Reflections: a Synchronicity?

I belong to a group on Facebook where members share their dreams. This morning I posted the following on that page:

I slept long and well last night--over eight hours, unusual for me. I remember only a snatch of the many vivid and busy dreams I was having: I was in the basement of my house and found that there were foreign students living in at least two different rooms down there. I went into the room of one student, who was Chinese. He was very friendly, but not very fluent in English. We shook hands. He was able to make me understand that he could hearing me pounding on the keyboard of my computer through the ceiling of his room at night.
A couple of hours after getting up this morning, I decided to find a book in my personal library that I had been meaning to reread for a long time, but had never gotten around to reading--"Jesus and Lao Tzu, the Parallel Sayings" edited by Martin Aronson. Once I held the book in my hands, I decided that I would write a blog post on it later today. Having made that decision, I suddenly connected that inspiration to my dream. Forever Jung.

The first section of the book is titled “Simplicity,” which seems to be a thing that I need more of -- in my soul, if not in my life in the external environment. I have simplified my daily actions to a great degree, but my inner life has remained overly complicated. I have suffered great losses over the past two years. Right at the time of each of these crises there is much pain to be dealt with. But each event also entails many necessary activities, the very busyness of which is a firewall against the onset of despair. Only when the last crisis is past and is not immediately followed up by another can each loss be felt in its fullness, and the real pain begin. As I write this today, I think I am as close to despair as I have ever been in this life.  Therefore, simplicity:

Jesus:

Martha, Martha, you are busy and bothered about many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her. ~ Luke 10:41

Lao Tzu:

If you keep your mouth shut

and guard the senses

life is free of toil.

Open your mouth

always be busy and life is beyond hope. ~ Tao Te Ching 52

Jesus:

Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ~ Matthew 18:3

Lao Tzu:

Being the stream of the universe,

ever true and unswerving,

become as a little child once more. ~ Tao Te Ching 28

Jesus:

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God. ~ Matthew 5:8

Lao Tzu:

Reveal your simple self,

embrace your original nature. ~ Tao Te Ching 19

This seems as good a place as any to stop. This, too, could become too busy. To quench despair, let go of the circumstances causing the pain--embrace your original nature--become as a little child once more: trusting.

Jesus:

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. ~ Matthew 6:8

Lao Tzu:

The Tao of heaven does not ask,

yet is supplied with all its needs. ~ Tao Te Ching 73

Readings: The Dao of Dick

In this previous post, I offered some commentary on a book of recently discovered ancient Taoist (or, as this translator would have it, “Daoist”) scriptures. This morning, in reading the last few pages of the book, I came across the following bit of ancient Chinese wisdom, which seems to warn of certain very specific dangers to which our nation has recently fallen victim.

Here, the Emperor is being counseled by his resident Sage, Yi Yin, on the first of “four crimes of the ruler”:

[The Emperor said], “What are the four crimes of the ruler?”

Yi Yin replied, “The lord who bestows his monopoly of power on another is one who has lost the Dao. As a result, he is acquired by others, it is not that he is the one who acquires others. He is a ‘state’ servant, it is not that he is the one who makes use of others, but he is used by others. For this reason, the minister is able to arrogate authority ahead of the ruler, and uses the ruler’s country, and thus is a minister who controls his ruler. It is for this reason the fault lies with the ruler for the case in which the lord bestows his monopoly of power on another and loses control of the government. …

The Emperor said, “Alas! How dangerous that he obtains the ruler’s abilities! “

That last line (can it refer to anyone other than Big Dick Cheney?) could appropriately be carved into the lintel over the entrance of the G. Dubya Bush Presidential Library.

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Readings: Natural Tao

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I have been reading the book Five lost Classics: Tao, Huang-Lao and Yin-Yang in Han China; translated, with an Introduction and Commentary, by Robin D. S. Yates. It is an interesting study based on a cache of 2000-year-old Chinese philosophical-religious writings found in 1973.

I have also, elsewhere, become involved in an argument against the Aristotelian concept of ‘Natural Law,” as imported into Christianity, primarily via Thomism. I therefore took special interest in the following passages, found on pp. 22-23 of the volume cited above:

The Dao produces law. Law is what draws the line between gain and loss, and makes clear the curved and the straight. He who grasps the Dao, therefore, produces law and does not venture to oppose it. …is able to draw himself with the line, only then may he be not confused when he sees and knows the world. [from Dao and the Law]

R.P. Peerenboom (1993) writes that this passage contradicts Joseph Needham’s (1956) assertion, now well-accepted in the West, that China produced no theory of natural law (law derived from the divine or the processes of nature) and that for the Chinese, law was always contingent upon the whims and fancies of human lawgivers, most particularly the Chinese emperors.

A bit further down the page we read that Peerenboom’s assessment of the relationship between the ruler and the Tao (or Dao) entails that “the ruler is a kind of conduit for the Dao in practice; by legislating, he accords with the natural, normative order.”

In another of the treatises dealt with in this book (Canon Law, “Assessments”) is found the following:

Tao [Dao] is the beginning of the myriad things, the standard of right and wrong. That being so, the intelligent ruler, by holding to the beginning, knows the source of everything, and, by keeping to the standard, knows the origin of good and evil. Therefore, by virtue of resting empty and reposed, he waits for the course of nature to enforce itself so that all names will be defined of themselves and all affairs will be settled of themselves. Empty, he knows the essence of fullness; reposed, he becomes the corrector of motion. Who utters a word creates himself a name; who has an affair creates himself a form. Compare forms and names and see if they are identical. Then the ruler will find nothing to worry about as everything is reduced to its reality.

This “resting empty and reposed” seems to me to be very different from the proactive pursuit of ‘natural law’ through the tireless exercise of painstaking logical discourse and calculation which characterizes the Aristotelian-Thomistic method.

But I could be wrong.
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Quote du Jour: One Is the Only-est Number

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Keeping in mind the Simone Weil quotation in the sidebar concerning "Oneness," consider also:

Being the One constantly, it was nothing more.
[...]
So small, it could bring smallness to completion;
So large, it could bring largeness of completion.
xx~ Dao Yuan (Dao the Origin)
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