{"id":125281,"date":"2019-01-07T12:02:40","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T12:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=125281"},"modified":"2019-01-05T11:37:53","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T11:37:53","slug":"six-sided-tao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/01\/six-sided-tao\/","title":{"rendered":"Six-Sided Tao"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout the world, Japan is famous for unique cultural traditions, which, strangely, all end in the suffix \u201cdo\u201d <\/em>[pronounced like \u201cdough\u201d!]<\/p>\n

Do<\/em>, or Tao, or Taoism, is the root of Zen\u2014that philosophy or discipline that characterizes so much of the culture of Japan.\u00a0 We all know about Judo<\/em>, for example, which means \u201cthe way of self-defense.\u201d\u00a0 There is also Aikido<\/em>, \u201cthe way of the meeting of force and spirit.\u201d\u00a0 And Kendo<\/em>, \u201cthe way of the sword.\u201d\u00a0 There is Sado<\/em>, \u201cthe way of poetry\u201d; and several others.\u00a0 Obviously, do <\/em>means \u201cthe way of.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, what exactly do we mean by \u201cthe way of\u201d?<\/p>\n

Westerners are certainly comfortable speaking of the practice or discipline of an art or sport.\u00a0 But this suffix embraces so much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo<\/em>\u201d is derived from \u201cTao,\u201d the \u201cWay,\u201d and it is at least as old as the writings of Lao Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher of the sixth Century B.C..\u00a0 He is a quasi-mythic figure and little is known about his personal life, but he was, we discern, rather anti-rationalist: \u201cHe who knows, does not say; he who says, does not know,\u201d he declares, and he would have been the last to attempt a pin-me-down and pin-it-up definition of so slippery a thing as Tao.\u00a0 In fact, his enduring masterpiece, the Tao Te Ching <\/em>[\u201cThe Book of the Way\u201d] is basically a teasing, poetic intimation of the ways in which Tao eludes exposition!<\/p>\n

In his popular translation of the I-Ching<\/em> [\u201cThe Book of Changes\u201d] \u00a0Sam Reifler writes: \u201cTao\u2026is a gateway.\u00a0 It is the gateway through which we are constantly passing.\u00a0 We are never before the gate, nor beyond it.\u00a0 Nothing exists except there, with us, at the moment, in the gateway.\u00a0 We are always on the path, we are always in the Way, we are always in Tao\u2014even if we don\u2019t feel that we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a pretty elusive definition in itself, but it will serve.\u00a0 The gateway implies discovery, and to be \u201cin Tao\u201d is to be in a state of perpetual discovery; and that would imply a state of openness to the world\u2019s wonders.<\/p>\n

The gateway is both the end of one world and the beginning of another.\u00a0 But when we stand in the gateway, we are in both worlds at once.\u00a0 The gateway is what exists between the future and the past; it is, in other words, this very ungraspable present.<\/p>\n

I say ungraspable because, as soon as we think we have it, it is already a moment in the past.\u00a0 And until we have it, it is merely a dream of the future.\u00a0 The redoubtable poet and questioner, T. S. Eliot, wrestled all his life with the conundrum of time.\u00a0 In Four Quartets <\/em>he had an epiphany:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What might have been and what has been<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Point to one end, which is always present.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is the balm of understanding that eliminates regret.\u00a0 Every moment is ripe for action and discovery\u2014if we are paying attention!\u00a0 \u201cThe readiness is all,\u201d Shakespeare tells us.\u00a0 \u201cRipeness is all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grasping this too-fluid moment is exactly what Do<\/em>, or Tao, or Taoism is all about.\u00a0 It\u2019s about bringing the past and future together\u2014the whole enchilada!\u2014and reconciling opposites; bringing light and dark, good and evil, male and female, Yin and Yang together in balance and in harmony.\u00a0 It is, moreover, about converging the everyday, humdrum world and the miraculous.<\/p>\n

\u201cA special contribution of Zen to Eastern thought,\u201d Kazuko Okakura wrote in her classic, The Book of Tea<\/em>, \u201cwas its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the spiritual.\u00a0 It held that in the great relation of things there was no distinction of small and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

(When I read that I thought of \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d\u2014the idea that, at some moment in eternity, an atom took it into its infinitesimal noggin to explode into a Cosmos!\u00a0 And, it is still expanding!)<\/p>\n

French philosopher Pascal looked up at the night sky and cried out: \u201cOh the terror of those infinite spaces!\u201d–a cry of separation, wounded by vastness and incomprehensibility.\u00a0 (Centuries later, Joseph Conrad cried out similarly, contemplating our human hearts of darkness: \u201cOh the horror!\u201d).\u00a0 Tao recognizes the mundane, fleeting and incomprehensible\u2026and reminds us that all time and all space were contained within the first atom of God (or, we need not masculinize nor feminize–call It \u201cthe Infinite,\u201d \u201cthe Eternal.\u201d).\u00a0 Another epiphany from Four Quartets<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Time present and time past
\nAre both perhaps present in time future,
\nAnd time future contained in time past.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within an infinite, eternal universe, there is either no center, or everywhere is the center.\u00a0 The \u201cBig U\u201d expands and contracts over eons, and the miracle is that we are part of it.\u00a0 Male flows into female and vice versa.\u00a0 We are constantly becoming.<\/p>\n

This truth within thy mind rehearse,
\nThat in a boundless universe
\nIs boundless better, boundless worse.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tennyson wrote in \u201cThe Two Voices,\u201d after the death of his BFF Arthur Hallam\u2014a self-dialoguing poem about suicide.\u00a0 And that, too, is the nature of our lives\u2014ever expanding, ever contracting.\u00a0 And who has not thought about the end of it all?\u00a0 With all the challenges, with all the storms, how to keep a steady keel? \u00a0We are constantly becoming, expanding into greater awareness, knowledge, strength, honing our edges; and we are constantly contracting, wilting, shrinking, aging\u2026compelled to re-write the script.<\/p>\n

It all depends on how one looks at it.\u00a0 Perceived properly, every atom has the same potential as the first atom; every atom\u2014including ourselves\u2014contains a new universe within.\u00a0 Perceived properly, we also have the potential to lose ourselves, in one way or another, in a moment.\u00a0 (The Bard again: \u201cNothing is but good or bad, but thinking makes it so.\u201d)<\/p>\n

I would like to provide a framework for the Spirit of Tao.\u00a0 The task reminds me of a song from the \u201860s.\u00a0 The rock-group, \u201cEarth, Wind & Fire\u201d transformed a simple Zen poem into an incantatory refrain:<\/p>\n

\n

First there is a mountain<\/em>
\nthen there is no mountain<\/em>
\nthen there is.\u00a0 <\/em>(repeat)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When we approach this subject, it is like approaching a great mountain: it seems we could never climb to such a summit, that the goal must ever elude us.\u00a0 (First there is a mountain.)\u00a0 But, gradually, as we study the matter, as we discipline our minds, hearts, and bodies through Judo, Sado, etc., it seems that we just may be able to understand, we just may be able to glimpse the view from the top.\u00a0 (\u201cThen there is no mountain.\u201d)\u00a0 Then, as we climb still further, and go a little deeper into ourselves, the mountain seems to rise up again, challenging us anew.<\/p>\n

We in the Western world like numbers and formulae: 2 + 2 = 4 and E=mc2, for example.\u00a0 In the Eastern world, there\u2019s a preference for hinting and suggesting.\u00a0 This causes all sorts of trouble when negotiating business deals.\u00a0 Westerners like the firmness of handshakes and contracts; Easterners prefer all that a bow, a nod, a tone of voice may imply.\u00a0 Of course, there are implications in facial expressions and vocal tones\u2014and all people would be wise to consider them.\u00a0 (Darwin even wrote a book about the evolution and importance of facial expressions!) \u00a0But, generally, in the East, more attention is paid to such.\u00a0 The English language is the international language\u00a0 of science, technology, hard facts and precision.\u00a0 Yet, one cannot find a word or expression like hira-hira <\/em>in the English language.\u00a0 But there are many such words in Japanese; many such words with meanings like, \u201cthe sound of the beating of butterfly wings.\u201d<\/p>\n

One way is not better than another, only different.\u00a0 Now more than ever, as we swirl around quicksand pools of \u201csocial media,\u201d and the House of Mirrors of \u201cmass media\u201d and the \u201cMSM,\u201d \u00a0while we reap the fruits and countenance the challenges of these eternal and momentary times, it behooves us to understand the differences and sameness of the Tao.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who say, do not know,\u201d Laot Tzu said.\u00a0 And, \u201cThose who know, do not say.\u201d\u00a0 A few centuries later, the Chinese poet and comic wit Po-Chu-I noted that Lao Tzu then continued for some 5000 words saying what he did not know!\u00a0 (But, to be fair to Lao Tzu, he had tried to suggest another way of thinking and feeling, another way to be within the mystery of life.\u00a0 Thinking and feeling and being!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

So, today, in the footsteps of the Chief, I would like to do what most Asians would never presume to do: I would like to attempt a framework for Tao!\u00a0 I do this based on my lifetime of learning and experiences; and based on my inscrutable follies!<\/p>\n

In my framework, there are six sides. \u00a0(One could have more or fewer, but six will do.)\u00a0 I like six because the central image of the Tao is the torii<\/em>, or gateway.\u00a0 Now, when we imagine this gateway, let us not imagine the simple garden gate of the white picket fence that one passes through.\u00a0 Let\u2019s imagine, instead, the grand gateways or toriis<\/em> of Japan: the large, red, wooden or metal structures before temples or shrines that one passes under and through.\u00a0 One could also pass around these toriis; there is no attempt to close off the temple or shrine from the mundane world or the circumambulating tourist!<\/p>\n

These toriis call our attention to the presence of the divine.\u00a0 They \u201cframe\u201d the temple, the ambient world, ourselves, and the moment.\u00a0 They come in various shapes and sizes, but all have the general pattern of two pillars supporting a horizontal bar that overlaps each pillar.\u00a0 Imagine two capital \u201ct\u2019s\u201d put together thus: TT; now imagine another cross-bar a bit under the top one, like this: tt.<\/p>\n

Of all the toriis I\u2019ve seen in my peregrinations during five years of teaching and traveling around Japan, my favorite is the massive one at Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima Island, near Hiroshima.\u00a0 The shrine and temple complex there is set at the water\u2019s edge, and when the tide comes in, the huge torii\u201416 meters high, with cross-beams of 22 meters\u2014appears to float in the sea.\u00a0 Its vermillion reflection floats like a dream upon the azure, dusk-tinged water\u2014a spectral gateway between the worlds.\u00a0 Viewed from the sea-corridor leading to the shrine, with the mountains behind it and the white clouds scudding above, it seems the very embodiment of the symbolic meeting of spirit and matter.)<\/p>\n

And it has six sides.\u00a0 Its horizontal cross-beam is doubled\u2014like the first two lines of a musical score, as though it waits for the grace notes to be written.\u00a0 Its two massive pillars, with the girth of great firs, are buttressed by two orthogonal structures that rise halfway to the top cross-beam and reach backward to the shrine and forward to the mountains, rippling like scarlet silk in the gentle waters.\u00a0 This six-sided torii has stood its watery ground these seven hundred years.\u00a0 It stood its ground when nearby Hiroshima was shaken to death.\u00a0 And it has heard \u201cthe sound of the beating of butterfly wings.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

So let me use this as my symbol; let me use this as the frame for Tao.<\/p>\n

The first side of the frame is humility, the sine qua non.\u00a0 <\/em>When one enters a Japanese teahouse, one bends low and creeps through a three-foot-high door into a small room.\u00a0 The mighty shogun <\/em>warrior-monarchs of Japan entered in this way, and so did the wandering monk.\u00a0 In the eyes of the universe we are all equal and each of us has an equal chance to attain enlightenment.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the Renaissance, when Westerners re-discovered the Greek virtues of individualism, we have tended to glorify the artist above the art.\u00a0 The trend became pronounced during the Romantic Revolution of the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries.\u00a0 In our own times, it appears that celebrity is the main thing, not art and not character\u2026, and the idea is to get famous however one can and as fast as one can.<\/p>\n

(I recently heard modern art defined by a \u201cserious\u201d critic as \u201cwhatever the artist does.\u201d\u00a0 Or was it, \u201cwhatever the artists says it is\u201d\u2014which is even worse\u2026far too \u201ctop-down\u201d!\u00a0 Such circuitous definitions have nothing to do with the spirit of Tao.\u00a0 We need to remember that the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built and ornamented by nameless artisans.\u00a0 Always remembering and reverent, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote at the beginning of each of his compositions the Latin words Soli Deum Gloria <\/em>(\u201cOnly to God is the glory.\u201d)\u00a0 That is the spirit of Tao.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second side of our frame is related to the first.\u00a0 It is the idea of refined poverty.\u00a0 That is a hard nut for Westerners to crack: How can poverty be refined?\u00a0 A society based on material well-being castigates poverty and those who are poor.\u00a0 But one remembers Henry David Thoreau living in a cabin\u2014about the size of a teahouse\u2014on the edge of Walden pond.\u00a0 Thoreau said that the secret of life could be expressed in three words: \u201cSimplify, simplify, simplify.\u201d\u00a0 He said he had three chairs in his cabin: one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.<\/p>\n

Taoism, and its related branch of Zen in Japan, can deeply understand the vows of poverty taken by Saint Francis of Assisi.\u00a0 Burning with an inner fire, Francis made his life his art.<\/p>\n

But only a handful of mortals can ever achieve such grandeur.\u00a0 In Taoism, the refinement of poverty means making the most of what one has available, using simple, clean lines, being unafraid of silence and emptiness; not wasting\u2014money, food, others\u2019 patience, one\u2019s own and others\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

Out of silence and emptiness, new life sprouts.\u00a0 The refinement of poverty is the spirit of acceptance with which the haiku poet wrote:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The barn has burned down!<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now at last I can enjoy<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the sight of the moon.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The third side of our frame I\u2019ll call process.\u00a0 Since we are always standing in the gateway, the actual arrival is less important than how one gets there.\u00a0 Robert Louis Stevenson said, \u201cTraveling hopefully is better than arriving.\u201d\u00a0 The greatness of life lies in its potential.\u00a0 In America, we rarely consider how a work of art is made; we concentrate on the finished product.\u00a0 In the East, the process is at least as important.\u00a0 Those who practice Tao believe that we train the spirit to be receptive.\u00a0 True beauty comes from mentally completing the incomplete.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite stories is about a painting contest in which the Emperor urges the greatest painters of the day to paint a flock of geese just taking flight.\u00a0 Many masters presented delicate and beautiful works, but first prize was awarded to a painting that was mostly blank space.\u00a0 But\u2026in the upper right corner of that nearly blank canvas was the webbed foot of the last goose taking flight.\u00a0 The master Taoist painter allowed the viewer to fill in the details.\u00a0 He knew exactly which strokes to make to suggest flight.\u00a0 Just as the Swiss sculptor Giacometti suggested the range of human suffering, alienation, and triumph in the thinnest of human figures, so the Taoist speaks volumes with silence.\u00a0 The Taoist believes that the finished product, \u201cthe art,\u201d is the expression of the sublimity of the process.\u00a0 Getting the process right means properly aligning the spirit and the work.<\/p>\n

In New York City, I had the good fortune to have a wise high-school principal named Louis Schucher (I\u2019m not sure of the spelling).\u00a0 Addressing our junior class assembly one day, he taught with metaphors and similes like so: A father sees a map of the world in a magazine, cuts it out and cuts it into pieces, then gives it to his son to Scotch-tape \u00a0it together.<\/p>\n

The father thinks he will keep his studious son busy for a while and he will test his geography at the same time!\u00a0 Dad settles into his favorite reclining chair to read his evening paper.\u00a0 (Yes, people still read newspapers in reclining chairs back then!)\u00a0 Dad is astonished when the clever young boy completes the test in ten minutes!<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the back of the picture of the map of the world,\u201d the boy explains, \u201cwas a picture of a man\u2026.\u00a0 I put the man together, and the world came together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though my principal did not call it such, that is the process of Tao\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fourth side of our frame is age and tradition.\u00a0 The Taoist reveres these.\u00a0 It has been said that the Japanese merely copy other cultures\u2014Korea first, then China, now the United States\u2014and that they cannot invent anything.\u00a0 This, of course, is nonsense.\u00a0 I would say instead that the Japanese artist is constantly inventing\u2014if we think of \u201cinvention\u201d as \u201crefinement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japanese culture stretches back some 1500 years, and the Japanese see no reason to constantly reinvent the wheel.\u00a0 In Japan, temples and shrines are re-built; there are none of the ancient ruins one finds in Greece or Italy.\u00a0 By re-working the traditional forms, Japanese artists pays homage to those who preceded them.\u00a0 The wild originality that may provide each of us in the West with fifteen minutes of fame is incomprehensible and would be undesirable to the Taoist artist.<\/p>\n

The fifth side of our frame is focus.\u00a0 Describing the art of calligraphy, Tessen Horino wrote: \u201cDo<\/em>\u2026means to pursue a certain purpose at the risk of forfeiting one\u2019s life.\u201d\u00a0 Genuine artists know that when they are truly within their art, they enter a new dimension of time.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had this experience myself.\u00a0 I know I\u2019m writing my best when I can look up from the page or computer screen and two hours have passed, but I have a sensation of a few minutes having passed.\u00a0 (Sometimes it feels like I am merely taking dictation!)\u00a0 When one is totally immersed in the work, absorbed by the work, one is practicing Do.\u00a0 <\/em>Lovers gaze and gaze into each other\u2019s eyes; a mother and her baby bond with tickling, giggling, and the fragrance of skin; children pass their days playing hide-and-seek, finding each other and finding themselves.\u00a0 This, too, is focus.\u00a0 This, too, is Do.<\/em><\/p>\n

The sixth and last side of our frame hinges upon the fifth: I\u2019ll call it the commingling or union of artist and art.\u00a0 \u201cHow can we know the dancer from the dance?\u201d William Butler Yeats wondered.\u00a0 In the spirit of Do <\/em>there is no separation.\u00a0 The artist achieves spiritual revelations through the everyday practice and discipline of her work.<\/p>\n

But, this state of oneness is more than discipline or practice.\u00a0 It involves the body, spirit and intuition as much as the analytical mind.<\/p>\n

This is how do <\/em>transcends the idea of mere practice or discipline.\u00a0 When embroiderers speak of Nuido<\/em>, they imply a state of oneness with the art, a state of grace achieved through practice or discipline.\u00a0 This state of oneness connotes much more than the analytical words \u201cdiscipline\u201d or \u201cpractice.\u201d\u00a0 In this state, art seems to call forth itself: the target calls the arrow to its center; the implicit design calls forth the Master\u2019s hand for actualization.\u00a0 It is the same state of grace and oneness which Michelangelo achieved when he remarked that he had merely \u201creleased\u201d David from his prison of marble.<\/p>\n

These, then, are the six themes that unite the culture of Do<\/em>, the culture of Japan: humility; refined poverty; process; age and tradition; focus; and spiritual union.\u00a0 As we bring these themes and this practice into our everyday lives, into our business and personal relationships, we spiritualize the everyday, realize and manifest our connections to the infinite and eternal, to ourselves and each other.<\/p>\n

Only a handful is as gifted as a Michelangelo, a Saint Francis, a Lady Murasaki.\u00a0 Yet, each of us is born with the capacity to consecrate our daily lives, to simplify and focus, to be the artists of our own creations.\u00a0 It requires attention to detail, and a surpassing knowledge that we are standing in the gateway now and forever.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

An earlier version of this article appeared in <\/em>The Quest magazine in 1997.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dr. Gary Steven Corseri is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/a> He <\/em>has published\/posted poems, articles, fiction and dramas at Transcend Media Service<\/a> and hundreds of publications and websites worldwide.\u00a0 He has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta.\u00a0 He edited the \u201cManifestations\u201d literary anthology.\u00a0 He has published 2 novels and 2 poetry collections, has taught in US public schools and prisons and in US and Japanese universities. <\/em>Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do, or Tao, or Taoism, is the root of Zen\u2014that philosophy or discipline that characterizes so much of the culture of Japan. We all know about Judo, for example, which means \u201cthe way of self-defense.\u201d There is also Aikido, \u201cthe way of the meeting of force and spirit.\u201d And Kendo, \u201cthe way of the sword.\u201d There is Sado, \u201cthe way of poetry\u201d; and several others. Obviously, do means \u201cthe way of.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}