Commentary on the Tao Te Ching: Chapter 1 - Words

Hi Internet family,

This is Chapter 1 of a series where I post, and provide commentary, on the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching, or “Way of Virtue”, contains the essence of Taoism, a fundamental influence in Chinese thought and culture, in roughly 5 000 English words. It was written 2 500 years in sixth century B.C. by Confucian contemporary and keeper of imperial archives, Lao Tsu (Laozi). Whereas Confucianism is concerned with day-to-day rules of conduct, Taoism is concerned with a more spiritual level of being. The book I’ll be using is translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.
Side note – I recommend reading the original text of the chapter first, and then the commentaries for each section. I hope you enjoy the content provided, feedback and discussion is always welcome.

The Tao Te Ching original text

• @Imerick commentary

One

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

• To begin, there are three words I want to focus on: eternal, Tao, and name. First, eternal is a pretty powerful word. We don’t hear it a lot because it’s a word reserved for things that last forever - eternal life, eternal glory, eternal youth – that’s its literal definition, “without end”, and there’s very few things in ordinary life that don’t end. However, it’s also used to relate to God – think of our Eternal Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or our Eternal Father, also things that last forever. So, when we take the second word, Tao, and believe this to mean ‘way’, we get the very first line of this book telling us that ‘the way’ that can be talked about, or communicated, is not the way to anything eternal. Finally, the last word, name, would have you believe this refers to a person, but ‘name’ can refer to anything! A name is a word we use to acknowledge the perceived existence of an entity; for example, the name of the land I live on is California, or the name of my school is Cal Poly Pomona. It’s important to recognize the sole purpose of a name is to help us categorize and describe, but they are no substitute for the actual thing being identified. For instance, my name is Erick, but having the word, “Erick”, on this page doesn’t mean that you’ll find me here on your magical rectangle, or my typing, “the name of this color is white”, doesn’t make it true. Any ‘name’ you create is only a symbolic representation of the real thing, but it can never be ‘the eternal name’.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

• Heaven and earth are one and the same: hence, they both start with the nameless. Personally, I think the nameless refers to our emotions. I mean, think of all the poems, and songs, and monuments created in the name of love, sorrow, or joy. They all seek to reproduce an aspect of the creator’s experience: a moment so profound that their response was to design a way for others to, also, feel that experience. We call this art, and you can find it everywhere on earth. After all, the purpose of art isn’t the art itself. Rather, the purpose is the reaction of the observer when they surrender attempting to define the art, and accept it for what it is. If you attempt to define that moment, you deny the true nature of the experience by using words to represent it. Thus, the beginning of heaven and earth can’t be found with words. Words, or names, make you “the mother of ten thousand things”. For, with every word, you will need new words to describe it, and then more new words to describe the old new ones, and on and on and on. And you have to be responsible for these - These are your creations; they’re reflections of your humanity! We don’t want our creations to be misunderstood, but these creations are only reflections, not actually you.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

• We’re going to approach this one backwards. To start, human beings are exceptional when it comes to desiring. There is no conceivable end to the amount of wants and wishes human beings are willing to create. As long as we attempt to fulfill these desires (another exceptional human quality) we will continues to “see the manifestations”. Manifestations are the physical elements of reality. They are all the states of matter and properties of the life that we can observe, measure, and (maybe) manipulate. But why would we want to do such things? What purpose do we have for observing, or manipulating, anything? It’s to gain pleasure. In spite of everything, these manifestations only exist because we have desires, and desires exist to be satisfied. So what happens when we stop desiring? What do you mean what happens? You already know! You enjoy the moment! When we lose our desires, we no longer seek order and control; we don’t seek anything; there is no more naming, or manipulation, we simply exist in the grand cosmic mystery of life. This duality between desiring and being desire-less is, I believe, the process of science. After all, the first step in the scientific method is to “make an observation”, and reality’s true nature (heaven and earth) can only be observed in a state of non-desire. From here, we “see the mystery”, and can either explore it, or become a part of it. If we decide to become a part of it, then there’s really no need to go on, but if we choose to explore it, then we create the second step in science, which is asking questions. Asking questions inevitably leads to desires because questions demand answers. The answers we initially create are the hypotheses, or step 3, of the scientific method, and because we want to satisfy our desires, we need to apply our answers! So we test them out (Step 4), and see if they work (Step 5). If they work: great, we’re done, our desires our met. However, if they don’t work: we reexamine the tests, and variables involved, make adjustments where needed (Step 6), and further increase the manifestations needed to satisfy this desire. Once the desires are satisfied, there is no longer any need for the manifestations, and we return to the mystery.

These two spring from the same source, but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

• Desire and non-desire derive from the same place: reality. The distinction made between these two, with their names, is what creates ‘darkness’ because neither desire, or non-desire, allow us to communicate exactly what it is we’re experiencing - hence, everyone is ‘in the dark’ to another’s True meaning. Our reliance on language and subjective interpretations of words creates the penultimate line ‘darkness within darkness.’ We are so dependent on this linguistic form of communication that we sometimes forget that it’s all made up! It is the moments when we doubt this system (such as when someone uses words you recognize, but in an order that doesn’t make sense), and ask for clarification that we begin to open ‘the gate to all mystery’.
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-- @imerick