sdi

A man decays
His corpse is dust
His family dies
But his books live on

(Chester Beatty Papyrus IV, as translated by Susan Brind Morrow.)

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching I, as translated by Stephen Mitchell.)

Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol "Apollo" [a=not, pollon=of many] with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that.

(Plotinos, Enneads V v "On the Nature of the Good" §6.)

Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger. Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

(Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate, as translated by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps.)

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

(Ikkyu.)

I have never understood Memory. Why should one wish to remember or be remembered? The earth is not a place of Memory, it is a place of Forgetting, and it is by Forgetting we become unearthly. Isn't it?

And yet the "Orphic" tradition highly prizes Memory: Hesiod was initiated by her daughters; Homer urges the initiate to remember everything; Pythagoras's prior incarnation, Aithalides, so prized Memory that it was the one gift he asked of Hermes (Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica 640 ff.; Diogenes Laertios, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII iv); the Delphic god says "Know Thyself;" the Orphics and Platonists emphasize drinking from her pool rather than the stream of Forgetting; the Orphic Hymn to Memory goes so far as to say that it is wicked to forget. But Memory is a thing of the world below: God has no Memory, it simply Is; even Souls have no Memory, they merely survey the entire sweep of their great Life as attention requires.

Memory is, perhaps, simply a paradox. There is nothing that can be said, and yet where would I be if they didn't try?

䷮
47: Oppression. Fifth nine moves.

To those who yearn for life, the great sacrifice is to die for an ideal.
To those who yearn for death, the great sacrifice is to live for an ideal.

My spiritual path in life has, to date, wandered near or through each of the following:

• Christianity: Earth is a test for sorting beings into good and bad.
• Taoism: Earth is. (What more do you want?)
• Buddhism: Earth is a nightmare from which one ought to awaken.
• Occultism: Earth is a kindergarten where beings learn the basics of how to live.
• Neoplatonism: Earth is a borderland where exiled divinities eke out a meager subsistence.

While each of these has a fragment of truth to it, none of them have been entirely satisfactory to me. I was pondering, today, what I might say if somebody asked me to describe my religion in a single sentence. This is what I came up with:

• Earth is a womb where baby angels gestate before birth.

Heaven and earth are indifferent, and regard all things as straw dogs.
[Similarly,] the wise man is indifferent, and regards people as straw dogs.
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?
It is empty, but doesn't lack; it moves, but doesn't change for all its coming and going.
Much talk counts for little, and is not in keeping with guarding the center.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching V, as adapted by yours truly.)

[A "straw dog" is a temporary icon, used in religious ritual and discarded afterwards.]

My first deep dive into spirituality came fourteen years ago or so when I stumbled across Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching in a bookstore. This was a balm for the injuries sustained in my abusive, fundamentalist upbringing, and I spent the next few years studying Taoism as deeply as I could. For some reason, even though I read quite a bit, I never came around to studying the I Ching—I just wasn't ready for it, I guess, since it took most of a decade for me to open up enough to take up the tarot (which didn't work out very well) and geomancy (which did).

The I Ching has just sorta been sitting there in the background, quietly waiting for me. My family is presently in the middle of moving to Colorado, and my copy of the I Ching is stuffed away in a box somewhere, so I figured it wasn't the time to try taking up anything new... but I suppose there's something in the air, here, since when we visited here last autumn, I was led to a Taoist Feng Shui book; and just yesterday a copy of The Fortune Teller's I Ching jumped out at me at the local library's annual book sale. I took this as a hint that I should go ahead and play with it: not really for anything serious, since I can use geomancy for important questions, but more as an avenue for exploring Taoism more deeply once again.

So I thought I'd start putting the oracle through it's paces by asking the obvious question: "How can I expect my study of the I Ching to proceed?"

䷬

45: To Collect. Success. The king approaches the temple. It is good to see the great man. There will be success. It is good to behave properly. The use of large offerings brings good fortune. To move forward in any direction will also bring good fortune.

Top six moves. He sighs and weeps floods of tears. There will be no mistakes.

I am disciplined, I am committed to the work, and the path before me is easy. I will have success, but what comes easily doesn't last.

Do you know the story of the man who lost his horse? It's an old and famous parable from the Huainanzi, written a bit over two millennia ago. It's about a farmer who has various things happen to him, and the apparently good things turn out to be bad, and the apparently bad things turn out to be good. He simply does his best in the moment, and is successful in a way, since he never suffers any harm... but, on the other hand, neither does he see any material benefit from the "good" things that happen. His true success is the perspective he has to see through the illusion of each occurrence. This reading feels a bit like that to me: what success is to be found is abstract, rather than concrete. Studying geomancy required a lot of effort, and granted rewards commensurate with that effort; but since I've already put in all that work, studying the I Ching will go much easier but not really move the needle in my life, since I already have the tools I need.

Still, though, it's fun. Why not play a game with my angel?