Meditations: Tao Te Ching Chapter one

the tao source of life that we often talk about
is beyond the power of words and labels to define or enclose

While it is true that we employ words and labels to outline our experience
they are not absolute and cannot define the absolute

when it all began there were no words or labels

these things were created out of the union of preception and perception

whether a person who is awake in play
sees the heart of life or its surface manifestations is hardly important
because they are exactly the same point in space and time

the words and labels that we use make us think that they are different
but only so we can talk about it from the outside of ourselves
in regard to the outside of the point in space and time

if you feel as though you really need a name
then call it the wonderwork
and watch one miracle talk to another
in a language that you can feel but not understand

it is playful to approach something that is logically unknowable

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

The first words of the first chapter present us with an enigma: “the tao source of life.” Tao is the way, the road, the narrow path along which one orients himself toward that which transcends subjective, human understanding. Therefore, the source of life in relation to the tao is that transcendent, truly objective source from which life as we know it emerged. In other words, existence as we know it is actually a first-order abstraction and not the thing itself. This is how, A Priori, we can claim it impossible to ever completely encapsulate or describe objective reality.

Our “words and labels” are products of our subjective experience—though even that is not quite right. It is better said that the words, labels, images, thoughts, and sense impressions which we use and experience are emergent properties of consciousness interfacing with an objective reality beyond our power to control or comprehend. They are the “union of preception and perception.” They are the shadows on the wall, the product of the relationship between noumena and phenomena: that is to say, our thoughts, beliefs, opinion, and impressions are maps—mere representations—by which we navigate a space that our biology does not possess the capacity to process or even detect.

This is why, so long as a person is “awake in play” (awake meaning consciously aware; play meaning in a state of voluntary and thereby positive engagement—Amor Fati, loving one’s fate), it matters not that he understands. So long as he maintains an attitude in the spirit of play, and so long as he voluntary engages with the objective world, he is in the same “time and place” from the perspective of the universe. That is to say that while our use of labels may draw distinctions between scholars and simpletons, it is actually our attitudes and actions (morale; morality) that align us with the Tao—The Way of being in accordance with the absolute, unknowable, objective reality.

And yet here we are, playing the role of the scholar, attempting to confine an infinite within the bounds of our finite human definitions. Perhaps this is an inevitable part of our nature, and necessary, and perhaps even good. After all, to venture voluntarily into the dark—the unknown and the unknowable—is the only way one can incorporate new traits, insights, aspects of personality, and/or modes of motivation. In the same way that a child play-acts many roles in order to arrive at who he is and must be, perhaps we also as adults must open our minds to play-acting new, strange, foreign, and even dangerous or evil ideas and identities. Maybe transformation of oneself and one’s perceptions are in order with the objective, transcendent universe; and maybe to believe otherwise is to assume we’ve contained all that is and will be true within the confines of our pre-established labels.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter 1”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. p.9