The knowledge of that unchanging rule produces a (grand) capacity and forbearance,Here's what Derek Lin has to say about this line:
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
Knowing constancy is acceptance
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
(No corresponding line)
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
Tao cultivators accept reality as it is, rather than as they wish it to be.So, does this mean that, if we find oppression or injustice in the world we live in, we should just shrug our shoulders and walk on by, that we should accept it as the way reality is?
I have been struggling with this [false] dichotomy for some time. This morning it dawned on me that, maybe, I haven't been noticing the forest for the trees. The underlying reality of the universe is something different than what typically plays out in our lives. Because we are estranged from our internal nature, we stride through a world of unreality.
In other words, maybe the reality that the Taoist sages speak of is the underlying essence of Tao or, to put it in the popular vernacular, the laws of nature. Therefore, to be active in the world of ideas (and politics) would be okay IF one seeks to bring the unreality of human civilization into the reality of the Way.
I'm thinking out loud here. I'm not sure if this notion represents a personal epiphany or not. What do you think?
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I agree. Seems the point is to accept what is actually real, rather than blunder on ahead trying to work change, when you aren't even able to see the real picture. BLind leading the blind kind of thing; this is why every social program seems to have unintended consequences and fuck everything up worse than it was. We only see a part of the whole, or a biased part, so we can't really be effective.
ReplyDeletebut with all the talk about compassion you get in Zen and such ( I know it's not Taoism, but they also preach acceptance, so its a good insight), I cannot believe they mean acceptance as something static or as a big "oh well, thats just the way it is."
Just that first you have to see clearly, then you can act clearly and from compassion.
Ooh, I really like the way you phrased it in that last sentence.
ReplyDeletere: reality
ReplyDeleteyes, over time societies tend to become detached from reality. eg, GDP was supposed to measure "wealth", but then politicians started playing games to goose the measurement of GDP, distorting what it measures. the philosopher Baudrillard (as i understand it), talks about 4 stages:
1. It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2. It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3. It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4. It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.
for more discussion of how the monetary system has become dissociated from reality, read
Bumming out with Baudrillard. (that blogger mentions
baudrillard in a few other posts also.)
re: doing something about injustices
yes, you should do what you can, but realize that it's not likely to change, at least not on the schedule you would like, so don't let your expectations of change impact your happiness.
i no longer believe in the "great man" theory of history. ie, it's not great men who change history, instead i suspect that change occurs at it's own pace, and whoever leads the charge at the time gets the credit.
eg, MLK and gandi. in both cases, there had been injustices for quite some time. yet both finally made a difference. do you suppose if both had been alive just before the french revolution, that they could have averted the bloodshed there too? what about had they been alive at the time of the russian revolution? not to take anything away from the courage and greatness of either figure. but i suspect that the times have to be ripe for a particular change to come about. enough of the general populace has to be dissatisfied with the status quo, and the credibility of the elites has to be heavily eroded, before any substantive change can occur.
given that view, there's a limited amount you can do, particularly when the injustice is systematic, rather than isolated instances of a particular person doing something.
but the various protests, education efforts, changes in shopping habits, can build over time such that a tipping point is reached. it's taken about 40 years for various aspects of environmental awareness to become more or less mainstream. that's just how long it takes. i suspect there's not much that can be done to accelerate that process, but it will eventually reach it's own momentum. and once that occurs, there won't be much if anything that those opposed can do to slow or stop it.
--sgl
And yet, you have Gandhi AND partition. Two Koreas. Rich and poor. Yin and yang, things just change, Uncle Zhou's horse doesn't care. It's all the world of dust.
ReplyDeleteYou can try to do some good, with "ai xin", a loving heart, you may even "succeed," but nothing is ever finished or permanent. And a "good" action today might have "bad" consequences down the road. Although there are periods that things might seem really nice, like the decades right before the Black Death in England.
But it's up to you where to put your energy. Just try to maintain the ai xin.
I once had a professor of English, who found his real calling as a ceramic artist (potter), who once put forth his philosophy of "enlightened apathy." I think he was a Taoist.