Number Thirty Four The Gift
34
drifting on a spit of land
where the river ends
and the ocean begins
Lesson # 34
The Tao is in all things,
yet it does not dominate them,
but it leaves them
to find their own way.
The Tao is there
in the living and the dead,
in the past and in the future.
It owns nothing, and yet
everything rests in its arms in the end.
Don’t seek to be great,
just seek to fully be.
From: 81 Lessons from the Tao Te Ching
Number 34 The gift
This unnamable presence is flowing everywhere
within and around us
It generates energy life and awareness
with infinite generosity
It flows forward in time
nourishing and unfolding its creation
with a purpose we will never be able to comprehend
It gives birth to life and to death
doling them out seemingly randomly
What can we learn
from this generous unknowable ruthless abundance
All we can do is be humble generous and awestruck
in the face of such greatness
NUMBER THIRTY FOUR
Great Tao flows everywhere,
It extends to the left and to the right.
All beings receive It in order to live and be free.
It works out perfectness in them although It possesses not a Name.
It protects them with love and sustains them, but does not claim to be Ruler of their actions.
Always seeking the innermost, you may say that Its Name is in the Small.
All beings return again into It, yet It does not claim to be Ruler of their actions.
You may say that Its Name is in the Great.
That is why, to the end of his life, the self-controlled man is not great in action,
Thus he is able to perfect his greatness
Isabella Mears, The Tao Teh King, A Tentative Translation from the Chinese, William McLellan, Glascow, 1916.
Number 34 (commentary) Will God save us from ourselves?
The odds that we might exist at all are minuscule. Gravity must operate within tiny parameters or the Universe either collapses in on itself or flies apart.
We must evolve on a planet with a molten iron core, which has a stable atmosphere rich in oxygen and a fertile environment. We must be protected from life-destroying cosmic radiation.
A giant meteor has to hit the Earth 66 million years ago. Another one may be on its way. Let’s face it, the odds were always against us. Yet here we are.
And we have the gift of being conscious. How rare a gift this life that we lead is, one that we take for granted! We have the capacity to throw this gift away and we have the capacity to transform our civilization to honor this rare gift.
The Tao doesn’t care. The universe will unfold with or without us in it.
But if we can attune ourselves to it, we might find a Path away from Armageddon.
Tangent and Tool #34, Already Lost A question and a reflection: “What am I losing by doing all the giving that I do?” You are probably a caregiver, one of the ones who serve, one of the warriors for Mother Earth. I am too. All of us excel at giving and serving. But there is a hidden narcissism in all that. We can begin to see ourselves as noble, as amazingly good, as special because we are sacrificing ourselves for the greater good. We can be so busy saving the world that we lose the time to relish life and the world as it is.
Here is the good but sad news: Everything you do will not be enough. The forces of darkness are presently far in excess of the forces of light. It feels like greed (the urgency to get what you think is yours before it is too late) trumps compassion. Competition (the hunger to win and the fear of losing) overtakes wisdom, virtue and ethics. This is good news, because you can relax a little. It is not on your shoulders to fix. The battle for humanity to wake up and become conscious will not be won in your lifetime. It will take a lot of catastrophes that you will never witness before mankind realizes what a horrific path it has chosen.
The problem is that we want change, and we want it today, or yesterday if that is possible. We want it fixed. Breathe and tell yourself, “Someday, just not today.” Your job is to do what you can and then let the hope of a quick victory go. That will come much later, to some other generation. Go ahead, fight for what you believe, serve selflessly by sharing some love and kindness, but then remember to be loving and kind to yourself. You deserve it.