The Finite Contains the Infinite (Tao Te Ching 21)
21.
Resplendent Te
flows forth from the Tao.
Yet, the Tao in itself
is elusive and enigmatic.
How enigmatic! How elusive!
Now, if you treat the Tao like an object,
you’ll never understand it.
How elusive! How enigmatic!
That’s because you can’t see it directly,
but only through its existence
in, with, and under all things.
How deep! How unfathomable!
Though it has no form,
it is the source of all life.
Existing before all things,
its pattern is within all things.
This is the perennial wisdom.
And how do I know
all this to be true?
Like this…
Written Reflection
We open with the phrase “Resplendent Te.” (Don’t forget that we only decided to leave a few words untranslated. “Te” is one of them, meaning virtue or the manifesting power of the Tao. See this article for our glossary, which has an extended discussion of this term. ) The original opening words could have been rendered through adjectives like “great” or “magnificent.” But “greatness” is too generic and lackluster a term to convey what’s going on here and magnificent—at least to our minds—is too connected to a hierarchical view of the world in which the Te becomes something like a king before which the lowly people must bow. By using “resplendent” we don’t deny that its power is awesome and causes people to respond with reverence before it’s majesty. But we like the idea of splendor because the awe-inspiring nature of Te resembles the ways in which light passes from dark space through a prism and bears various colors. That gets to the way in which the world flows out of the source and takes form through the dance of existence.
The Tao is real but hard to grasp and hard to clearly see in itself. This has implications for dogmatism of all sorts. It isn’t that there isn’t truth out there. Quite the contrary. It’s rather that the truth is too profound to completely contain in words. As the Wailers once sang: who feels it knows it. That is, even though we are incapable of delineating the Tao’s boundless reality, we can encounter it in rather direct ways, it just can’t contain and possess it all.
It’s sort of like dipping a cup into a cool mountain stream and drinking, something we tried in Montana. We’ve lived for so long in places where water needs serious treatment that it was hard to take the first gulp, but we were glad we did. And when we did, we legitimately drank the river. We didn’t drink the whole river. We didn’t know all the fish and nymphs and snails that lived in the river. We didn’t even know the shape the river took a few miles down the road. Nevertheless, we encountered it. Similarly, if we taste the Tao, we are encountering it directly and simply, just not exhaustively.
That said, there’s much more to the Tao’s presence in our lives than just a cup full of refreshment. Tao itself is infinitely within even the smallest thing. This is represented beautifully by the word for “in” (中) is formed after a flag pole and visually depicts how the Tao flows through things. For this reason, we took the liberty of drawing from language from our own religious background in Lutheranism: in, with, and under. That phrase was used by Lutherans to describe the real presence of Christ in the context of what Christians call Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass, or the Lord’s Supper. Whereas Roman Catholics tried to make sense of this presence using Aristotelian philosophical categories, and other Protestants wanted to say that Communion was merely a memorial ceremony without any mystical reality, Luther was drawing from a mystical tradition that appreciated the ways in which the transcendent and the natural were interconnected.
Thus, for Lutherans, the Incarnation of God is everywhere in the world, but especially and personally in the bread and wine shared with the community of the faithful, and especially in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Again, we aren’t trying to be syncretistic here and meld two religious traditions together. Rather, we’re noting the resonance between these two rather similar and in fact compatible ways of thinking about the relationship between transcendence (the vast, vast beyond) and imminence (the very, very intimate).
Similarly, there’s an interesting connection between this chapter and the way in which early Christians drew from Stoic teaching about the logos spermatikos or divine creative wisdom of the universe to describe Jesus, the Logos made flesh (John 1). Existing before all things, likewise, the Tao’s pattern is within all things.
If all this sounds too theoretical, consider the wonderful way that the English mystic Julian of Norwich (1343 – after 1416) described her experience of divine reality while holding a simple hazel nut.
And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.
Julian’s mysticism recognizes the infinite deep within the finite, and helps make sense of a curious way of ending some of these chapters:
How do I know…?
Like this…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This isn’t about a rejection of religious thought; it’s an invitation to a more authentic contemplation of sublime truth. This isn’t fideism (irrational belief). It is a sort of immediate recognition of reality. And if you look closely enough, or step back and behold it’s enormity, this reality is indeed resplendent.
[Note: the stream and bird sounds that we leave you with at the end of the audio reflection were recorded at the Taosurfer Ranch in San Diego County.]