Chapter 19 – Go with the Flow

Banish wisdom, discard knowledge,
And the people shall profit a hundredfold;
Banish “humanity,” discard “justice,”
And the people shall recover love of their kin;
Banish cunning, discard “utility,”
And the thieves and brigands shall disappear.
As these three touch the externals and are inadequate,
The people have need of what they can depend upon: 

   Reveal thy simple self,
Embrace thy original nature,
Check thy selfishness,
Curtail thy desires. 

(Translated by Lin Yutang, 1955)

For several years now, I have been practicing what is called Taoist Tai Chi, which is a more or less traditional “long” form that was introduced to North America by Master Moy Lin-Shin in 1970.  It is said to consist of 108 postures or moves.  That is an interesting number -108 is the product of 3x3x3x2x2x1 (3³x2²x1¹).

The first style of Tai Chi I learned many years ago was the “short” form developed by Cheng Man-Ching, which is said to have 37 moves.  For a short time I also studied a short form that is said to have 24 moves and was developed by the Chinese Sports Committee in 1956 through a collaboration of four recognized masters.

Almost all of the postures in any of the forms require more than one movement to complete, however.  For instance, each has at least one posture called “grasp bird’s tail” – sometimes referred to as the “three pushes” – which takes at least four distinct movements to complete.

The actual number of moves performed during a set of any of these forms thus seems arbitrary.  However, if you sit down with an experienced practitioner of any of them and demand to know how many moves comprise a set, all will give the same answer:  ONE.  From beginning to end, the tai chi set should flow without interruption.

The Tao Te Ching is similar. Continue reading →

Chapter 18 – Good and Evil

When the Great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality appear.  

When intellect and knowledge are emphasized,
There is great hypocrisy in the heart.

Family is no longer in harmony
When there is preaching of duty and affection.

 The nation is in disorder
When patriotic loyalty is admired.

The translation above is from a post by Amy Putkonen.  I don’t feel this chapter is very difficult to understand.  Lao Tzu is simply telling us that judgments of what is good or bad, kind or unkind, moral or immoral, etc. arise as humanity moves away from the natural flow of the Tao.  Bob Dylan sort of summed it up when he wrote, “To live outside the law [we will call it the Tao], you must be honest.”

 It is perhaps dishonest, or lazy, on my part; but I would like to comment on Chapter 18 through a fairly long quote from another author.  I recently became aware of a very interesting book entitled Novice to Master:  An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity.  I feel that most days are like that.  This book, though, is an autobiography of Soko Morinaga Roshi.  The author was a Japanese Zen monk who was a young man during World War II and who adopted the monastic lifestyle after surviving the war.  He wrote:

Among human beings there are those who exploit and those who are exploited.  The same holds true for relations among nations and among races.  Throughout history, the economically developed countries have held dominion over the undeveloped nations.  Now, at last, Japan was rising to liberate herself from the chains of exploitation!  This was a righteous fight, a meaningful fight!  How could we begrudge our country [our] one small life, even if that life be smashed to bits?  Such reckless rationalization allowed us to shut off our minds. . .

Then on August 15, 1945, came Japan’s unconditional surrender.  The war that everyone had been led to believe was so right, so just, the war for which we might gladly lay down our own life, was instead revealed overnight as a war of aggression, a war of evil – and those responsible for it were to be executed.

Continue reading →

Chapter 17 – Presidential Leadership

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!” 

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988)

Welcome .  This week I am writing shortly after listening to President Obama’s talk on the tragic use of chemical weapons in Syria and the atrocities of dictator Bashir “Basher Al” al Assad.  That, combined with Lao Tzu’s observations in Chapter 17 led me to consider what kind of presidential leadership we have and have had in this country.

My first thought was that we can never have the best leader, we can never be governed by a Master, because our political system is one in which the president and other elected officials feel they must always stay in the public eye in order to be re-elected.  We are all too aware of their existence.  Therefore, we must settle for second, third or fourth best.  Is our chief executive/commander in chief loved or feared or despised?

More important, I think, is Lao Tzu’s observation that “if you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.”  The corollary is that when the people don’t trust their leader, that leader becomes untrustworthy.  President Obama’s difficulty in convincing the American people that some military action against Syria is necessary or justified is that his predecessors have shown they  could not be trusted. Continue reading →

Chapter 16 – Like a Song

Attain the utmost in Passivity,
Hold firm to the basis of Quietude.

The myriad things take shape and rise to activity,
But I watch them fall back to their repose.
Like vegetation that luxuriantly grows
But returns to the root (soil) from which it springs.

To return to the root is Repose;
It is called going back to one’s Destiny.
Going back to one’s Destiny is to find the Eternal Law.
To know the Eternal Law is Enlightenment.
And not to know the Eternal Law Is to court disaster.

He who knows the Eternal Law is tolerant;
Being tolerant, he is impartial;
Being impartial, he is kingly;
Being kingly, he is in accord with Nature;
Being in accord with Nature, he is in accord with Tao;
Being in accord with Tao, he is eternal,
And his whole life is preserved from harm. 

(Lin Yutang’s translation, 1955)

I have just returned from a week of hiking in the South Lake Tahoe area, with one day on the lake in a boat.  Since that experience is fresh in my mind, I would like to work it into this post.  I will start with the name.

The Washoe people took this area as their summer home for hundreds of years before the first Americans – Fremont and Carson and their expedition – passed through in 1844.  Tahoe seems to be a mispronunciation of the Washoe words “Da ao,” which look and sounds a lot like “Tao” but mean something like “deep water”; or “Da ao a ga,” which means the “edge of the lake.”  Beginning from that tie to Taoism, I am going to indulge in a couple of metaphors.

The lake was formed thousands of years ago when a mountain range was essentially split in two.  Fault lines, which still exist, thrust upwards on the West, creating the Sierra Nevada, and on the East, creating the Carson Range; while down dropped blocks created the Tahoe Basin in between.  In the millennia since that movement, more than 190 square miles have filled with water – to an average depth of more than 1000 feet – creating what we know as Lake Tahoe.  The lake is the home of various fish, like trout and the kokanee salmon that leave the lake and run up Taylor Creek during spawning season in late September and early October.  Around the lake are fir and aspen and pine trees, including the majestic sugar pine, the world’s largest species of pine, with its huge cones.  Those forests are home to bears and bald eagles, beaver and osprey, squirrels, chipmunks, mink and many other animals.

Thus, like the Tao itself, we see the one (the original geologic uplift) giving rise to the two (the mountains to the East and West) creating the three (the mountains and the lake basin) which bring about the 10,000 things (all the flora and fauna). Continue reading →