At the Gate

Where the mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.
Lao Tzu (as translated by J. Legge; 1891)

So what did you think of Verse One?  Did it touch you or did you find yourself saying: "WTF(front door)?

Hmm!  I don't know if there is a right or wrong way to make sense of the Tao conceptually.  I just read it, feel it, then I jot down what I believe each line to mean right off the top of my head.  I do not want to over think it...because when we do that we lose the way.

This first Verse , I believe, is talking about the spiritual path which is the way or the Tao Itself.

Stanza One

It states in the opening line that this 'path' is not necessarily a physical path that one can trod upon.  Unlike things of the physical world it is eternal and unchanging. What is eternal and unchanging?: spirit, essence, the non physical.

It is also not something that you can reduce to a label, a thought or a 'name' because again  it is eternal and unchanging.  The Tao is not something we can truly understand and experience  with our bodies and minds.

Stanza Two

In the second stanza Lao Tzu goes on to say (according to this translation) the Tao takes us between the physical and non physical realms.  Having no name it goes beyond what is created as form to being the  Creator (Originator) of form and formless (heaven and earth).  We can look at Tao then  as God, Life, The Field etc. The Tao is spiritual and divine. It is non physical.

Then Lao Tzu goes on to say when It  has a name...when we give it a name ( and therefore understand it conceptually with the  mind) the Tao becomes or is the mother of all things....creator of form and form itself. It is earthly. It is physical.

Stanza Three

The third stanza is speaking to where we, the seeker, must be if we want to truly understand the Tao. We need to be without desire.  Without craving and superficial seeking.  Sounds a bit like the Buddhist ideology, doesn't it? We cannot expect to find it if we want it with the limitations of our human mind or ego .  It is too deep for that.  And if we seek it from there we will never hear it.

If we remain with desire, with ego craving... we will only ever catch glimpses of its outer fringes at best.  We will never get beyond that superficial understanding of it.  We will never experience it or know it completely.

Stanza Four

In the forth stanza where  Lao Tzu's words are  translated as under these two aspects, I assume the two aspects to be the physical and non physical aspects of the Tao, the nameable and the nameless. Possibly  meaning that there is no duality...no two...just one when he says it remains the same. It is only when development takes place that It receives different names or distinctions.  I am not sure if 'development' here refers to worldly development, ego development, development of the mind or something else?

Together we call them the mystery.  So regardless if wed ivied them with our minds and no matter what we call them... they are one  mystery.  The Tao is a mystery...the world of form and formless is a mystery.  Life is a mystery. Of course, a mystery is something that is challenging to figure out, to know and understand with the mind.

Where is this mystery the deepest? Where is there less knowing with the conceptual mind? It is at the gate...right at the gate that leads us inward.  We might think that the closer we get to understanding something,  the less mystery there would be but Lao Tzu is saying it is deepest...there is more mystery, less knowledge right at the gate. Again...maybe conceptual knowledge is not needed to understand the Tao.  It is beyond what we can understand with our limited human minds.

I think of this quote from Einstein:

"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books . It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranges and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations." - Albert Einstein(Goodreads)

What lay beyond this gate?  The subtle (the ordinary, the plain, the easily bypassed) as well as the wonderful( the extraordinary, the amazing, all that causes wonder and awe.) So we get right up to the gate of experiencing Life and it is there where the mystery of Life is deepest.  Could this mean that the mystery is greater in that space  between 'thinking about life' and experiencing it? 

I really got hung up on that 'and' in this translation.  When we read  the subtle and wonderful we are not making distinctions between them.  We include all Life behind the gate of our understanding. But what if Lao Tzu actually meant 'between'...what if he was referring to the  gate between the subtle and the wonderful...that would change the whole context of this stanza wouldn't it? Oh...oh thinking too much lol.

So in a nutshell...what message do we carry away from this Verse? It doesn't matter if we name it or don't name it; think of it as physical or non physical or if we understand it or not with our conceptual minds (well we will only be able to understand it superficially that way)...the Tao which is the way, the Life force within us, the truth, the  true spiritual path will always be the Tao...eternal and unchanging...a mystery.

Well that is how I see it.  :)

All is well.

References

Goodreads: http://www.alberteinsteinsite.com/quotes/einsteinquotes.html

J. Legge(Translator) (1891) Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. From the Sacred Books of the East, volume 39. Retrieved from https://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm