Monday, April 21, 2014

Chapter 15

The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and comprehensive.
Their minds were too deep to be fathomed.

Because they are unfathomable,
One can only describe them vaguely by their appearance.

Hesitant like one wading a stream in winter;
Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;
Cautious and courteous like a guest;
Yielding like ice on the point of melting;
Simple like an uncarved block;
Hollow like a cave;
Confused like a muddy pool;
And yet who else could quietly and gradually evolve from the muddy to the clear?
Who else could slowly but steadily move from the inert to the living?

He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full.
But precisely because he is never full,
He can always remain like a hidden sprout,
And does not rush to early ripening.

This beautiful verse tells us for the first time how we would recognise the Taoist saint in the street.  Like the ancient Greeks, our writer imagines a ‘Golden Age’ from the past where sages roamed the country and brought perfect order to society.  There is every reason to believe that this is just a rhetorical device.  It is always far more compelling to suggest that such people were an actual feature of the past, rather than a idealised vision of how people might be in the future.  But one thing seems certain, that this portrait of the saint is comparable to the saints of all cultures and ages – and must surely be based on real people that lived.

The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and comprehensive.

In other words they had the wisdom not to become fixed on one-sided interpretations of the world.  Wisdom is always nothing other than the ability to be sceptical.  The capacity to see and understand alternative possibilities with which to question the status quo is the defining trait of the philosophical personality. 

Their minds were too deep to be fathomed.

When this sceptical ability is applied to the fundamental categories of reality – time, space and existence itself – the intelligence at work is something truly transcendental.  It is a vision that cannot be put into words: words can only symbolise realities in a world of time, space and plurality.  Words cannot therefore reach the place where the sage’s intelligence has taken him.  Only those of similar attainment are equipped to fathom it.

Because they are unfathomable,
One can only describe them vaguely by their appearance.

By appearance, we should read behaviour.  The sage does not act with the same motives as those fearful ones who live in time and space.  Although the sage’s actions are rational, they are in accordance with laws that are of an entirely different order to our own. 

At one time, changes in weather seemed to the human intellect entirely random, even capricious.  But with increased understanding, the weather became more predictable.  Our understanding of the spiritually wise is also, as the text says, ‘vague’: we notice that they are often kind to others, they are happy and seem to live in a state of deep peace.  If we want to know more, we must make the scientific investigations ourselves – there is no sense in waiting for general knowledge to catch up!

Hesitant like one wading a stream in winter;
Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;
Cautious and courteous like a guest;

Hesitant, timid and cautious!  These are not the virtues of the Ancient Greeks, are they? 

Yet, the average person will notice that the sage doesn’t rush headlong into things boldly and brashly, rather they move quite slowly and with great circumspection.  The average man only knows that when he behaves the same way: it’s because he’s afraid of what will come!

The sage, actually, is afraid of nothing.  And he has the confidence to know that everything can and will go well, just as long as he slows down a little and takes things carefully.  The truth is: it is fear and impetuosity that is so often behind what looks like bold, assertive action.  True confidence is relaxed enough to take its time.

This is the unfortunate situation that surrounds all the best examples of the spiritual life we have.  We judge the sage according to our own standards, and then disregard him as being as we are at our weakest.  Like Jesus says: ‘we have eyes to see, but do not see; ears to hear but we do not hear!’

Yielding like ice on the point of melting;

Ice on the point of melting is on a knife-edge: more coldness makes it more rigid; more warmth makes it more fluid.  This is a good metaphor for the person who is presently of form, but will instantly shed it for the sake of fluidity when the occasion arises.

The rest of us are not on the point of melting – that is our problem.  We are solid cubes stuck to the shelf of the deep-freeze.  We never have the choice to melt…we don’t even have the desire!

Simple like an uncarved block;

An uncarved block appears crude and simple, and is not refined in any way that makes it useful to everyday people and society.  But, it still has the potential to be any form it wishes.  The carved block, on the other hand, is a finished work; it has already gained ripeness and cannot return to its aboriginal potential.

It is no surprise that this powerful metaphor has also been at the heart of Christian Mysticism, first conceived by Plotinus and established in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

Hollow like a cave;

The fathomless unpredictability of the sage makes him appear totally vacuous to the ordinary man.  What we can’t understand intellectually remains as a nothingness to us, an entity of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.  A drifting, aimless, nowhere man are the words we use to dismiss him.  What a shame for us!

There is of course an emptiness at the heart of the sage.  But it is that unfathomable spiritual world which is so far above our real world of time, space and form that we must use the antonym, emptiness, to describe it.

Confused like a muddy pool;
And yet who else could quietly and gradually evolve from the muddy to the clear?

The confusion of the sage is the main subject of Chapter 20, and we shall only hint at it here.  It refers to a midway stage in the evolution from the everyday person’s worldview to that of the realised saint.  It is a period where the conventional motives of society have died away, but the person has not yet learnt to fully trust the Tao, termed here as the ‘clear’.  Unsurprisingly it is a difficult period of bewilderment and depression, and is strongly characteristic of many who embark on the spiritual path.

Who else could slowly but steadily move from the inert to the living?

By inert, we may imagine the inertia of the ice-block as compared to flowing water.  Normal, everyday people are stuck in the inert rigidities of the egoic life, responding in predictable and stereotyped ways to the situations that present themselves.  And then we congratulate ourselves for our consistency and rigid strength of character!

He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full.
But precisely because he is never full,
He can always remain like a hidden sprout,
And does not rush to early ripening.

Again we have the notion of resisting fullness, because this is the moment where decay switches from an incipient to an actual process. 

Ripeness is not something that can be delayed indefinitely.  The wise man, however, deliberately chooses not to ‘cash in’ too quickly on whatever crop is growing within him.  Other people meanwhile are eager to go out in the world and demonstrate skills and knowledge that might have been nurtured to a greater degree.

The obvious example is the two businessmen – the first of which seeks to transform his product into instant profit and so devotes less time and money to research and development.  The second man sees more deeply into the future potential of the product and so prefers to defer cashing in until he has made something better and with broader appeal.

Our lives and our persons are also like precious, innovative ideas.  Most of us do not really see ‘what a piece of work man is’, it is the rare few who insist on withdrawing themselves from the market place for the sake of further cultivation.

Psychologically speaking, we don’t really have a choice which of these people we are.  To those who ripen early, it will be torture to withhold their own ready gifts, and it will be immaterial whether these are great or small, so long as they don’t go unrecognised.

The person gifted with a strong vision of their ideal self, on the other hand, will find it torture to limit themselves to the threadbare uses society usually offers them.  They shall suffer much for their ‘uselessness’, and only with great strength and faith will they have the courage to keep deferring their own ‘ripening’ until they feel ready for it.


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