Never do anything ? Tao --- Tuesday, 15th Sept.2015

We discussed the 37th passage of the Tao Te CHing

The Tao never does anything, yet still everything is done by her/him.

Could mighty men and women nestle in its heart the whole world would change through herself, in her natural rhythm. Humans were joyful with their simple, everyday lives, harmonious and without needs.

If there is no need,

everything is in peace.

Long time we circled the term desire. What was desire and how could we really live without it ? In Buddhism desire is the cause of all suffering said Greg. One of the guests could define the state when desire was no more and just being or floating was achieved. Then, he said, many things go by itself,…it’s as if without desire

everything stands still…no more duality. The problem starts, another guest said, when our desire goes out to something we can impossibly reach. Then we feel unsatisfied because the energy is targeted at something beyond our concrete influence. Ad says: Silence has always been there. It is the end of the trip inscribed in some gravestones. So living a non-desire life means that there is no movement to keep us going. It is an energy-less state of existence. But what about nature ?, asks Greg. A plant has a desire to come out…This thought might as well be reconsidered,…comments Arjan. A plant has no desire. Desire is a human condition, it is an expression of an emotional state…a human being that has desire has a strongly directed will to want something particular. A river for example has no will….The river may have a soul but not a will telling him or her where and how to go. What we human beings have is this enormous sense of purpose,…we want to go with the flow but our will gets distorted and our vision blocked. So what happens when not following this natural tide is that we ask for problems. There should always be a middle way, says Ad. Maybe we can also get to TAO by half rational and half emotional statements and interpretations of ourselves.

Then Arjan starts describing the character of the Sufi poems of master Rumi. He says that the interrelation of TAO and Sufism is LOVE. Everything that is described in the Chinese Wisdom about TAO and is manifested as TAO is the same as LOVE in Rumi’s poetry and she is delighted by the comparison. That TAO and LOVE are the same identical energies and forces,…means that actually everything that is in TAO is movement and comes from LOVE…on this interpretation she realises that knowing TAO can strongly influence the way we practise of love. Ad was not happy with the comparison…for him TAO had nothing to do with love nor desire. Love was surely the power for everything but was not the same as TAO.

Arjan added that if everything is seen as a dance, even when we just sit and breath, there is never any stagnation,…there are always some molecules moving around and creating images and other impressions. The way to detect whether we desire something or we love 

something is to find out if we have a goal with our feeling. If the answer is yes,…we might have a plan consciously or unconsciously and that will determine our actions. So then Greg contributes to this thought that when there is a direction in our thought or feeling we can recognize the difference of desire and love again. And yet there is a positive side of desire,…the question is, if it’s possible to have no will with it. And then we come back to desire and EGO. Greg says that if one can let go of the ego and thus of desire then we become one with love.

How can we then present these thoughts into a practical form for everyday actions ? We can train doing nothing with mindfulness and meditation and by always confiding in trust and faith as guiding forces.

The Natural Law of the Universe makes all men and women equal, if we learn to live in the Tao, if we learn to choose according to that path, we will all become mighty human beings not wanting or desiring anything.