Meditated for the first time this year yesterday. Did about fifteen minutes, and it felt like I was reading the Tao-te Ching, only more so. Calm, focused, and… well, slightly odd. Without any external stimulus, without any distractions or movement, you only have one place to go- inside. It felt much longer than fifteen minutes, and I would have done more, but I was antsy to eat something after getting home from work. Will do more meditating after this post, I think.
I was planning on meditating at work, before I opened the store. It’s dark and quiet and there are plenty of cushions, but the Olympic torch was heading through downtown, waylaying my transit plans, and making me late for work even when I left early. I tried meditating on the way over, which was still calming, and certainly made the commute go by faster, but it wasn’t the same. Harder to focus, harder to center.
I’ve started to read the Chaung-Tzu, a compilation of stories and Taoist wisdom from a man of the same name and a few other Taoist teachers. It is considered one of the central texts of Taoism, alongside the Tao-te Ching, but it is very, very different. Much like how Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is praised because of it’s timeless wisdom in the art of conflict, the Tao-te Ching is timeless in it’s easy to understand advice and observations on the human condition. If The Art of War is good for battle, then the Tao-te Ching is good for the soul.
But the Chaung-Tzu is an enitrely different kind of animal. Instead of simple allegory and common sense sayings, it relies on word games, paradoxes, and strange stories to convince the reader of the uselessness of words and definitions to work your way through the world. Better just to be and let the world in unlabeled, without expectation. To show you what I mean, here is how the Tao-te Ching begins:
As for the Way, the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way. As for names, the name that can be named is not the constant name. The nameless is the beginning of the ten thousand things. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Therefore, those constantly without desires, by this means will perceive subtlety. Those constantly with desires, by this means will see only that which they yearn for and seek.
Alright so maybe that doesn’t seem as straightforward as I thought it would, but it’s a walk in the park compared to what you find in the Chaung-Tzu:
In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K’un. The K’un is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P’eng. The back of P’eng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.
That’s how this book starts. It hasn’t drawn me in the same way to Tao-te Ching has, but it’s still good.