THE CYCLE OF LIFE (TAO TE CHING 51)

Photo by Stacie Mallinson near Pismo Beach

51

The Tao births them.

Then Te nurtures them.

Stuff affects them.

Life events complete them.

There’s not a single living thing 

that doesn’t exalt the Tao 

and proclaim Te’s glory.

They exalt the Tao

and proclaim Te’s glory

not through coercion,

but spontaneously,

because of who they are.

So, the Tao gives birth to them.

Then Te nurtures them,

tends and teaches them,

completes and cultivates them,

nurses and buries them.

Births but does not own them.

Gives without imposing obligations.

Leads without coercing.

They call this the Mystical Te.

[Note: in the audio reflection, Stacie mentions the RadioLab podcast episode from June 11, 2021 called “Breath” which you can catch here.]

Written Reflection

The glory of the ultimate, according to Lao Tzu, is proclaimed by every living thing. Jesus said something similar when he said that if his followers were prohibited from proclaiming his Way and were to hold their peace, yet the stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). Similarly, the English mystic Julian of Norwich saw the whole mystery of creation in a single hazelnut. And then there’s the Flower Sermon of Gautama Buddha who “preached” to his students by simply holding up a flower and smiling at it until a single disciple got the point. 

In other words, the Te—the virtue or power of something—is inherent within it. This means it is inherent in us too. This doesn’t mean there isn’t sickness or imbalance in our souls or the natural world. It means that there is something within that echoes the sublime mystery of the universe.

Repeatedly, the Tao Te Ching reminds us to value spontaneity, which is not simply freewheeling independence, but rather the naturalness expressed by fulfilling one’s nature rightly and in harmony with the flow of existence. 

But recognizing this flow, also means recognizing the importance of external things as they affect our lives. Environment (shi) is thus important in this chapter’s conception. We translate this term as “stuff” instead of “environment” because we hoped to leave space for the idea that bumping into stuff can create its own sort of beauty. Think for instance of a naturally polished stone on an Oregon coastal beach. By being tossed about on other rocks, stones can look almost artificially smoothed out. 

Our lives are like this too. If your body has been changed through childbirth, honor those marks of sacred giving to new life. If your body has the marks of sun which you absorbed working out in a field to feed your family, honor those spots (and have a doctor keep an eye on them of course). When we recall even our enemies and folks who have harmed us, we can also realize that our growth past trauma is its own sort of holy adornment, like the hand wounds of Jesus. It’s not that all these scars are from happy moments, but we recognize the beauty as we view everything from an eternal vantage point. 

Part of that vantage point also happens to include a sober view of mortality. Some translations say that the Tao nurses and shields them, but we decided to go with “nurses and buries” to recognize the cradle to deathbed arc of this literary picture. There’s at least some evidence that “to shield” could have been a euphemism for shrouding someone for burial. Especially given Stacie’s work as a death doula, we thought it was worth keeping even dying within the flow of the Tao.

This chapter is especially important to us for our work with Protect Your Noggin, through which we try to provide folks with tools for discerning manipulative religious folks and resources for finding happiness and freedom on the other side. That’s because what we find most problematic about many religious folks is their attempt to take something powerful and meaningful in their lives and remember it through symbol and ritual (a good thing) but then to make it a new burden for others for whom those symbols and rituals might not yet have meaning. Likewise, we find that the coercive bent of so much religion—from East to West and in the southern hemisphere mind you—tries to rigorously structure behavior, too often without cultivating the naturalness in which traditional symbols and rituals might make sense.

Moreover, religious evangelists too often fail to note the importance of a local culture in their attempt to transmit the core of their message, though we know many good missiologists who are rethinking this in even the most conservative of theological schools. Local culture matters because, as we’ve seen, the local stuff or the environment in which we live matters. We don’t exist in vacuums and thus the flow of our lives means slightly different things at different times and in different places. For example, if I wear a Hawaiian shirt to a wedding in New York City I might offend the families of the couple getting married, but such attire might be respectful for a wedding in Oahu. This isn’t about cultural relativism, at least in the facile sense many people use this term in conservative religious circles, it’s simply about contextualization. And contextualization is important as we recognize the interdependence of all things under heaven. 

One last note relevant to this chapter: if you are in a religious community or relationship that seeks to dominate you and take away your agency, you’re likely not where you want to be. Seek a space and (boundaries for that space) in which you can cultivate rather than control yourself and those you love. What we think of as cults are generally those that are extremely controlling, spiritual traditions worth investigating should offer genuine liberation, not a new yolk of bondage neither we nor our ancestors could ever bear (Acts 15:10).

—JCM