Finding your muse
I have a painting that hangs above my desk of a woman – no one I know – but a woman who posed for a friend and artist (Randall Sexton) – and for some reason the first time I saw this painting, I knew I had found my muse. She’s a robust woman, with a nondescript island foreignness about her looks and the colors – turquoise, navy, green and plum – are colors that put me in mind of my tropical past.
A neighbor and fellow writer just started a blog using the poems of Emily Dickinson as her muse for contemplating and writing. I thought good idea to stand on the shoulders of a genius in order to see farther.
In a lot of instances, I feel inspired to write and in a lot of other instances, I feel like I have absolutely nothing to say. Or at least, nothing new.
So today, I’d like to borrow from my friend’s daily habit and begin a meditation on the Tao te Ching. Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching (pronounced Dow Deh Jing) was written over 2,500 years ago but seems as current as if it were coming across Twitter. What is the Tao? Well it’s a book of poetry, maybe, or a philosophy, sometimes, or perhaps it is a meditation, on life.
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The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Caught in desire you see only the manifestations – when you fill in the blank of I want ____ – you no longer really know what it is you want. This is a trick bag I have often avoided like the plague. I was never one to wish for ____ for fear _____ would be my undoing. I don’t cast a penny into a fountain and say, “I want a baby.” I throw it to another place – happiness, health, love – which come in many manifestations.