The Doubtful tao

the doubtful Tao #30

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:32:53 -0600

I

There aren’t many buttons on the control panel of your life. Mostly you have dials and throttles. Very few things are as simple as “on” and “off.” Instead it’s usually a matter of “how much” or “how little,” and so it’s most helpful to think of attitudes, emotions and behavior in terms of ranges or scales. For example, when we talked about judgmentalism earlier, it became clear that it’s impossible NOT to judge. There is no “off” button on our control panel for judging. Rather, to get ourselves under reasonable control, it’s a matter of adjusting the dial of HOW MUCH we judge. Imagine on your control panel a meter that measures judgmental thinking - a “judgeometer” if you will - and at the far right end of the scale, it goes into the red zone. Keeping out of the red is the objective.

Let’s apply this idea to another behavior: aggression.

The 30th verse of the Tao Te Ching is addressed to leaders, and it warns them against using military force to get others to do their will. I think the application to us as individuals is pretty obvious: Don’t use force to get other folks to do what you want them to do.

I have to give Lao-tzu credit this time for being reasonable. He doesn’t say, Don’t EVER use military force. He acknowledges that sometimes it’s necessary. And in our individual lives, it would be naive to think that we will never be in situations where aggression or force is the wise course of action. You just have to know when it’s appropriate and when to draw the line.

Aggression sits on the right side of a scale of behavior as an opposite to passivity. Most of your interactions with others involve your being somewhere on that scale between being passive or aggressive. (Some of us are known for being strongly one or the other.) The far left of the meter shows you doing absolutely nothing (taking a passive role) while the far right shows you declaring all-out war on someone to enforce your will upon them. That’s the red zone, according to Lao-tzu, and you want to keep the needle of this meter in the black.

The problem is, most of us don’t pay much attention to our control panels. We grab the steering wheel and jam our foot on the gas, and that’s pretty much it. We develop a pace and a general “feel” for how our life is going, and that serves us very well. It’s too much trouble to keep our eyes on all the little dials and meters.

That’s normal. That’s OK. We all have our “style” of living, and it really isn’t reasonable to expect any of us to have our eyes on the panel all the time instead of watching where we’re going. But it would behoove us to look down and check from time to time.

II

Metaphor change:

Imagine life as a stream and us as the fish inhabiting that stream. The water flows, and because we’re fish we’re suited to move with it or through it smoothly. But often we find ourselves wishing we were something other than a fish. We try hard to be a bear because there’s something we want that only a bear could have. We try hard to be an eagle because there’s someplace we want to go that only an eagle can go.

There is a lot of merit in reaching for our dreams, in striving to be all we can be, in seeking to fulfill our potential. But there is a danger inherent in these pursuits: we must never lose touch with our essential nature. A fish will never, for long, be as happy anywhere else as he will be swimming in the water. If you’ll indulge my metaphor a little, I’ll tell you that there is a natural joy for the fish who understands the relationship he has with the water and learns to revel in it. And there is a natural joy for the person who has gotten in touch with his or her essential nature and has learned to live in tune with it.

I believe that there are some people whose essential nature is warlike. These people are built from the ground up for aggression and decisiveness in battle. But I also believe that this is a small percentage of the human race and that most people who trample other people to accomplish their goals have been warped to be that way. They’ve learned somehow that they aren’t valuable unless they succeed or that people won’t respect them unless they force their way to the top of any situation. But at their core, if they could go back to the time they were born, before the damage was done to their understanding, there is an essential part of them that is pure and capable of being at peace with the world around them. They are the fish needing desperately to be a bear, but that need they feel is a lie; It’s all in their head. Being at peace is just a matter of stepping back from the battle and finding a quiet place from which to observe and reflect. Long enough to perceive their true essential nature which lies at the core of their being. For all of us, the true need is to be at peace with ourselves.

Only then can we be at peace with the world.

the doubtful Tao #29 Part 2

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 06:00:59 -0600

I’m going to take a leap here and say that taking the 29th verse of the Tao Te Ching at face value would be just plain naive. Put simply, this passage tells us to stop trying to control (or in some translations, to improve) the universe and to allow our lives to unfold naturally. You’re kidding us, right Lao-tzu? I mean, what part of our daily activity is NOT some effort to control or improve our world? When I brush my teeth in the morning, I’m trying to control my world. When I handle the steering wheel and pedals of my car, I’m trying to control my world. If I sat back and “allowed” my car to “unfold its way naturally” to work in the morning, I’d be out of a job. I can even jump into the psycho-social realm here and say that when I smile at a person who looks troubled, I’m trying to control my world. So what’s the itch in Lao-tzu’s craw here? What’s he want us to do? Stay in bed and watch Sesame Street all day?

I’ve spent weeks mulling this over. For one thing, I’m not a control freak. I’m not aggressive (or even assertive most of the time), and I tend to be pretty passive about things. I certainly know some control freaks who could stand to read this verse, but as far as a message to myself and the general population, I was coming up short. Oh sure, I could put together a nice little new age essay about relaxing and letting the divine forces work their “will” out, but that’s about as helpful as telling you to have a nice day. So what’s the meat here? Is this a waste of a verse? Just a wad of used bubble gum? Nah. Let’s make it work for us, shall we?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve taken the opportunity to talk to some good friends about how I could apply this verse to myself. My main question for them was something like this: Are there any ways in which I (Kyle) am trying to control my world in an unhealthy way? Well, I was amazed at how easy it was for my friends to answer this question for me. It seems I DO have a little bit of the control freak in me after all. Damn.

My personal control issue has a lot to do with my motives for doing things like writing this commentary on the Tao Te Ching. Writing this stuff is a great activity, I think. It has the potential to help people. It’s utilizing my strengths in a positive way. To my mind, I SHOULD be writing this commentary. So where could I possibly be going wrong?

It all comes down to my EXPECTATIONS. Not of myself, but of those who I consider to be my audience. (That’s you folks... in case there’s any confusion.)

You see, I’m a performer. An artist. I write, draw, paint, compose, sing, and play a couple of instruments. All of these things naturally involve me trying to get some sort of response out of an audience. I do not do “art for art’s sake.” I do art for the sake of those who might appreciate it. I wouldn’t dream of composing a song or writing a story with the intention of keeping it to myself. And when I write these little commentaries on the Tao Te Ching, I have you guys clearly in mind. Only in this case, I’m not trying to entertain you; I’m trying to make you think.

What’s that? I’m trying to MAKE you do something? Oopsie.

So, I AM trying to control my world after all. But is this bad? Is the comedian bad for trying to make his audience laugh? Is the activist wrong for trying to get people to change? Surely not.

Brace yourselves, my friends. It’s about to get complicated. Mathematical even.

It seems to me that one way to make sense of all this is to think of controlling behavior as a range. And not a simple range either. Let’s think of it as a Grid with an X axis and a Y axis. Let’s say the X axis is the behavior itself. For this axis, on the positive end you have behavior that is trying to make healthy, helpful things happen (i.e. making the plaque on your teeth go away, getting that sad person to smile, or selling a good idea to your boss). But the X axis has negative values as well which indicate a range of controlling behavior that is destructive or malevolent (i.e. giving someone a guilt trip, manipulating someone to do something for your selfish reasons, or outright bullying). Got it?

OK, now for the Y axis. Let’s say the Y axis deals with motives and expectations. On the positive side, your motives for your behavior are to be responsible for yourself and yourself only, without attaching value judgements to how OTHERS respond to your behavior. (To some extent, the higher up you go on the positive side of this scale, you attach less and less value judgement to YOUR OWN performance as well.) On the negative side of this scale, your motives reach farther and farther out toward others, imposing greater and greater expectations for how they respond to your behaviors. The greater expectations mean that you are actually judging others according to their responses.

Take a moment now to visualize this Grid before reading on. You have one scale (the X axis) involving your actual behavior, and another scale (the Y axis) involving your motives and expectations attached to your behavior. For any given action, you can slide between the positive side of the scale and the negative side. You may be surprised to notice that it’s possible for a positive behavior to have have negative motives or expectations. It’s also possible for a negative behavior to have positive motives or expectations. Ideally, you would want all of your behavior and motivation and expectation to fall within the top right quadrant of the Grid.

(Sigh)

We’re not simple creatures, are we?

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and I believe that’s true. I don’t, however, believe that you can keep this fancy-dancy Grid in the forefront of your thoughts all the time and examine every single behavior for its positive or negative merits without driving yourself insane. A more reasonable course would be to do something like I did over the past couple of weeks. First of all, ask this question of yourself: Are there any ways in which I am trying to control my world in an unhealthy way? And then, if you’re feeling brave and you have someone whose opinion you trust, ask them for their input. Make it clear to them that you really want an honest answer... something you can work with.

Lao-tzu tells us to allow our lives to unfold naturally and to believe that our lives will flow toward perfection if we don’t meddle too much. He says that the wise person should never go to extremes or push excessively. As I said before, I believe this to be naive. Our lives call for action on our part, sometimes light action and sometimes extreme action, and we had better be prepare to respond accordingly. However, if we are to pull some reasonable sense out of the 29th verse of the Tao Te Ching, let it be this: Find the natural rhythm of your life and move to it. Be at peace with the natural rhythm of your life. You’ll know when you’re off the beat. One translation of this verse says we should not try to grasp and control life, but rather dance with it. I like that. Life moves, and we have to move with it. Sometimes we have to take the lead. But sometimes we can allow ourselves to enjoy yielding and letting Life go where it will, and then we can discover how passionate and mysterious and powerful a dance partner Life can be.

See you on the dance floor.

the doubtful Tao #29 Part 1

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:37:39 -0600

A precious friend of mine died yesterday. She was much, much too young and her children now have to face life without a mother. I was going to write - following the order of topics in the Tao Te Ching - about allowing life to flow naturally, about not trying to control the world around, about letting go and being OK with things. We aren’t the masters of our universe. We just live here.

But a friend of mine died yesterday. And she was young.

If I believed in Someone who was in control, I could be very angry right now. But I don’t believe that anyone is up there decreeing that young mothers die on this day. So I have no one with whom to be angry. If I believed that I could influence events like this by somehow manipulating the positive and negative energy around me, or perhaps by eliminating sin in my life, I suppose I could make myself guilty or otherwise responsible. But I don’t believe I have those kinds of powers, and I don’t believe that a cosmic judge is meting out punishment (especially on OTHER people) for my right- or wrong-doings.

A friend of mine died yesterday. And no one is to blame.

A friend of mine died, and there wasn’t anything I could have done about it.

Accept this?

I’ll write about acceptance another day.

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

-Robert Frost, Reluctance

the doubtful Tao #28

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 06:56:28 -0600

The human mind - at least in our society - has conditioned itself for progress. It’s been just that mindset that has fueled the great achievements of our history. It’s “how the west was won” if you will. And it’s not just internal. We’re bombarded constantly by the call to build, to grow, to expand, to add, to increase, to push the boundaries of our potential. In fact, I’ll probably hit you with it a time or two myself - it’s so ingrained in my own nature and culture. After all, we’re talking about growing here, right? What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, I don’t mean to snatch your lollipop away, but as is often the case, too much of anything can make you barf.

At first I thought the 28th verse of the Tao Te Ching was talking about balance. It tells men not to be too out of touch with their feminine sides and vice versa for the ladies. To Luke Skywalker, it says not to totally dismiss the Dark Side as worthless. And to all you ambitious folks out there, it says to maintain a healthy attitude of humility. Sounds like a lesson in balance, right? Well, kinda. But I think there’s more to it than that.

If we return to our lesson of the Wheel (see #11), remember how it’s important that we keep ourselves centered at the hub of the wheel rather than living out on the rim? That’s what the 28th verse is pointing us back to.

We tend to find something about ourselves that defines who we are, and then we make that one thing our Central Headquarters. “I’m a rebel.” “I’m a peacemaker.” “I’m an artist.” “I’m a REAL man, dammit.” And from there we set out to construct this persona that demonstrates that yes, this really is what we’re all about (see #19). I remember back in my school days, I was a really good artist. So I made everything about myself reflect the artist image I had of myself. All the flags on my castle wall proclaimed “Artist In Residence!” Later, I adopted Tae Kwon Do as my identity. I became the Dedicated Martial Artist. And from there, I went on to become the Spiritual-minded Christian. in each case, I was reaching OUT to take on things that I thought defined who I was.

The 28th verse is warning us, just as Lao-tzu has in previous verses, that we mustn't stray too far from what we really are. “But I really am an artist!” some of you are protesting. Oh get over it. Believe it or not, there is a you that lies even deeper than your art. For those of you fellas who think that you are just a man through-and-through, there is a part of you that lies deeper than any testosterone can flow. And for those of you who feel it’s your destiny to proclaim some message to the world, there is a part of you that lies deeper than your mission.

This deep part of you is what Lao-tzu refers to as “uncarved wood.” This is the you that hasn’t been formed into ANYTHING yet. Yes, it still exists! No matter how much pounding and shaping and carving and forceful discipline you’ve undergone. No matter how the ruthless hand of Experience has worked you over. No matter how young you were when you were trained or otherwise traumatized. There is still at your center a block of uncarved wood. And the key is to stop thinking of yourself as whatever persona you’ve already constructed from that raw hunk and to move your Central Headquarters back to the center where you are nothing but pure potential again. It’s just a matter of shifting your thinking, of doing it every day until you come to think of this place as Home.

At some point you’ll begin to see that you are not your artistry. You are not your gender. You are not your mission. You are not your reputation. Anchoring yourself to any of these things is extremely limiting (believe it or not!). But returning to your core unformed self brings you to a place where you can be or do anything.

Most of us need change in some way. But we stay rooted in patterns and mindsets that bring us frustration or unhappiness because we tell ourselves that’s just the way we are. Don’t settle for this trap. Realize that at your center lies the same free embryonic potential that anyone else has. It has nothing to do with talent or gender or training or even destiny.

It ONLY has to do with CHOICE.

the doubtful Tao #27

Mon, 4 May 2009 18:18:08 -0600

All my life I’ve felt compelled to teach. I believe I’m a capable teacher, but even more, I feel like I often have something important to contribute, as though my little insight were the patch to repair some ominous hole in the ship’s hull. But I’m frequently troubled by a factor that weakens my delivery and often distorts the truth of my message: Pride.

Pride is not always the big baddie that it’s made out to be, but it can still be very corrosive and insidious if not tended to properly. We’d be weak and ineffective without it, but pride can rule us and run us out of control if we don’t keep it in its place. The 27th verse of the Tao Te Ching hints at pride when it speaks directly to those whose gift of understanding requires that they share, and the advice is: Let the truth speak for itself without interference on the part of the teacher.

What?

How is that possible? How can a teacher teach without somehow interfering in the life of the pupil? After all, interference is what teachers DO.

The answer is simple. The person of understanding teaches by simply living according to that understanding, and then the lesson will take care of itself. To anyone watching, the “lesson” will be obvious. Before them walks a person who manages to rise above the turmoil and remain at peace, who is not ruled by passions, who loves easily and forgives quietly. Let these watching “pupils” ask questions when they are ready to ask questions, and the results will be greater than if you take it upon yourself to point out to them what you think they need to understand. If they aren’t asking questions, then they aren’t ready to hear from you. But they are always free to watch and free to look away.

The person who understands the truth has this responsibility of living well. He cannot shirk it and hide his understanding by not living according to what he knows. As Jesus pointed out to his disciples, one shouldn’t hide one’s light beneath a bushel, but rather, let it shine.

Here is where pride can be a problem. “Shining” is wonderful until you try to twist the light into a neon sign advertising how wonderfully wise or good you are. As soon as you begin to do so, the light becomes tainted. I can vouch for the difficulty of keeping this prideful ambition out of your motives; it’s tough, and it keeps trying to sneak in. The best remedy for this is to draw back into your quiet place inside your mind and experience the freedom of holding onto nothing. It’s in this place that you can be free of prideful ambition, and when you are ready, you can emerge again and resume offering good things to the world easily and without struggle.

Lao-Tzu exhorts the teacher to treat those around us with respect in such a way that we leave no trace of ourselves upon their being. This makes teaching a real challenge, for what does a teacher do but try to make an impact on the pupil? Again, if I let my life speak for itself, those who are watching with receptive hearts will find the lesson and be able to extract it without getting bits of me all over their hands. If I try to do this for them, all delicacy is gone and there’ll more likely just be a mess.

When we’re finally called upon to speak, this is not time for us to clear our throats loudly and commence pontificating. Nor is it time to demonstrate our wisdom. The more of ourselves we throw at those asking, the more damage we’ll do to the truth - and possibly to the person we’re talking to. Give just enough words that the person can then go and find the answers themselves, because chances are they need a different set of answers than you found in your own searching. Giving your own answers to others is just as dangerous as freely handing out medicine your doctor has prescribed specifically for you.

Perhaps this doesn’t even need mentioning, but it’s in the 27th verse, so I’ll touch on it: Don’t treat your “sharing” as though it’s a favor you’re doing for others. And certainly don’t think anyone owes you for sharing your light. Just shine and keep moving, forgetting your own shadow and the footprints left behind. If you try to keep a running account (or even a scrapbook) of how much you’ve “given to the world,” there’ll be no room in your head for much of anything worthwhile. And probably, your arrogance will be what everyone sees rather than your understanding.

If you can share your light without leaving a trace of yourself upon those around you, and if you can speak gently without splattering them with your consideration of yourself, and if you can let the lessons go their own way without you claiming ownership of them... then the effectiveness of what you do give to the world will be long-lasting and deep. The doors you open for people will remain open, and the connections you help them make won’t come undone.