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Newsletter - August 2024

​At Ease In Your Own Life

 

“Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception… You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life.” (Lao Tzu)

 

“Image without an image”? Words don’t work when we try to wrap our minds around something too big to be put into words. Not good news if we want to pin something into the structure of knowledge. But what if it’s not about knowledge and knowing? What if it’s about awareness and being? The Tao Te Ching (Chapter 14) reminds us this is how to be “at ease in your own life.”

 

Do you ever want to feel more “at ease in your own life”? I know I do from time to time. But why is Lao Tzu trying to connect how I feel with whether or not I can “know” something? And what does he think I am trying to “know” anyway? This newsletter explores an answer.

 

To be fair, I’ve taken his words out of context; so here’s the rest of Chapter 14. “Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped. Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life.” Sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it?

 

Well, does the context help? I’m not sure the answer is yes. I think Lao Tzu is making the same point when he says: “In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped” (chapter 48). In other words, if you want to be “at ease in your own life” then pursuing knowledge is not the way to go.

 

At this point, I might say: So what am I supposed to do? The answer is given in the next line: “Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom." Really? And how am I supposed to do that? I’m not sure I’m any the wiser. At least, not yet.

 

I think the problem is that we really like to know things. Why? Because we think the pursuit of knowledge is the way to understand anything and everything. Here’s what we typically do. We observe all the separate things we think we see in the world out there, give them names so we can talk about them, and then arrange them into patterns that we call knowledge.

 

Is this a useful exercise? Sure it is. Along the way we can use our knowledge to predict and control certain aspects of our natural world. We can dam rivers and create hydroelectricity, we can repair damage to the human body and prevent illness, and we can send a man to the moon and listen to the stars with radio telescopes. All very impressive.

 

But here’s the problem. What does this have to do with being “at ease” in our own lives? I think the short answer is, not a lot. Why? Because pursuing knowledge always takes us away from oneness. Knowledge is all about separating things and making distinctions between them. What if being at ease calls for letting go of the pursuit? What if we replace what we call understanding with awareness?

 

So, what is it that we need to be aware of? The short answer is the Oneness/Wholeness that is everything. The longer answer was in the quote already given above: “Look, and it can’t be seen. Listen, and it can’t be heard. Reach, and it can’t be grasped. Above, it isn’t bright. Below, it isn’t dark. Seamless, unnamable, it returns to the realm of nothing. Form that includes all forms, image without an image, subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end” (chapter 14). In other words, we’re back to the riddle again.

 

How can we possibly know what Lao Tzu is talking about? And the answer is we can’t. That’s the point. We never will, no matter how hard or for how long we try. Lao Tzu makes his point by using a bunch of words that we can’t possibly wrap our heads around. Why not? Because they don’t make what we like to call sense. So, to return to my earlier question, what are we supposed to do now?

 

(I’ll digress for a moment to comment that Lao Tzu never suggests we are “supposed to” do anything. The Tao Te Ching contains no suggestions, or recommendations, much less commandments. I think it simply contains observations which point out that certain approaches produce certain outcomes.)

 

In this case, the outcome we’re looking for is to feel “at ease” in our own lives. And here’s the observation: “You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom.” Well, if I’m looking for an easy-to-understand five-step program for achieving “ease in my own life” then I’m disappointed. But, joking aside, what does matter is the fact that it’s not a “program.” Why? Because a program is precisely something we can wrap our heads around.

 

I think it’s actually a one-step program. And the step is simply to let go of the pursuit of knowledge. However, I think Lao Tzu acknowledges that it’s a bit hard to do this in one single step. So he makes it easy for us: “In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped” (chapter 48). So if we want steps, then let’s simply take them one day at a time.

 

An example that’s true for me is when I say to myself “I will be at ease when…” and I follow that with anything other than what is true right here right now in this present moment. But, I hear you say, what about working towards goals? What’s wrong with feeling “at ease” when you achieve a goal?

 

Well (aside from the confusion often caused by words like “right” and “wrong”), I think one answer is to allow myself to be at ease with the steps along the way. The trouble comes when I put off being at ease until some point in the future. “I will be at ease when…” that’s where the problem lies.

 

But, before we end, what does Lao Tzu mean when he says “Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom”? I think he’s talking about being aware of the Oneness/Wholeness that is everything. And what’s that? “For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao” (chapter 25).

 

I think when we realize we are not separate from the Tao, and nor is anything else, and that we can pursue knowledge all we like and still not be separate from the Tao—that’s the lightbulb moment, as it were. I think this is what Lao Tzu means when he says that we cannot “know” it, but that we can “be” it—at ease in our own lives.

 

What’s an example that’s true for you? What’s the common denominator of the moments in your life when you do not feel “at ease”? What about the moments when you do feel “at ease”? 

 

If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, you can get in touch with me by:

 

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share this newsletter.

 

Francis

 

IN OTHER NEWS...

 

New book released - There Is No Somewhere Else: Insights from the Tao Te Ching was released on July 16, 2024. It's available as shown here.

 

Book launch event August 22, 2024 - will be an in-person in-store event at Banyen Books in Vancouver, BC (details here). If you're able to come, it would be great to see you there!

 

First book - In Harmony with the Tao: A Guided Journey into the Tao Te Ching is available as shown here.

 

Synopses and reviews - for There Is No Somewhere Else and In Harmony with the Tao are on my new website www.francispringmill.com

 

Past newsletters - www.francispringmill.com/newsletter-archive

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