Swanson The Tao

October 10, 2018


[Outside Reading][Tao Te Ching]

What we look at but can't see
we call invisible,
What we listen to but can't hear
we call inaudible,
what we touch but can't feel
we call infinitesimal.
These three qualities
are unfathomable, collapse together
in the null set, defining
the universe.
Its heights aren't bright,
its depths aren't dark.
It keeps changing, can't
be named, becomes nothing
again.  Call it the shapeless shape,
the formless image,
indeterminable, unimaginable.
Confront it, you can't see the front.
Follow it, you can't see the rear.
Grasp the ancient way
to direct today's affairs,
Knowing the ancient beginning
is known as the heart of the way.

This excerpt from the Tao Te Ching reminds me of the sublime nature of the wilderness. Just as the wind comes and goes but is never present and is always present, the Tao, or "the way" is also like this. It's the inexplicable nature of the world that supposes something divine. Whether or not we can understand the nature of a God or supreme being, we can try to understand the nature of our own world. What we don't understand we still try to attribute meaning, even if it is not supposed to be understood. Stop trying decipher our world and let it decipher us, encounter the place without destroying it.

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