Heaven-and-Earth is not sentimental;
It treats all things as straw-dogs.
The sage is not sentimental;
He treats all the people as straw-dogs.
Between Heaven and Earth,
There seems to be a Bellows:
It is empty, and yet it is inexhaustible;
The more it works, the more comes out of it.
No amount of words can fathom it:
Better look for it within you.
In ancient China straw dogs were used as ritualistic offerings to the Gods. Throughout the ritual they were handled with total respect, but when the service was over, and when the Gods were deemed satisfied, the effigies were simply tossed aside. As the people left the assembly hall the straw dogs were stepped on, kicked, trampled, perhaps gathered by the poor for kindling…
A lot of us are in denial about the justice of the world. We like to think that the wicked always get their just deserts, and that good conduct pays in the long run. But in this verse, the sage will not indulge such wishful thinking. Every day in the newspaper, we hear of normal, blameless citizens being visited by unimaginably hideous events; and the unscrupulous ones, untroubled by their consciences, so often live charmed existences to the end of their deceitful days.
In our own lives we too have periods – two, three, four years long – where we feel like the revered straw dogs in the ceremony. It seems we are the favoured ones ourselves! Our projects work out, our relationships are satisfying and plentiful. We start to feel invincible; we actually believe our success is due to our own merit! And then a few years later we are staggered that we could ever feel so confident about ourselves and our wretched existence.
We need to see this about our lives: a naïve optimism only makes the sting of misfortune worse. And the Tao Te Ching does offer a remedy, but in order to find it we must first have the courage to face the brutal realities of existence.
If we are unable to imagine any other pleasures in life than the creature comforts of mortal existence, then we shall suffer for our narrow view. The injustice of the world will strike us everywhere we look, and we will bemoan it. And we are indignant because we are jealous of what others are getting. Our belief in the world’s justice is a kind of superstition. We think that we know the methods to get happiness, and we call these methods ‘virtue’ or ‘merit’, and then get annoyed and bewildered when we see our methods contradicted in others people’s lives. ‘they didn’t follow the right technique, and yet they got all the good results!’
But of all this talk about justice only arises because we are not yet aware than true happiness comes only when we stop all these speculations on moral cause and effect and actually start enjoying the beauty and depth of the moment.
And it is only when this new source of pleasure arises in us and takes root that we are actually able to understand the true nature of Justice.
We finally understand that the individual we thought we were is never anything more than a passing idea, gone in a flash. We see that ideas of self form only a minute proportion of all that flashes before our eyes, and that our true identity is nothing other than the awareness that watches it all. To see this and learn this is more than a huge relief, it is an immense joy. We feel born again, into a larger, freer existence where all that happens is trusted and accepted.
To realise our true identity is the only benefit worth gaining in this life, and yet we see that there is a catch. In order to first see it we must first feel the pain of frustration with our narrow egoic existence. Through suffering, it occurs to us to aspire for more. What the world considers ‘good fortune’ is therefore of no help here. In fact, an easy charmed existence shall only detain us in a worldview which is actually far from the ideal one.
We understand justice when we realise that all our misfortunes in the everyday world are actually good fortune in the search for ‘heaven’. And good fortune in the everyday world is actually misfortune from the spiritual perspective. The wise person, who is under no further illusion about himself, and has nowhere left to develop therefore wins both ways. Whatever happens is either good for his body or good for his soul.
Naturally, the sage’s attitude towards the fortunes and misfortunes in other people’s lives is also transformed. He now understands the whole needs of a person, and will not necessarily pander to their physical pleasures…
The sage is not sentimental;
He treats all the people as straw-dogs.
He will always be beneficent to his fellows, but we may not always be able to see what is so pleasant about it.
Between Heaven and Earth,
There seems to be a Bellows:
It is empty, and yet it is inexhaustible;
The more it works, the more comes out of it.
We’ve already read about how the Tao might be described as being the creator of all things; in this short verse we are presented with an opposite but equally plausible explanation: that the Tao is an emptiness. The comparison is with a bellows, which first empties and then refills itself again. Every single moment of existence is like this. An thought or perception arises, and then immediately vanishes back into the void, only to be replaced by the next thing. Sometimes the items of awareness appear to linger for a longer time, other times, the Tao seems to be ‘working more’ and the items rush before our eyes at superspeed.
To watch this process as it happens is meditation. It is the essence of all spiritual practice, and much of the Tao Te Ching is devoted to describing this way of viewing things. We are reminded of Buddha’s words at the close of The Diamond Sutra: ‘This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.’
No amount of words can fathom it:
Better look for it within you.
Any word is, itself, just another of the fleeting things that pass before our eyes. The Tao can never be talked about nor thought about. It must be seen, and the truth of it realised for ourselves. Fortunately every single moment of our lives are opportunities to do this.
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