1 the 4 Discourses of the Dao: Zhuangzi Meets Lacan Shunyamurti
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The 4 Discourses of the Dao: Zhuangzi Meets Lacan Shunyamurti speaks: So tonight, let’s explore more deeply: how does a Taoist sage deal with the end of the world? And how does one relate to those who are either in denial or wanting to resist or trying to prematurely bring about a new age before the end of this one? The Taoist understands the order of things and what must be eliminated and cleansed before a new creation can take place, but that must happen microcosmically within the sage’s mind and heart. So in Song 5, that was sung very beautifully by the Daughters of Nothingness, Lao Tzu says: “For the Tao to function fully, both heaven and earth must separate from duality.” This is a very subtle point: heaven and earth seem to be two, but they’re not, they’re only one. So we have to understand the difference between a distinction and a duality. In the same way we can see two sides of a coin as actually being one: nirvana, samsara—heaven and earth—must be realized as a single whole. The sage doesn’t simply leave the world and enter into the transcendent Nothingness and have nothing to do with the samsara, but acts in the samsara, seeing it as nirvana, realizing its perfection, and not being fooled by the apparent events that are occurring in the simulation, but understanding their true significance. So heaven and earth are indifferent to each other because each is nondifferent from the One. The transcendent One is also the immanent One, but that One from which the world and the transcendent derive is present in each. This is very difficult for the ego-mind—if not impossible for the ego-mind—to grasp: that the One and the many are the same. They have a distinction, but they are not actually different. “Neither one can have any sentimentality.” So, the sage has no sentimentality towards the world. And the world has no sentimentality or love for the sage, or for God, or heaven, or for the higher truths. In fact, the sage will be laughed at, if not worse—some get crucified, some get burned at the stake, right? So, there’s no love, and yet love is exactly all that there really is, and the two express the oneness despite the shocking way in which it seems to be brought into manifestation. “So the world is but a worthless simulation, if you take the world to be a world separate from the Source of its existence. Then it has no worth.” Its worth comes because it is an expression of the Tao. “All of its characters are expendable, you know.” The actual word used in the Chinese is that all the characters, all the people in the world are “straw dogs”—that’s the phrase that’s used. And what was a straw dog? I think it’s actually a cliché, even now, but in ancient China they were characters used in rituals—much like they would make clay idols in India and then throw them into the ocean when they were done—the straw dogs were then trampled on and the straw was fed to the animals, but they were, for the period of the ritual, they were valued, but then after that, worthless. So, in the same way, the 1 human being is not actually considered being worth very much, especially at the end of the Kali Yuga period when there is a massive depopulation, a culling of the herd which is now occurring. “But the space between heaven and earth, the symbolic sphere, functions like a bellows.” You know, the bellows, that produces the wind—it is empty but not vacuous. The bellows works because of its emptiness, but it is filled with wind, which is a symbol of Spirit. So in the same way our minds, when we are attuned to the reality of the transcendent within the mundane, are able to download many valuable insights, many ideas, many understandings about the nature of reality that can keep us from being sentimental, or suffering, or in some inaccurate state. So if you pump it hard, more and more information comes out. The more that you meditate, and you begin to pump from the intelligence of God-consciousness through your own attunement to it, you can translate that into knowledge. But then the warning of Lao Tzu, which I think is an extremely significant one, is that: “It is better safeguard what you have within already than to learn a great deal that goes nowhere.” So it’s very easy to be on a path wanting to have more and more knowledge of the transcendent, but that knowledge becomes a substitute for transcending. So, there’s a point where you want to stop downloading the knowledge and start uploading your Self. And if you keep downloading without uploading into that supreme level of Being, then you’re going nowhere—literally. So knowledge has to be put into its proper place and perspective. And then finally: “You can’t be both a character in this great game and try to change it, try to affect it, and still be a master of the Tao.” So, if you take the world as a chess game, or a Go game, the pieces on the board seem to have particular qualities and attributes, or positions and purposes and functions. But when the game is over, all the pieces get thrown in the bag—and they have no more value, right? So, the Taoist sage is already seeing the game over, and being a character in the game, even if you’re a queen or a king or whatever, has no more value—no more value than being a pawn. They’re all going in the bag. All the bodies are going in body bags and they’re not going to be worth anything. So, since you already know that, why expend your life energy trying to get somewhere in a futile game rather than getting out of the game and not being thrown into the bag at the end even though your body may? So the Tao song is a warning to not waste your time, either on political kinds of energy, efforts to improve situations or to attempt to be an intellectual who has an understanding of an academic sort but has not transcended into real sagehood. And even that transcendence must be completed by the integration of the transcendent and the immanent. Nirvana is samsara. If you try to make a difference, a separation from them as if they are two, then you are still not in nonduality, and you’ll still have to come back to reach that point where you realize that not only is there nowhere to go, but there is nowhere that you have been. It is that realization. The world doesn’t really exist as a world, but you can only realize that in the world, and through the vision of the oneness, 2 realize that it’s all simply light and the simulation is a reflection of the Source from which the light comes. So then in Song 6: “The lifeforce of the dream field never dies.” The lifeforce of it. What dies are all the creatures in the dream field, but the Dreamer that gives life to the cosmic dream does not die. But She is yin, the dark goddess—She is not known and luminous within the world—She is unknowable. But She is that feminine power that’s “the Mother of the ten thousand things”, and She is the root of the world. And so you don’t get out by being yang—you get out by surrendering to the yin. And then there is the integration between the yin and the ultimate yang that becomes a single whole, the Wuji, the Absolute, the Tao. So the feminine power is wispy and delicate, but She only seems to be in the world—She’s not really here—She’s on her lotus throne in that realm of the light, but you can see Her if you can see through the darkness into the light that is the source of this world of darkness and to know Her power to create is limitless. So from the perspective of the goddess who has both forms of, let’s say, Lakshmi and Durga, or Kali, there’s the goddess as She appears as the Mother of creation, and then as the Mother of destruction. And then along the way She’s Saraswati, as the Mother of cultural sustenance, and She is all the different goddesses who keep the world in a form that is evolving and devolving simultaneously. All the different aspects of the goddess. The goddess is one, regardless of the names, but with different functions at different moments in the historic process of cyclical revolution of the illusion. So, Song 40 which we read before, but again: “The Tao is returning you to Nothingness.” That’s Its function. If you want to get on the train of the Tao, you’re going into Nothingness. You’re not going to a new world—you are going to the Singularity now. That might be the next stop if you want it, but right now we’re going to the light, into the disappearance from the world. The Tao functions not by force but by yielding, so, there’s no benefit in trying to resist what’s happening. Flow with it to the Nothingness.