Light | Contemplative Inquiry

February 28, 2023

TAO TE CHING AND THE DARK NEW MOON

“The Tao Te Ching is at heart a simple book. Written at the end of the sixth century B.C. by a man called Lao-tzu, it’s a vision of what our lives would be like if we were more like the dark new moon.

“Lao-tzu teaches us that the dark can always become light and contains within itself the potential for growth and long life, while the light can only become dark and brings with it decay and early death. Lao-tzu chose long life. Thus, he chose the dark.” (1)

Red Pine’s translation of the Tao Te Ching has been around in its present form since 2009, but I have come across it only recently. It has given me a new lens on this much loved ancient text. Red Pine is the nom de plume for Bill Porter, who was born in Los Angeles in 1943, grew up in the Idaho Panhandle, served a tour of duty in the US army (1964-7) and went on to study anthropology. Dropping of graduate school in 1972, he moved to a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan for four years before becoming involved with English language radio stations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 1993 he moved back to America, since which time he has been an independent scholar specialising in Chinese Buddhist and Taoist texts.

The word Tao (road or way) is made up of two characters, one meaning ‘head’ and the other meaning ‘go’. Red Pine cites a modern scholar of comparative religion, Professor Tu Er-wei, to suggest that : “the ‘head’ in the character tao is the face of the moon. And the meaning of ‘road’ comes from watching this disembodied face as it moved across the sky”. He also reminds us that the symbol Taoists have used since ancient times to represent the Tao shows the two conjoined phases of the moon.

China was divided in Lao-tzu’s time. and he was based in the state of Ch’u, described as being on the ‘shamanistic periphery’ of Chinese culture. The Ch’u rulers took for their surname hsiung (bear) and they called themselves Man or Yi, “which the Chinese in the central states interpreted to mean ‘barbarians’… The influence of Chu’s culture on Lao-tzu is impossible to determine, but it does help us better understand the Tao Te Ching, knowing that it was written by a man who was no stranger to shamanistic conceptions of the sacred world. Certainly as Taoism developed in later centuries, it remained heavily indebted to shamanism”. Specifically in relation to the Tao Te Ching, “Lao-tzu redirects vision to that ancient mirror, the moon. But instead of pointing to its light, he points to its darkness. Every month the moon effortlessly shows us that something comes from nothing”. For it is the new moon that holds the promise of rebirth. The first verse of his translation reads:

The way that becomes a way

Is not the Immortal Way.

The name that becomes a name

Is not the Immortal Name.

No-name is the maiden of Heaven and Earth.

Name is the mother of all things.

Thus in innocence we see the beginning

In passion we see the end

Two different names

For one and the same.

The one we call dark

The dark beyond dark

The door to all beginnings.

At other points in the text, according to Red Pine, Lao-tzu says that the Tao is between Heaven and Earth; it’s Heaven’s Gate; it’s empty but inexhaustible; it doesn’t die; it waxes and wanes; it’s distant and dark; it doesn’t try to be full; it’s the light that doesn’t blind; it has thirty spokes and two thirteen-day (visible) phases; it can be strung like a bow and expand or contract like a bellows; it moves the other way (relative to the sun, it appears/rises later and later); it’s the great image, the hidden immortal, the crescent soul, the dark union, the dark womb, the dark beyond the dark. These can all be seen as lunar images.

There is of course a place for the light as well. We approach the elusiveness and namelessness of the Tao through Te – virtue, both in a moral sense and as the power to act. Without the Tao, Virtue would have no power: without Virtue, the Way would have no appearance. These are the two poles: the Tao, the body, the essence, the Way; and Te, the light, the function, the spirit, Virtue. In terms of origin, the Tao comes first. In terms of practice, Te comes first. The dark gives the light a place to shine. The light allows us to see the dark. But too much light blinds. “Lao-tzu saw people chasing the light and hastening their own destruction. He encouraged them to choose the dark instead of the light, less instead of more, weakness instead of strength, inaction instead of action”.

This is not the only way to read, or work with, the Tao Te Ching. For me, it’s not the kind of text that offers fixed meanings and interpretations. But it does seem clear to me that a lunar inspiration, and lunar imagery, stand behind this work and are part of its construction. I feel enriched by having this pointed out and demonstrated through Red Pine’s translation.

(1) Red Pine Lao-tzu’s Taoteching: with Selected Commentaries from the past 2,000 years Copper Canyon Press, 2009 https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/ (First edition published in 1996)

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February 9, 2023

ALERT REST IN THE LIGHT OF EARLY SPRING

Crocuses are appearing, harbingers of spring. In the middle of the day, I feel the power of the sun. In my own life, I am getting used to a smaller and lighter living space. The work of moving is almost done. I shed calculation and care, making room for curiosity and glee.

Some of this is visual. I track changes in daylight from misty early morning to strong sunlight and vivid blue sky at noon. Subtle shifts moment to moment lead to big changes over the hours.

A personal mood of renewal fits the change of season, now that we are clearly in a rising year. The difference is that I am allowing myself to experience a tiredness that I had not fully acknowledged when our moving process was at its height. I am also aware that there are still things to be done. I am not fully in a get-up-and-go frame of being. What I need most, right now, is an alert kind of rest.

I have a sense of coming to a place, and settling, and embracing the experience I am offered here. I’ve been working to refine my personal understanding of Eckhart Tolle’s use of ‘Presence’. For me, it seems to combine an immersion in the flow of experience and a communion with it. Not only bare awareness but also relationship. Being alive in a living cosmos. Opening up to gratitude and love.

This is a key aspect of my contemplative inquiry within the modern Druid tradition, though the experience pointed to is universal. Uncovering what is hidden in plain sight by polishing the lenses of perception. An alert kind of rest.

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September 12, 2022

STATES OF LIGHT

This is the face of dawn outside my window, just after 6.30 a.m. I welcome the mid September day, appreciating this moment in the year. I like the infusion of pink into grey clouds, and the suggestion of warmth in the old church tower.

I have now grown used to getting up in the dark, and to beginning my morning practice with an awareness of darkness outside. The nurturing dark and enabling light are both part of my experience. A transient time of balance has begun. It feels numinous to me, and a time of great potential. I am energetically alert and alive.

Later, a little before 9 a.m., I am walking by the Gloucester-Sharpness canal. I notice light on leaves, and its influence on the gaps between trunks. The view, here, is over water. But it is the influence of sunlight that makes the greatest impression on me – captured in the picture as well as in real time.

By contrast, the spaces furthest away from the light source are able to show their earthiness, their woodiness and the depth of their green. The light is everywhere, but it is subtle and not over-bearing. It reveals its influence in different ways. Rather than radiating raw power, it allows possibilities in this small, fragile habitat. Contemplating autumnal states of light, as I approach the autumn equinox, I have been shown something about power and its manifestation.

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August 4, 2022

THE GATEWAY TO TWILIGHT

High summer becomes late summer, in my world, with a gentle movement into the evening of the year. In the picture above, taken a little after 8 pm, I at first feel, as much as see, a suggestion of muting light. On looking up, the blue of the sky seems influenced by a subtle greying effect that is independent of the clouds. Looking down, the buildings are shadowy and their reflections in the water are set within a gathering darkness.

The picture below was taken at 9 pm on the following day. The grey in the sky owes everything to clouds, whereas the orange and yellow are connected to sunset. The latter is reflected in the water, and electric lighting is now also present. The day is changing, but not yet into night. This is an in-between time, twilight. It is its own, extended moment, quietly shifting in the physical world, profoundly influential in my psychic world.

I feel joy with an edge of melancholy. It is a familiar feeling that stretches deeply into my early life, prior to language, older than memory itself. It seems to come from deep time, and to be pre-personal, not just about ‘me’. I am any finite being, moving from day towards night, from summer towards winter, from life towards death. Having shifted decisively away from the zenith, I find myself, for now, in a beautiful moment. The Gloucester docks provide me with a magical space for walking, standing still, experiencing and recording this time.

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June 12, 2022

TOWARDS ALBAN HEFIN: EVENING LIGHT, FLOWERING PLANTS

An evening walk on 10 June, around 7pm. We are approaching the summer solstice, Alban Hefin in OBOD Druidry. It is a late moment in the rising year. We are in a now familiar Georgian neighbourhood, where I often focus on sky and buildings. But here my attention is on the earth, and patches of green growth a little recessed from the kerbside. What draws me is a strong sense of light enabling life, relatively late in the day, touching the plants to ensure their thriving.

Flowering plants appeared quite late in this history of our planet, less than a hundred million years ago. Over time they helped to shape the habitat in which we have appeared and made our home. Seemingly fragile, they have, over time, exerted a tremendous collective power. It seems only right to honour them and recognise what they have done for us. May we preserve the habitat on which they and we depend.

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January 26, 2021

CHERISHING LIFE

The world is changing, again. New growth insists on its place in the world, however icy the conditions. Life asserts its rights, as we move towards the festival of Imbolc. But this post is personal rather than generic. I am welcoming the return of my wife Elaine from seven days in the Royal Gloucester hospital, where she was treated for a life-threatening, non-Covid condition.

This was the background to my previously reported Covid test, (1) since we thought that Covid might be a factor for Elaine, whose symptoms were severer than mine. I have not said anything about this context up until now, because Elaine did not want to be mentioned in this blog at the time of the crisis. Now she is fine about it. In her first two or three days of Elaine’s hospitalisation, I was very worried about her. In the last couple of days I have been more relaxed and confidently looking forward to her return and a period of convalescence at home. Elaine speaks very highly of the hospital, its staff and the treatment she has received. I was able to communicate with her (and others) by text, email and sometimes (on her initiative) phone. So I did not feel cut off from her even though the hospital is operating a complete ban on visitors due to the Covid crisis.

The week has reminded me of the fragility of both life and love, and of their immense value. The outcome feels like a victory for life at a time when nature, in my neighbourhood, is pointing in this direction. Meanwhile the festival of Imbolc celebrates the return of the light. I will cherish this time as we move forward from here.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/01/18/another-dawn/

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January 11, 2021

SKY AND WEATHER

The fog has gone now, for the time being. But its memory still clings to me. I can acknowledge its beauty as seen through the window of a warm room. But I would rather not be out there, tasting the fog, breathing it, trying to find my way in a clammy kind of cold. To go out, I wait for another day, with clear light and the effects, however subtle, of the winter sun. What a difference a day makes.

Part of my Druidry is about cultivating dimensions of experience ignored or unvalued in mainstream culture. Practice keeps my connection to them open. Tibetan Buddhists are sky watchers and have the saying; ‘you are the sky; everything else is weather’. This recognition does not erase the fluctuations in our weather, without and within, or our response to them. It does point to a capacity to hold them within a hidden dimension of clarity and stillness.

In the opening days of 2021, I have been taking in the likelihood of another collectively hard year, perhaps harder than 2020 in a different way. Last year I was more hopeful about this year than I am now. I don’t find this easy and I don’t ask myself to. What I can do is find a home in this seemingly unboundaried and seemingly timeless dimension, here called ‘the sky’, without abandoning the day-to-day.

I am the sky, and I hold the weather – fog and sunlight alike.

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January 3, 2021

LIGHT RENEWED

I have now landed in 2021. I can see the renewal of the light; however tentative it might be. The winter quarter, from Samhain to Imbolc, is a season of dying and regeneration. I have glimpsed regeneration in nature and in myself – potentially in culture too. The collective crisis is deep, and projects remain on hold. But I can sense opportunity, and possibilities for creative change.

I have noticed a major transition in my work. I have entered a phase where contemplative inquiry is a strand in my life rather than a project called ‘Contemplative Inquiry’. I look back and see this transition as an accomplishment of 2020. Certain questions have been answered and won’t need much revisiting. I began an ended the project within a modern Druid orbit – saturnine in distance, perhaps, but still part of the family.

My view, values and practice have largely settled. A lightning-flash experience, or transformative encounter, might cause me to change them, for I retain a commitment to openness. But the project of Contemplative Inquiry will not. I am much less engaged with teachers, teachings and traditions than in former years, whether through literature, groups or events (live and virtual). Instead, I want to work more deeply and congruently within the frameworks I have already learned and developed. I tend to be a solitary practitioner at heart, though I also like some link to companions and community along my spiritually hermit way.

The great gift in this is the opportunity to live a life of ‘abundance in simplicity’ at the level of ideas as well as material goods and activities – to pare down in the very area where I am most tempted to seek variety and feast on new input. There is Sufi story in which the crazy wisdom master Shams persuades the more conventionally trained Rumi to throw all his religious texts down a well. I do not plan to go so far. But I recognise the time for a change in emphasis. As a trade-off, my monkey mind is freed for other subjects. I look forward to seeing how this new direction works, and how it affects this blog.

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October 14, 2020

WALKING TOWARDS SUNRISE

Sunday, 11 October, 6.40 am. My plan is to walk towards the dawn of a new day, but I take time to stop and photograph this liminal moment. It is still, on this normally busy road. It makes me almost nostalgic for the early days of lockdown in the spring.

In this moment, there are no cars and no other people. I am fine with the artificial light. I like the contrast of the street lights (bright and focused) with the softer light in the sky, dim yet with a promise of expansiveness. I enjoy the shadows and the presence, too, of outright darkness at this stage of my walk.

It takes me twenty minutes of enchanted meander to reach my next point, pictured above. The scene is inherently more spacious. Water and sky are prominent. It takes notable artefacts to make their presence felt. The main theme of the picture, as I look in a generally eastern direction, is the coming of the light. Clouds do not obscure it. The buildings have become more than silhouettes. There are the beginnings of colour and the detail it brings. I judge it OK to walk on the canal path itself, just visible on my right.

Another twenty minutes and the light seems to predominate, though I am not yet in full daylight. I am on the canal path. Even though the surroundings of the towpath are lushly green, the world I stand in is a little dusky, or dawny if there were such a word. Crepuscular. Looking up, I see pinkness in the sky, white clouds, hints of blue. I feel heartened and strangely moved by the effects of light on the autumn trees. They give me a warm sense of walking towards the sunrise, and encourage me to move on.

The picture immediately above is not part of my plan. It stems from delighted surprise followed by purposeful calm. Knowing about the heron in advance, I would likely have botched my picture in an anxious, clumsy effort to put the bird on record. I always have before. I think that herons fly away from me out of disdain rather than fear. This time I am a quiet human in a quiet world. I stand still for awhile and am almost elegant in my use of the phone. I wait for an intuited ‘right time’ before pressing the button. There is no drama at all. I do not know if the heron even notices me. The whole incident feels like a blessing of the still early morning.

Now, further on in my walk, the sun is on its ascent through the sky and I can picture it indirectly. The contrast between the sun kissed light areas and the shady ones is strong and vivid. I notice that, as the fading trees accept that their season is over, the ‘parasitic’ mistletoe – even the Druid Plant Oracle (1) calls it that – is gleefully green.

Now I am on my way back home. What draws my attention, after a little exploration, is the white owl. To me it looks very present and collected, situated just where it wants to be. It seems also to be acting as gatekeeper for its own arch.

I make stream of consciousness connections. I began my walk on the Bath Road. Bath is less than 30 miles away. There, the Romans turned a Celtic shrine into a city and called it Aquae Sulis (see http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/), acknowledging Sulis the Celtic goddess of the shrine. She was concerned with its waters and their healing potential whilst doubling up as a solar deity as well. The Romans called her Sulis Minerva, and that links her with owl wisdom. The white owl has a rich hinterland of associations for me. It makes the encounter significant. I note that two resonant avian images have met me on this walk into the sunrise, offering avenues for further contemplation.

(1) Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Plant Oracle: Working with the Magical Flora of the Druid Tradition London: Connections, 2007. Illustrated by Will Worthington.

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