Verse Seven: Heaven and earth forever...

A paradoxical verse. Heaven and earth last forever because they are unborn so ever living. The sage (not to be confused with the meddling intellectual) stays behind so he is ahead. The last shall be first? "He is detached, thus at one with all." Make me one with everything, eh? The Tao as mind-controlling religion instead of as possibility-enhancing philosophy.

I ran this morning among the twig and branch and downed-tree lined streets thinking of endlessness. Of things that last forever and don't particularly care what kind of a mood you are in on any given day. I thought about platitudes that tell happiness is most effectively found contemplating what you have and not whining about what you don't have. I thought about letting go of everything in order to claim ownership of everything.

Oh the big things. Not the anxiety over next week's in-class performances. Not the worry about saving enough for college. Not the how am I going to keep myself fed all day long. Or what I am going to wear, or knit next. Heaven and earth could not care less, and perhaps I shouldn't either.

If I were detached from all, I wouldn't get so bent out of shape when I see things being done wrong. I know, wrong is in the eye of the beholder.

And I wouldn't, but then I wouldn't knit anything next, or plan another long race, or finish my degree, or would I?

I had hoped today's verse was the one about high winds not lasting all morning, but instead I get ever-living things that don't get born and so last forever.

The sky was light early this morning, the winds abated, and the air relatively warm. I ought to make myself more heaven and earth like, detached and not caring about the particulars of any given moment. That strikes me as somewhat of a loss. Not entirely, but missing out on something good. "Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment." Not just selflessness, but selfless action.

Running is a selfish action. Maybe I'll go give blood next week.

Verse Six: So this is where it all started...

Five short lines to v6, but it's where it all started. It has taken me three running days to get a grip on v6, not only because the verse is dense, but because I am, and because I have had a lot going on around here.

V6 is about Mother Nature. I hadn't pegged Taoism for being a a goddess-worship religion, but here it is. The Primal Mother whose "gateway" is the root of heaven and earth. I guess roots grow from somewhere, no? We are still missing an explanation of the start to the start.

But maybe we can start the earth here? Human experience? I was about to write "human misery," but thought the better of it. I have some long hills to climb over the next several days. Thinking positive, speaking positive. Funny how that becomes an effort.

So which gateway are we talking about? The obvious gateway? Where Harold tries to stick his head in the wooden sculpture in Maud's railroad car? Of course that's always been mysterious and powerful, but I would have thought a tad too obvious or something.

Maybe I'm on to something thinking about the starts of things. Everything comes from somewhere. A thought, a seed, an accident, a decision, an accidental decision...

V6 ends with "Use it; it will never fail." Which puts me in mind of putting one's faith in Jesus, or God, or something. Yogis tell you to trust your breathing. Lao-Tsu says to use the "valley spirit."

It's hard to get excited about running up a staircase of hills when one's head is in the philosophy like this. Sometimes it is hard to even notice running up a staircase of hills, even in what by all measures should be a most unpleasant 40 degrees and raining, just before the sun and wind come up.

This edition of The Tao te Ching has photos, I think I've mentioned. Humans are in about two of the photos, only a hand and a foot. A couple photos of human-made structures and things. Lots of trees, leaves, landscapes, birds surprisingly. With the book in my head, before dawn, running like a caveman, I do get lost in a timeless soup. When I get home all kinds of things fall on my head that need attention in the very present moment. Perhaps fewer people would hate running if they knew that this kind of peace was the payoff. I can step back and see that my physical experience and reactions are at best counterintuitive, and in the most honest light, probably delusional. But I'm not the only running maniac out there. I'm not even the most egregious offender (thought I understand it is symptomatic of a deeper ill to wish that I had more time to run more than I already do).

I didn't set out today to articulate why my running is cheaper than therapy, but this is a nice revelation. I certainly didn't think that contemplating the primal mother's gateway would get me here, either.

Verse Five: buncha dummies

Heaven and earth think things are stupid. Heaven and earth could not care less about the Hope Diamond or Doodlejump or Vibram FiveFingers or Hostess Twinkies. Or Evan Lysacek's gold medal.

Well, that's not true. Heaven, or the skies, might not, but the earth coughs up the compounds to manufacture the plastics and the earth receives the toxic byproducts therefrom. The skies suffer the indignities of human and animal emissions. Maybe the things themselves are "dummies" as v5 indicates. The next line says that the wise think of the people as dummies, too. Like ventriloquist dummies? Are the wise the people who have power? Are they ruthless in considering us proletarians dummies? Are we dummies? I suspect the ruling class, the owning class, the dummy class, the powerful, the intellectuals, etc are all dummies in ways large and small. And Heaven and Earth, the Tao that cannot be named, doesn't care.

There's a line later about a goose not intending to cast its reflection on the surface of the lake below. That line is an old friend. In this verse, "more words count less," another old friend. "Methinks thou protesteth too much?" Zooming out to a perspective that includes both heaven and earth, sky atmosphere and ground, this verse prompts me to take a big-picture look. The shape shifts, but the sky does not fall, the ground usually does not rise. Each serves its purpose, lives out its life measured not in years but in eons (suffering our indifferent fouling in pursuit of transient pleasures)...

So into this bigness, this seeming endlessness, v5 ends with "Hold fast to the center." The center of what? The amorphous Tao? The Heaven and Earth or the wise who all ruthlessly consider me the people a big dummy? So I run my hour, feeling my strained hamstring from building a snowfort and enjoying the light flurries that escort me back up the hill home.

Verse Four...knots and dust and sharpness

The Tao is...

- An empty vessel used but never filled. The streets. I use them, but I don't use them up. Ok, that scans.

- Unfathomable source of ten thousand things veers towards the religious, creationist, I'm not going there. And ten thousand? That must be such an outdated number. I mean, we're up over 150K iPhone apps alone! 3500 years ago there must have been fewer things.

- Hidden deep but ever present is religion again. I suspect I would have had a very short medieval life, for all my potential heresy and je refuse.

- The forefather of emperors for some reason catches the edge of the image of me waking up before my alarms. My emperors. I do what they tell me to when I tell them to tell me? I woke up before my emperors this morning. Does that make me the Tao?

- Hidden deep but ever present is in me, and I am in it.

The Tao is asked to blunt sharpness, soften glare, untangle knots (come meet my knitting bag). These were bad things 3500 years ago? I shouldn't leave off merge with dust. Is running extending my life or shortening it? I'm hopeful that running is extending my functioning life, whether or not I get extra years because of it.

Part of what is so compelling about this writing running thinking assignment is that it unfolds over time. I like that about yoga, too. This hurts because I don't have time to write carefully - or think carefully. Yoga is a meaningful struggle between what I think I feel and what I am actually physically capable of. Instygrat. Instant gratification fills the rest of my life. Refreshing to take some time with at least a few areas of my life.

Verse Three part two

When we last left verse three we were not treating anything as special so that no one's feelings would be hurt and people wouldn't be driven to do bad things (ok, reminding myself, this is morality six hundred years before the new testament).

The second half of v3 lets more of that classic Confucianism hang out. Control, people, control. Rulers rule by keeping temptations to a minimum and making sure people have full bellies.

Well, now haven't we got that all out of whack? Fat and happy? We've got the full bellies and then some. But how much moral behavior can we ascribe to wise leadership? How much happiness?

"weakening ambitions and strengthening bones"? Fat and happy? This keeps the powerful in power. Overthrow of illegitimately powerful has come from the hungry (and the not so), the ones unafraid to sing together in direct confrontation of authority. Singing has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with common cause? Unity? A desire to make noise, when all else fails? We're not talking American Idol singing, either. I'm sure this old text will give me the opportunity to rant about that before all is through.

But we're not done yet. "If people lack knowledge and desire, then intellectuals will not try to interfere."

Interfere. With what? With the powerful rulers ruling? What if the powerful are the intellectu...I couldn't physically finish typing that question. Oops. Interfere. Meddle. Try to make things make sense. Improve things? Dislodge the powerful? Keep 'em fat, stupid and happy, then. Don't give them any reason to think.

And the very last line of Verse Three rings loud and clear and true and stupid. "If nothing is done, then all will be well." That seems to be the official elected official philosophy of the moment. Making sure nothing gets done. All will be well for the six rich guys in the country. The rest of us?

I never said I was any kind of Taoist, much less an orthodox one.

Sometimes I run harder because it feels good. Sometimes I run harder because I am pissed off.

Three: The Olympics are a Bad Idea

Verse Three. Six lines. Worth at least two days worth of pondering. Human achievement plus politics, how could those both possibly fit in a weekday morning run?

Part one: The Olympics are a bad idea. Shiny anythings are a bad idea because they will inspire the worst in our fellow people. Jealousy, stealing, and worst of all confusion? Just because there are shiny things out there in limited quantity so that not everyone can have one of everything? What happened to the let go of everything to have all of everything people...I must have my eastern philosophies scrambled.

"Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling." So we should take down the medals stands. Never race another marathon? Never hand out another National Book Award? Sure, I may not get where some of these sports came from - who on earth dreamed up bobsledding? And I may have no idea how some kid figures out that they are born for biathlon, but lo every four years a whole bunch of 'em get together from all over the world and aim at a target the size of a silver dollar after a series of full-out nordic ski sprints. And one of them wins! Imagine that. And the Olympics only covers the sports I know about...Women do ski jump, by the way. I can only imagine that there are thousands of athletic-competitive pursuits that don't get anywhere near a world stage. Does that mean the practitioner should give it up? Go mainstream? Abandon her dreams? Eat the chess board?

I have a theory that at least some marathoners are born that way. Genetically supposed to run two hours of 5 minute miles. The rest of us do as well as we can with the genetics we've got. So we're supposed to tell the genetic (or determined) chess player, runner, author, painter, musician, to give up being excellent? To give up expression of their unique gifts so that someone else doesn't feel bad for not having those particular gifts? Tell your neighbor not to buy that fancy car to prevent someone else with less impulse control from stealing it? I know, this is kind of an extreme ramble.

But, two things. One, I know kids sports have taken some of the scoring out. And this whole subject brings to mind one of my favorite short stories. In "Harrison Bergeron," Kurt Vonnegut created this world, in which ballet dancers were assigned random weights attached to their bodies to prevent gracefulness; thinkers were assigned random-noise-emitting headphones to prevent thinkiness, the beautiful were marred, everyone was compromised according to his or her gifts. The story does not have a happy ending.

Some are born to sing. To write. To lawyer. To govern (see Verse Three, part two, either tomorrow or Wednesday). To run. To make cakes. To farm. To fly headlong down a slope stopping to perform aerial gymnastics on skis for hours at time, years in a row, culminating in a gold medal and a desire to have a flavor of ice cream named after. Some know from the very beginning what is inside them. Others, blessed with a talent for working hard, wander and contribute where they can, outside of mainstream competition but making a life and finding such rewards as make sense.

Verse Two

is about yin and yang. Beauty recognizable against a backdrop of not-beauty. Good is only recognizable because we have examples of not-good against which to compare.

So I spent the morning run thinking of my own antithetical pairings. Running/resting. Eating - oh, wait, I'm never not eating. Hungry/sated (see previous). Paying attention/tuning out. Anxious/... What comes as a backdrop against which anxiety stands out in defined relief? That one I don't get.

Read a book called "Saving Sammy" where the single mother of three describes an uncharacteristic failure of executive function after nearly 18 months of dealing with a severely mentally ill child. Missed meetings, forgotten details. She ascribed it to a wearing out over time, of being worn down by her stressors to the point where she could no longer cope with the higher-order requirements of her professional life. That was so not the main point of the book, but it resonated. The story is about her then 12 year old middle son who developed overnight OCD and Tourrette's Syndrome and it took nearly a year and a half and antibiotic treatment for mysterious strep to bring him back to normal.

"The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease." And I have nothing to do with it. Well, it's not my fault. Ok, I didn't cause it. It's not my fault the ten thousand things go humming along wherever they want. I would say I'm a victim of the ten thousand things, but that's not exactly right. I watch them, I partake of some of them. Maybe I might spin one as it goes by just for effect. Ok, so I like shiny toys. But seriously, how much trouble is one person in the span of history actually capable of getting into?

Lao Tsu is described in the book's introduction as "an older contemporary of Confucius." Lao Tsu lived in the 6th century bce, or roughly 600 + 2010 = 2610 years ago, give or take. That's a lot of lives who have at one point been in being, or are still in being. That's a lot of ten thousand things doing their things. How much of the blame could realistically be pinned on me?

Oh, the antithesis of anxiety? I'm not a total idiot. If I were in class I'd have to play the guessing game, though, as if my professor were hiding the ball and I did not want to commit to some stupid answer. Peace? Calmness? Stillness? Confidence? The twelve steps about letting go and letting god? (aside: googling "Alcoholics Anonymous" to find the twelve steps was the first search in a long time that came up with the content site first and not wikipedia). I can't answer the opposite of anxiety from experience right now, and I'm wobbly on answering from an intellectual perspective.

I have been in school for a long time. I still hang onto stressors and adaptations I needed to get me through earlier rounds of this process, and I've been really slow on the uptake to adapt to the stressors in front of me. Something to think about, no?

Verse One

A whole bunch of ideas coalesced yesterday, after another marginally successful day of managing my attention span.

During the run, I hit on the idea that I would have thought that an early morning hour of non-differentiated activity would set me up for the rest of the day with a strengthened ability to pay attention to tasks. Perhaps yesterday was a different day because of the predicted and fickle snowstorm that never materialized, and as the day progressed my out-of-the-house activities kept getting cancelled which made the critical path of attentional tasks hard to follow, but on the other hand, I've been at this for months now with no appreciable gains in attentional capability. I've even added yoga to the mix, without nearly as much success as I would have hoped.

I have the discipline to run. Why can't I do what's on my desk?

At an early age, and I don't even remember how, but in the middle of the country, probably while still in high school, I met up with a copy of the "Tao Te Ching," the Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation. At the time I encountered it, I was formless and feeling in desperate need of shoring up against the demands of growing up, colored by managing chronic pain and some other issues. Life, the book reminded me, is a lot bigger than my personal struggles. There have been lives longer than I can imagine, there are more lives out there than I could ever count, and lives will go on in being despite how I feel at any given moment. I do not describe myself as religious, or spiritual, but maybe these learnings could be characterized as something like that, though I would defer. I found affirmation in the reminder that although my eyes are the ones I see with, I don't see everything that has ever happened or is happening or will happen even in my own life, less so the life of the world. I was young. I needed perspective.

So now I have it open again. Perhaps finishing the career-changing degree has me feeling young redux.

There are 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching, of various lengths. I have at least that many running days until I graduate, more or less, and take the bar exam in July. On a typical winter day, it takes me 10 minutes from waking up to the first running step. Surely I can spare an extra minute to flash over a page of a sparsely written (and beautifully designed) Very Old Book. And if it gives me something to think about, write about, and self-medicate with, then that would be a very productive minute, no? Perhaps not every run will meditate on a whole verse. Perhaps not every run will meditate on any verse at all. I'm grabbing on to this for structure. Which is probably a very Ironic thing to do with this particular book. And my life is nothing if not ironic, so this gives me no pause whatsoever.

Verse One always puts in my head the opening bars of Led Zeppelin's "In the Evening." The song starts with a swirl of sound, formless but not aggressively so, and then emerges as a forge-ahead rocker. Thinking about Verse One, the nameless and the named, the beginnings of heaven and earth and the source of the ten-thousand things I think about attachments. I edited one very scrambled-eggs metaphysical young yoga instructor's hour plus lecture/workout by overdubbing him in my head with the message that everything is impermanent and only takes on the meaning we attach. Similar message to something I took away from reading "Full Catastrophe Living" by Jon Kabat-Zinn, when I was working to manage chronic pain. Notice, move on. Yeah, it hurts. No it's not an infinite life-sucking bowl of howl. Move on. Still shopping for a yoga instructor I don't have to overdub.

It's all a bigger mystery than I will ever be. Therein I find strength.