The Tao and Water and You are synonymous.

If someone squeezes you, you elude them. If someone relaxes their grip, that one experiences you readily. If you keep stationary, you become stagnant, but if you flow with the moment, you maintain purity. You don’t seek highness to be above others but settle for the low and the common. Gather together and course your journey and fall again in the form of your progeny, be they natural or in likeness. You have no fixed map for your journey because the journey draws its own map and plays no favorites as to the heights or depths or triumphs or tragedies or intention. Yet, you provide and benefit.

Asking for you to be content yet fluid seems paradoxical. Yet, if one can be both content and fluid simultaneously, then it becomes easier to be gentle with others and allow them to be free to go where they are inclined to go without interference. Again, for me, naturally trusting and treating everyone as equal seems counterintuitive. However, being in harmony with the present moment and knowing how to behave might help with practicing measured trust and enhanced acceptance of others.

When you’re free to flow as water, you’re free to communicate naturally – information is exchanged, and knowledge advances in a way that benefits everyone.

Be careful and receptive to the uneducated, homeless, or troubled members of society. The low often make it easy to be loathed but it can be your challenge. Sometimes, you can try to shield yourself from the unresponsive with acceptance, gentleness, and kindness as a response. There is the great likelihood that your efforts will feel wasted, but the curse will be on them, not you.

Sometimes, just your existence irritates others, and so, you are poorly equipped to battle with that. But if the irritation emanates from the other one not being the focus of attention, you might be able to cure that one. Nourish others with the flow of attention, listening and interest.

Let your thoughts float freely.

Masau Emoto’s The Hidden Messages in Water commentary is delightfully poetic but hardly concrete. However, if the intent is to fill one’s mind with pleasant thoughts and kind words in order to crystalize one’s life into a beautiful container rather than a crumbling and broken urn, there can be no harm in it.

Dyer’s characterization of Emoto as “Stupendous” might be taking this poet too emotionally. Yet, consciousness and balance in our intentions bring positive change into the realm of possibility. As far as impacting the entire planet, I will be content with the miniscule impact I can engender in myself through consciousness and balance.

Do the Tao Now

Drink water silently – nourish others with each sip

Note how many places visits you – singing drip by drip

Serving you and slowing too – a natural way evoked

Say a prayer of gratitude – then drink and swim and soak.

Lin declares both Heaven and Earth everlasting (i.e. lasting forever or a very long time) while Dyer uses the term “eternal” to describe Heaven (i.e. without beginning or end) and the term “endure” to describe Earth (i.e. suffer, something painful or difficult, patiently).

Is there significance to these differences in terms? Eternal and everlasting connote the ethereal while endure inspires mortal fortitude. Although Dyer uses the word endure, it is Lin who emphasizes emulation by suggesting we discard selfish desires and self-centeredness and, instead, mirror Heaven and Earth functionally and somehow our service to others leads to longevity.

Both Lin and Dyer suggest that sages putting themselves last results in their coming in first. But, without reasoning, this seems to be merely an inspiration to an aspiration. Again, Dyer uses the term endure, which is, I think, the most important concept in this verse. Through prolonged and persevering purity, good things shall come. But when we pursue good things only, our motives are corrupt, and our ends fail to be satisfactory.  Not very sagely.

Again, Lin’s commentary infuses his gossamer translation with linguistic tangibles.  Using terms such as genuine, inspire, humility, memories and reverence – Lin fleshes out the sentiments the vague exhortation – to place oneself last in order to elevate oneself to first. Such a sagely practice surely elevates one above a community largely concerned and consumed by achievement and goals.  

The final lines of each translation both address selflessness. Lin refers to achievement and goals. Dyer talks of needs and fulfillment. Lin’s terms strike me as artificial, manmade; while Dyer’s touching terms connect more viscerally. However, Lin’s commentary on his translation again bring the verse to life. Noting that the translation is a paradox, he emphasizes that the sacrifice referred to means ego, not physical body. He does this by underscoring being a good example, contenting with the humble and remaining unknown. When words become knowledge and knowledge becomes a living example, a life becomes eternal through intangible values. Miraculous in this day, indeed.

The idea that I can approach my interactions involving other people fair mindedly becomes more challenging when put in the context of real life. If we have a contemplative setting where both minds are at peace, responses can be well measured and deliberate. However, as one wends his way on a dark highway in a treacherous storm while foolishly trying to talk to a loved one in deep crisis about the right path, right words can hardly be found. No doubt practice makes perfect, but the environment of practice hardly resembles the imperfect situations we find ourselves in, let alone the asymmetric and mottled souls we encounter, flee, or create. With this in mind, what aspect of your experience should you incorporate into “a short sentence to silently reminds you to approach situations with an unbiased attitude”? Rather than Dyer’s rhyming “Guide or help me right now, Tao”, I prefer “Guide me to a future, without suture”. Preventing judgement from surfacing, in the present, is certainly worthy. Anticipating and reckoning with the tomorrow’s approaching turgid tides involving others deserves honorable mention.

I desire to be a part of something, but I care not to be favored within that something. My level of knowledge, maturity, genuine beliefs and thoughtful, substantive conclusions deserve fair consideration even though they differ from leadership or accepted thinking.  I wish not to be favored over another because of artificial valuations but rather to be valued for my gratitude, contribution, and commitment. My importance should be for those intangibles which can be built on and trusted not the whim of personal prejudice or immediate gain. However, I wish to be excluded if what I honestly bring forth falls in disfavor to the fluctuating pursuits of an immature spirit in a yet unformed character.  

Heaven and Earth are impartial

And regard myriad things as straw dogs

The sages are impartial

And regard people as straw dogs

The first section of this verse makes me think of my white dog. At times, she seems to be the princess of evil: attacking my livestock, finding escapes from my secure fence, looking for ways to make my life miserable. However, when I settle and watch, I realize evil is a formation in my mind, a straw dog. My flesh and bone dog has needs and desires which I can only imagine and these urges have nothing to do with evil or destructiveness or me.

When I empty my mind of conclusions.  When I allow my eyes to observe. When I let nature take its course.  I can know more about the mind of another…even a dog. Rather than securing each breach in my fence AFTER it has occurred, I watch and determine if a pattern is occurring, if my dog is seeking the path of least resistance, if the increasing desire to escape will come back down to, decrease back to a tolerable level, to a level that doesn’t lead to a dead dog on the side of the road.

The space between Heaven and Earth

Is it not like a bellows?

Empty, and yet never exhausted

It moves, and produces more

Section two takes my breath away. The image of a bellows inhaling nothing, producing nothing, converting nothing into everything. This idea of physical nothing producing physical everything takes me to my thoughts of what a human should do for fellow humans. Act in good faith. It takes nothing. Listen to what is being said to you. It takes a hollow minute. Admit when you are wrong. It takes an empty ego. How better to repair your soul and enhance your standing with another.

Too many words hasten failure

Cannot compare to keeping quiet

Final section. My dog, though she doesn’t know it, benefits from my caring enough to watch her, to understand her, and thereby love her. My companions in life, though they do not always notice, get more than nothing from me when those nothings are good faith, listening, and humility. All of these nothings hold value where too many words have failed. The treasure of quiet, though less than a straw dog, produces more than tangible treasure. Fills the emptiness of desire. Lasts and fulfills in each one’s eternity of want.

 

Tao

1. …with expectation, one will always perceive the boundary
2. Act without expectation
3. Do not focus on desires, and people’s minds will not be confused.
4. The Tao is empty and yet useful
5. Evolved individuals are impartial; They regard all people as straw dogs
6. Everlasting, endless, it appears to exist.
7. Evolved individuals put themselves last and yet they are first…
8. The value in water benefits all things and yet it does not contend…
9. Holding to fullness is not as good as stopping in time.
10. Produce but do not possess.  Act without expectation.
11. …take advantage of what is there, by making use of what is not.
12. Regard the center and not the eye.  Hence one discard’s one and receives the other.
13. Those who love the world as self will be entrusted with the world.
14. Control the current reality.
15. Who can harmonize with muddy water, and gradually arrive at clarity?
16. What is tolerant becomes impartial; What is impartial becomes powerful…
17. Those who lack belief will not be believed.
18. When the family has no harmony, piety and devotion appear.
19. Perceive purity; Embrace simplicity; Reduce self-interest; Limit desires.
20. How much difference is there between agreement and servility?
21. The Tao acts through Natural Law; So formless, so intangible.
22. To become whole, Turn within.
23. Those who lack belief will not in turn be believed.
24. Those who are on tiptoe cannot stand firm.
25. Humans are modeled on the earth.
26. Stillness is the master of agitation.
27. A good person is the teacher of an inferior person; and an inferior person is the resoure of a good person.
28. When simplicity is broken up, it is made into instruments.
29. Evolved individuals avoid extremes, avoid extravagance, avoid excess.
30. Where armies are positioned, thorny brambles are produced.
31. Even when victorious, let there be no joy, for such joy leads to contentment with slaughter.
32. To know when to stop is to be free of danger.
33. Those who master themselves have strength.
34. …one does not seek greatness, and in that way the great is achieved.
35. We use the Tao and it is without end.
36. Fish should not be taken from deep waters…
37. …without desire there is harmony.

Te

• 38. One who has propriety has the veneer of truth and yet is the leader of confusion.
• 39. Mind without inspiration would probably sleep.
• 40. …existence was produced from nonexistence.
• 41. The greatest talents are slowly mastered.
• 42. Those who are violent do not die naturally.
• 43. The most yielding parts of the world overtake the most rigid parts of the world.
• 44. Know what is enough; be without disgrace.  Know when to stop; be without danger.
• 45. Clarity and stillness bring order to the world.
• 46. There is no greater fault than desiring to acquire.
• 47. One may travel very far, and know very little.
• 48. Through nonaction nothing is left undone.
• 49. To those who are good, I am good; To those who are not good, I am also good.
• 50. As life goes out, death comes in.
• 51. Produce but do not possess.  Act without expectation.
• 52. To perceive the small is called insight.  To remain yielding is called strength.
• 53. The great way is very even;  yet people love the byways.
• 54. What is skillfully established will not be uprooted.
• 55. Things overgrown must decline.
• 56. Those who know do not speak.  Those who speak do not know.
• 57. Too obvious a growth in laws and regulations, and too many criminals emerge.
• 58. Misfortune! Good fortune supports it.  Good Fortune!  Misfortune hides within.
• 59. In leading people and serving Nature, there is nothing better than moderation.
• 60. Leading is like cooking a small fish.
• 61. …one receives by becoming low;  another receives by being low.
• 62. If some are not good, why waste them?
• 63. Plan the difficult when it is easy; Handle the big where it is small.
• 64. People often spoil their work at the point of its completion.  With care at the end as well as the beginning, no work will be spoiled.
• 65. To lead without cleverness will benefit…
• 66. Because evolved individuals do not compete, the world cannot compete with them.
• 67. Nature aids its leaders by arming them with compassion.
• 68. A skillful fighter does not feel anger.
• 69. No misfortune is greater than underestimating resistance…
• 70. My words are very easy to know, very easy to follow.  Yet the world is unable to know them, unable to follow them.
• 71. To know that you do not know is best.
• 72. Evolved individuals know themselves but do not display themselves.
• 73. Nature decides which is evil, but who can know why?
• 74. Whoever substitutes for the master carpenter in carving, rarely escapes injury to his hands.
• 75. People are hungry.  Because those above consume too much in taxes, people are hungry.
• 76. The position of the highly inflexible will descend; The position of the yielding and receptive will ascend.
• 77. Evolved individuals act without expectation, succeed without taking credit and have no desire to display their excellence.
• 78. The receptive triumphs over the inflexible;  The yielding triumphs over the rigid.
• 79. Even when a great resentment is reconciled, some resentment must linger.
• 80. Let the people value their lives and yet not move far away.
• 81. Evolved individuals do not accumulate.  The more they do for others, the more they gain; The more they give to others, the more they possess.

The Tao of Power is a translation of Laozi’s Chinese epic Tao Te Ching into English by an exceptional woman whose nom de plume is R.L. Wing.  The verses I have chosen here are relevant to what I consider the basics of The Tao: Path, Polarity, Pattern.  What I hope to do here is relate selected current events to these three fundamental principals.

Path:

Translation: When a country is divided: fields are overgrown, stores are empty, clothes are extravagant, sharp swords are worn, food and drink are excessive, wealth and treasures are hoarded.

Thoughts:

Is the controversy over the Second Amendment an issue of freedom or division with regard to the need for each citizen to wear a sharp sword?

Is our crumbling infrastructure a symbol of “fields overgrown”?

Are the empty calories sold cheaply and abundantly an example of “stores are empty” yet food and drink are excessive?

Are the cheap textiles made by exported slave labor why we have extravagant and excessive clothing?

Illegal immigrants and excessive crimes point to poverty in a country of wealth and treasure being hoarded in a country of plenty, is this a fair assessment?

 

Commentary: The path of least resistance is level and even, but for many the bypaths are tempting.

 

Translation: Plan the difficult when it is easy.  Handle the big when it is still small.

Thoughts:

Could gun violence be better controlled if gun control had been attempted long ago?

Would immigration be less of an issue if NAFTA and WTO had been uninitiated and global corporations had been less profitable?

Commentary: Just as a river finds its way through a valley of boulders, Evolved individuals work their way around areas of resistance, knowing they will ultimately wear them down.

 

Polarity:

Translation: Evolved individuals produce but do not possess. Act without expectations.  Succeed without taking credit.

Is it possible to benefit from one’s productivity without possessing it?

What are the results of expecting nothing from anyone versus equitable reciprocity?

Can one succeed in today’s work force without taking credit?

Translation: When something increases something else decreases.

Is there such a thing as win/win?  Lose/lose? No fault?  Or is everything win/lose, biggest loser and your fault?

Commentary: All things are interconnected and interdependent and from this concept comes the behavior of polarity.

Pattern:

Translation: What is small becomes attainable.

Can a situation that exceeds one’s capacity to understand it become too big to control?

Do things that are out of balance or out of harmony become entities with their own momentum?

Commentary: The Taoist goal is to control cause and effect by transcending it through balance and harmony with the environment.

I picked this verse because its number, 22, coincides with the week of the year that I next need to supply questions for our Pub Theology group.  Interestingly, “Pattern” is one of the themes I like to pursue when communicating my take on the Tao.  Here, I will select from R.L. Wing’s translation and commentary from her book, The Tao of Power.

Evolved Individuals…regard the world as their Pattern (paraphrased).  Look for the pattern of nature in the pattern of man’s behavior.  Once one has become exceedingly crooked, the only coarse is to straighten.  When the depths of indulgence become filled, emptiness follows and self might be found.  For the ages, those who sought not to display, define, make claims or boast are forever illuminated, distinguished, credited and advanced.  They do not compete and so the world cannot compete with them.  To evolve one’s outer countenance, turn within.

Wing writes that change is governed by cause and effect.  Cause and effect are transcended through balance and harmony with the environment.  At this point, I will insert my own interpretation of “Pattern” and try to match it up with what Ms. Wing is saying.  I view the Pattern of all events as seasons of the calendar.  All activity begins in the “dead season” of winter, the important time prior to actual action.  This is the time for balance and harmony to be contemplated before launching oneself into the foray of activity in the Spring, where one’s events begin to grow.  The elements and interruptions of this second season cannot be known in the first, but they can be prepared for.

Let not one goal cost you all that you have attained up to the Spring.  Balance the desire for your future with the weight of the past.  See that the harmony you have attained and aspire to exists in the goals you wish to attain and aspire to the seeds you are gathering for planting.  Those plantings must persevere and progress through the fire and deluge of the next season, Summer, which seems to seek your development but never in a painless and obvious way.  The four seasons are like a set of toll bridges on a single path.  Not one can be skipped to without paying the toll of the one before.  Not one cares whether you are prepared to pay the toll, so one should be prepared to pay.  The end that comes before the next beginning is the Fall Harvest.  Have no doubt, even if there is nothing to thrash, that is something.  One’s Harvest, while viewed as great or small, is always something.  It is the stuff one takes with when the dead season again beckons and encourages contemplation.

R.L. Wing writes the line “They produce but do not possess…”.  I feel this attitude can be freeing for those of us who react to both success and failure in ways that set up exhilaration and depression.  To be able to function and produce and move on is better than assigning labels and valuating the things we do.  The best laid plans and the vagaries of luck are not staples for our well being, they are detours from it.  Letting fate’s hand cloud or blind our reality puts someone or something else in charge.  It is better to feel blessed with all of life’s lessons than to search through our day, throwing out the distasteful and challenging moments while still trying to cling to those that bring us temporary good fortune.

In Wing’s commentary on this verse, he speaks clearly about polarity in cliched physics terms: every action has its complementary reaction.  Each of us who rides the rocket of rapture with success needs to always remember that the artificial fuel will soon burn out and a crash comes just as quickly as the sudden launch.  Every ascent has a descent in its future.  That being said, the opposite is also true.

Every descent has an ascent its future.  Things can only get so bad before they get better.  If there is a top, there is surely a bottom.  One can control one’s environment, according to R.L., by avoiding extremes.  Extremes of good are even frowned upon.  Possession of one’s ideas and work is also a path that will take one, eventually, down.  Great expectations are a burden one does not need.  Nature gives credit to those who never try to take it and therefore, they always have it.

In R.L. Wing’s book the Tao of Power, verse 8, Noncompetitve Values, there are lines that appear in no other translation in the form Mr. Wing has presented.

The lines are:

1. The value in a dwelling    is location.
2. The value in a mind          is depth.
3. The value in    relations    is benevolence.
4. The value in a words         is sincerity.
5. The value in    leadership  is order.
6. The value in    work           is competence.
7. The value in    effort          is timeliness.

Wing, in his commentary on this verse tells us how to achieve these 7 noncompetitive values:

1. To achieve  location          one must know              the whole.
2. To achieve  depth             one must know              its possibility.
3. To achieve  benevolence  one must                        comprehend human nature.
4. To achieve  sincerity        one must know              inner truth.
5. To achieve  order              one must know              the entire structure.
6. To achieve  competence  one must know              the results of a perfectly executed task.
7. To achieve  timeliness     one must                        hold in mind both the past and the fututre.

I am reviewing this verse for the thousandth time and I recognize things which I never did before.  First, number 4, I couldn’t fully grasp what Wing meant by Inner Truth.  Now I completely understand that I can not be sincere in my words unless I understand the truth within myself and the motivation in my words.  It’s about those things that can only be known by me and those things are ingrediants of sincerity, not the words but the meaning.  The words, whether accurate or not, have no value unless they are directly mapped back to the truth within that no one else can know.  When one can accomplish this, one can have words of value because one speaks sincerity from the inner truth known secretly to oneself and revealed to others in simple words.

The other revelation is that of the the principles that lie at the base of Taoist thought and philosophy.  Wu Wei is very much involved in the achievement of timeliness because nonaction is the best course to take when the time is past or time has not yet arrived.  The caution on timeliness is that one must be aware of the Path: everything eventually takes the path of least resistence; Polarity: every ascent has a descent in its future and every descent has an ascent in its future;  The Pattern: each event begins in the dead season of winter when seeds lie dormant, some are planted in the spring and some come to life, some of the living grow and develop in the long harsh summer of life, some of those that live to maturity come to be harvested in the fall and the timeliness of that some can be assessed for that life’s effort at that time.