MEDITATIONS: THE DHAMMAPADA, CHAPTER SIXTEEN

tHE dEAR

Those who would want to take the world and contrive to do it,
I see that they simply cannot.
For the sacred vessel of the world, artifice will not do.
Those who contrive spoil it, those who grasp lose it. (Lao-tzu & Takuan 69)

control by surrendering
bend and shape through an inward willing
passively assert through active non-assertion

to make it is to spoil it
to hold it is to lose it (Lao-tzu 55)

It is by means of these two translations of excerpts from the twenty-nineth chapter of the Tao Te Ching that one should understand the proper application of the Buddhistic renunciation of all that is held dear. Desire is suffering, but desires are necessary products of our minds and senses; therefore, consciousness and being itself is suffering—that is the conclusion from which such solutions are inferred as in The Dhammapada:

Don’t get entangled
With what you long for or dislike.
Not seeing what you long for is suffering;
So also is seeing what you dislike.

Therefore, do not turn anything
Into something longed for,
For then it’s dreadful to lose.
Without longing or dislike,
No bonds exist. (Buddha 52)

But what is really being suggested here? On its face, the urge toward detachment seems like a sputtering of the passions, a kind of killing of desires, aversions, and of the will. However, one might linger on the lines, “do not turn anything / Into something longed for” and wonder what is means to turn something into a thing desired.

There seems to be an assumption of an act of conscious will, a direction led by the ego which makes one thing into something else. And does this assumption not also suggest that the opposite should exist—that is, if some desires are products of the will, are not other desires a consequence of the course of nature?

And what is meant by “No bonds exist?” It cannot be taken literally. Even a rock without the capacity of desires, conscious or otherwise, is bound by numerous material laws of nature. Then what is meant must refer to a specific kind of bond, likely the same type as the aforementioned warned-against desires—the conscious ones.

Hence comes the Taoist and Buddhist synthesis. Both religious and philosophical schools engage in a practice of renunciation. However, the orientation of each sees the same process from different angles. Where the Buddhist practice concentrates on relinquishment, the Taoist focuses on the natural flow of matters of course as a consequence of said letting go.

One cannot hold anything if he is unwilling to let go of what he already has. One cannot go anywhere if he is unwilling to leave behind where he’s already been. Clinging to that which is precious is spiritual calcification. It is rigidness in keeping with finality and death. It is artificial in the sense that it does not possess the self-regenerating and self-begetting processes intrinsic to nature. It is contrived in the sense that it is false: a desire for things to be as they are not—as opposed to a desire for things to be as they are.

What is being described and advocated for both in Buddhism and Taoism is a turning of the vision inward. Faced with unmet desires and inescapable aversions, one sets to transforming the self, particularly the will, to be in accord with reality instead of continuing to entangle oneself in a fight with the world. Thus does one achieve harmony in place of discord. Thus does one clear the debris blocking the flow of the Great Course. Thus:

Anyone who aspires to the Indescribable,
Whose mind is expansive,
And whose heart is not bound to sensual craving
Is called “one bound upstream.” (54)

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The Dhammapada; Teachings of the Buddha, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambala Publications Inc, 2008.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Twenty-Nine”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.55-6

Lao-tzu and Takuan Soho. Tao Te Ching; Zen Teachings on the Taoist Classic, translated by Thomas Cleary, Shambala Publications Inc., 2010