The Magic Hand of Chance (Revisited)

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year, to everyone!  And many many thanks to those who have left reviews on Amazon for my new book, Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment.  That means so much to me, that you take the time and care to write something there, which will help others find the book.

Today, another wonderful cloudscape from the Cloud Appreciation Society, and another crack at Keats's famous lines:

When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge, cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance....

Taoism has long been the Way of balancing titanic opposites, like being and non-being, or light and darkness.  For us, this kind of unity-in-polarity is most accessible in terms of creating something or thinking something, on the one hand, and finding that creativity is just happening, or understanding just arises, on the other hand. These two hands together are Keats's "magic hand of chance," that on the one hand creates on its own, and on the other hand is guided by vast supra-human models.  In other words, is it I who think and feel and create, or does the world think, feel, create through me?

Today's meditation will not attempt to answer this question, but rather to make it experiential in its living and suggestive power.  For a meditation text, we'll supplement Keats with a part of David Hinton's translation of the seventh verse of the Tao Te Ching:
 

[I]n putting himself last
the sage puts himself first,
and in giving himself up,
he preserves himself.

If you aren't free of yourself
how will you ever become yourself?

It is interesting that the self is preserved here,  and one does become oneself, but at tremendous cost ( c.f. Eliot: "costing not less than everything.")

with love,
Michael