Verse 57 - Living Without Authoritarianism

Re: Verse 57 - Advice from Dr Dyer

Re: Verse 57 - Advice from Dr Dyer

Re: Verse 57 - Stephen Mitchell & Byron Katie

From tao te ching - A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell

If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.

From A Thousand Names For Joy - Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are by Byron Katie

                                                       Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
                                                       and the world will govern itself.

When you follow the simple way of it, you notice that reality holds all the wisdom you'll ever need.  You don't need any wisdom of your own.  Plans are unnecessary.  Reality always shows you what comes next, in a clearer, kinder, more efficient way than you could possibly discover for yourself.

Last week, in Copenhagen, I bought a black eye patch to rest my right eye when it hurts - my pirate costume.  My eyes are seeing less, for longer periods of time, and the pain has increased.  The cells in my corneas seem to be dying at a very fast rate.  I'm excited to find out what blind people know: the kindness of a world without vision, how the other senses become more acute, how the hands learn to feel their way, how ready friends and strangers are to help.

It turns out that I may or may not go blind.  Before I left for my summer tour in Europe, a specialist told me that there is such a thing as cornea transplant surgery.  Good.  One moment there's no cure, and the next moment there is.  He said that I wouldn't be a candidate for another four or five years.  Good.  Stephen does some research and learns that if I'm going to have surgery, the sooner the better.  Good.  I'll be able to see with new eyes.  He does more research, and we learn that the surgery has repercussions: uncomfortable stitches in the eyes, and twelve to eighteen months' recovery time.  I hear from a woman who still has six stitches in her eye after sixteen months, 20/500 vision, and a lot of pain.  Good: I can do that.  People say, “Katie, stop traveling the world”.  Is that the way of it?  Who knows?  Success or no success with the surgery, whether my body rejects the new cornea or accepts it, whether I see or not, I have no experience with traveling under such circumstances.  Reality will let me know.  What it shows me for the present is to keep moving.

Now, through the Internet, Stephen discovers that there's a new kind of cornea transplant surgery (“cutting-edge”, he says, with a smile) called DSEK - Descemet's stripping endothelial keratoplasty - and the leading practitioner is Dr Mark Terry in Portland, Oregon.  It's a one-hour procedure, with no stitches, or two or three at most, that transplants just the endothelium (inner layer) of the cornea, and it has a recovery time of weeks or less.  Good.  Then he finds that the director of one of the Fuchs' online groups has been pleading, “No, no, no, don't do that, it's experimental, there's not enough data, the Fuchs' dystrophy can return if they don't remove the whole cornea, don't let them use you as a guinea pig !”  Good: maybe the traditional surgery is the way.  He does more research, talks to some doctor friends, ask a lot of questions, and we're back to the new surgery.  Good: that will be easier.  How do I know to have surgery?  I don't need my eyes, after all.  But the pain is getting worse, and at times it is exhausting; it lessens my efficiency in sharing inquiry with people.  That shows me the way of it.  And right here, right now, nothing has happened, and I can't know what will happen.

I am dictating this after putting drops of eye-pain medication in my right eye.  I've been doing my job, a weekend intensive, and then I signed books for an hour or so until my eye stung.  What a beautiful moment: Stephen typing my words, the breeze flowing through the open terrace door of the hotel room, the Stockholm sky, the gratitude I'm feeling for two doctors - Pascale's mother, who express-mailed me emergency eyedrops from France, and Gustav's father, who prescribed another brand here in Stockholm.  They, too, are the way of it, allowing me to continue to function in this moment.  Tomorrow morning, Gustav will pick us up after breakfast and drive us to the airport for our flight to Amsterdam.  Who knows how my eye condition will turn out?  I only know that it's a good thing, as I sit here, doing what I do, being what it is.

Whose corneas will show up?  Who will die and give me new vision, if the surgery works?  Like me, like you, he or she will die perfectly on time, not a moment too early or too late, and I will inherit the corneas living in that person now - a woman, a man?  Old, young?  Black, white, yellow?  (One dear man in Germany, who loves The Work, offered to donate his corneas.  Stephen thanked him and said that he didn't qualify, since he wasn't dead.)  I love the way of it.  I love that when I die, my body parts, too, will be recycled.  Take my heart, my organs, my secondhand eyes; take whatever you need, whatever is usable - they don't belong to me anyway, and they never have.

I look forward to being blind if the surgery doesn't work.  I've already been there, almost.  I have walked through airport terminals unable to see the signs or read the monitors, I have walked through hotels when the world was a total blur, I have stood in front of a thousand people when I was unable to see raised hands, in a world without faces, without colors - a beautiful world, and very simple to live in.  Stephen can see and read without glasses, and at the hotel breakfast buffet I am quick to be on my own as he points out where the softboiled eggs are, where the decaf is, where the bread goes into the toaster, where the yogurt and fruit are.  I know that I don't need to know anything, and perception shows me shadows, textures, the feel and glow of the world.  I gather my food and walk across the large dining room with him, looking for the man who is to join us for the breakfast business meeting.  As I walk, everything is dark, and yet there are differences, shadows dark and darker.  A shadow moves.  I say, “Is that Peter, sweetheart?”  And Stephen answers, “Yes.  There he is.”  Without him, I would have had no difficulty walking up and saying, “Peter, is that you?”  And today, the way of it is so kind that there are no obstacles, no chairs out of order, no objects on the floor to trip over.

I always know that the way is clear.  And when I trip over an obstacle, I enjoy myself all the way to the ground.  Falling is equal to not falling.  Getting up again and not being able to are equal.  The only way you can know the way of it is to join it without separation.  It's constant lovemaking, with no other lover than what is.

I see the common good everywhere.  The common good looks like entire villages being wiped out by one tsunami.  It looks like one man losing his legs, another man getting the raise that he worked so hard for, a woman so obese that she can't bend over.  It looks like the stench coming from the sewer, or the clouds as they slowly move across the blue sky.  I no longer believe that the man with no legs shouldn't have lost his legs.  I see that he wants them, I see that he thinks he needs them, and I see the heartbreak that comes from believing that.  I see that his war with reality is causing all his misery.  Misery can never be caused by loss of legs; it can only arise from his desire for what's not.

“I should,” “I shouldn't”, “you should”, “you shouldn't”, “I want”, “I need” - these unquestioned thoughts distort the appearance of the good that is as common as grass.  When you believe them, you make your mind small, and small-mindedness doesn't allow you to see why the loss of legs is good, why blindness is good, sickness, hunger, death, a village wiped out, the whole apparent world of suffering.  You stay unaware of the good that is all around you, you block out the elation you'd feel when you finally recognized it.  Whatever you think, reality is the natural way of it.  It won't bend to your ideas of what it should be, and it won't wait for your consent.  It will remain just as it is, pure goodness, whether or not you understand.

Verse 57 - Jonathan Star

From Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star

To rule the state, have a known plan
To win a battle, have an unknown plan
To gain the universe, have no plan at all

Let the universe itself
          reveal to you its splendor
How do I know this should be so ?
          Because of this -
The more restrictions, the more poverty
The more weapons, the more fear in the land
The more cleverness, the more strange events
The more laws, the more lawbreakers

Thus the Sages say,
          Act with a pure heart and the people will be transformed
          Love your own life and the people will be uplifted
          Give without conditions and the people will prosper
          Want nothing and the people will find everything

Re: Verse 57 - Living Without Authoritarianism

This is synchronistic.  I just read this (the exact same thing, from Wayne Dyer) from a Detroit magazine maybe a half hour.  Then looked here on Gaia and within five minutes this posting caught my eye.  Am learning something really deep about the inner authoritarin and the inner rebel right now.  But it's still tentative, so need to sit with it.  Thanks, Deborah.  (I like what you grapevined yesterday about this being your sacred space.)

Re: Verse 57 - Living Without Authoritarianism

Kathy,

You are such a joy with parallel paths, that are different but somehow sync'd, for reasons beyond either of our abilities to know or explain.

It is, my sacred space.  I have the physical one and this, the virtual, non-physical one.  What a blessing to be alive in this timeframe of humanity.

Thanks -
Deb

Re: Verse 57 - The Tao of Emerson

From The Tao of Emerson by Richard Grossman

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

A state may be ruled by measures of correction;
Weapons of war may be used with crafty dexterity;
But the kingdom is made one's own
          only by freedom from action and purpose.


How do I know that it is so?  By these facts -
In the kingdom, the multiplication of prohibitive enactments
          increases the poverty of the people;
The more implements to add to their profit that the people have,
          the greater disorder is there in the state and clan;
The more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess,
          the more do strange contrivances appear;
The more display there is of legislation,
          the more thieves and robbers there are.


Therefore, a sage has said, “I will do nothing of purpose,
          and the people will be transformed of themselves.
I will be fond of keeping still,
          and the people will of themselves become correct.
I will take the trouble about it,
          and the people will themselves become rich;
I will manifest no ambition, 
          and the people will of themselves attain
          to the primitive simplicity.”

From Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays - ”Politics”

We live in a very low state of the world
         and pay unwilling tribute to governments
         founded in force.


The tendencies of the times favor
         the idea of self-government
And leave the individual, for all code,
         to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution.


Therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic
         beside private ones.
For any laws but those which men
         make for themselves are laughable.


Hence, the less government we have the better,
        the fewer laws, and the less confided power.
The power of love, as the basis of the state,
        has never been tried.


We must not imagine that all things
        are lapsing into confusion,
If every tender protestant be not compelled
        to bear his part in certain social conventions:
Nor doubt that roads can be built,
Letters carried, and the fruit of laborers secured
        when the government of force is at hand.
Could not a nation of friends devise a better way?

Re: Verse 57 - The Tao of Motherhood

From Vimala McClure - The Tao of Motherhood

57


BE FIRM

At each stage of your child's life
she needs demonstrations of
your love and your support.

Your love comforts and accepts.
It is a mirror in which your child
sees herself as beautiful and
worthy.

Your support encourages and
affirms; it is a springboard
toward independence.

Too many rules turn facilitation
into interference, affection into
business.  Let your child help set
her own limits against which she
can push now and then.

Be firm without being rigid.
Your child will grow up with
lots of healthy personal power.

Re: Verse 57 - The Tao of Motherhood

This is heart, i.e. bottom of parenting! So beautiful, thanks!

Re: Verse 57 - Dr Dyer's Essay

In this and some of the following chapters of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu counsels the rulers of 2,500 years ago on how and why to pursue a high quality of leadership.  His advice is pertinent today, in the 21st century, to all forms of leadership, including government, business and, in particular, parenting.

The essential message in this 57th verse is to allow rather than interfere.  Now I don't interpret this to mean letting an infant crawl into traffic or leaving a child alone near a swimming pool - obviously, you must be sensible when supervising those who could harm themselves or others.  What I believe Lao-tzu is conveying here is that allowing is quite often the highest form of leadership.  He states that “more poeple are impoverished” in societies with excessive restrictions and prohibitions; the same can be true in families with commandments that must be obeyed without question.  The more authoritarian any system is, the more outlaws will appear.

On the other hand, when children are encouraged to explore and exercise their inquisitiveness, they're inspired to be their best with little need for regulation.  So when you change the way you view the need for rules, family members will tend to make decisions based on what's best for everyone rather than themselves.  See what happens, for instance, if you drop an absolute curfew time for your teenagers, asking them to just be sensible about when they come home and to notify you if they're going to be later than normal.  You may find that because you didn't impose yourself on them, they end up coming home even earlier than when they had a strict curfew governing their conduct.

Examine the restrictions that you enforce in your family.  Remember that effective parents don't want to be leaned on; they want to make leaning unnecessary.  After all, you want your children to be responsible, healthy, successful, and honest - not simply because you're there to monitor them, but because it is within their nature to do so.  So set an example and let them see that it's possible to be self-sufficient and enormously successful.  Allow them to learn to trust in their highest nature, rather than having to thumb through a rule book to decide what's right.

Change the way you look at the need for edicts, laws, and prohibitions, and see yourself as someone who doesn't need to rule with an iron fist.  Then enjoy taking this revised view of your leaderhsip abilities into every area of your life where you're considered to be “the boss”.

Re: Verse 57 - Dr Dyer's Essay

These words speak to me.  I so often find myself unconsciously - or sometimes consciously - wanting to impose my will upon others.  I can remember instead to pause and take that centering breath, and practice allowing.

Re: Verse 57 - Deb's thoughts

In closing out this verse, I offer my own insights and contemplations.  I see these words as imparted intuitively from Dr Dyer's own contemplations, as not only in leadership roles, but just generally good advice for living without stress “Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts,”.  One of my favorite phrases in Dr Dyer's version is ”the more artful and crafty the plan, the stranger the outcome;” which reflects James Legge's 1891 translation ”The more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear;”

In Dr Dyer's advice “Recognize that you've created restrictions for yourself that keep you from new and expanding experiences, and find the time now to close your personal rule book and plunge in where you've never before wandered.” “Go where you're instinctively guided to go.”  I have found myself going more and more off the path, during my Nature Journal hikes.  I am expanding my perspective of the wild land around me and looking at all things “new” through the eyes of an artist.

I deeply appreciate Stephen Mitchell's way of saying this “I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass.”  I loved the synchronicities and meanderings and the acceptance in Byron Katie's account of how she copes with the disease that seeks to rob her of sight and inflict the suffering of pain upon her.

I thought Ralph Waldo Emerson's words to be valuable for our times “… The power of love, as the basis of the state, has never been tried.  We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, … Could not a nation of friends devise a better way?”


My own heart felt moved by willowspirit's words regarding the motherhood tao verse “This is heart”.  Dr Dyer in his essay turned his attention to parenting as well, as regards the value of this verse.  I was always encouraged as a child to explore the farther reaches of my world (it is humorous to note, that I believed I had this encouragement, but that my parents never dreamed I was wandering so far ! ! !) and it has given me a confidence in the benign goodness of life, that could not have been imparted by any assurances from trusted adults that this was so.  Call my parents approach to parenting “benign neglect”, a concept I now have great appreciation for.

It was gratifying, to have Centria, willowspirit and John-David each affirm in appreciation, the value in their own lives, of the work I do here for my own learning and contemplation.  I share and it matters not to me how many or few benefit, if even one other benefits from my sharing, it is not in vain.  If only I benefit, it is not in vain ;-} LOL 

Wishing that all that come here, find something of value in the words we share -
Deb

Re: Verse 57 - Living Without Authoritarianism

So much power is radiating from your words and interpretations. At least, parenting and any nurturing type of leadership is based on defending from negative influences and growing of healthy and auto-respecting attitude. Restrictions are sometimes made for controlling, but sometimes from fear of negative experiences. Upbringing trend underline balance between restriction and allowing, i.e. middle route. One of observations come upon to me in recent time - negative experiences as learning experiences, but not from point: I learned to take care and wont did it again, but rather understanding of own need to go through something like that, to test credence and maturity. Every great goal have weakness, accomplished in bigger picture (like little yin spot in big yang part and vice versa, yang spot in yin). Sometimes, it could be falling point or point of power. And it is present multilevel, from reaching of goals, ordinary life, work, parenting, etc.
Thanks Deb for widening of horizons and making more clear of some thoughts arising in spiral of learning!