Verse 1 - Living the Mystery

[Eva Libre]

1st Verse

The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal name.

The Tao is both named and nameless.
As nameless it is the origin of all things;
as named it is the Mother of 10,000 things.

Ever desire-less, one can see the mystery;
ever desiring, one sees only the manifestations.
And the mystery itself is the doorway
to all understanding.

Contemplation/Meditation Verse

I choose to enjoy living the great mystery.
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.


Do The Tao Now

At some point today, notice an instance of annoyance or irritation you have with another person or situation.  Decide to do the Tao (or practice the Way) in that moment by turning inward with curiosity about where you are on the continuum between desire and allowing.  Permit the paradox of wanting the irritant to vanish and allowing it to be what it is.  Look inward for it in your thoughts and allow yourself to feel it wherever it is and however it moves in your body.

Turn all of your attention to becoming open-minded, allowing permissiveness to befriend the mystery within yourself.  Notice how the feeling manifests itself: perhaps doing “loop-de-loops” in your stomach, giving a rigidness to your skeleton, making your heart pound, or tightening your throat.  Wherever it is, allow it as an enigmatic messenger within you, and give it nonjudgmental attention.  Notice the desire for the feeling to disappear, and allow it to be monitored compassionately by you.  Accept whatever comes.  Encounter the mystery within without labeling, explaining, or defending.  It's a subtle distinction at first, which you must take personal responsibility for identifying.  You alone can prepare the ground of your being for the experience of living the mystery.


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

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr. Dyer -

First and foremost, enjoy the mystery !

Let the world unfold without always attempting to figure it all out. Let relationships just be, for example, since everything is going to stretch out in Divine order. Don't try so hard to make something work - simply allow. Don't always toil at trying to understand your mate, your children, your parents, your boss, or anyone else, because the Tao is working at all times. When expectations are shattered, practice allowing that to be the way it is. Relax, let go, allow, and recognize that some of your desires are about how you think your world should be, rather than how it is in that moment.

Become an astute observer … judge less and listen more. Take time to open your mind to the fascinating mystery and uncertainty that we all experience.

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr Dyer -

Practice letting go of always naming and labeling.

The labeling process is what most of us were taught in school. We studied hard to be able to define things correctly in order to get what we called “high grades.” Most educational institutions insisted on identifying everything, leading to a tag that distinguished us as graduates with knowledge of specific categories. Yet we know, without anyone telling us, that there is no title, degree, or distinguishing label that truly defines us. In the same way that water is not the word water - any more than it is agua, Wasser, or H20 - nothing in this universe is what it's named. In spite of our endless categorizations, each animal, flower, mineral, and human can never truly be described. In the same way, the Tao tells us that “the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” We must bask in the magnificence of what is seen and sensed, instead of always memorizing and categorizing.

[Eva Libre]

From Jonathan Star - Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition

Away that can be walked
is not The Way
A name that can be named
is not The Name

Tao is both Named and Nameless
As Nameless, it is the origin of all things
As Named, it is the mother of all things

A mind free of thought,
merged within itself,
beholds the essence of Tao
A mind filled with thought,
identified with its own perceptions,
beholds the mere forms of this world

Tao and this world seem different
but in truth they are one and the same
The only difference is in what we call them

How deep and mysterious is this unity
How profound, how great !
It is the truth beyond the truth,
the hidden within the hidden
It is the path to all wonder,
the gate to the essence of everything !

[Eva Libre]

From Vimala McClure - The Tao of Motherhood

1

ONENESS

Tao is the oneness of all things.

You and your child come from
One and journey toward One.
You are essentially the same.

Right mothering springs form
this knowledge: the One in either
responds to the One in both.
The bond is oneness, and cannot
be broken.

When doubt and uncertainty arise,
return to this simple truth.

Be in oneness and the illusion of
separateness dies.

Be still and allow unity to be revealed.

[Eva Libre]

From Richard Grossman - The Tao of Emerson

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

The Tao that can be trodden is not the
enduring and unchanging Tao.
The name that can be named is not the
enduring and unchanging name.

Conceived as having no name,
it is the Originator of heaven and earth;
Having a name, it is the Mother of all things.

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.

Under these two aspects
it is really the same;
But as development takes place,
it receives the different names.

Together we call them the Mystery.
Where the Mystery is the deepest
is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

From the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - ”The Over-Soul”, ”Idealism”, ”The Poet”

That great nature in which we rest,
that Unity, that Over-Soul,
Is an Immensity not possessed,
and that cannot be possessed.

The animal eye sees, with wonderful
accuracy.
sharp outlines and colored surfaces.
To a more earnest vision,
outlines and surfaces
become transparent;
Causes and spirits
are seen through them.

The wise silence,
the universal beauty,
To which every part and particle
is equally related,
Is the tide of being which floats us
into the secret of nature;
And we stand before
the secret of the world.

[Eva Libre]

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

1
(45)

The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way;
The names that can be named are not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of the myriad creatures;
The named is the mother of the myriad creatures.


Therefore,
Always be without desire
in order to observe its wondrous subtleties;
Always have desire
so that you may observe its manifestations.

Both of these derive from the same source;
They have different names but the same designation.

Mystery of mysteries,
The gate of all wonders !

[Eva Libre]

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

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

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

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.

You can't express reality in words. You limit it that way. You squeeze it into nouns and verbs and adjectives, and the instant-by-instant flow is cut off. The tao that can be told isn't the eternal Tao, because trying to tell it brings it into time. It's stopped in time by the very attempt to name it. Once anything is named, it's no longer eternal. “Eternal” means free, without limit, without a position in time or space, lived without obstacle.

There's no name for what's sitting in this chair right now. I am the experience of the eternal. Even with the thought “God”, it all stops and manifests in time, and I create “God”, I have created “not-God”. You can substitute anything here - with the thought “tree”, I create “tree” and “not-tree”; the mechanism is the same. Before you name anything, the world has no things in it, no meaning. There's nothing but peace in a wordless, question-less world. It's the space where everything is already answered, in joyful silence.

In this world before words, there is only the real - undivided, un-graspable, already present. Any apparently separate thing can't be real, since the mind has created it with its names. When we understand this, the unreal becomes beautiful, because there's nothing that can threaten the real. I don't ever see anything separate called “Tree” or “you” or ” I “. These things are only imagination, believed or unbelieved.

Naming is the origin of all the particular things that make up the world of illusion, the dream world. To break off part of the everything and name it “tree” is the first dream. I call it “first-generation thinking”. Then thought begets thought, and we have “tall tree, beautiful tree, tree that I want to sit under, tree that would make good furniture, tree that I need to save”, and the dream goes on and on. It takes a child just a moment to fall into the dream world, the dream of a world, when she first connects word with thing. And it takes you just a moment to question it, to break the spell and be grateful for the Tao of everything - tree, no tree; world, no world.

When the mind believes what it thinks, it names what cannot be named and tries to make it real through a name. It believes that its names are real, that there's a world out there separate from itself. That's an illusion. The whole world is projected. When you're shut down and frightened, the world seems hostile; when you love what is, everything in the world becomes the beloved. Inside and outside always match - they're reflections of each other. The world is the mirror image of your mind.

Not believing your own thoughts, you're free from the primal desire; the thought that reality should be different than it is. You realize the wordless, the unthinkable. You understand that any mystery is only what you yourself have created. In fact, there's no mystery. Everything is as clear as day. It's simple, because there really isn't anything. There's only the story appearing now. And not even that.

In the end, “mystery” is equal to “manifestations”. You're just looking from a new perspective. The world is an optical illusion. It's just you, crazed and miserable, or you, delighted and at peace. In the end, “desire” is equal to “free from desire”. Desire is a gift; it's about noticing. Everything happens for you, not to you.

I have questioned my thoughts, and I've seen that it's crazy to argue with what is. I don't ever want anything to happen except what's happening. For example, my ninety-year-old mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. I'm taking care of her, cooking and cleaning for her, sleeping beside her, living in her apartment twenty-three hours a day (my husband takes me out for a walk every morning). It has been a month now. It's as if her breath is the pulse of my life. I bathe her, I wash her in the most personal places, I medicate her, and I feel such a sense of gratitude. That's me over there, dying of cancer, spending my last few days sleeping and watching TV and talking, medicated with the most marvelous painkilling drugs. I am amazed at the beauty and intricacies of her body, my body. And the last day of her life, as I sit by her bedside, a shift takes place in her breathing, and I know; it's only a matter of minutes now. And then another shift takes place, and I know. Our eyes lock, and a few moments later she's gone. I look more deeply into the eyes that the mind has vacated, the mindless eyes, the eyes of the no-mind. I wait for a change to take place. I wait for the eyes to show me death, and nothing changes. She's as present as she ever was. I love my story about her. How else could she ever exist ?

A man sticks a pistol into my stomach, pulls the hammer back, and says, “I'm going to kill you.” I am shocked that he is taking his thoughts so seriously. To someone identified as an I, the thought of killing causes guilt that leads to a life of suffering, so I ask him, as kindly as I can, not to do it. I don't tell him that it's his suffering I'm thinking of. He says that he has to do it, and I understand; I remember believing that I had to do things in my old life. I thank him for doing the best he can, and I notice that I'm fascinated. Is this how she dies ? Is this how the story ends ? And as joy continues to fill me, I find it miraculous that the story is still going on. You can never know the ending, even as it ends. I am very moved at the sight of sky, clouds, and moonlit trees. I love that I don't miss one moment, one breath, of this amazing life. I wait. And wait. And in the end, he doesn't pull the trigger. He doesn't do that to himself.

What we call “bad” and what we call “good” both come from the same place. The Tao Te Ching says that the source of everything is called “darkness”. What a beautiful name (if we must have a name) ! Darkness is our source. In the end, it embraces everything. Its nature is love, and in our confusion we name it terror and ugliness, the unacceptable, the unbearable. All our stress results from what we imagine is in that darkness. We imagine darkness as separate from ourselves, and we project something terrible onto it. But in reality, the darkness is always benevolent.

What is the “darkness within darkness” ? It's the mind that doesn't know a thing. This don't-know mind is the center of the universe - it is the universe - there's nothing outside it. The reason that darkness is the gateway to all understanding is that once the darkness is understood, you're clear that nothing is separate from you. No name, no thought, can possibly be true in an ultimate sense. It's all provisional; it's all changing. The dark, the nameless, the unthinkable - that is what you can absolutely trust. It doesn't change, and it's benevolent. When you realize this, you just have to laugh. There's nothing serious about life or death.

[Eva Libre]

Lynn's - Daode jing of Laozi

The Dao that can be described in language is not the constant Dao; the name that can be given it is not its constant name.

The Dao that can be rendered in language and the name [ming] that can be given it point to a thing / matter [shi] or reproduce a form [xing], (1) neither of which is it in its constancy[chang]. This is why it can neither be rendered in language nor given a name.

Nameless, it is the origin of the myriad things; (2) named, it is the mother of the myriad things.

Anything that exists originates in nothingness [wu], thus, before it has forms and when it is still nameless, it serves as the origin of the myriad things, and, once it has forms and is named, it grows them, rears them, ensures them their proper shapes, and matures them as their mother. (3) In other words, the Dao, by being itself formless and nameless, originates and brings the myriad things to completion. They are originated and completed in this way yet do not know how it happens. this is the mystery [xuan] beyond mystery.

Therefore, always be without desire so as to see their subtlety. (4)

Subtlety [miao] is the absolute degree of minuteness. As the myriad things reach completion only after originating in minuteness, so they are born only after originating in nothingness. Thus always be without desire and remain empty, so that you can see the subtlety with which things originate.

Jiao [usually "frontier" or "border"] here means the ends to which things revert. If anything that exists is to be of benefit [li], it must function out of nothing. Only when desire is rooted in such a way that it is in accord with the Dao will it prove beneficial [ji]. Thus always have such desire so that you can see those ends to which things finally arrive.

These two emerge together but have different names. Together, we refer to them as mystery: the mystery upon mystery and gateway of all subtleties.

The "two" are origin and mother. "Emerge together" means that they emerge together from mystery. they "have different names" because what these apply to cannot be the same. At the start, it [mystery] is referred to as "origin", and, at the end, it is referred to as "mother". Mystery is the dark, where in silence absolutely nothing exists. It is where origin and mother come from. We cannot treat it as something to be named. Thus the text cannot say, "Together, they have the same name: Mystery," but instead says, "Together, we refer to them as mystery". The reason it refers to them in this way is that there is no other way that they may be treated. Because it has to refer to them in this way, it could not just stop and restrict their meaning to the single word "mystery". If it had restricted their meaning to the single world "mystery", this name certainly would have been far off the mark. Thus the text says, "mystery upon mystery". All subtleties emerge from mystery. thus the text says that it is "gateway of all subtleties".


[Text, in Italics above, is Wang Bi's commentary]

The notes below, are from the translator, Richard John Lynn -

(1) Zhishi (point to the thing) is the first of Xu Shen's (fl. ca. 100 AD) six graphic principles [of Chinese characters] (liushu): the simple ideogram. Zaoxing (reproduce the form/make a semblance of something) is probably a variant of xiangxing (image the form), Xu's second graphic principle: the simple pictogram. See Xu Shen, Shuowen jiezi Duan zhu(Explanations of simple and compound characters, with the commentary of Duan [Yucai]), 15A:3a-3b. Wang Bi here reminds his reader of the limited way language functions, too limited to capture the entirety of the Dao because it always has to refer to things in the specific. Zaoxing also occurs in the Zhuangzi: "Although your lordship would practice benevolence and righteousness, it almost amounts to counterfeit versions of them ! Their forms certainly may be reproduced [zao xing], but if you were successful, it would unquestionably provoke attack, and, once such abnormality occurred, foreign states would attack you without fai" (Zhuangzi yinde, 65/24/21; cf. Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 264). Wang Bi probably had this passage in mind as well: not only is language limited to naming specific things, it consists of names that at best only approximate the real nature of specific things and, as such, are inevitably false or counterfeit.

(2) The base text reads "Nameless, it is the origin of Heaven and Earth", but Wang's commentary clearly refers to a text similar to that which occurs in the two Mawangduiversions of the Laozi (designated "A" and "B" in these notes), so I have altered it accordingly, following a suggestion by William G. Boltz, "The Lao-tzu Text that Wang Pi and Ho-shang Kung Never Saw", 34-35. See also Mawangdui Hanmu boshu (Silk manuscripts from the Han tomb at Mawangdui), 114; and Wagner, "The Wang Bi Recension of theLaozi", 50.

(3) Cf. section 51, fourth passage.

(4) Wing-tsit Chan draws our attention to the fact that beginning with Song era commentators such as Wang Anshi (1021-86), Sima Guang (1019-86), Su Che (1039-1112), and Fan Yingyuan (1240-69), it has been the tradition to punctuate this and the following line in the Laozi differently, resulting in a very different reading: "Thus let there always be nothingness, so we may see their subtleties; let there always be existence, so we may see their ends" Cf. Chan, The Way of Lao Tzu, 97 and 99. n. 5. Many modern annotators and translators of the Laozi, Chan among them, follows this later tradition.

[Eva Libre]

Dr Dyer's Essay for Verse 1 -

In this opening verse of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu tells us that the "Tao is both named and nameless".  This sounds paradoxical to our Western intellect -- and it is !  Paradoxical thinking is embedded in Eastern concepts such as yin and yang or the feminine and the masculine, and where things are comfortably described as both this and that.  We in the West, by contrast, tend to view opposites as incompatible concepts that contradict each other.  Yet this book is asking that we change our ingrained ways of thinking and see how our lives change as a result.

The Tao is an unknowable, unseeable realm where everything originates; while at the same time, the Tao is invisibly within everything.  When we desire to see this invisibleness (mystery), we attempt to define it in terms of the outer world of form -- what Lao-tzu calls "the 10,000 things".  He counsels us that letting go of trying to see the mystery will actually allow us to see it.  Or, as I like to think of it, "let go and let God".  But how can we do that ?  One way is to permit ourselves to practice more paradoxical thinking by recognizing that desiring (wanting) and desireless (allowing) are different and the same . . . rather like the mysterious ends of a continuum.

Desiring is the physical expression of creating conditions that allow us to be receptive; that is, it's in-the-world preparation for receiving.  According to Lao-tzu, wanting to know or see the mystery of the Tao will reveal evidence of it in a variety of manifestations, but not the mystery itself.  But this isn't a dead end !  From this ground of desiring, the flowering of the mysterious Tao grows.  It's as if wanting transforms into effortless allowing.  Desiring, one sees the manifestations; desireless, one can see the mystery itself.

When we tune in to what Lao-tzu is telling us, it becomes readily apparent that our world produces abundant examples of this paradoxical process.  Think of gardening and desiring those luscious homegrown tomatoes or spring daffodils: Allowing them to grow is ultimately what happens.  Now think of the things in life that involve wanting and how they differ from allowing: Wanting to go to sleep, for instance, rather than going to sleep.  Wanting to diet, rather than dieting.  Wanting to love, rather than loving.  In this reference to the Tao, desireless means trusting, permitting, and allowing.  Desire is both the beginning and the ground of desirelessness, yet wanting is also the beginning and the ground of allowing.  They are the same, and they are different.

Pay attention to times when you can feel in your body where you are on the continuum between desiring and allowing (or trying and doing).  Trying to play the piano, drive the car, or ride the bicycle is the same as, and different from, actually playing the piano, driving the car, and riding the bicycle.  Once those outer-world activities are desired and learned, there's a time when allowing is what you do.  The point here is to recognize the difference in your body between trying and allowing, and to then become aware of the effortless sensation of the latter.  This practice will also lead to a greater awareness of the invisible mystery and the 10,000 things, which are the visible phenomena of our world.

The 10,000 things that Lao-tzu refers to represent the categorized, classified, and scientifically named objects of the earth, which help us communicate and identify what we're talking and thinking about.  Yet for all our technological expertise and scientific categorization, we can never truly create a human eye or liver, or even a grain of wheat for that matter.  Each of these things -- along with the remainder that comprise the known or named world -- emerge from the mystery, the eternal Tao.  Just as the world is not its named parts, we're not exclusively the skin, bone, and rivers of fluids that we're physically made of.  We, too, are the eternal Tao, invisibly animating our tongues to speak, ears to hear, and eyes to see and experience the manifest and the mystery.  Consciously allowing this nameless mystery is ultimately the way to practice the Tao.

Does that mean putting yourself in harm's way ?  Of course not.  Does that mean trusting the mystery at the moment you're being mugged or mistreated ?  Probably not.  Does it mean never trying to change things ?  No.  It does mean cultivating a practice of being in the mystery and allowing it to flow through you unimpeded.  It means permitting the paradox of being in form at the same time that you allow the mystery to unfold.

Do the Tao; find your personal ways of living in the mystery.  As Lao-tzu says in this 1st verse, "And the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding".

[Eva Libre]

Adding this mention, regarding NOTHINGNESS, in The Lunar Tao - Meditations in Harmony with the Seasons by Deng Ming-Dao - one of my Taoist "teachers" along with Lao-tzu himself, who came to me in dream vision early on in my study of the Tao Te Ching.

Gateway to Mystery

Moon 1 Day 20 ~ Rain Water Day 5 ~ Lunar Tao Day 20

In the Daodejing, Laozi refers to "wu" - meaning "no", "not" or "nothing".  This Verse 1 (sometimes referred to as Chapters or Sections) states the relationship of nothingness to existence:

These two issue forth together,

but have different names;

Together, they are called mysterious.

Mystery upon mystery:

the gate to all marvels.

When we get to Verse 40, Laozi is even more explicit, using just four words:

"Existence comes from nothingness."

The Wumenguan and Zhaozhou's "Wu !"

The first case in the Wumenguan is known as "Wu".

A monk asked Chan master Zhaozhou Congshen, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature ?"

Zhaozhou answered, "Wu !"

On face value, this answer says, "No !"  But the masters teach that this would be an erroneous interpretation.  Contemplating what "wu" means here is often the entrance to a beginner's Chan.

The gateway is found only after a long search,

and the long search is a spiral going inward.

With so much multiplicity -- a pantheon of gods, the orbit of the earth around the sun, the orbit of the moon around the earth, the spinning of the earth, day and night, minute after minute -- how do we discern the Truth ?  Maybe we find small and relative truths, but is it important to find the one, big, ultimate Truth ?  Physicists, for example, are seeking a unified theory.  The search for a single truth is a powerfully intriguing journey.

Even Taoists want to know the first cause, the first principle, the first origin.  For all the mythology surrounding him, that is exactly what the Heavenly Lord of the Primal Origin represents: that there is a single fundamental truth that gave birth to all the universe -- and that this source is benevolent.

Taoism teaches that there is both a relative truth and an absolute truth.  That is why Laozi says, "These two issue forth together, but have different names."  The relative truth can be reached by science, deduction, reasoning, discussion, and observation.  The absolute truth is reached by mystical perception.

E's final note, on these thoughts just shared - I am a Taoist by nature, as well as a metaphysician by practice.  The two are one within me.  They represent the wholeness of expression, as me, in this moment of my eternal existence.  Never denying relative "truths"; and always finding the mystical perception of absolute truth - within.