The Tao of Dark Sages - Part II, Introduction

The Tao of Dark Sages
by Scott Bradley

Having transcribed and edited previous discussions between Sue-tzu and her friends, I very much wanted to see what kind of progress they had made in their pilgrimages since I last saw them several years ago. I had heard that Sue-tzu and Mark-tzu were together in the Hindu Kush Mountains of northern Pakistan and so decided to go and see if I could find them. It took only a few days of hanging out in Peshawar, the capital and staging area of the Northwest Frontier, to receive intelligence as to their whereabouts.

It seems that though living as best they could in obscurity, they had still been found out by European backpackers on a nostalgic journey along the old hippy trail. Afghanistan being a bit too unstable at the moment, the Kailash Valley of Chitral Province seemed a good alternative. There they heard about these sages and, always ready to find a new guru to adulate, sought them out. Their reports were not glowing, however, since they had been told by Mark-tzu in unambiguous terms to bugger-off. So, here was my prey.

What follows are highly edited transcripts of the discussions which ensued when I, and several other former friends of these sages, found them in their hideaway.

Before I proceed, however, I feel compelled to consider my own motivations in seeking them out and writing this book based on their words. For I, too, am a way-farer, a Tao-farer and I have thus had to take a serious look at my motivations.

It is a well known aphorism that those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know. And, although I can slink past that truth by writing what others have spoken, still, I have to ask myself if I am not indeed negating the very object of inquiry in writing about it at all. There is comfort in realizing that someone, and presumably someone in harmony with the Tao, wrote the aphorism in the first place!

Indeed, it appears in the Tao Te Ching which is the bible, sort of speak, of all wayfarers. It must be then that the meaning is something other than what we might first believe. The true Tao has no name that can be named and must remain unknown, at least to cognitive apperception. Of that which cannot be known we most assuredly cannot speak. What could we say that wasn’t nonsense?

There is, however, a role for the word and that is by way of pointing. Dealing with this paradox, Zen developed methods which are intended “to point toward the moon” without attempting to describe it. Among these are a good slap in the face of the sincere inquirer, a nonsensical answer, or the institutional use of the koan, a more or less nonsensical question.

Regarding the first, future Zen masters have had their satori experience as a result of a slap or the twisting of their nose! And some of these have returned the same when they realized how obvious and of little import the experience actually is! As to a nonsensical reply, perhaps the most famous is: When asked what is the Buddha, a Zen master replied, "Three pounds of flax." And finally, the koans are a series of "problems" which cannot be solved with the cognitive mind. A popular example is: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

If you're interested in reading more from this series by Scott Bradley, go here.