No way really leads anywhere. The way itself is what is important.
Laozi:
Way is like a stream
that takes the river to the sea.
How do you find the right and good way? How are you going to have the most pleasing life?
Laozi:
Way won’t do anything.
And nothing remains undone.
The right ways have a light, very fragile, very simple and very natural draw for us.
Laozi:
Way holds the wayfarer.
It’s so delicate that it hardly seems right.
Laozi:
In the right way there is no call.
Yet they are coming.
You can’t hear it when you go beserk, rant and rage, and want to get out at any price.
Laozi:
Way has no fight.
Way has no taste.
It may be a secret, but that’s how it is: no need to see the way, it can be trusted, you can be released from the wheel.
Laozi:
Calming down is easy to hold.
The unpredictable is easy to do.
Clarity and peace will set up all.
Take the pressure off. The right way may be very close; the right way is easy.
Laozi:
Right way has benefits, no harm.
The missing is useful
There are things that never seem to be enough, that we would still like to have more and more of: sex and money, sweets, chocolate or ice cream, bubble bath and champagne, sea views and luxury yachts, parties with alcohol and drugs, attention and compassion, care and acknowledgement, honour and praise, compliments, forever.
These seem to be the most important things, the highest targets and goals, the ultimate and final happiness to aim for, whether it’s money, power, sex or whatever. That all women should want me, all men should adore me.
It’s a continuous longing, hunger and thirst, a feeling of everlasting shortage. There’s never enough, I will never be satisfied, I still need more and more.
But look at the cactus, for example. It grows between stones and sand, in a hot dry climate with constant water shortage, but it lives and has lived like this for hundreds of millions of years.
Its construction, its tissues and cells, have been shaped just to stay alive despite the dryness. Evaporation is minimal. It can also live for a very long time without any water at all. But if gets some water, it’s going to collect it and keep it because it doesn’t know when this will happen again.
What kind of life is this, you could ask, with such eternal water scarcity? But just try to ‘do good’ for the cactus, flood its surroundings with water, and it’s going to die. Although water is vital to all living organisms, the cactus cannot survive in that abundance. Its life is constant thirst, constant water shortage, because only in that way can it live.
Some would say it lives in constant suffering. This would sound rather banal to the cactus, but in the human world it has a religious meaning. It’s said that life must be suffering. You could think about that.
Why is it that the availability of alcohol and other drugs is limited? Why are there so many restrictions and taboos around sex? Why do the legislative, judicial and executive powers have to be separate and limited? Why can’t an official offer any benefits to their relatives and friends? Why is there a lack of money all the time?
The answer, of course, is so we don’t die like that cactus in the water. There must be a lack of something for us to be alive; life must be suffering in that sense, and perhaps it would be better if we don’t talk about some things, if we forget, or if we don’t know something in the first place.
Why do we eat? Because our organism needs nutrients, proteins, carbohydrates or fat? Because we can’t live without vitamins, micro-elements or calories? Of course not. We don’t really need to eat, at least not as much as we tend to eat, nor do we need to use alcohol or other good stuff.
Eating is not a life-and-death issue, at least not for us, at least not in the world we live in right now. We don’t die if we don’t eat anything all day, and even a week of starvation won’t kill.
And the same goes for all kinds of ‘wanting’. We don’t have to want everything possible and don’t have to worry about anything we don’t get. The less we want, the better.
We eat, in particular, to feed our soul. Our soul is hungry, our soul is in trouble, and eating helps, improves our mood, is calming and relieving. In fact, very little food is needed.
The soul needs to feel some taste – salty, bitter, sour, sweet, whatever. He needs to feel something raging under his teeth, he wants something crunchy.
Diet has nothing to do with it. If his chips have become moist and soft, they will no longer be good, although they are still composed of the same nutrients.
Or he wants something relentless or something cold or something bubbling in his mouth. But he only needs it for a moment, and once that moment’s gone he doesn’t really need it any more.
However, meeting our spiritual needs will trigger metabolic events in our body. Our organism feels like it’s starting to be nurtured, and then we’re going to keep eating, even though we don’t really need it any more. The spiritual necessity, which forced us to crunch the miserable crunchies, was already satisfied, but we munch on and that’s how we get fat.
So much eating is not necessary to survive, but we want, we insist, we need to eat all the time because we are sick – our souls are sick, our spirits are sick, we are mentally sick in a serious sense.
If we can’t deal with our lives, if we don’t know how to live, if we don’t get what will help us, if we’re sad, afraid, if we hate, if we’re jealous, intolerant, offended, then we need a consolation, then we need recognition, justification, support. And that’s why we eat – eating helps.
Of course it’s a scam, of course it’s not a necessity. You won’t die if you don’t get those chips right now, that ice cream, that chocolate. You’re like a little kid. You want it, right now and right here, because it’s so important to you, so important that it’s all-consuming.
But who makes you consume these things? You’re still there with your own soul and your desperation; you’re the one who is missing something, and knowing what is missing could be useful.
Laozi:
Wishes bring evil.
Unrest brings trouble.
Wanting brings misery.
Knowing what’s enough,
Then that’s enough.
Mind the gap
Anyone who has travelled on the London Underground will remember the message repeated from all the loudspeakers on the arrival of a train: ‘Mind the gap’.
‘Notice the space’ between the train and the platform you’re stepping on to, that’s all. Just a friendly warning, and actually rather over the top because the gap is not very big; you get over it easily, so you don’t notice.
But such a warning, especially over a loudspeaker and heard multiple times, remains in the memory as if it was something important. And if you’ve heard this day by day, year on year,