It turns out I am desire personified. I want to say more about my Tao Te – 1 reflection.
One approach to the Tao Te Ching is to divide or categorize it into discrete sections: Tao (1–37) and Te (38–81). I was not able to refrain from looking at Tao, except through Te. That first jotting replaced an emphasis upon the identity/form/name of Tao with my tendency to control through what is named and what is not. This impulse to name, behind any naming, may bring too much Te to the table of Tao.
I’m about to bring over my signification of G*D (a simplification of a preferred cloud-of-dots advocated by Rustum Roy in Experimenting with Truth) may periodically show up as Ta* — the asterisk always pointing beyond what can be questioned or known or understood. Every definition of Tao or God misses more than it describes. This humility of form is a critical practice.
I expect to find references to Nature and the Feminine (before patriarchy) to be important correctives to our rational, capitalistic context.
Do you have a working definition of Tao and Te?
I’m interested in how to talk about Ta* and Te in mixed company (yes, they are as tricky to define as sex). Each attempted definition probably says more about the speaker than that spoken of. Nonetheless, we do try to make sense of experience. For the moment, my shorthand is: Ta* – Beyond; Te – Ethical Application.
Here I am, stuck in a delightful foreground/background optical illusion. Time to relax my gaze and practice improving my “free-viewing“.
“…periodically show up as Ta* — the asterisk always pointing beyond what can be questioned or known or understood. Every definition of Tao or God misses more than it describes. This humility of form is a critical practice.” (Wesley White, above)
emptiness and form are tao, which “points to” and “not-points not-to” as well as “all of the above” and “none of the above” and “every definition of tao or god misses more than it describes” and “every definition of tao or god describes more than it misses” and tao cannot “periodically show up” because “what shows up” is nothing/no-thing other than tao manifest as tao-what-is-missed and these two are the same.
“Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same…” (D.C. Lau translation, Wang Pi manuscript)
Periodicity (catch me if you can) is quite a game. It allows a perennial excuse for acts or omissions. I appreciate the notice that some consistency of orthography (Tao or Ta*) is likely a good and helpful practice. At this point I will admit I am quite inconsistent with the asterisk in this part of the blog. I suspect I have not been as sensitized to this use of the * in this context. I’ll be interested to see if this changes over these 81 days.
just observing that perhaps through tao-1 (as received/translated/exegeted which are all impossible tasks) it works as well and as badly to use (erase the quote marks):
“tao”
or just leave it at:
“*”
or perhaps even better:
” ”
but then we’ll be back to needing manifestations!
If “ “ [needs] a manifestation is it “ “?