Tao Te Ching Verse 16: NoThing is Permanent

Tao Te Ching Verse 16

Attain the utmost in Passivity,
Hold firm to the basis of Quietude.

The myriad things take shape and rise to activity,
   But I watch them fall back to their repose.
Like vegetation that luxuriantly grows
   But returns to the root (soil) from which it springs.

To return to the root is Repose;
   It is called going back to one's Destiny.
Going back to one's Destiny is to find the Eternal Law.
   To know the Eternal Law is Enlightenment.
And not to know the Eternal Law
   Is to court disaster.

He who knows the Eternal Law is tolerant;
Being tolerant, he is impartial;
Being impartial, he is kingly;
Being kingly, he is in accord with Nature;
Being in accord with Nature, he is in accord with Tao;
Being in accord with Tao, he is eternal,
And his whole life is preserved from harm.

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

Practicing Immortality

I’m imagining being in bed now.  I’m cozy, wrapped in blankets, and I’m just waking up from a good night’s sleep.  I had pleasant dreams, and I have this feeling of freshness, newness.  I’m already thinking.  And my brain is already in motion.  I’m thinking about a bunch of things, probably, and what my day’s going to look like.

It seems to me that in that transition between the sleep and the waking state, I go from restfulness to an awareness of my self.  Sort of like the transition between a yin energy state and a yang energy state.  My conscious thoughts cycle between the manifest and the unmanifest state, don’t they?

We just talked about how my form is going to change when this body dies.  And we talked about how what’s left is this unchanging part of me that is the Tao.

So if we put these two ideas together - that our no-self and our self is always going back and forth always changing - we can observe that since forms are always in motion, there must be a still part of things - just like the sound underneath the sounds!  So my life force is the force underneath my life.  Like the Tao, it’s always been there or been not-there, however you like.

And if it’s always been there, it will always be there as a part of the Tao.  By practicing awareness of this aspect of ourselves, we can actually practice immortality.  Immortality doesn’t mean that my body won’t age, of course not.  Immortality means that I, as a life force, an essence, will continue on forever, with the Eternal Tao.

It will continue, regardless.  But I may risk losing this awareness if I come out of stillness and engage with my thoughts, others and their thoughts, and so on.  If I start taking things too seriously again, I, as Lao Tzu puts it, do not know the Eternal Law and therefore court disaster.  

So it seems I have a choice, don’t I?  I may set aside stillness because it seems uninteresting or unimportant.  I can get caught up in things that seems to have value, things that feel good.  I get caught up in the corporeal senses and lose my Inner Vision, as we discussed in verse 12.

So when we say that pleasing the senses isn’t really the point of it all, we look to this verse to realize that the point is unity with the Tao, for that’s what’s really important - mostly because it is more real than what we experience when we’re not still.

If I can allow that sense of separation to abate by becoming still, I allow my ego to die daily.  And in so doing, I am returning to Source - I am the Tao - I am Eternal.