tao te ching

The Place Of Death

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In The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, there’s a line about people who’ve attained the Tao that translates as “they have no place of death to enter,” “they have no place of death in them” or “for them there is no place in the land of death.” I’d not thought much about this chapter or this line until recently until a mix of meditation and stressful events gave me a new understanding.

In analyzing my own fears and concerns, I saw how they would obsess me. I’d worry about things, and thus my fears, from death to petty things, were actually part of me. I’d carry my concerns with me constantly, and as you doubtlessly know that was a heavy burden.

But being isolated, worrying, etc. just cuts me off from myself. It keeps me from engaging with life – with the Tao. It keeps me from being truly alive, freezing me in place. Honestly we all know too well how fears and worries can lock us down and even lead to bad outcomes – sometimes the very ones we feared.

There in my head, is the Place of Death.

Life, I realized, is a dialogue. You’re constantly reacting and interacting with places, people, ideas, food, etc. You make judgements and evaluations, changing or maintaining your course. Being alive, really alive, really there in the Tao, is a conversation.

And you can’t really have a dialogue when you’re hiding away. Life has to be lived, engaged. You can’t freeze yourself in your head or loop with scenarios to “protect” yourself.

Before I had talked about what I call “The Escape Capsule” in psychology and psychoanatomy. We build a walled off part of ourselves, shoving our supposed “self” into a box inside of us to protect it. This produces tension, warps our concept of ourselves, creates physical discomfort, and is quite miserable.

The “Escape Capsule” and “The Place of Death” are close to or are the exact same thing. Trying to get away from a changing world means you carry the changes you fear with you.

Life is a dialogue, really embracing yourself and the universe means you’re engaging. You can’t hide away in that case, you have to be open and vulnerable – because that’s how you have the dialogue with the world. The attempts to escape just lead you to build a mausoleum in your head.

It might be hard, but we can’t run away or stew in our fears. Why have a place for Death in us? Death has its own place in the world. We might as well find our place as well.

-Xenofact

The Flaws of Virtue

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The Flaws of Virtue

“Great Virtue Seems Flawed” is a quote from the Tao Te Ching Chapter 41. Lately I’ve been thinking about that between a mix of readings and watching today’s supposedly virtuous people. The former makes me think, the later makes me outraged THEN I think. I suppose it all goes to the same place – people with deep morals and principles, grounded ones, are NOT going to look perfect to people.

Because looking perfect is a great way to not actually focus on important issues and your own personal integrity.

Think of how much of “morality” we’re taught is just posturing. Say the right thing. Smile at the right time. Invoke some religious platitudes. I mean how many times do you see someone held up as a moral paragon who violates everything their religion and principles supposedly stand for?

In a media age it’s even worse. I’m often stunned – me, who’s had plenty of time to become cynical – how often supposed moralists are clearly not following what they say. They are lying to people’s faces, posing, posturing.

A person who has deep values, who has connected values, doesn’t place performative actions on a pedestal. They’re not here to sell you themselves, they’re not here to grift you. They have certain principles and act on them. Often that will conflict with the performative morality of others.

This also means that people who are interested in what is right and what values run deep is going to clash with the times. By definition someone who is contemplating what’s important is going to be at odds with flaws in society at the time. They will make waves, they will not be what we expect – and a smart society has “space” for wave makers (which lets you find out who has good ideas and who is just a jackass).

Finally, some ideas of what proper, moral behavior is really fall away when people take a look at deep issues and principles. Deep morality will seem flawed as people realize some things they were taught are, at best, useless, and worse harmful. Look at the history of people protesting injustice against people for skin color, sexual preference – at their time, they looked very flawed, but in retrospect we see their virtue (even if some want to deny it).

So yes, great virtue does seem flawed. It comes from a deeper source, from contemplation, from trying to get the big picture. We should always expect some moral friction in the world because we’re always re-evaluating things.

I would note, as a warning, that there is “being flawed” and “being performatively transgressive.” A person who’s deep morals come first and just happen to appear as flawed is one thing. Someone going around breaking things and putting on a show is clearly not coming from a deeper place.

And ironically, the performative faux moralist is probably performing “acceptable rebellion” so they’re conforming anyway . . .

-Xenofact

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