Chapter One- Begin Here
Haiku:
the robin’s song
slices into the stillness
a silver blade
Short Form:
Lesson # 1
Names are lies.
Speak the name of a thing
and you kill it.
You dare to limit it to your puny
ideas about what a thing might be.
You carve it out from the
everything that it arises from
and the everything that it
disappears into,
like carving out cubes of air
and calling them yours.
You freeze it in a word, a name,
and you think you know it.
Silly.
Everything is just one thing.
Mears Translation:
NUMBER ONE
Tao that can be expressed is not Everlasting Tao.
The name that can be named is not the Everlasting Name.
The Name, in its inner aspect, is Life-Spring of Heaven and Earth.
The Name, in its outer aspect, is Mother of all created things.
Therefore:
To perceive the mystery of Life, desire always to reach the innermost.
To perceive the limitations of things, desire always to possess them.
These two aspects of Life are One.
In their outcome they become different in Name but in their depth, they are One.
In a depth, still deeper yet, is the Door of many mysteries.
Long Form my Translation:
Number one: Begin here
The way of the Tao cannot be reduced to words
Any name we speak is not its essential name
The source of Heaven and Earth
comes from the nameless
Naming defines what we see
when we look at all of the ten thousand things
But when we are free from desire,
we see what was hidden in darkness
Caught in desire we see only its manifestation
We do not recognize that
the outer manifestation and the inner essence are the same thing
But when we see both the surface of a thing and this inner darkness
the darkness within the darkness
we enter the door to all mystery
Commentary:
Number One (commentary) What is this thing called the Tao?
Look around!
You appear to be in a world filled with separate objects, each which you can name and each which seems distinct from the objects around it.
We think we know them because we can name them.
We name, and name, and name.
What you do not yet see is the energy dancing within and between those objects.
What you do not yet recognize is the energetic space between objects that contains them.
This is the dance of forces that both create and connect everything.
When you do “see” this (not with your eyes exclusively but with your whole being) you begin to see beneath the surface of things and into the depths of their reality.
This is an unsettling, deep and profound experience. Everything appears both solid, separate, and also ephemeral and impermanent.
Everything, including yourself, is being (instant-by-instant) created by and from some unnamable, eternal source.
Tangent and Tool #1, Expanding your frame of reference: (Reflective exercise) Sometimes we know too much. All that data, all those names, opinions and beliefs bounce around inside our brain. This causes us stress. Too Much Information! So, choose a day when you are not at work and spend the day not naming, not pretending to think you know what is right before your eyes. Try to see everything with fresh, newborn eyes, with no ideas about who or what is in front of you. Take in everything with a quiet, curious, wonderous mind. Sometimes, our fears about where the world is going contaminate our ability to appreciate just what we have right in front of us. Let those worries go just for a day and relish the wonder of what is right before your eyes, ears, nose. Today, be newborn.