MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
the ancient child asks
how does it feel
the great tao source of life floats and drifts
it is a candle in a room filled with mirrors
it is a diamond in a room filled with candles and mirrors
the great tao source of life flows and undulates
it is a spider’s web that stretches in every direction
it is wondrously expansive and cyclical and unique
the great tao source of life has a rhythm to it
it revolves and spins in every direction
it connects and binds all things with freedom and independence
and interdependence
when you are aware of all these things
a light and sensitive energy collects at your crown
and space and time literally break apart
usual becomes unreality
reality becomes unusual
everything depends on this
it always has
it always will be
name it paint it sing it if you must
but trust it as silence
a blank canvas in the unnamed
it can not die
neither can you
if you remain humble and quiet a new mind will be born
where puzzles are solved in their own space and time
where unique thinking that is greater than thought flows like water
where flowing into human life
transforms human life
then you will be a great sage wise man
—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey
Throughout these meditations, we’ve used many terms interchangeably. Roughly speaking, these have been various interpretations of the concepts Yang/Yin.
Yang is the masculine, the benevolent father and the tyrannical king. Yang is Order; it is the domain of the known and of ego-consciousness (though it is not the ego-consciousness itself). Hierarchies, institutions, borders, words, names and labels—anything constitutive and therefore exclusive by nature falls under the Yang.
Yin is the feminine, the nurturing mother and the devouring witch. Yin is Chaos; it is the domain of the unknown and of the vast unconsciousness (Collective/instinctual and personal). Equality, novelty, creativity, dissolution, and destruction—anything which is permeable or incorporative and therefore inclusive by nature is in principle the Yin.
These two interrelated forces constitute Taoist metaphysics. They describe the relationship among us, our experiences, and the objective world.
Beginning with Nature, the transcendent, the object universe as it is outside our human perspective. This is fundamentally the Yin, the chaos of the unknown. All things, good and evil, emerge from it. All things we are yet made conscious of are, by definition, denizens of the unconscious. This is why it is impossible to ascribe a proper name or label. We call it the “unknown” or the “Tao source of life,” thought these are only place holders that describe the idea of a thing totally obscure and foreign to us—not the thing in itself. But whatever it is, this transcendent objectivity which our label Yin is only a shadow of, is to us uninhabitable. While dependent on it for our existence, we are beings of Order (or else we wouldn’t be beings at all). The chaos can be generous and rewarding, but more often it is like an endless abyss. Nothing is constant in a universe of constant change. We cannot act nor speak, nor even think when, from one moment to the next, the categories by which actions, words, and thoughts are conceived dissolve and either change or else remain gray and nebulous.
As I said, we are beings of Order. We require a dualistic universe, one of firm land as well as shifting seas and rivers. In this context, Order is stability, reliability, and from them it become validity—at least insofar as the Order remains stable. For while we must make for ourselves Maps of Meaning—what is called Maya in Buddhism, the illusion; Plato’s shadows on the wall; Nietzsche’s great glowing ship of Apollo—these maps and models are mere representations, not the things in themselves. They are temporarily reliable approximations. They are like walls that guard the city from the wilds. They must be repaired, sometimes torn down and built again—and not always on the same grounds.
That is the meaning of these lessons in Chapter Thirty-Four. We are meant to meditate on the power of reconstitution—the power of the relationship between the us and the unknown. What is that relationship? It is one of ignorance and admittance. We are finite, and it is infinite that which we do not know about ourselves and everything else. To realize this is to open the Eye of Shiva which possesses the power to disintegrate all within its sight. Likewise, it is to become a vessel capable of containing the Alkahest, a substance believed by the alchemists to be capable of dissolving anything down to separate base elements—but this is the mythological view.
Let us shift to the practical. If we seek peace through the Tao, through the Way of accepting and adapting to the ever-changing conditions of life, then we must become ourselves wise travelers. Wisdom is the spontaneous, revelatory knowledge born from our adaptive instincts which we inherited from our ancestors over millennia on millennia of evolutionary history. Though we are already in possession of this wisdom, it exists separate from our conscious awareness, hidden in the unconscious with all of our shameful animal traits. However, if we can be like water and find our equilibrium at our lowest point, we can find balance in immersing ourselves in those aspects which we would rather ignore. We can put aside our preconstructed prejudices and open our eyes to what could be. This is the lesson: open yourself to the notion that everything worth knowing lies outside of your knowledge, and perhaps pin pricks of light will reveal themselves to you like stars in the night sky by which you might navigate toward your potential future.
Lao-tzu. “Chapter Thirty-Four”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.67-8
