deviation from my wholeness. When I (or others around me) act against my nature, it doesn’t feel natural. Sometimes the feeling of it not being natural is glaring, other times more subtle.

Not only does it feel natural to act in alignment with my nature–it’s also more effective. So this inner cue which tells me when I’m acting in accord with my nature is adaptive, and appears to be something I’m ‘meant’ to attend to in the same way I’m ‘meant’ to attend to the pain of a burn so I know what to do and what not to do.

Part of my human nature is a capacity to pause and sense a new way of being that can come in any current situation where the old way doesn’t seem to make sense. Taken together with the capacity to sense whether or not that new way of being is actually natural to me and natural in my situation, this creative capacity makes me and human beings in general, something absolutely amazing: we’re able to act at the edge where nature is doing something new, in conscious self-awareness of whether this bit of new makes sense! That’s wild and wonderful.

But the wildness and wonder go even deeper than that. When you stop and turn and really notice it, everything having its own nature which goes on inseparably in this whole enormous incredibly intricate process we call Nature, is so wondrous it’s hard to even begin to take it in. How can this be? It begs one to ask: What is a ‘nature’ anyway? And where does the nature of something come from?

I can feel my own nature pulsing into the world right here and now. So… what if I turn, and look at where it all comes from, right here in me? What do I see there?

I ‘see’ something that can’t be seen. I ‘hear’ something that can’t be heard. But even though I can’t see or hear or taste or smell or touch it, I can still feel, very very intimately, that there’s something with no beginning or end which my ‘I-ness’ comes from, and not just my own ‘I-ness’, all I-ness all the way up to the great big huge I-ness of the whole big system.

It’s like the pattern for the biggest tapestry that ever was–except the tapestry is alive and growing and constantly doing something surprising. It’s like a pattern in which a billion billion points unfold in a choreography both precise and free, where I come in in the middle for a little while. It’s not quite predictable, and yet… somehow, it is order…. or a drive towards order… toward something like making sense, itself.

we try to see what can’t be seen:
the invisible
we try to hear what can’t be heard:
the inaudible
we try to touch what can’t be touched:
the subtle

these three are aspects of one, unfathomable
unclear even where it’s revealed
and utterly obscure where it’s hidden
an unnameable, infinite, continuous thread
which stretches out, and returns

it’s form, without substance

you can’t see its beginning or end

hold fast to it in its becoming
to move in the here and now
as part of the ancient unbroken thread

— 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

It is common to think of everything, even other people and our own selves, as a resource–that is, as something for ‘use’. Every time we take even a minute to pause, something in us says we are ‘wasting time’.

The Taoist approach offers a corrective here. One example is the well-known story of a tree whose wood was of low quality. No one ever cut the tree down, because it was ‘useless’. So it lived to a great age.

Yet this chapter is apparently focused on what makes things useful to us!

I think the mistake comes in translating the character ‘yung’ as ‘useful’. ‘Fulfills its destiny’ might be closer; ‘allows it to serve’ holds another bit of it; ‘expresses its nature’ touches on a slightly different strand; ‘in its power’ yet another.

A wheel is its own beautiful shape, but also its shape makes it possible for it to engage directly with the ground to move a vehicle forward, with as little energy expended as possible. Its generous circular shape is just right to do this.

But the wheel can’t do this by itself. In fact, in a sense the wheel doesn’t ‘do’ anything at all, other than to be the shape that it is. It has to be connected to the cart in such a way that it is completely responsive to the energy and direction that flows ‘in’ to it. The empty space at its center where it’s exactly fitted to the axle, makes this possible.

A clay pot is beautiful just in its own shape, too–and in its nature accepts the flow of something into it. It wouldn’t be a pot if it couldn’t do this.

The third metaphor used in this chapter is especially interesting because it’s not the empty space of the room itself that’s highlighed, but the doors and windows: the means by which we come and go from the room.

The Tao Te Ching is always about our own nature. If this chapter were only about what makes something work, that would be trivial. No, the ‘wheel’ and ‘pot’ and ‘room with windows and doors’ that’s meant here, is me!

–And far from telling me to ‘get busy’ and ‘make myself useful’, the text invites me to do the opposite: instead, to be the beautiful shape that I am, really.

It highlights that If I’m my own real shape, I will have room at the heart of me to welcome the comings and goings which are intrinsic to my particular kind of being.

The previous chapter is widely understood as being directions for meditation. And meditation is deep-related to this chapter as well: after all, in meditation we’re letting go of our busyness in order to be at rest, welcoming what comes and goes in us. The less we do and the quieter we get, the more connected we become to the ‘whole big thing’.

Meditation lets us practice our own natural shape and pace, and the awareness of when we’re ‘in shape’, and when we’re not. We become more sensitized to when we’re forcing things and when we’re not; when we don’t ‘have room’, and when we do.

Our ordinary doings also start to become visible as a way we’re in our own shape and pace–or not. As we play with this over time and learn to stay closer to our own nature in the midst of our doings, our regular lives become more and more connected to the ‘whole big thing’.

thirty spokes are joined
upon a hub
to make a wheel–

that hole in the center
is the source of its power

clay is shaped
to make a vessel–

in its hollowness
is its power

when windows and doors are cut
it makes a room a room–

those openings
make it habitable

being can be beneficial
only because of the open space
that lets it function

— 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

This is maybe the most important chapter in the Tao Te Ching.  Approaching it, I’m nervous: can I do justice to it?  It’s so deep that I don’t really feel I can.

In my nervousness, I’m not fully embracing the writing.  Something is holding back.

But the text is asking me, ‘can you be undivided?’  –There are no hedges here; it’s not ‘can you be undivided while you’re sitting on the meditation cushion and nothing else is happening?’  It’s an invitation right now, to totally embrace what I’m doing.  It’s an invitation to embrace it as just plain me–and to embrace it with all of me.

And this is possible.  Now I’m with my energy, and my energy is with this.

I soften.  My breath becomes soft, too.  All of me is now here doing this.  Nervousness has dissipated like clouds in the sun, and my vitality rises.  I’m just being interested in this text, and the interest is giving rise to these words.  It’s almost like the words are landing here by themselves, it’s so easy.

And no, I can’t yet do this ‘without deviation.’  But I’m learning!

can you bring the whole of you
and keep yourself undivided?

can you gather your energy
and make it soft as a baby’s?

can you clean the dust from the mirror
and see things, including yourself, clearly?

can you lead without cleverness?

as life comes and goes from the world
can you be strong like a woman?

seeing clearly
can you stay innocent?

a mother gives birth and nourishes
but does not own
works but does not take credit
leads but does not dominate

this is a deep, secret power

— 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

This has always been a more difficult chapter for me, so I’m going slow in reading it, looking at several translations, and paying close attention to my experience of the words as I read.

“A sound leader helps the populace
to be open minded and self aware.”

The shy me, reading the word ‘leader’ here, at first is not so sure this chapter really has much to do with her.  But to deny that it does, denies the reality that of course I’m a leader in some settings–we all are.  I lead when I write and my words influence someone; I lead when I work with clients; I lead as a parent, and as a caretaker for my mother.  …Other places too, but these are the ones I’m aware of immediately.

Now I’m alert to the words, feeling how actually they are meant for me. The text is saying to me, ‘here’s a way to think about these situations where you influence others, which may help you to have a more beneficent effect.’

So I come back to the sentence I just read, this time to ‘open minded and self aware’… and now I’m moved by the words, because this is what I care about with my clients especially: to re-open the possibilities, and to include the heart of the person in what happens next.

Picking up another translation I read, “regain their ability to respond… no force… no strain.”

Yes… to reopen the possibilities so that this person I’m being with can regain their own being, their own equilibrium.  To be alive in themselves, as themselves.  And when they are alive as themselves it can happen that there is no force, no strain.

It continues, “There is an original nature in things.  Things in their original nature grow with abundant life and all have a place in the scheme of things.”

I care a lot about the ‘own place’ that each of us creatures actually has in the universe.  This is why I do what I do.  This chapter actually has everything to do with me!

Another translation says, “strengthen bones and weaken ambition.”

I pause to feel my own bones–what is strong in me, my inner foundation, the core of me, what endures in me–and I hold to my bones.

Similarly, I can sense the bones of someone I’m with–if I slow down, and listen with all my attention and care.  And in my listening, in my caring, I strengthen their bones.

Weakening ambition happens of itself without my doing anything at all, just in listening to the heart, the core, the innermost value of myself, or this other.

Another translation: “Do not inspire the people with grand visions, for the visions will become idols.”

It’s not about inspiring others to reach for a goal I want for them–or even necessarily to reach for a goal they have for themselves.  It’s about paying close attention to what their own deep being wants, and is.  And strengthening that.

“Not making a show of what might be desired.”

This is the crux of it all.  Instead of putting things ‘out there’ that I or another doesn’t have and feels the lack of, I can nourish what we already have, and are.


don’t exalt the talents of some people above the gifts of others
so that people won’t be jealously pulled
to try to obtain these ‘rare goods’

that keeps people from becoming thieves

don’t display such objects of desire
as these can pull someone away from their own heart
and true place in the world

the sage’s way
is to put peoples’ hearts at ease
solidifying them in their relationship to their souls
weakening their desire to get ahead
strengthening them in their true strength
encouraging their innocence

not presuming to interfere

not contriving

then all can live in peace
at peace with their own nature

— 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

Technically, I’m late to write about chapter 2.  That was the chapter for last week.

How interesting!  How did that happen?

…wondering what happened, I’m not wondering about the story of my week: how first this happened and then that happened, so that only now can I sit down and write this post.  What I’m asking is, how did it happen that this simple notation on my list of things to do today–’write a post about chapter 2′–could become something-to-do-that’s-now-late?

When I began to write my way through the Tao Te Ching, I decided to do something I love to do, together with someone I like.  And to do something together, we need to show up at the same place at roughly the same time.

In US culture, we are big about doing things ‘on time’.  When we agree to meet, for us in the US it’s ‘good’ to be ‘on time’.  But for ‘on time’ to even make any sense, we have to have the concept of ‘late’.  And in the US, it’s ‘bad’ to be ‘late’.

I can write a post as something that’s ‘owed’ and therefore ‘late’ or ‘on time’.  If I write it that way, then there’s something unnatural introduced.  I’m forcing the process.

The interesting thing is that I can only show up when I show up, which is now–and there is no way I can make it be any earlier (or later) than it is.

In truth there is just this possibility of writing, and this keyboard and screen, and the sense of what I could say right now.  When I let that truth suffuse me, there is plenty of time.  I spread out and take up this whole precious time, luxuriously…

…just in time!

beauty as beautiful gives rise to ugliness
being gives birth to nonbeing

because of good there is bad
because of easy there is difficult

high and low position one another
sound and silence form a unity
future and past follow each other

so… the sage
lives his life without forcing anything

things come and go
and he welcomes it all
without judging it

he does his work
and lets it go
without claiming it

his actions endure,
because they are the actions
of the universe

— 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