Loneliness and Meaning
Shavua Tov. Wishing everyone a good and healthy week.
Here are my thoughts today - the meditation text is below.
The loneliness in this passage speaks of both abandoning and being abandoned, and finding meaning in difficulty. It feels a lot like Psalm 23:4:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me”.
The authors of both the Psalm and the Tao feel abandoned in that place of loneliness and still they feel connected with the most profound ideas of meaning. So this passage in the Tao concludes:
“I alone differ from others,
And value drawing sustenance from Tao.”
I too have felt that loneliness and often find comfort in the Psalms. Even alone, we are not alone.
Another thought: “Abandon learning…” seems to be difficult for anyone who spends any part of our lives trying to expand our minds.
This connects to Martin Buber’s I and Thou - Buber advises against the accumulation of experiences. The idea that we can gather things and tick them off a list from which we would derive meaning, in Buber’s writings, leads to diminish our very nature. Meaning arises from encounters and learning and we must figure out how to continue to be open to growth and not constrained by what we’ve experienced or learned before.
Before meditating today I read this:
[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), pages 149-150, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]
20.
Abandon learning and there will be no sorrow.
How much difference is there between “Yes, sir,” and “Of course not”?
How much difference is there between “good” and “evil”?
What people dread, do not fail to dread.
But, alas, how confused, and the end is not yet.
The multitude are merry, as though feasting on a day of sacrifice,
Or like ascending a tower at springtime.
I alone am inert, showing no sign of desires,
Like an infant that has not yet smiled.
Wearied, indeed, I seem to be without a home.
The multitude all possess more than enough,
I alone seem to have lost all.
Mine is indeed the mind of an ignorant person,
Indiscriminate and dull!
Common folks are indeed brilliant;
I alone seem to be in the dark.
Common folks see differences that are clear-cut;
I alone make no distinctions.
I seem drifting as the sea;
Like the wind blowing about, seemingly without destination.
The multitude all have a purpose;
I alone seem to be stubborn and rustic.
I alone differ from others,
And value drawing sustenance from Tao.