govern yourself with a light and sensitive energy
of hand, heart, and intent
and you will behave as one unified being

govern yourself without a light and sensitive energy
gently holding your heart behind a gate
and you will never be unified
as you pry and intrude upon yourself
becoming a collection of decaying parts

happiness
misery

the seed of one is always within
the other

they both come from heaven
they both fold one on the other
they both hide from each other
they both surprise each other
they both speak to each other
in a private language only they can understand

this is the interplay of yin and yang
you can not stop or control it

seeing things as separate brings illusion and calamity

conform and shape yourself
to the interplay of the yin and yang

discipline and order yourself
like a great square without sharp edges or corners

train and integrate yourself in order
to cut through confusion and illusion

without hurting yourself or others

it is difficult to illuminate without blinding

that is why the sage wise man strives for the authentic
and not the artificial

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey

The stereotype of a Zen riddle is a paradox, the answer seemingly impossible from the typical answerer’s point of view. But this apparent contradiction is actually a consequence of a divided mind. It is a product of our natural, dualistic thinking. We see the world as a realm of opposites: masculine and feminine, good and evil, life and death, light and darkness. Likewise, we see ourselves as separate entities, divorcing the mind from the body, action from intention, feeling from thought. In principle, this is not wrong. Without parameters by which to distinguish between objects, without conceptual borders diving ideas and words from one another, we could not think nor act nor communicate.

However, beyond the veil of our rational thought and perceptual experience, the universe does not conform to such standards. Whether a concept or object belongs to one category or two categories, or a thousand, or none is not up to us—and, in a most fundamental sense, is impermanent and unknowable. This is why it is possible for new knowledge and wisdom to become knowable, and it is also why the truth—the objective, transcendent universe—is to us tainted by the terror of the unknown.

Fear sets us to want to protect ourselves from anxiety, pain, depression, and despair. We hide our hearts (i.e. our emotions) behind a great gate, separated from physical action and conscious intent. We ignore the light, the inner archetype of our potential Selves, and thereby ignore the consequences of disunification on our unconscious selves. So disunified, we act in ways that make us feel guilty and ashamed. So disunified, we lie to ourselves about our own intentions; and believing those lies, we drag our hearts further through thickets of thorns. We can pretend it to be otherwise, but pretending does not bring meaning into our lives. It does not generate purpose nor strength enough to survive the pains and terrors of life.

Only unifying our divided selves does that.

Once we understand that living—that being—cannot truly be divided between good and bad nor suffering and happiness, once we comprehend our own nature as intertwined bodyminds and heart spirits—as embodied incorporation of conscious and instinctual forces—only then can we unify ourselves and realize that the division we see in the world is but an illusion.

Happiness and misery are the same being, as are life and death, light and darkness. One does not exist without the other, and so our belief that they are opposites is but a human limitation. A mistake.

To correct this error, all we need to do is to assent to the truth. That is the Tao way of life, to decide ourselves to take on the pains and sufferings, to not try to hide our hearts behind protective gates. The Tao way is to instead stand exposed to the unknown that we may be shaped by it, just as the athlete and the craftsman are shaped by enduring the hardships of training and labor. The Tao way is freedom through discipline; it is the escape of meaningless suffering through the embrace of suffering as to imbue it with meaning. It is a thing easy to talk about and as useless to talk about as it is easy—worse than useless: to discuss the Tao source of life in place of living the Tao way is to blind ourselves and others with immense existential dread. Nietzsche was right when he said, “if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Knowing all this, we strive to live our lives authentically. We remind ourselves to be grateful in spite of our suffering; we embrace imperfection and thereby we let go of the Spirit of Revenge.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. 1906. translation by Helen Zimmern, Enhanced Media, 2017.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Fifty-Eight”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.113-14