Boaring into the Depths

Tao Te Ching

by Lao-Tzu

translation by j.h.mcdonald

from wright-house website

Verse 1

The Tao that can be described

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be spoken

is not the eternal Name.

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.

The named is the mother of creation.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.

By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Yet mystery and reality

emerge from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.

The beginning of all understanding.

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Yikes.

What was I thinking?

Did I actually believe that I could, in one day of contemplation, do any justice to such speechless inquiry? Did I imagine that I could plumb the depths of such ideas for a few hours and then blithely go on to the next verse? What hubris! Yet, here I am, at the beginning of a task that has called itself to me. All of my experience is telling me to trust in the process, and continue to see where this leads.

So, my day begins.

This morning my boyfriend Edward and I awakened to discover our yard almost completely torn up. Ed had spotted a wild hog on the lawn when he got home from work late last night (I had been hearing weird noises when I was in the hot tub the past few evenings; I thought that I was hallucinating.) Evidently the nocturnal pigs have been rooting in the garden and grass looking for food. It looks like a tractor has torn through the yard.

So, ah, a first opportunity for contemplation!

How about I see this experience through the eyes of desire/no desire.

Option 1: Desire. I weant the hogs gone and my yard back!

Option 2: Non-Desire. It doesn't matter whether they tear up the yard or not.

I close my eyes and imagine each choice in my mind. In option #1, many thoughts, emotions and images flood my being, from justification of my frustration at the mess, to helplessness, to anger at the destruction of beauty. In option #2, if what is being done truly does not matter, then when I close my eyes I experience only.....emptiness.....darkness.....peace.

Hmmm. How easy is that? Many times in the past I have considered having a life of non-attachment, where wanting or having anything or nothing simply doesn't matter. But I keep coming back from thinking about it to live in my normal world of desire. I WANT to look forward to eating chocolate! I WANT to live in a warm comfy house out in the country! The thought of being just as content to live in a noisy city or even on the streets horrifies me.

But what if it all truly didn't matter? What if I could live fully, free from preference, from attachment? My first instinctive response is that it would be a boring life: Not to care if I have loved ones around me? Not to have anything special to look forward to? My second response is that it would be endless bliss: Everything would be a wonder. And I could accept anything with the same level of equanimity.

But, for me right now Option #2 just doesn't sound juicy or delicious enough. Part of me still enjoys reveling in the ideas and judgments of right/wrong, tasty/unpalatable, ugly/beautiful. When I judge, I can sometimes feel superior to the other and thus feel OK about being me. I conveniently put aside the fact that in glorifying myself I am stepping on something or someone else.

I say that I am anti-war, and anti-hate. But isn't living in the world of option #1 simply a form of warfare and hatred? When is it time to give up my desire for chocolate and grow up? Someday we'll all have to. Is there a reason I need to prolong the suffering I create until the pain is so big that it can't be endured anymore?

Isn't it interesting that we often choose to stay in our lives of suffering because the concept of going below into our shadows is so terrifying that the known pain feels safer. What is it about going into the darkness that is so scary? What are we truly afraid of? For me, I have been afraid that I will discover how bad, how flawed, how, well, human I am. But, don't I worry about that a lot of the time anyway? What keeps me from jumping into the ocean of darkness I carry within me? After the first shock of cold, if I keep breathing and don't respond to that first instinct to jump back out, I can rise and fall with the initial turbulence. Eventually, as I am swept out from the shores and crashing waves, I can find myself lovingly carried within the waters' soothing silkiness, free and contained, supported and floating, one with it all.

There is something both mesmerizing and horrifying about contemplating this last step. Right now it doesn't feel free to me. It feels like I'm strangled and drowning. Let me OUT! I want to be FREE! After living most of my life in that cave, I don't want to now go live in the ocean and be a part of everything else. I want to fully relish Jan's favorite burritos and tacos and chili, Jan's rages and sense of humor, Jan's friends; I want beautiful hiking trails and peace and quiet and plenty of money and sleeping in late in the mornings. And and and!

I have all of these wonderful things now, and I don't want to let it go. It feels great. So, what do I do with the dichotomy of joyfully embracing all that I have and the undeniable joy of being willing to let it all go? How come it feels like a sin to NOT enjoy these gifts, yet some inner knowing is also aware that being able to easily release feels just as holy?

How come the more I contemplate, the fewer answers I have? And, how come feeling even more confused than when I started my day brings me such internal peace?

For this day and this moment, I decide to take away two meanings. One: to go after my greatest joy. And Two: To investigate my deepest darkness.

The mysteries of the Tao..