The Tao Never Does Anything

Dear Friends,

The 37th Chapter of the Tao Te Ching, in Ursula Le Guin's version, speaks to the possibility that we could derive individual, effective capacities by opening to the totality.  As Emerson said, "Hitch your wagon to a star." 

Over all

The Way never does anything,
and everything gets done.
If those in power could hold to the Way,
the ten thousand things
would look after themselves.
If even so they tried to act,
I'd quiet them with the nameless,
the natural.

In the unnamed, in the unshapen,
is not wanting.
In not wanting is stillness.
In stillness all under heaven rests.

For me, these lines inevitably recall that mysterious passage from a Kafka notebook:

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Of the many things that block us from such listening, our knee-jerk emotional responses play a central role.  Today, we will inwardly evoke, then release, some of our habitual inner turmoil to see what the world has to say in the following stillness.

with love,

Michael