Taoism

I handed off my favorite translation of the Tao Te Ching to a friend recently and one of my favorite stories lit up like a supernova in my mind.  The story goes something like this:

Once, a Chinese lord who followed the Tao was under siege by a local lord who thought him weak.  His people were in fear.  Their friends and farmers outside the keep could not approach.  Food stores were running low.  The king gathered his people together and called out to the greatest thief in the town.  Everyone in the town knew who this person was, but it took a while for her to step forward from her home in the shadows.  The lord got on his knees and asked her calmly to aid his fair city.  It may not have been kind to her, but she is the only one who can save their keep.  Obviously, this piqued the thief's curiosity and the king told her what he had to do.  

That night, the thief was sent out alone on a dangerous mission.  The following morning, one of the most agile boys in the town climbed down the side of the fort and delivered the jade hairpin of the sieging general to the standing army.  The siege continued and the thief was sent out into the night once more.  This time, the general was waiting on the front lines to retrieve his pillow from the young delivery boy.  

A curious thing then happened.  The siege stopped.  The people asked their king why this had worked.  He told them that he was demonstrating his power.  Taking his hairpin was easy, a catburglar could do that.  Taking the pillow gently enough that it could not be sensed was a step up to the level that if my people were to come to harm from his blockade, I could take his life at any moment I pleased.  He finally reminded his subjects to reflect on who had saved them from their plights and asked them to focus on aiding the worst of them that they might not have to resort to such desperate acts.

The story sticks with me to remind me that all beings have purpose.  There is no good or bad, there is simply what is.  A thief is a result, not a criminal.  A challenge is a door, and many keys exist if you are but creative enough to find them.

Order and Chaos

I like to say often that the universe of life is a metaphor reflecting the universe of things.  As usual, this has been said before.  "As above, so below."  If you'll sit with me, dear reader, I feel this will be one of the more intense posts I'll ever write.  I could be wrong.

In today's world, we hear the words "good" and "evil" thrown around a lot.  Light and darkness, fire and water, the names change, but the concept remains the same.  Today I will be expanding on these themes by calling them instead "order" and "chaos" respectively.  The balance between these two forces, much like the good and evil stories of our culture's youth, shift the fate of the entire universe as we know it.

Chaos on the physical plane manifests as entropy, the tendency for the universe to break down.  My cod example here being the vase breaking; once broken, it is never whole again from that point in time forward.  Those aligned with this physical nature believe in impermanence and the one fate that connects us all: death.  This is not "evil", it is simply a physical reflection of the metaphor of entropy.  Scientists speak often of the end result of entropy.  If entropy is to win out, the universe itself will continue to expand until everything is ripped apart.  According to this theory, as matter spreads, gravity will not be able to overcome this emptiness and universal temperatures will drop.  Eventually, all matter in the universe will exist only in black holes, but entropy will eventually break those down too, for her immeasurable depths envelop all.  At some point further than any of us can fathom, all matter will eventually reach zero Kelvin, a metric invented to denote absolutely zero kinetic energy; no movement, no life, forever.  This is one possible death of the universe and it is the reflection of chaos reigning supreme over order.

Order on the physical plane manifests as the anti-entropic force of life.  If entropy is the breaking down, anti-entropy, now synonymous to love and order in this post, represents the tendency for life to join.  Love is an experience of two, who were once one as we all were at the Big Bang, attempting against all law in the universe to join together again.  Love is two pieces of a broken vase attempting to become whole once again.  If love were to flourish in this world, all life would begin to mix back together and form a singularity of individuals who act as one body greater than the sum of their parts.  Mankind would walk among the stars with the same chaotic grace of a body comprised of a billion cells walking through a grocery store.  This is not "good", it is simply a reflection of the metaphor of this anti-entropic mindset.  This is currently not the projection of scientists, but if order were to win out over entropy, the entire universe would eventually become one being.  "Man will impregnate the universe with knowledge and eventually matter will become mind," as someone really cool once said.  Gravity, in this case, would eventually begin to pull the entire universe even closer together.  If man can indeed master the universe, our great love will weigh on this universe with immeasurable mass and pull things closer.  Andromeda and Sol would be as connected as I am to all of you-- and eventually closer.  Closer still that this gravity would grow and grow until the entire universe would collapse in on itself and truly become one once again.  This fate is called "the Big Crunch" by physicists, and it too is a definition of how the universe might die and it is the reflection of order winning out over chaos.

Address your attention to the one common force here, gravity.  Gravity is the Tao of the universe.  Like tides, the universe as a whole flows towards order and chaos and back maintaining the life of the universe itself, for as long as neither of these forces wins, the universe will neither expand nor contract.  If either becomes too powerful, the end result is only death.  The largest cycle I can fathom (which is but a grain of sand compared to our universe) is the relationship between Sol and Serius.  These stars dance with each other in the heavens and that gravitational force astrologically creates the great Mayan cycle of awakening and falling asleep in our world.  These cycles on every level, from sub atomic particles to galactic interactions, are the very BREATH of the universe.  Breathing out into chaos is just as necessary as breathing in into order.  The Tao of gravity knows this, although gravity does not "know", it simply is.

Therefore, do not despair if you see the world through entropy-tinted glasses.  You are simply a reflection of the universe breathing and are as necessary as the brightest soul.  For that soul cannot bring breath into this world without the lack of it.  If your glasses are order-tinted, do not despair at the great battle of attempting to become one.  Revel in that struggle and commit to it because you MUST bring life and breath into this universe for it is what the lion in your heart demands.  All beings have purpose and it is only when we all do our part that the universe will live.

And death is not the end.  The Big Crunch will be followed by a Big Bang.  Life would not be able to live in that confined space for long.  As one, it would create another universe just as ours was created. The heat death of the universe would also rip apart, for the unstoppable force of entropy meeting the immovable moment of zero Kelvin would surely rip open the dimensions in a way that there are no words yet to describe.  This cycle of death and rebirth, is but one more cycle that macroscopes to every level of this universe with perfect consistency.

When I hear the words, "as above, so below", I picture a human awakening.  A state of enlightenment is reached wherein balance simply becomes.  This human's spirit becomes aligned and as above, so too their body rights itself into a state of perfect being.  As above, so below.  I would like to end this post by taking this just one step further.  I see the entire universe as one being doing whatever the hell universes do in the land beyond our many dimensions.  All of us, all of THIS STUFF, is but a metaphor for what lies above.  Take some time to reflect on those words.  As above, so below.  The universe is breathing.  Listen to that breath, dear reader, and you will know fear no more.