Under the Spell of Words

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 3

 If you overly esteem talented individuals,
people will become overly competitive.
If you overvalue possessions,
people will begin to steal.

Do not display your treasures
or people will become envious.

The Master leads by
emptying people’s minds,
filling their bellies,
weakening their ambitions,
and making them become strong.
Preferring simplicity and freedom from desires,
avoiding the pitfalls of knowledge and wrong action.

For those who practice not-doing,
everything will fall into place.

-Translation by J. H. McDonald

People normally think it good to heap praise upon talented people, but this is an unnecessary act that produces conflict and jealousy. We might say it’s not necessary for other people to get jealous at the praise we give someone, but then it’s also unnecessary to give them praise or to be praised.

People desire money, treasures and other valuable things, but one who amasses these things tempts people to steal them. If a society prizes having things, and the “need” to have things is constantly drilled into people’s heads, some of its people will decide to get the things they want by whatever means necessary.

 “The Master leads by
emptying people’s minds,
filling their bellies,
weakening their ambitions,
and making them become strong.
Preferring simplicity and freedom from desires,
avoiding the pitfalls of knowledge and wrong action.“

Seems fairly straightforward to me: It is best to take care of one’s basic needs and leave all the other superfluous junk aside. The only two phrases that might need explanation are those about emptying people’s minds and avoiding the pitfalls of knowledge.

In this and other chapters, the TTC talks about being empty-minded. This can be interpreted as emptying one’s mind for the sake of meditation, but I don’t think that’s the whole meaning behind it.

Something to keep in mind here is that the word “mind” in this chapter is only used in about half of the translations of the TTC I’ve read. The other half use the word “heart”. I think this is indicative that the Chinese word being translated doesn’t exactly correspond to either of these two english words. Another book I read once – I believe it was a book on Qigong by Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming – details some of the differences in how Chinese and Western culture classify the various functions of an individual, explaining why the word “mind” is often used to translate some words that don’t carry quite the same meaning. Unfortunately, it’s been a while since I read the book so I don’t remember what those words were.

As for the last verse: judging by this chapter and the last one, «not doing», or «wu wei» to use what I believe is the romanization of the chinese words, might be said to mean, or at least to involve, doing without any great desire or ambition driving one’s actions; doing something for its own sake and letting things turn out as they will.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 2

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

Tao Te Ching chapter 2; Original attributed to Lao Tzu; Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

The first two “stanzas” share a theme, which again says something about the nature of language. Language is built on distinctions between “this” and “not-this”. Words that describe a thing’s qualities, such as “dark”, “big” and “soft”, are only meaningful if we can conceive of other things that lack those qualities. If everything was equally dark, or equally big, or equally soft, then those words would lose their meaning because they would draw no longer draw any distinctions between “this” and “not-this”. Things are only dark, big and soft in relation to other things which are not like that.

“Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.“

I’m not sure how the theme of the first two stanzas–that all qualities imply the idea of a lack of that quality–is supposed to imply that one should do nothing and teach without talking. A possible interpretation occurs to me if “doing nothing” is meant to be taken in the sense of “nothing is the thing that I’m doing” as opposed to “I am not doing anything”. The phrase “doing nothing” would then be paradoxical, since “doing” implies “doing something”, but “nothing” is the opposite of “something”. “Teaching no-talking” might also be considered paradoxical, if one takes “teaching” to imply “with words”, in which case one would be telling other people that they shouldn’t talk. If this is a valid interpretation, I think the use of paradox here is, among other things, an invitation to move beyond the dualistic “this/not-this” perception of the world inherent in the use of language..

Doing nothing and teaching no-talking might also be understood as actions that have the same end-goal as doing and teaching as while employing none of the methods of doing and teaching as commonly understood; to do without doing and to teach without teaching.

The next line seems to be pointing out the impermanence of all things. All things rise and fall after a time; this is something that a sage should accept as a matter of course. In other translations, this line is translated as the sage letting the 10000 things rise and fall, not interfering in the process for the sake of his desires. This can be understood as part of doing without doing.

“Creating, yet not possessing.
Working, yet not taking credit.”

Creation is often associated with possession, as is working with credit. To create without possessing and work without taking credit are also part of “doing without doing”; to do something without all the baggage that we associate with doing something.

“Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.”

I believe the first line is another part of doing without doing. On the second line I’m at a loss. How does forgetting one’s work allow it to last forever, and in what sense does it last forever? I don’t have any answers to these questions right now. Perhaps the key will be found in some future chapter.

Meditations on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 1

I start this blog with the first in a series of meditations on the Tao Te Ching (or Dao De Jing) because so many of my ideas are, if not derived from this text, at least reflected in it. I am no expert in this text–I’ve only read it in its entirety a few times–so this series of posts will be more for my benefit, as an attempt to understand the text more fully, than for the sake of educating anyone else about Taoism. At the same time, I mean to use these meditations as a vehicle for exploring my own philosophy, which I find easier to do by commenting on a text than by writing something completely original. Hopefully you will find the ideas I explore here interesting.

Anyway, without further ado, let us begin with the first Chapter of the TTC.

The Tao that can be told /is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.

These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

Tao Te Ching chapter 1; Original attributed to Lao Tzu; Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Already the text provides ample fuel for meditation. Let us begin going through it two lines at a time.

«The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.»

The first pair of lines hints at limitations to human language; “blind spots” containing ideas about which little or nothing can be said. Concepts such as “truth”, “being” and “reality”, for instance, seem to me to belong to one such blind spot, as any attempt to define these words will usually produce some synonym of the word, or else entire essays on the matter that obfuscate more than they reveal.

The Tao, which can be translated as “The Way”, is one such ineffable concept. One could describe it as “the way things are” or “the way things act”, or call it “Nature” or “Natural Law”, but these merely graze by a full understanding of the Tao, like a tangent that touches on just one of the infinitely-many points of a circle. Instead of relying on descriptions of the Tao, we must experience it ourselves in order to understand it.

«The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. «

The “nameless” mentioned mentioned here might refer to that which can’t be communicated through language, or to a perception of the world not filtered through human language–the world as it is, not as we say it is. “The named” as “mother of the ten thousand things” refers to the fact that though the act of naming we separate all that is into distinct categories–separate the color spectrum into reds, blues and greens; distinguish the living from the non-living; separate living things into plants, animals, and fungi, and these further into different species.

«Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations. «

Here the topic seems to shift from language to desire, but this shift hints further at the nature of language. The names we use for things help us to draw attention to certain qualities that we care about. If the qualities we care about change, then so does the name of the object. The same cloth might be balled a curtain if it’s hung over a window or a tablecloth if it’s covering a table, without anything about the object itself being different.

Beyond the implications about language, this pair of lines also point out that as long as you desire things, you will only ever see things. If you desire ice cream, your attention will be focused on getting ice cream, or on the fact that you haven’t gotten ice cream. Rather than simply taking in your experiences for what they are, you will see everything through the lens of your desire.

“The two [the mystery and the manifestations] spring from the same source but differ in name”

The ineffable reality of the Tao is not something separate from the world of objects; they are two different angles from which we can look at the world. Seen from one angle, tablecloths, animals and red are valid categories for things that definitely exist; from another one, there are no such things, or else they are just illusions.

“this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.”

About these lines I can’t say I understand much. Presumably it says something about the mystical experience of the Tao, but about this I can say nothing as I haven’t experienced it.

The limits of language, which are brought up here a few times, is something I’ve thought a lot about. To my mind, many philosophical problems, such as that of “free will” are only problematic because people insist on taking language (their language in particular) at face value, as something that accurately describes reality, and so end up ignoring many of the problems and limitations that come from using language. I will eventually have more to say about this topic, but for now I will leave you with this post and continue my meditations on the TTC with chapter 2 next week.