From Soil Thou Art (Tao Te Ching 16)

16

Empty yourself. 

Embrace peace upon peace.

The galaxies blast out

from the center of the cosmos.

Await their fall back to the center.

Living things sprout forth

and then return to the soil.

Returning to the soil brings rest in peace.

Peace is returning to our true self.

Returning to our true self is to be steadfast.

Being steadfast brings utter clarity.

Wavering brings delusion and catastrophe.

Being steadfast involves facing reality.

Facing reality is being unbiased.

Being unbiased grants power over oneself.

Having power over oneself is heavenly.

To be heavenly

is to surf the Tao.

The Tao is everlasting.

This is dying to your false ego

and letting your true self emerge unscathed.

Reflection

Galaxies blast out and fall back…

There was a time when smart folk thought the Jewish and Christian idea of creation ex nihilo (creation of the material world out of nothingness or the void) and the idea that the universe had a beginning was intellectually silly. The reigning theory drew from the “steady-state model.” Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, it turned out that the silly old Aristotelian idea that there was a mass of matter, without beginning or end was silly. Then, theoretical physicist Laurence Krauss came up with a way to show that the universe can pop in and out of existence. 

As interesting as all this cosmological stuff is, from the perspective of intellectual history, ideas seem to come and go just like Krauss’ view of the physical universe. Lao Tzu, for instance, might have agreed with Stephen Hawking’s concept that the universe blasted out of a hyper-dense marble and then eventually will fall back in on itself by the force of gravity, only to blast back out once again. And the ancient Indian philosophers also thought of this, as if the universal consciousness were falling asleep and waking back up every yuga or so. And so theoretical physics, religion, and philosophy converge. What’s going on with all this? We don’t know, but we’ve started to observe some patterns over the last few millennia.

As Jesus states in John 12:24, life involves seeds falling into the ground, “dying” and then sprouting back with new life. Disney’s Lion King observed this circle of biological existence as well. And so did Lao Tzu. In all this, for the Tao Te Ching, we don’t just take note of natural phenomena, we let those natural phenomena help guide us to peace and understanding of existence. 

We are dust, and to dust we shall return. For this reason, especially given Stacie’s interest and training in end of life guidance (as a “death doula”), we rendered the line about returning to the soil to rest in peace. The language of “soil” rather than “dirt” or “dust” is sublime and makes all the difference. Dust is just stuff. “Dirt” is a derisive term. Soil is life. From soil we come, and to soil we shall return. We might come back to that concept next Ash Wednesday and do a family service where we rub earth on our foreheads as we plant seeds!

Whether you like the organic image of the rising and falling of the earth’s flora or the fireworks of the galaxy with its nebulae, the metaphor is about breathing in and out and living. And being at peace with dying. And being at peace because for some strange reason we get the nagging sense that life is stronger than death. Love is the last word for those in despair. All manner of thing shall be well. And if we just behold the breathing in and out of this existence, even with all the discomfort and tears along the way, there may just be more heaven than hell. The whole experience might just be worth the price of admission.

To use a phrase from Hunter S. Thompson, we’ve bought the ticket. We’re taking the ride. But we don’t think that it’s been used up yet. Rather, there’s enough joy to behold in a hazelnut to keep us in the game for ages to come, so long as we have eyes to see the beauty in the seemingly empty spaces of this world.

Wavering brings catastrophe.  What does this mean. It’s a similar sentiment to Jesus’ statement that we should count the cost before we embark on his Tao. Or, to put it in Yoda’s terms, Do or do not. There is no try.  Or to put it in the words of the more obscure Star Wars character, Davish Krail: Stay on target. Stay on target. When we lose our focus on what really matters, when we get sidetracked, or when we despair of the joy of surfing the Tao, we don’t just lose heart. We lose our heads and become spiritually and emotionally crestfallen.

The better way is to remain steadfast.  At first, we resisted using this word which we might have rendered “constancy,” since it might accidentally imply stubborn dogmatism or unyielding authoritarianism, both of which we robustly eschew. But we kept it because we like this metaphor as it might relate sailing, with the navigator focused on a fixed point or star on the horizon, even as he zigs and zags to catch the wind, or to effortlessly roll over ocean ripples taller than we are. To stay steadfast in this way is what it means to be TRUE, not just in the verbal sense of aligning a wheel or instrument, but in the ordinary epistemological sense of aligning our knowledge to the way things really are. 

This chapter teaches us to stay in touch with reality, to keep it in our sights. As much as there may be some similar themes to Zen Buddhism here, it is not about emptying ourselves in the sense of utter annihilation into the void but in terms of letting go of, dying to false ego. As scary as this seems, when we let our ego’s go, we are delighted to discover that our true selves emerge unscathed. As Jesus taught, we find that by losing one sort of life, we find Life Itself. (Matthew 10:39)