The Lazy Yogi

The Great Tao

This world is made up of many things. Temporary constructs and activities that appear real but shift and change as time moves on. What you once thought to be unmovable as stone may be eroded through the years to become a beautiful beach.

Everything that has a moment of creation also has a moment of destruction, as we had touched on before. But suspended between those two moments is nothing without consequence. It is a beautiful song, rhythm, dance. It is a tao. 

Each phenomenon in this universe is a tao, including yourself. The way that all of these taos flow together and apart in one marvelous stream is called The Great Tao. While taos shift and change, they do so within the context of the Great Tao. 

The tao of art, of sports, of cooking are all temporary things when put into context within the Eternal picture. They had beginnings and they have endings. But the Great Tao has none. 

The following is the opening poem from taoism’s seminal text The Tao Te Ching:

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.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Darkness is stillness and silence, the kind you find through meditation and mindfulness. The wordless, thoughtless, unmanifest nature of Being. 

When you are caught in desire, you only see the world through that desire. When you are free of the compulsion to desire, the mystery presents itself. 

Food for thought. 

Namste