Look at it but you cannot see it!
Its name is Formless.
Listen to it but you cannot hear it!
Its name is Soundless.
Grasp it but you cannot get it!
Its name is Incorporeal.
These three attributes are unfathomable;
Therefore they fuse into one.
Its upper side is not bright:
Its under side is not dim.
Continually the Unnameable moves on,
Until it returns beyond the realm of things.
We call it the formless Form, the imageless Image.
We call it the indefinable and unimaginable.
Confront it and you do not see its face!
Follow it and you do not see its back!
Yet, equipped with this timeless Tao,
You can harness present realities.
To know the origins is initiation into the Tao.
Although the verse says we cannot see the Tao, we are
looking at it all the time. This is what
makes it so hard to see! Normally we
want to be told that the Tao is ‘this right here’ or ‘that over there’, but we
can’t do that with the Tao. We must see
it with eyes that do not try to categorise experience into a name or concept.
To see the Tao we must see That which is common to every
single moment that happens. But this is
so hard to do: all we see is difference – in fact each moment seems unique.
The Tao is none of the forms we see in this astonishingly
rich and varied cosmos. And yet at any
given moment it is taking on, if only for a flashing instant, some form or
other. The sage calls the Tao the
‘formless’, but if we imagine this to refer to some ethereal void we will be
quite mistaken. The Tao is the
formlessness of all forms.
Listen to it but you cannot hear it!
Its name is Soundless.
Grasp it but you cannot get it!
Its name is Incorporeal.
The Tao appears in six different modes, which are the five
senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste and the sixth sense of
thought. But the same argument applies
to each of these as to sight. All
sensory percepts are similarly transient.
The Tao is not contained in any of them in particular, but is expressed
by each of them without exception.
These three attributes are unfathomable;
Therefore they fuse into one.
The Tao cannot be contained within any category of thought
or perception. Whatever mental concept
you come up with is, in itself, just another transient manifestation of the
Tao. The Tao itself remains forever
aloof, transcendent. Whether we call it
‘formless’, ‘soundless’ or ‘incorporeal’ the Tao itself shows itself in these
three words. These three words are
therefore of the same nature: they are all Tao stuff. In this sense they are the same, and any apparent
difference in their individual three meanings breaks down.
The lesson here is: do not try and reduce the Tao to
anything that can be perceived or thought.
Its upper side is not bright:
Its under side is not dim.
All adjectives like ‘bright’ or ‘dim’ apply to objects in
the world of form, and are used to distinguish the object in question from
other objects in the world of form. The
Tao however is in every single object without fail. It is the one common denominator between all
things. But clearly, whatever it is, it
is not a similarity that can be described with adjectives.
Trying to explain the Tao in words is an immensely difficult
thing to do. Too often, perhaps, we
resort to metaphors, which are heard as being truthful descriptions. You may well have heard the Tao described as
a divine darkness, or perhaps a dazzling effulgence. This couplet rightly reminds us not to take such
attempts too seriously.
Continually the Unnameable moves on,
Until it returns beyond the realm of things.
All that lives comes from nothing, endures for a period, and
then returns back to nothing. This
applies, of course, to the mortal human in this world. But the life and death of the creature is
reflected in each and every moment.
Birth and death is a process that we can witness, should we choose, in
every single instant that we live.
There is a certain existential instruction to be gained by
reflecting more often on the inevitability of our death. But the deep instruction comes when we learn
to confront death moment by moment. Do
this, and mortal death will hold no further fear for you.
We call it the formless Form, the imageless Image.
We call it the indefinable and unimaginable.
Undoubtedly, the most honest and intellectually consistent
statements that we can make about the Tao will be paradoxical. Our conscience may be clear if we present the
paradox, we have less of that uncomfortable feeling we get when we present
things one-sidedly…but hardly anyone can understand us!
Paradoxes can only appear as straightforward truth
statements when we have opened up a fully comprehensive understanding of the
situation. In the jargon of the Tao Te Ching this means being able to
see things from the vantage of heaven and earth. Then we see how the same thing can appear
differently according to the intellectual perspective we adopt.
Confront it and you do not see its face!
Follow it and you do not see its back!
It is common in the early stages of ‘Tao discovery’ to
associate the coming of Tao with happy, peaceful moods, only to feel bereft at
what feels like the Tao’s departure from your life. Strictly speaking, this is an illusion. The Tao is as much in the high points as the
lows; it does not approach one moment and leave you in its wake the next. As we become more and more convinced of the
Tao’s omnipresence, we suffer less from fluctuation in our moods.
Yet, equipped with this timeless Tao,
You can harness present realities.
By timeless, we should read eternal – that is, the total transcendence
of time altogether. The Tao is that
place in which moments that have the flavour of time make their appearance.
As we’ve already discussed, this place gets called the ‘present
reality’, but this term will confuse us if we imagine the present as a
coordinate in the flow of time.
The true Present is above time; it is a reality that cannot
be described, only seen, felt and experienced absolutelt directly without any
interference from the (time-dependent) intellect whatsoever.
If we can manage this then this ‘reality’ becomes fully, and
I mean fully, available to us. And one fully aware moment transforms into
another fully aware moment until we and everyone around us notices that we are
living extraordinarily skilfully, and the satisfaction and joy that comes from
this life is experienced deeply and fully as their own moments. The spiritual life grows and grows and grows
with ever increasing circles. This is
what the sage calls ‘harnessing present realities.’
To know the origins is initiation into the Tao.
Once we enter the Tao we have entered it completely. The first step and the whole journey are the
same thing. There is no need for a
priest to initiate us; true religious initiation always must be a personal
initiative. Some of us feel liberated by
this truth – we are perfectly equipped to do everything exactly as we are. Others feel despondent at the effort this
implies. In many ways it is easier just
to book an appointment and get the specialists in!
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