Tao Contemplative Tribe Introduction

Below is an audio introduction to our Tao Contemplative Tribe meetings.

Transcript:

[Intro sounds of waves lapping against rocks]

OUR CONTEMPLATIVE TRIBE of SOLITUDES

So what is the contemplation society about? The Tao describes this more succinctly than I can:

“Academia confuses knowledge with knowing. 

Most everyone applauds the memorialization of the 10,000 trivia. 

BEWARE! 

These schooled addictions are not just myths -- they are a form of mental illness. 

Any fragment of the mind, divorced from the heart, spirit, human community, and from the primal reality of the universe, is an abomination of the Great Integrity. 

Let us prepare for the Great Integrity by cleansing ourselves of all cobwebs, of cluttered fragments that paralyze the mind. In this way we will function as our own holistic physicians.” 

So it is amusing to be describing and explaining a gathering where we are discussing the Tao. And giving that group shape and form is a balancing act, because while the Tao is being used, discussing the Tao is not the focus.

For us, the Tao is a mirror.

We are using the Tao as a mirror to examine our own personal:

  • Pretenses and belief systems

  • Compulsions

  • Obsessions

  • Illusions

Those voices inside, the thoughts we experience, the impulses we have…we live in a culture that seeks to convince us that if I develop new tools, acquire new knowledge, and increase my capabilities, I can manage them in order to get what I want.

What I want. What a curious phrase. And it is that curiosity that presents opportunities for speaking, many times with the voice of my beliefs, compulsions, obsessions, illusions. Those intrusive thoughts that seem to be foreign to me…well…they’re not. 

They have a purpose, they are trying to tell me something. And with the Tao as a mirror, I have found the language - and sometimes the silence - to hear the message. To allow my heart to be cracked wide open, so the truth can fall in.

Yet we are doing this as a group.

And as a group, we acknowledge that the Tao has no answers. The answers that come up from within each of us is for us. And sometimes what is happening within me can be a gift for others who have the opportunity to witness me finding my speech through the Tao, to observe me looking at something that I might not have wanted to see before. 

And that is why we come together. We are using the Tao so we can bump into each other a little. We are using the Tao to hear each other into our own speech. 

And if I hear something for me, I get to share it with the other solitudes in our little tribe. Or not. Yet it is not persuasive. It is not an argument for what should be. It is a picture of what I am. Not what I am becoming. Not what I am doing. 

And that is a glimpse we don’t often get to pay witness to. 

So to hold that space for this to happen, this group is triking to strike a balance between the abstract and the pragmatic, the ideal and the practical. Our discussions will have some guidance, yet where they lead is not predetermined.

A CURSORY DISCUSSION OF THE TAO

Open an translation of the Tao - of which there are many, it being the most translated text in existence after the Bible – and you will find a number of names to describe what the Tao Te Ching is:

  • Mystery

  • Subtle Essence of the Universe

  • The Great Integrity

  • The Way of Death

  • The Always-So

  • The Root of Heaven-and-Earth

  • Source

  • [...]

  • The Unnnameable

That last name is ironic, a tongue in cheek nod to the first chapter of the Tao which says: 

The Tao that can be told is not the universal Tao. The name that can be named is not the universal name.

A quick note on the translations of the Tao: We will read from multiple translations of the Tao, each one with a different flavor. It is helpful to remember that each translation has an an inherent approach and method reflective of the translator. And it is further helpful when we sort translations into one of three buckets, though they are not mutually exclusive.

  • Bucket No. 1: Transliteration - These translations take the original Chinese across multiple manuscripts and seek to directly translate into English. The caveat here is that Chinese is not a denotative written language; it is a symbolic written language, relating ideas, so efforts to directly translate lead to wide variety

  • Bucket No. 2: Thematic - These translate the Tao through a predominant theme like Death, the Feminine Divine, or other and can provide a unique perspective on Taoist thought

  • Bucket No. 3: Lyrical or Poetic - These translations apply meter and cadence to the text, and make choices on which couplets or stanzas fit together, sometimes changing the order to pit their lyrical prose or poetry

None are more right or wrong, and to try to determine which is superior/inferior would be a decidedly dualistic act!

ENCOURAGEMENTS

To help us, we have some encouragements for the group and our sessions:

  1. Our inner teacher, inner sherpa, true self, is shy to come out, but to comfort it, we share in the group with a domination toward our own experience, our own story, our own internal, using “I”/”Me” language.

  2. I avoid setting straight, analyzing, or diagnosing: in keeping with the first encouragement, I don’t need to bring the “aha” insight to someone else, even if they are not seeing what I am seeing. I trust their inner teacher will bring them the “aha” in their time and space.

  3. Explain Like I’m 5: As witnesses to each other, we ask clarifying, open ended questions as much as possible, so that others can understand themselves, so they can be heard into speech, and in so doing, I have the honor of witnessing, and letting their emerging understanding, run into my own.

  4. Double Confidentiality: We do not share outside the group with anyone else, AND we do not approach anyone else about their story once th group closes, unless the person who owns their story approaches us first.

We have called these encouragements because they are not rules or principles for the group: the second encouragement about not setting others straight, analyzing or diagnosing is self-referential: there are no “gotchas” built into this where during discussion I will say to another, “You’re not using I/Me language!” Yet if I violate one of these encouragements, it is an action for my own reflection. What came up inside of me that was strong enough to overcome my simple awareness, and violate a value I hold? Surprising myself when I violate my stated values, what I believe to be reflective of my True Self, is a mirror unto itself. And it belongs to me. I hold myself accountable. I do not need to hold others to my values. So these are encouraged to be considered, not simply accepted as ‘rules of engagement.’

Let’s go back to Chapter 71, this time from a different translation:

“He who regards his intellectual knowledge as ignorance has deep insight. He who overrates his intellectual achievement as definite truth is deeply sick.

Only when one is sick of this sickness can one cease to be sick. One who returns his mind to the simplicity of the subtle truth is not sick.

He knows to break through conceptual knowledge in order to directly reach the subtle truth of the universe.

This is the foundation of health.”

[Outro sounds of waves lapping against rocks]