Verse 47: Seeing Without Looking

Verse Forty-Seven
Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.
The more you know,
the less you understand.
The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.
~Stephen Mitchell translation ~

Because we have been bestowed with eyes and all the optical elements that go with them, we often become fixated on this one method seeing. And so, our lives are filled with blogs, books, movies, paintings, photographs, lists, physical appearances, colors -- the window-dressings of life.

But there is so much more to vision than simply looking upon things through our lenses! People who are legally blind know this intuitively, but it's a lesson we of sight so easily forget.

To know oneself, our eyes really aren't much help. Oh sure, we can gaze upon our visage in the mirror, but that only provides clues to the exterior self. In order truly to come to know who we are and what we stand for, we must look with our heart, our spirit and our very essence.

Of course, a lot of us become very uncomfortable looking within because we often don't like what we see. It's much easier to gaze upon external eye candy because we can do so without any kind of bona fide personal attachment or a feeling that we need to undertake the necessary work to change things.

But, when we find the courage to look within, we begin to understand that what exists inside of us is a picture of the world around us or as Nina Correa states it,

Everything that's happening in the world around you is also happening right within you. Observing your physical body, you can see that there's a war being waged all the time - your white blood cells are constantly doing battle with any infections that invade your body. Your mind works constantly to solve any problem, whether perceived or illusionary. Your emotions can turn just as easily from a blocked traffic jam to a free-flowing drive down a country road. If you can't understand what's going on within you, how can you possibly hope to understand what's going on in the world around you? The nature of Dao is as unexplainable and mysterious as every one of the things in this world, and within you.

In many ways, our own anger can mirror a storm. As our frustration begins to bubble up, it's not unlike thunder rumbling off in the distance. When our temper and angst reach a particular point, it comes streaming out of us like a torrential downpour. As we stomp and fume, it's not that much different than streaks of lightening and claps of thunder. In time, our fury dissipates just as storm clouds break and the sun comes shining through.

If you want to know the world, you must know yourself first. If you don't, then everything -- including your own heart -- will be foreign and unintelligible to you.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.