Gaia: Living Metaphysics - The Verses of the Tao Te Ching

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Motherhood

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:11:34 GMT

This is a beautiful interpretation by Ms McClure of the Tao to parenting. I absolutely resonated with this segment -

When you deliver
harsh, judgmental consequences,
you are trying to do nature's job.
Like an inexperienced carpenter,
you are bound to make a mess of
it and only hurt yourself.

This Christmas my favorite carol is "Joy to the World". In one sense, it goes along so beautifully with my practice of the Gaia Minute. I also see how beautifully it goes along with The Tao of Motherhood.

And Heaven & Nature do sing ! ! !

Deb

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Motherhood

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:29:25 GMT

From The Tao of Motherhood by Vimala McClure

74

PUNISHMENT

Many parents discover too late
that one cannot raise children well
with punishment as the core of
discipline. Hit your child and
eventually the child's rage will be
greater than your censure.

Prisons are filled with "well-
disciplined" people.

A good parent helps a child
to learn how his behavior affects
his own life through natural
consequences. This is how true
inner discipline is cultivated.

A master carpenter cuts cleanly
and quickly and makes furniture
which endures. When you deliver
harsh, judgmental consequences,
you are trying to do nature's job.
Like an inexperienced carpenter,
you are bound to make a mess of
it and only hurt yourself.

Re: Verse 74 - Ma-Wan-Tui Manuscripts

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:13:12 GMT

Tao Te Ching - The Classic Book of Integrity and The Way by Lao-Tzu
A New Translation by Victor H Mair
based on the recently discovered Ma-Wang-Tui Manuscripts

74
(39)

          If the people never fear death,
                     what is the purpose of threatening to kill them ?
          If the people ever fear death,
                     and I were to capture and kill those who are devious,
                               who would dare to be so ?
          If the people must be ever fearful of death,
                    then there will always be an executioner.

Now,
          To kill in place of the executioner
Is like
          Hewing wood in place of the master carpenter;
          Few indeed will escape cutting their own hands !

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Emerson

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:48:12 GMT

Ken,

None of this is off-topic. I am so touched that you shared this with me and I hold space in my heart for the perfect love to find its way into your life and take away the pain of letting go of one that is not perfect.

Love is what everything good that we do
is meant to express and to live without love is hell.

I am struggling with the "loss" of my youngest sister. It may not be physical death but those are the stakes, never-the-less. Death is the measure of how important an action in this physical life is. Not that any of us can cheat death by any action we take.

My heart is heavy the last couple of days regarding this little sister of mine. If anyone has time to read and is interested, I wrote a piece in the Diving Deeper - the Gaia / Creative Writing Workshop, inspired by my sister's plight, Christmas and love.

Christmas Spirit Love

Peace & Blessings -
Deb

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Emerson

http://baba.gaia.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:25:30 GMT

Death reminds me what really is important in life: love. I agree Deb that living is scary, and dealing with loss is the toughest thing to do. I'm going through loss right now, though it is the classic unrequited love. Rejection, termination, removal all mean the same: loss.

All of this may be off topic, but I just wanted to say a few things, as I saw discussion about death here.

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Emerson

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:47:12 GMT

In these versions, from The Tao of Emerson, each has extraordinary ways of expressing this verse. I love that there is no ONE Tao and that all versions of Tao are ONE. Of all the philosophical paths, the Tao or The Way, seems to me to be the most open to individual interpretations. That something so old, could resonate so completely, with our more fully accessible, abundance of knowledge from which to learn, says something of the extraordinary existence of the Tao Te Ching. To have endured for so long and still be so special to the human heart.

From the 1891 version, I liked this -

There is always One who presides over
          the infliction of death.
He who would inflict death in the room of him
          who so presides over it
May be described as hewing wood
          instead of a great carpenter.
Seldom is it that he who undertakes the hewing,
          instead of the great carpenter,
Does not cut his own hands !

Forever is it so, that humanity makes a clumsy work of meting out justice. If we could trust the Divine; and the action of Karma or the Law of Cause and Effect or the Law of Attraction, however one prefers to name it, what perfect justice would humanity have ? We like to think we do God's work by our justice system and no doubt, at times, God is present and acting through even this imperfect system; and even when human effort is imperfect, can we believe and yet doubt that God is in charge ? It is a koan of sorts and an eternal puzzle. What to do ?

In Emerson's version, I resonated deeply with this -

The idea dignified a few leaders,
          who made war and death sacred,
But what for the wretches
          whom they hire and kill ?
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.

and this ending -

man is one, and that you cannot
          injure any member
Without a sympathetic injury
          to all the members.

Peace & Blessings -
Deb

Re: Verse 74 - The Tao of Emerson

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:35:31 GMT

From Richard Grossman - The Tao of Emerson

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

The people do not fear death;
To what purpose is it to try to frighten them with death ?
If the people were always in awe of death,
And I could always seize those who do wrong,
          and put them to death,
Who would dare to do wrong ?

There is always One who presides over
          the infliction of death.
He who would inflict death in the room of him
          who so presides over it
May be described as hewing wood
          instead of a great carpenter.
Seldom is it that he who undertakes the hewing,
          instead of the great carpenter,
Does not cut his own hands !

From Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays - "The Uses of Great Men", "Lecture on the Times"

Why are the masses, from the dawn of
          history down,
Food for knives and powder ?
The idea dignified a few leaders,
          who made war and death sacred,
But what for the wretches
          whom they hire and kill ?
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.

It is a doctrine alike of the oldest,
          and of the newest philosophy,
That man is one, and that you cannot
          injure any member
Without a sympathetic injury
          to all the members.

Re: Verse 74 - Jonathan Star

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:17:03 GMT

From Jonathan Star - Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition

If people do not fear death
          why threaten them with it ?
But suppose they did fear death
          and this was the fate handed to lawbreakers
Who would dare to do the killing ?

There is always a Lord of Death
He who takes the place of the Lord of Death
          is like one who cuts with the blade
          of a master carpenter
Whoever cuts with the blade of a master carpenter
          is sure to cut his own hands

Re: Verse 74 -Advice from Elizabeth Lesser

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:45:43 GMT

The Seeker's Guide - pgs 291-292, Chapter The Landscape of Death

Every day you can practice dying. You can find countless ways to "die before death". Grist for the mill is everywhere: things in your life that seem out of your control; anything that makes you insecure and anxious because of its uncertainty, its "strangeness"; all kinds of change and loss. Do an experiment right now: become aware of something in your life that is making you feel out of control, fearful, worried - some anticipated event or chronic condition that, for better or worse, is in your life right now. Something that your will and your worry can no longer alter. You can't turn back the clock or press the delete button on this one. Perhaps it is the fact that your child is leaving home, or your job is changing, or your body is aging, or your parent is dying. Or maybe it's something less tangible, something that just isn't turning out the way you wanted it to, or the way it was "supposed to be".

Whatever it is that is making you afraid of change, or loss, or death, let it engulf you right now. Imagine it as a swift and broad river, and yourself in the river, floating, traveling, moving along in the waters of change and loss. Tell yourself that you do not know what the outcome of this journey will be. For just a moment, give up thinking you know where the river is taking you or should be taking you. Give up your dread, your worst-case scenarios, your sense of knowing what is going to happen. Because you don't know. You couldn't. The river of your life is too deep and meandering, its currents far too complex and shifting for you to know the course it will take. Instead, just as an experiment, meet the fear of loss and change with openness and relaxed curiosity, as if you are floating on your back, easy about what you'll find around the next bend.

Hazrat Inayat Khan said that "I consider every loss in life as the throwing off of an old garment in order to put on a new one; and the new garment has always been better than the old." Since you don't know how things will turn out, why not have that kind of faith ? Why not assume that the new garment will indeed be better than the old ? That right around the river bend something new and splendid awaits you. I know that in my life the things I have feared and the losses I have resisted never materialized as I thought they would.

(deb's note - ditto for me on that one, it never is as bad in reality as I imagine it will be in my own mind and this advice, as a reminder, is very much needed by me, in my own situations, as I attempt to complete a phase in my life, and I can not help but I find myself fighting against the anxious feelings that does bring up within me.)

In fact, they turned out to be profoundly different in feeling and texture and content than I ever dreamed. When I look back on the losses sustained throughout my life, I see that the outcome rarely, if ever, matched the perceived threat. Even the big threats, like divorce, illness, and death, which knocked me over and shook me up, left me alive and strangely expanded. In retrospect, I can say that each new garment has been better than the old, if better means wiser, stronger, and more free.

To practice dying is to watch yourself carefully and compassionately in the midst of change. Are you gripping tightly to the old garment ? Then let go of your grip a little. Are you afraid of the new garment ? Try not to anticipate the future. Let the old garment slide off and trust that the new garment will fit you even better. (deb's note - I love the imagery that sentence gives me to cling to.) After you have gone through the transition, compare what actually happened with what you feared would happen. Practice this over and over until fear of the unknown slowly transforms into a faith born from experience.

As I practice dying while alive, I gain more and more faith that the final death too has surprises in store for me. As I take the old garments off, I begin to identify less and less with myself as the garments, and more with an eternal soul that survives every change. "Once the soul has been able to feel itself - its own life independently of its garb", says Inayat Khan, "it begins to have confidence in life." After years of spiritual work I am beginning to gain a confidence in life, a confidence that heightens my appreciation of being alive, and makes me less anxious about the death of my body.

Re: Verse 74 - Advice from Dr Dyer

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:24:25 GMT

Examine the ways you kill.

Make a decision that you're no longer going to serve in the capacity of executioner, including even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant creatures, and then act on it. Live this principle by allowing the lord of life and death to decide when the return trip is to be made. Don't make this a crusade; just make your own commitment to exist in harmony with the Tao. And by all means, don't impose your beliefs on others, for noninterference is one of the major positions of the Tao Te Ching.

Re: Verse 74 - Advice from Dr Dyer

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:33:40 GMT

Discontinue fearing your death.

It makes as much sense to think about your death in fearful terms as it does to perceive the color of your eyes in such a way. The Tao is in it all - birth, life, and death.

Read the T S Eliot quote below,

Little Gidding

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started,
And know the place for the first time.

Also, go back to the 40th verse of the Tao Te Ching (which I titled "Living by Returning and Yielding").

By returning in death, you'll truly know the Tao . . . for perhaps the first time.

Re: Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:25:53 GMT

Here is another good one from The Seeker's Guide by Elizabeth Lesser. My reading for this morn on pgs 289-291 -

"To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us . . . let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death . . . We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave."

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, during the French Renaissance

From Elizabeth's comments that follow on pg 290 - 291

The truth of the matter is that we don't conclusively know anything about death - and not knowing makes most of us uncomfortable. We don't know when we will die, how we will die, or what of the self survives after death. Not knowing this makes death the ultimate stranger. This is why Montaigne counsels us to "deprive death of its strangeness" by getting used to it, by facing it, by seeking out the opportunities life provides every day for practicing dying. "We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom."

deb's note -

I was driving home from Yoga class on Sat and having a wonderful rare conversation with my grown daughter and death came up between us. She commented that during a little fight recently, her husband had commented that my daughter had changed with the revelation of a serious health challenge that she copes with daily. We discussed the NOW moment and how, certainly we can be practical and plan for a future we believe we may have; but that in reality, we do not know what the morrow will bring, and I added we did not even "know if we would arrive home alive that day".

Death can remind you, does remind me often, that those around me may suddenly be faced with the debris of my own life and that I should try to keep my affairs in order a bit more than I do (perhaps my 2010 New Year's Resolution), to ease such a definite eventuality for them.

Peace & Blessings -
Deb

Re: Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:47:08 GMT

Judi & Meenakshi,

Thank you for expressing the ways in which you resonate with Elizabeth Lesser's excerpt above.

Since this is primarily a study group, and discussions flow from that, I would just re-state that - if I share something here; I do resonate with it, as though it is my own but of much I am not the author. I do try to clearly indicate that, but I understand that it can still be missed, when my icon is attached. Meenakshi, thank you for helping me make that point, once again.

Meenakshi, I do not fear death itself. I am so clear within myself that I have lived and died often, and I've seen the dying and the death itself is always quite kind (though the dying may be difficult, especially if one is struggling against it and it is human nature to seek survival and that is not wrong either).

I do fear living at times. Living can be hell at times. Endings are harder than losing a loved one to death because the finality of physical death is a force in itself. I have left 2 marriages. I have left children (giving my daughter up at the age of 3 to live with her dad). These deaths are hard. Leaving my daughter caused me months of grief, before I was able to align my energy with it and let it be the right thing for both of us. I've no doubt now that it was good for her; and whether it would have been equally good to have fought to get her back, after I let her go to her dad, so I could attempt to find an adequate way to support us - I think it would not have been. So, I am at peace with that.

Now, I am trying to let go of a situation that has consumed my last 5 years. So many other things have died during that time. I feel a kind of death stalking me with this one and I am afraid to some degree, meaning only that I see possible outcomes that I resist. Usually my fears are worse than reality and so, I've learned not to dwell in them. It is okay for thoughts to pass by. It is even okay to feel the fear and grief and sadness, as though it had happened, as a way of releasing it.

Always, I take the next logical step in faith that All Is Well and I will see the beauty of even this situation, some day.

Peace & Blessings -
Deb

Re: Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://Meenakshi.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:39:19 GMT

Deb, each word of your post is to be savored, and goes deeply into my soul. I would like to understand the fear of one's own death, because I have not felt it, seeing it more as a freeing; but the dread of the death of another, or even of what can come to pass in our children's life with our own untimely death is very real.

Your sharing of the way this remarkable poem has woven into your marriage is pretty amazing; and I would like to highlight these words from your post:

"All of what we crave in life - security, beauty, youth, energy, power - is out of our control; all of what we fear - loss, decay, illness, aging, death - will come to pass." Both are out of our control! That thought is actually so liberating. Thank you for sharing this.

Re: Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://myzaadzsanctuary.gaia.com — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:21:03 GMT

Good Morning Deb,
Thanks so much for this . . . the timing was perfect :) and isn't that how it goes when we're seeking something for our souls -- and sometimes even when we're not!

This lesson I know in my head -- to have a willingness to continually die -- but to fully experience it is a challenge because my ego "refuses to get out of the way".

Well, as I sit here watching the sun bathe the back yard with its amazing winter light on this very cold morning, I'm reminded that I have an opportunity to practice this life of dying.

Re: Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:40:38 GMT

I spent an entire day in a workshop with Neale Donald Walsch at Celebrate Your Life in Chicago last June and have written some about my experience with him in this group. I was also in a workshop with Elizabeth Lesser, and she was quite the subject of conversation among conference attendees because in her workshop, she took the participants into an experience of their own death (though she promised us, no one had failed to return from that deep meditation). Her workshop made a few participants very uncomfortable.

I share with Elizabeth Lesser a love of Death. It is a wonderful coincidence that I am now entering the chapter of her book, The Seeker's Guide, entitled The Landscape of Death (pgs 284-317). I share my current passage from that chapter with you today (pg 287-288) -

On the journey through the Landscape of Death, we won't get past the first tollbooth unless we confront what, in one way or another, we have put off confronting our whole life. All of what we crave in life - security, beauty, youth, energy, power - is out of our control; all of what we fear - loss, decay, illness, aging, death - will come to pass. Is this bad news ? No, but it is important news, and it is news that most of us just won't let into our thick skulls.

"Things are always ending and arising and ending", says Pema Chodron. "But we are strangely conditioned to want to experience just the birth part and not the death part . . . We have so much fear of not being in control, of not being able to hold on to things. Yet the true nature of life is that we're never in control; we can never hold on to anything. That's how life is. Although we can perhaps accept this intellectually, moment by moment it brings up a lot of panic and fear. So my own path has been learning to relax with this lack of control and the panic that accompanies it, learning to stay in the space of uncertainty, learning to die continually."

Sometimes it takes a strong blow - a crisis or a major loss - to crack the shell of a frightened heart and set us on a course of "dying continually". What may look to us as a tragedy may indeed be the very thing our soul needs to be liberated from the cage of fear. The mystics speak of the dark night of the soul, a period of time when you go deeply into the despair of abandonment, loss, or grief. Way down in the darkness you find a hidden treasure - your own timeless and eternal soul - and you emerge empowered and healed. The journey through the Landscape of Death is this journey into the dark night and the radiant day - death and rebirth, darkness and light, brokenness and wholeness. But first death, and first darkness, and first brokenness.

As Pema Chodron says, there's a natural tendency to want to skip the death part and go straight to the rebirth. We find such unspeakable joy in birth and in the newness of things - babies, mornings, new love affairs, any original melody, a flower bud - just opening, tender and pure. These things remind us of our own tenderness and purity. We long for their simplicity and unadulterated potential, their fresh, new energy. But in order for the new to be born, we must learn how to let the old die. There is no room for the new in a heart that clings to the old. There is no room for growth without death.

"And so long as you haven't experienced this:
to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth."

I first was introduced to this line from Goethe's poem "The Holy Longing" by the man who was to become my second husband. Since then I've used the poem like a chain letter from the Landscape of the Soul, passing it on to those in need. In the dark aftermath of my divorce, when I first was getting to know my husband, he sent me the poem:

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

At the bottom of the page my future husband, who had recently experienced divorce and the breakup of his family and business, wrote: "I think after what I've just been through I can only be with someone who's insane for the light, someone who is willing to die and to grow." He was sending me the poem as a promise - a promise that he would bring to our relationship a willingness to continually die, and continually grow. This poem is the foundation of our marriage. We return to it often when our marriage gets stale, when we act more like two "troubled guests" in a dark house than like butterflies "insane for the light". We use it when one of us is suffering from an inability to make a necessary change: "What must die within you now, so that you can grow ? " we'll finally get around to asking each other. When our frightened egos refuse to get out of the way, and we insist on being right or being in control, we'll also wind our way back to "The Holy Longing". We'll get our priorities straight. "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy ? " I once heard someone say. Goethe would say, "Do you want to keep trying to be in control, or do you want to die and be truly alive ? "

Verse 74 - Living with No Fear of Death

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:18:43 GMT

74th Verse

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you are not afraid of dying,
there is nothing you cannot achieve.

There is always a lord of death.
He who takes the place of the lord of death
is like one who cuts with the blade
of a master carpenter.

Whoever cuts with the blade of a master carpenter

is sure to cut his own hands.

Contemplation/Meditation Verse

I realize that all things change; and therefore,
      there is nothing for me to hold on to.

By not fearing death,
        there is nothing that I can not achieve.


Do The Tao Now

During meditation, practice dying while still alive. That is, leave your body, discard it, and float above the world. This will help you disconnect yourself from feeling that your physical shell is who you are. The more you are the observer rather than the object of what you see, the easier it will be to remove your fear of dying. Do this for just a few minutes daily. Remember that you are not this body - you are a piece of the infinite Tao, never changing and never dying.

This excerpt from Neale Donald Walsch's "Communion with God" elaborates on this thought:

Which snowflake is the most magnificent ? Is it possible that they are all magnificent - and that, celebrating their magnificence together they create an awesome display ? Then they melt into each other, and into the Oneness. Yet they never go away. They never disappear. They never cease to be. Simply, they change form. And not just once, but several times: from solid to liquid, from liquid to vapor, from the seen to the unseen, to rise again, and then again to return in new displays of breathtaking beauty and wonder. This is Life, nourishing Life.
This is you.
The metaphor is complete.
The metaphor is real.
You will make this real in your experience when you simply decide it is true, and act that way. See the beauty and the wonder of all whose lives you touch. For you are each wondrous indeed, yet no one more wondrous than another. And you all will one day melt into the Oneness, and know then that you form together a single stream.

Source -
Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life (Living the Wisdom of the Tao) by Dr Wayne W Dyer

(deb's note - you can find this title, Communion with God, at audiobooksonline as well as at Amazon. Published Oct 2000. The description says -

In 1992, Neale Donald Walsch -- depressed, in poor health, unhappy with his life -- wrote an angry letter to God. His frustrated questions -- "What does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?" -- poured out onto a yellow legal pad. Before he was through, his pen stayed suspended over the paper, and a reply was whispered into his mind by a voiceless voice:
"Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting?" So began an uncommon conversation -- a powerful, inspiring dialogue between God and man that has touched the minds, hearts, lives, and souls of millions of people around the world.
Communion with God is the latest in a series of books chronicling Walsch's extraordinary experience.)

(deb's note cont - the only book of Walsch's I have read is Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends. It is about Death.)

Re: Verse 73 - Living in Heaven's Net

http://baba.gaia.com — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:12:06 GMT

Thank you Deb for your wisdom. I understand it now. It is quite a fascinating way to look at bravery. I was used to thinking of bravery as doing something that makes one scared.

Re: Verse 73 - Living in Heaven's Net

http://yhd52754.gaia.com — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:59:13 GMT

Thank you for asking Ken. I think there is.

Cautious bravery would be calculated risk, not rushing headlong into. Having a sense of the odds in favor.

The dictionary defines cautious as showing careful forethought, restrained, examining probable effects and consequences of acts.

Confucious said "The cautious seldom err." Pascal said "In each action, we must look beyond the action, at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious."

The dictionary defines bravery as able to face danger without showing fear. I think the word "showing" here is important.

Not surprisingly military men speak often of bravery. Gen Patton said "I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened." Gen Bradley said "Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death."

And Morihei Ueshiba said "Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love."

Anyone else have thoughts about this phrase?

Deb

Re: Verse 73 - Dr Dyer's Essay

http://baba.gaia.com — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:54:41 GMT

What does "cautious bravery" mean? Does this mean that there is a middle path when it comes to bravery?