Chapter 12
Thoughts and Applications on the Tao Te Jing through the lens of Master Zhu's Teachings.
The five colors blind men’s eyes.
The five tones deafen men’s ears.
The five flavors spoil men’s palates.
Running and chasing make men’s hearts mad.
Rare goods confuse men’s ways.
Therefore the Sage works for the bodies needs and not for the eyes.
He removes the other and takes this.
How do you understand the world? How do you understand who you are in the grand scheme of the Universe? How do you make sense of the world? I’m thinking about our cosmologies, the idea and beliefs that tie our lives together in an overall understanding. I was raised in a western secular household who held to the enlightenment age ideas. These ideas are of rationalism, Truth, and logic. The political idea of a constitutional democracy and natural rights, as well as the separation of Church and State. These ideas fall under the umbrella of (classical) liberal ideology. Classical liberalism I think of as being liberated from a king, these ideas address how should we move forward in societies without a Monarch. It was these ideas I was curious about and strove to understand as I thought of the world that we have created. To summarize I have used a scientific, logical approach to everything I’ve been exposed to, these are the tools I use to make sense of the world. This is a very small sample size of the ideas we have access to. Age of Enlightenment philosophies are contrasted with the Religious ideology and institutions of our time that value Christian morality and an adherence to an understanding of God’s grace as their talking points and focus. I see these two tools of understanding and sense making dominate our current political discourse. No matter which side you except as true I see as belief, a commitment to an ideology.
What is the origin of belief? How did this idea come to be understood in the modern sense? I’ll revisit the idea of the Nameless being on a Nameless planet as a thought experiment to show an understanding of how I see the idea of belief. If we have a group (tribe) of human beings wandering through their part of the world, they are surrounded by the chaos of the natural world. Over time imagine they develop some understanding that connects them to the world, a creation of order and understanding that is unique to them. They develop and understanding of who they are, why they are there, and what they do. I don’t consider this belief, just an understanding of who they are, where they are, and why they are there. This understanding they have developed in unique to them. Then if we imagine there are other groups of beings that have developed with differing understandings from other parts of the world what happens when they meet? We have two groups of beings with differing understandings of their worlds, its the differing aspects of their understandings that I see as the root of belief.
It is the contrasting and opposition of unique systems of understanding that is the root of belief.
With this idea in mind I actively try to believe nothing. There are an infinite possibility of understandings that we can use to understand the dynamic world where we live. If belief is a commitment to an understanding, if I believe nothing I can commit to any understanding at any particular time. Do I do this? Sometimes…
This chapter is about a deeper understanding of the Taoist understanding. It is looking at an idea of what is called the WuXing, five element theory. I examined this philosophy in the essay The Shape of Understanding. This chapter is an example of the homogeneity of the Taoist system. It is an inclusive understanding of the world that still works (for me). I think the world was filled with these holistic systems, the Mayan understanding rippled from Mesoamerica through all of North America. The Buddhist world view traveled through the near and far east.
The five colors blind men’s eyes.
The five tones deafen men’s ears.
The five flavors spoil men’s palates.
These lines are referring to an understanding of Taoist five element theory. Figure 1 shows the transformational cycle of the 5-element theory. I use this understanding all the time when thinking of states of change. The basic idea is that a system has aspects of it that change and transform through time. But at the center (Earth) represesnts the whole of the system. An example is if we are looking at the system of the human being, Within our bodies (Earth) we have an energy base called Qi (Metal), the movement of this Qi (Strength), A Spirit (Wood), and a mind (Fire). I think there were other applications in ancient China that looked at other systems that were applied to this philosophy that Lao Tzu is referring to, not in a favorable way. I think these are a statement to a cultural drift or inaccurate understanding of the 5-element theory.
Figure 1
Running and chasing make men’s hearts mad.
I see this as a further critique of the state of China at the time, a searching for an understanding outside of ourselves. There is a parable of a young boy who is searching for a lost Ox in Chan (Zen) tradition. To paraphrase the boy is searching the world for a lost Ox. He ventures around the World through forests and marshes, everywhere he sees evidence that the Ox is close and nearby. He questions the search and wonders why the Ox is always wandering off. His understanding materializes when he looks down and realizes he’s riding the Ox.
Rare goods confuse men’s ways.
Our world is full of people chasing material wealth as the time of their lives tick by minute by minute as they engage some level of the game in which we are thrown. This isn’t the way of the Sage.
Therefore the Sage works for the bodies needs and not for the eyes.
The idea of what does it mean to live a life in the modern world. There is a saying “The unexamined life isn’t worth living”. I see it as the philosophical life, a life of searching for an understanding of who I am and why I’m here, how do I create meaning. At a deeper level, to live a life of meaning and purpose, I strive to not be driven by deep ideological currents or emotional stagnations that can control and direct our trajectories. To nourish our bodies and cultivate our internal structures and not to be distracted by the shiny objects in the store windows.
He removes the other and takes this.
I think the “This” is the contents of this entire text, a reference to the Tao De Jing. The other is the external world of man filled with beliefs and hidden drives that we are a part of intrinsically and are contrasted by. We are a product of our surroundings, the language, the social structures, the ideologies. To become a Sage is to remove understand these and remove them and follow the Tao…
I agree that chasing money and things are empty goals that leave life devoid of meaning and purpose. It’s hard to be in a world that you don’t align with. The seeds of my discontent were sown early observing my Fathers striving to climb the ladder of the corporate world to the detriment of his family. Thank you for your thought and insights. You always make me question and think about my relationship to the world.