Taoism

The Tao Isn’t The Market

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In my Taoist readings, “the Tao” is always a subject of discussion. This is ironic because as the beloved Tao Te Ching notes, when you speak of the Tao you’re not speaking of the real Tao. A great deal of Taoist writing is talking about how ineffable the Tao is then writing a huge amount about it. There’s a reason I compare writers like Chuang-Tzu to people like Dave Barry – you need that mix of humor and sarcasm to handle such irony.

Of course that’s kind of the point. You have a word for the ineffable (Tao) that’s behind all things, and that word represents everything and how you can’t really define it. The Tao is everywhere, it’s why everything is, it’s the smallest and the largest, the near and the far. Taoism takes a word that lets you refer to the great connected isness of absolutely everything that words can’t otherwise encompass.

It’s kind of a linguistic hack.

That, I find, is also the power of good Taoist writing. Using a single word and poetic writing, it reminds you that the universe is great and connected. Leading you around by words and sentences, you start intuitively getting to understanding the power behind everything. In turn, that lets you live in the world, living in harmony with things, knowing it’s all vast and everywhere and connected – Tao.

If you get it you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want to fake it, you probably can for awhile. But a lot of Taoism is words leading you to the wordless, that there’s a force behind everything.

What’s funny is I realized lately that the Tao reminds me of how Capitalists think of the Almighty Market.

What is is. The Market speaks. The great and powerful force that reconciles everything is perfect and everywhere and if you don’t get rich then The Market has decided. The market is unquestionable and good and perfect and the foundation of all things. The market is like the Tao in that it’s ineffable, AND like a personal god in that it makes decisions about things, granting everything a moral quality. The Market cannot be questioned, it’s that awesome! Yet also it makes decisions.

What’s funny is the market being a human construct, being about profit and gain and exploitation, is something Taoists warned about for aeons. As a construct that warps human feelings, it’s to be regarded with suspicion. As something about gain, it risks the traps of greed and acquisitiveness, which corrupt society. As something surrounded by flummery and endless long-winded justifications, it’s as suspicious as pretentious intellectuals and politicians and would-be sages.

The way people treat The Market as some divine force darkly echoes the words of the Taoists with a touch of theology, and realizing that I understand Market Fanatics passion much better. It’s beyond greed, into religion and even a kind of perverse mysticism.

And thanks to the Taoists, who would have laughed at the Market Fanatics and their pretentious, helped me understand that better. And laugh, of course.

I appreciate the irony. Which Chuang-Tzu and Dave Barry would probably both appreciate.

– Xenofact

Creativity and the Celestial Mind

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In my readings of Taoist mysticism, there’s an idea from some works (that dates back a bit over 1000 years by my guess) that describe the Human Mind and the Celestial Mind. The Human Mind is often described in terms of Yin, the receptive force of the universe, but a very pathological form – grasping, distracted, etc. Meanwhile the Celestial Mind, the enlightened mind, is described as Yang, the creative force, but concealed by the Human Mind. The creative power and the receptive form-giver are out of wack.

I found this concept helped appreciate my artistic creativity and it’s helped me in my meditations. In fact, I plan to write on this more.

The metaphor of the Human versus Celestial Mind is a helpful metaphor understand meditation. Our human mind, pursuing various activities like breathing, clarifies and calms itself, so something else emerges – the Celestial Mind. We’ve probably all been there – a state of clarify, powerful, subtle, and of course something we keep getting back to again and again as we keep getting away fro it.

With this metaphor of this Celestial Mind, this clear and calm yet somehow powerful and creative force, I began noticing something about my creativity.

When I was really creative, such as with my surrealist art, there was something about it. It was emergent, it wasn’t exactly part of my “everyday mind.” After a good art session I felt different, in touch with something, though it was almost like there was a hole in my regular self that something else poured through. It felt similar to what happened in meditations, those moments where you’re gone but something is there.

I also noticed similar experiences with energy work. Meditating on bodily energies (wether you consider them more metaphor like me or not) leads to a kind of clarity and a sense of something deeper within us. When you’re aware of your body, you’re aware of all the STUFF going on. This was also similar to that sense of creativity, of touching something greater.

Using the above metaphor of Human and Celestial Mind, of a pathological form of Yin and a concealed Yang, I appreciated the meditative element of creativity. When you really get going something shifts, the everyday you fades away and something else comes out. The “you” experienced in meditation and the creative you are similar if not the same thing.

I even began noticing how taking time to work on creativity seemed to correspond with better experiences in meditation. The way to the Celestial Mind was primed by both.

I hope to keep exploring this idea, as I find it in a few Taoist Documents, and I think it’s useful. I also now see how Creativity really can be a kind of meditation, and how it enhances our experiences. That Celestial Mind is there, and that’s one way to be in touch with it.

  • Xenofact

The Intake

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The five colors blind the eye.
The five sounds deafen the ear.
The five tastes harm the palate.
Dashing about riding and hunting injure the mind.
Rare goods lead one astray.
The sage is for the root not the eye.
They take one, discard the other.

-Tao Te Ching Chapter 12, interpretation

This chapter from the Tao Te Ching is one that I hadn’t thought of initially, just assuming it was about getting caught up in things. Over the last few years I’d come to realize how profound it is, and I have to say the internet played a huge role in that.

Not using the internet for research. But watching how overloaded with crap it is, and how it sells us crap. Does it seem like we’re overloaded with things to buy? Is there endless hype and things you’re told you want? Are you trying to keep up with the latest hyped game and getting the graphic card you’ll need? The internet in Web 3.0 is a gigantic device meant to overload the senses, keep us online, sell ads, and sell products.

And, as I became disgusted with the state of Web 3.0, I began to really get this chapter.

Humans can only process so much information. Some of that is the limitations of our senses and systems, but some of it is a blessing because we’re information, and taking in too much ruins who we are. To be who you are, you can’t drown yourself in information, but process it so you grow effectively. Information is a lot like nutrition, you choose the right input, the right amount, and you’re healthy and functional.

Web 3.0 is a mixture of buffet, processed food, and force feeding for the mind. It’s not good for us, and people are using it to drain our attention, money, and time.

So now I get this quote. Too much stimuli, unselected and unchosen, numbs us, distracts us, and misguides us. We have to be selective, we have to keep aware of who we are, centered, so we don’t numb and distract ourselves. It also keeps us from being exploited.

Its a reminder of how some common sense has been written down over the aeons . . . and how we have to keep rediscovering it.

-Xenofact