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    Guest Post To Tao From Zen

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    Beowulf Odin Son
    The document discusses the difficulties in applying the teachings of the Tao Te Ching to achieve sage-like wisdom. It argues that the Tao Te Ching describes sages but does not explain how to become one. Attempting to emulate sages described in the text leads to hypocrisy rather than true wisdom. The only way to act without expectation and ego, which is key to finding the Tao, is to fully accept the present moment through surrender and insight meditation. Alternatively, struggling with the unachievable teachings may lead to a realization of the ego's limitations.

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    Guest Post To Tao From Zen

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    Beowulf Odin Son
    67 views2 pages
    The document discusses the difficulties in applying the teachings of the Tao Te Ching to achieve sage-like wisdom. It argues that the Tao Te Ching describes sages but does not explain how to become one. Attempting to emulate sages described in the text leads to hypocrisy rather than true wisdom. The only way to act without expectation and ego, which is key to finding the Tao, is to fully accept the present moment through surrender and insight meditation. Alternatively, struggling with the unachievable teachings may lead to a realization of the ego's limitations.

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    The document discusses the difficulties in applying the teachings of the Tao Te Ching to achieve sage-like wisdom. It argues that the Tao Te Ching describes sages but does not explain how to become one. Attempting to emulate sages described in the text leads to hypocrisy rather than true wisdom. The only way to act without expectation and ego, which is key to finding the Tao, is to fully accept the present moment through surrender and insight meditation. Alternatively, struggling with the unachievable teachings may lead to a realization of the ego's limitations.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    67 views2 pages

    Guest Post To Tao From Zen

    Uploaded by

    Beowulf Odin Son
    The document discusses the difficulties in applying the teachings of the Tao Te Ching to achieve sage-like wisdom. It argues that the Tao Te Ching describes sages but does not explain how to become one. Attempting to emulate sages described in the text leads to hypocrisy rather than true wisdom. The only way to act without expectation and ego, which is key to finding the Tao, is to fully accept the present moment through surrender and insight meditation. Alternatively, struggling with the unachievable teachings may lead to a realization of the ego's limitations.

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    Guest Post: To Tao From Zen

    http://ramblingtaoist.blogspot.com/2011/12/guest-post-to-tao-from-
    zen.html

    I love the little book of wisdom that is the Tao Te Ching, but


    sometimes it strikes me as extremely useless. All this stuff about how
    the sage does this, the sage does that... well, that's fine and good for
    the sage, but what about the rest of us? If we try to emulate what the
    book says denotes a master, all we end up with is hypocrisy. We're
    aping the saints, not a saint ourselves.

    You need only look as far as the religious right to see what I'm talking
    about. They're rigid legalists, not Jesus-like Christ figures. They're
    faking it. A real sage doesn't read in a book how to act, it comes from
    his or her inner nature, from their oneness with Tao. If a sage lives as
    an ascetic, it isn't out of self-denial from guilt, or to set an example, or
    to not pollute the world with reckless consumption; it's because he
    realized he didn't need all that stuff to begin with. If he is generous
    and full of kindness to all, it isn't because he should, but because he
    deep down must.

    The Tao Te Ching often just seems not like a how-to book, but more
    of a snapshot of the sage. Full of lofty sayings and statements that
    tantalize but don't quite deliver. Interesting, in a way, but not always
    entirely helpful. What we all want is to know how to actually embody
    such sagacity. How do I find the Tao? I know it's a ridiculous
    question to even ask, knowing intellectually that it is all around us (so
    sayeth the texts and wise ones), it is all that is, as well as all that isn't,
    we couldn't get away from it if we wanted to.

    How do you do without doing? It's a bootstrap problem: wei wu wei,


    doing non-doing, is impossible to achieve. Attempt it, and you are
    acting with expectation, forcing things, and forcing is wei, not wu wei.
    Like in Buddhism, when you accept that desire causes all suffering
    (dukkha), and go on to desire to end desiring. This is the hypocrisy,
    and actually dangerous, because you may be deluding yourself, and
    get the spiritual pride going. You're doing all this religion/philosophy
    stuff to achieve enlightenment, which is something you (think you)
    don't have, but want to attain in the future, and thus you're always a
    seeker, never a finder. You are getting in your own way.

    So how does one get out of one's own way so as to flow with the Tao?
    There is nothing simpler, nor harder; it's always the most obvious
    thing that gets missed. But as always, I circle around to acceptance in
    the broadest sense. The only way to act without expectation is to not
    be in the future, by being in the present. You get there through
    surrender, surrender to your experience, whatever it currently is,
    without comment or opinion. In the present, you can't act with
    expectation, because it's all there, and you're just grooving with it.
    This is the point of insight meditation.

    Or perhaps this bootstrap problem is the point, to throw you against


    your ego's incapability, and knock you sideways into the Void -- a
    sort of Taoist version of a Zen koan -- Taoism being the mother of
    Zen (who's father was Mahayana Buddhism). You read the TTC, see
    how impossible it is to do this, get wrapped up in the dilemma, until
    the whole thing dissolves in a sort of ego-death or satori, if only for a
    moment. Sometimes I think this is the main point of sacred writings,
    from the Law in Judaism, Jesus' teachings, the Tao Te Ching, the
    Buddhist sutras, and so forth. Not to show you the way, but to prove
    that the way is impossible for the "i" to attain, thus pushing you into
    the realization of "I".

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