Ono
Quote:
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Tzu-chi said, "Their playing has myriad differences, and causes them to come from themselves. All partake on their own, but who is the motive force.
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This time you've got me. Who was Tzu-chi? I hear an echo of the tao in his words.
Of all the poems in the Tao Te Ching, the first is thought to be the oldest, and to me, the most profound. In meditation, it has given me the most profound of insights.
Poem 1
Quote:
There are ways but the Way is uncharted;
There are names but not nature in words:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation
But things have a mother and she has a name.
The secret waits for the insight
Of eyes unclouded by longing;
Those who are bound by desire
See only the outward container.
These two come paired but distinct
By their names.
Of all things profound,
Say that their pairing is deepest,
The gate to the root of the world.
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Each time I pronounce these words, I find new meaning, no matter how many times I have said them before.
As my faith is centered in the tao, the middle stanza centers this meditation. Reaching for meaning, striving for it, puts it out of reach.
I see in this the essential pairing between ultimate cause and proximate being. The one unreachable, the other unavoidable. In the unspannable void between them is "the gate to the root of the world."