You May Be Closer Than You Think (Tao Te Ching 47)
47
You can know the world
without walking out your door.
You can glimpse the celestial Tao
without looking out your window.
The further you run from yourself
the less you will know.
So the Sage gains insight
without needing to travel abroad,
knows what’s up
before the official story gets published,
and wins without playing games.
If you don’t figure out what’s inside you, you’ll never really “know,” “see” or “win.” This is a spiritual principle, but it also resonates with the questions of epistemology, or the theory of how we know what we know. Whether we come at this epistemological question from psychology, or logic, or postmodern cultural critique, or sociology, we find that we are often the biggest hinderance standing in our way of perceiving truth.
In psychology, we learn about cognitive biases. Here are some interesting examples:
The Curse of Knowledge: When folks who are deeply knowledgeable about something find it almost impossible to view problems from the perspective of folks who are not fully informed about the subject.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: This is where folks who are under-informed about something tend to overestimate their own abilities and knowledge.
Normalcy Bias: When we refuse to take seriously and plan for a disaster that has not happened before or at least isn’t in recent memory.
Well Traveled Road Effect: When we downplay how long it will take to go down a frequently-used route and to exaggerate the length of a less familiar route.
Granted, we often do well to work with a therapist or some sort of teacher to help us counteract the effects of such biases. Nonetheless, the work in this case remains inward. It is not navel-gazing but calibration. It is not narcissism but self-inventory for the sake of others. After all, when we misunderstand the world we are ignorant, but when we misunderstand other sentient beings we fail to treat them well. In all of this, our cognitive biases show us that we are often in our own way as we seek the Way.
The point in this chapter is not that travel is bad in itself, though whenever the Tao Te Ching criticizes travel, it does hit close to home, especially for me (Jeff), since my personality tends to involve an almost insatiable desire for new experiences, encounters, and landscapes. The point is that if we are not healthy inside, there is probably not a guru in a foreign land, or sacred mountain, or special conference that will magically take away what ails our spirits. Those things may be just the catalyst we need, and many of our friends have been transformed by travel experiences.
What this chapter cautions against, however, is the naive assumption noted by Martin Luther, when he joined a monastery. He thought that by going into that hard-core spiritual community, he could leave the world of sin and vain pursuits behind. But he soon learned that the monks had brought their psychological, spiritual and libidinous illnesses with them. Distraught, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, hoping to bring joy to his heart which had been afflicted with inner turmoil or Anfechtung. There, things were even worse, as far as he could tell. Church leaders were frequenting brothels, saying the mass in a hurried, rote manner because they were bored of the whole thing, and of course the cynical selling of indulgences to distressed people wanting to avoid the horrors of the afterlife. True, this helped propel him along his way (after all, as the Taosurfers of old always said, we can learn from both success and failure, fortune and misfortune.
Luther didn’t have his famous epiphany until he was back home, sitting on the toilet (in cloaca).
The point is, we can’t rely on religious authorities or epic journeys to make up for our own failure to do the internal work needed to heal, grow, and work for the healing of those around us. Luther, of course, would also (rightly) caution that too much inwardness is itself part of our spiritual sickness in that people are curved in on themselves (homo incurvatus in se) and fail to turn to the outer love of Jesus who is outside our selves (extra nos). Indeed, in the Lutheran tradition, there have been many individuals and movements that positively detested mysticism, inner reflection and silent contemplation. But that isn’t faithful to the original core theme: that inward reflection that involves fear of punishment, negative self-talk, or uncertainty about the unconditional love of God is unhelpful.
Back to our ancient Chinese context, the Tao Te Ching insists that we are naturally equipped with inner resources to confront the world in which we find ourselves. The reason few tell us this is because it is in others’ apparent interest to be our masters and to deny our agency. We don’t tell ourselves this often enough because we are uncomfortable with the burden of our own personal responsibility. So we defer to priests, gurus, experts, authorities, bosses, state dictators and the like all so we can alleviate our fear of having to steer the ship of our own lives.
Of course, with that metaphor, we must note that the Tao Te Ching would say our lives are more like steering our course in relation to the swells of the sea, its currents, and the like. The point is that we need not give up on the work of getting our inner lives in order in order to navigate the outer world. Moreover, even though inner work can remain difficult and requires patience, what you need might not be off in the Himalayas, at the Vatican, or at a retreat center in Bali. What you need might be much closer than you think.
Why not at least take a look and see yourself for yourself.
An now, for a reflection on some of this journey from Jewish reggae artist Matisyahu: