Saturday’s meditation
I’m on page 4 of the Tao te Ching and was thinking of how the translator Stephen Mitchell alternates between he and she throughout the text, which helps make it more meaningful. But I myself like to substitute master for guru as well. I like the fact that the guru is inside you and everyone else, so I can be the teacher or the student and I can be he or she.
One of the interesting things about this book is that it is ancient and if age teaches you anything it is that life is a series of cycles, and when things lean too far in the negative, a correction happens and moves things to the positive, and if things get too warm and fuzzy and teddy bears fall out of the sky, sure enough Darth Vader will appear and be your father, Luke Skywalker, because, after all, balance is true nirvana.
#4
The Tao is like a well;
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
So perhaps the Tao is like the Force, and I am your teacher and you are mine, and anyone who embodies only the characters of he would be called macho and of she would be called wimp, but enlightenment is like Tai Chi and the lesson is about welcoming the force inside you and then letting it flow through you and back out again, and our challenge is balance between she and he so that you could both take care of and nurture yourself at the same time as well as care and nurture others. Hold onto the center.
Wait that is page 5.