Verse 32 returns us back to the mysterious world of the essential Dao. Let’s stop for just a moment and consider this very now.
Release any drive to understand this now ... just let it be exactly as it is.
What you should discover is that there is no place to stand, there is nothing to say, and there is no name we can affix to this moment. And if it is true for this moment, then isn’t it true for every moment?
When we see the
full-emptiness of every moment, we also see that it is the operation of the mind to create a story - actually many stories about me and my life within the full-emptiness of this moment. The mind works with feeling and language and through both creates the universe that you have come to believe in. Yet when we just stop and explore this moment, we see that that narrative is really just an object that occurs to consciousness. Verse 32 of the
Dao De Jing takes us back to that mysterious, glowing world.
Once we see the authentic nature of existence, it is not difficult to experience the oneness that characterizes very moment of our lives. Even the idea of “our existence” is an object that is culled from the ever-present flow of the Dao itself. When you see how your mind does just this, you will have taken a giant step toward your own awakening to the magic of this very moment.
Addiss and Lombardo translate Verse 32 as:
Tao endures without a name (just like our shared experience of this moment).
Though simple and slight,
No one under heaven can master it.When we release our narrative we can see, directly, that the movement of the universe is utterly without our control. It just moves, like a single vast, and all but infinite river of light and energy. The very person we take ourselves to be is another object that moves and changes through the ever-flowing current of the Dao.
If kings and lords could possess it,
All beings would become their guests.But, of course, kings and lords cannot possess it.
Heaven and earth together
Would drip sweet dew
Equally on all people
Without regulation.This stanza does
not mean if a given king or lord could possess the Dao that that possession would create a perfect world. What is meant in this stanza is this: were a king or lord be able to align herself (himself) utterly with the Dao, then a perfect world would ensue. It would be a great awakening to the organic truth of this moment uncontaminated by selffullness. This describes a world in perfect alignment and harmony and balance.
Then the Verse takes us back into the human world.
Begin to make order, and names arise.When we move away from the Dao, there arises drive to create structure. We begin the process in which our resistance to the Dao begins.
Names lead to more names -
And to knowing when to stop.This is the key - to know when to stop. We know when to stop when we see that our names - our narrative has fully departed from the actual movement and validity of the now - the Dao itself. This is the realm of belief, where we reject what is real in preference to the dictates to human constructed belief. Anytime we turn against ourselves, that is to say when we have contempt for ourselves, this is the most devious turning of all. We are of the Dao and the belief in our woeful separation is the essence of “the Lie” as it is described in my work,
Liberation from the Lie. When we seek to improve the world and when we seek to improve ourselves, we migrate
away from the Dao. The key is only to see that! As
Stephen Mitchell translates the first stanza of Verse 29:
Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done---------------------------------------------------------
Know when to stop:
Avoid danger.
Tao’s presence in the world
Is like valley streams
Flowing into rivers and seas.This means that when you feel defeated by life and terrible about yourself, that this narrative and the evidence that your false self has marshaled to support it, are false. That projected self and life are truly a lie. They are the continuing story of the deficient - lacking self. Even if this is the most accepted story you have about your life, even if it seems to be everything you know, it is false. It is, in the language of Verse 32, a universe of names and to the extent that this story has hardened, to that same extent, you have departed from the Dao.
Thus this presence is always available to us. There is just no stopping its invitation. We abort the seeking self when we effortlessly join with the Dao, the mysterious full-emptiness of this moment. It is an intensely quiet and pleasurable joining. The energy of “I am”
is this moment. Let this be your permanent anchor. It is the ever-present portal.
Tags: identity, Balance, harmony, Flow
