Chapter 1

CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE CHAPTERS OF THE TAO TE CHING (CRCTTC)

WestLight Snackers, YB-dong

This writing is dedicated to my brother, J.O.L.

Chapter 1

The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.

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 “The tao that can be described is not the eternal tao.”

The first stipulation in the tao te ching is somewhat reminiscent of Richard Feynman who said: If you think you understood quantum mechanics, you are mistaken.

I was once talking with my brother on a university basketball court located a ten minutes’ distance away from our home and asked him to give some opinion on the above founding principle of the tao te ching.  He simply dismissed  the statement – namely, “DO GA DO BI SANG DO”–as a meaningless idea spewed out by some ludicrous “Sina” pundit who had no idea what he was talking about.

My brother’s opinion notwithstanding, I wish to lay out some personal thoughts on the tao te ching.

To borrow from a Platonic way of thinking, the only immutable truth may be that Tao defies definition. Therefore, I can only assume that Tao is something that is ubiquitous and pervades here and there throughout the past, present and future.  As will be discussed in the ensuing chapters, tao is primarily characterized by binary opposites. It may be argued that these binary opposites may simply be of a human invention or the only actual entities – whether it be purely abstract or tangible – as polar constituents of a particular component or of the whole of Nature.

In the later chapters of the tao te ching, Lao Tzu argues that water may be the closest thing to Tao. Once I try to grab water, it would immediately slip through my fingers; the Tao is likewise ungraspable. This evasive nature of Tao is actually what I believe enables philosophy. Philosophy, once it solidifies as a dogmatic teaching and not as a means for independent thinking, would no longer be the very philosophy that works as an empowering tool for people to think out of the box. Let us suppose two UFC fighters one of whom throws a jab or power-loaded straight right hand and thereby risks himself to a counterstrike from his opponent. To initiate a strike means to attack the opponent preemptively for knockout.  However, as noted above, every strike meant to be landed on one’s opponent can be exploited as a chance for the opponent to land a counterstrike on the initiator.  Likewise, to present an argument means to unintentionally allow a potential rebuttal that would expose a flaw in the argument. Is this not the reason why Kurt Godel was hesitant to publish his later ideas (though he was primarily a mathematical logician) after the incompleteness theorem? A perfectionist that he was, he did not decide to publish anything unless he was completely certain of it.

In Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx – and Afterwards, Kim Sang Hwan notes that according to Nietzsche “truth” is like a woman. You think you have her in your possession, but do you? Rather, is it not that there is a hidden trap lurking in the woman’s apparent submission that ensnares the man? It is also noteworthy that the tao te ching emphasizes femininity over masculinity. (Which makes me think that the tao te ching was written as a form of criticism against the prevailing tide of masculinity. In that regard, it would be also interesting to imagine a world that abounds with the “feminine” qualities cherished by Lao Tzu while lacking in masculine qualities. Would we then need “Nietzschean” masculinity as an antidote to the world full of the feminine characteristics endorsed in the tao te ching?)

It is this never-ending loop that we are caught within that continues to frustrate the philosophers/scientists alike; nevertheless, at the same time, this is what precisely makes room for us to maneuver and “live on.” But what do I mean by “live on”? Suppose that there is something such as “complete identification.”  According to Jacques Derrida, there is no permanent “self-identity.”  As we posit A=A, we like to think that this concept is solid and perpetual – which concerns the realm of “Idea.” Derrida argues however that this self-identity is only an illusion and and should yield to a better concept, namely “postponement.” For example, it can be argued– however absurd this may sound – that there is a temporal delay between the time that we identify the first “A” and the second “A”   which appears on the right-hand side of the equation. (Only upon death would we cease to ask the never ending question of this continual deferral.)

I remember from one of Feynman’s books that although it seems that the earth is constantly rotating around the sun, this can be understood as the earth doing the rotation by constantly “falling” towards the sun.(This is like the constant in-and-out-and-in-and-out footwork that Frankie Edgar does as a way of baffling his opponent inside the octagon.) As another example, a pedestrian almost collapses by taking one of his feet off the ground but maintains his posture right back by immediately stepping on the ground a little farther with the same foot – which is the act of “walking.” The earth is likewise right about to fall towards the sun but deviates from the direct fall perhaps because of its momentum  whose direction is perpendicular to the radius vector– but only to be brought back in and then be let loose only so slightly that it would not completely fall straight to the sun.  The ongoing continuation of the above scenario holds the earth in rotation. 

The “A”s in the above equation are in the constant state of deferral as if the earth is in the constant state of “falling.”(Disclaimer: I am not sure if this is completely accurate because I am not certain whether this adequately represents a classical mechanic point of view of how the earth continues to orbit the sun, nor do I know specifically about Einstein’s explanation on curvature and gravity.)

For further analogical reasoning, let us discuss Russell’s paradox. Russell’s question is whether the all-encompassing set(1) –which comprises all sets each of which does not comprise itself as its member –comprises the encompassing set  itself (2)as a member.  Say that the encompassing set (1) does not comprise itself (2) as a member; then this would mean that the encompassing set (2) is also one of the sets each of which does not comprise itself as its member. This would also mean, then, that the encompassing set (2) should be included as a member in the very encompassing set (1) because, by the very definition given above, the encompassing set (1) should include itself (2). However, this would cause a contradiction because as in the underlined assumption above, we decided that the encompassing set (1) should not include itself (2). Thus, we delete the encompassing set (2) (which is named “R” in Wikipedia) from R because it was never meant to be included as a member therein.  This constantly occurs back and forth back and forth back and forth. Indeed, “The tao that can be described is not the eternal tao.”As such, the above paradox may be one example of the impossibilities of making a rigid definition that attempts to embrace totality.

In relation to the above paradox, I remember a chapter in “What we believe but cannot prove – John Brockman” which states that several philosophers claim that a creature of higher intelligence may have radically different mathematics.  To be sure, this is a different topic for discussion, but I wonder whether the above paradox can be thought any differently by any other being. The core concepts of mathematics cannot be otherwise than they are, it seems.

Let us get back to Plato. When Plato posited “Idea,” that was an assumption based on appeal to common sense. He sought to establish universal principles that existed behind the ephemeral, superficial scenes of our life. This philosophy virtually reduced everything into “thought games,” or a realm of speculative investigation. How do we know that there is a world of pure Ideas? This is merely speculation. The same goes for Lao Tzu. We are not even able to define what tao is, let alone prove its existence. However, if there are verifiable results originating from acceptance of its existence, we can claim that the tao te ching may be of some use.

However, it would be very difficult to answer the question of what the tao te ching can do in general in terms of its predicting power in comparison with natural science. Or is it simply that I am persisting in my obsessive pursuit of metaphysical truths? One thing to notice about the tao te ching is that it appears to stay out of domain of our proof.  That is, it can only be understood from an empirical point of view (or it seems that it can only be understood in hindsight – I will return to this point shortly). There is in fact very little that the tao te ching can offer in terms of its power to predict the future. What it can only teach us in the real world may be that, for example, a bubble may sometime burst in an excessively bullish market – which may be true but is simply an analogy at best.

Let us get back to the issue of the ex post nature of the tao. We cannot decide beforehand that a particular thing is the case until we see its full manifestation. I will take the example of the stock market again. During the early 2000’s or 2008, many people thought – even including eminent economists – that we might have reached a new high in the economy and would never likely fall again. I am no economist here, so my depiction of their thoughts may not be entirely accurate.  However, the point is that even when people thought there might be “free lunch” and only glorious prosperity to come, we philosophers were not able to determine decisively then that they were wrong. What if they were really correct and a new economy was achieved? Only after a humbling crash– originating from the instable nature of the subprime mortgage market –did we realize again and reaffirm that there was no such thing as free lunch. In other words, the stock market is simply being the “stock market,” or the “capitalistic” economy is still being the economy the way it is.  As of yet, there is nothing about the current economy that transcends the economy of its nature as we know it.  In other words, the interplay of yin and yang in the stock market is still unfolding therewithin, and no miracle has happened yet such that the market has become rigidly bullish in its entirety so as to be now in the necessity of having to have an “antithesis” belonging in a realm of a different dimension (e.g., the natural resources quickly run out somehow because of unbridled ceaseless growth in the stock market). In sum, we cannot presume to know a future event, and it would be an error to think that one can absolutely foresee a downturn of an event in the midst of its “upturn” simply because the tao te ching reveals a “cyclic” point of view.In this case, I believe that a more realistic approach would be to employ the idea of probability – which also has to do with today’s quantum mechanics. More specifically, with regard to the stock market example above, one can say that there is a pretty good chance that people are mistaken once again and the subprime mortgage market will undoubtedly fall (I am employing the idea of “possibility” and not a theoretical probability model in this case).

However, the above discussion also reminds me of Alan Turing’s proof that it cannot be proved whether or not a mathematical theorem can be proved based on the given axioms of the field where the theorem belongs unless someone actually proves the theorem.  Even in mathematics do we now notice the trace of the ungraspable tao.

The tao te ching is certainly interesting in that it attempts to bring stability to ruling order and even, by extension, to the human psyche (after all, the tao te ching means attainment of power through harmonizing oneself or society with the tao of the universe). However, this idea has obvious limitations. I believe herbal medicine was heavily affected by the Taoist way of thinking, and we all know that it is simply pseudoscience.  It is western medicine that rules today’s medical practices. To stay away from artificial efforts or means at all costs and depend solely on the way of the universe through some dubious practices will not likely bring any good results. A personal acquaintance of mine passed away (God bless her) because of breast cancer because she, instead of going to hospital for direct treatment, relied on alternative Chinese medicine.  We cannot somehow force or wait for the universe or tao to intervene and do things for us; this is a wishful thinking from one’s self-centered point of view. In fact, this is no different from praying to Christian God for His favor. Therefore, I reject every thought or doctrine related to the religion of “Taoism” which “misconstrues” teachings of the tao te ching.

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“The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.”

I do not know why the English translator used the word “boundary” in the above verse because it gives a wrong impression that the nameless is situated in between Heaven and Earth. In fact, the literal Chinese texts state that the nameless is the “beginning” of Heaven and Earth.

Also, regarding the second verse in the above quote, I think the translation should be: “The named is the mother of [all] creation.”

Here, the “nameless” is akin to “nothing,”

And the “named” is akin to “being.”

According to the view of the tao te ching, it is “nothingness” that generates “being.”

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“Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.”

In the preface of the 48 Laws of Power written by Robert Greene, it is stated that one striving to attain power in the court must be able to see in both directions – one to the past and the other to the future.  I discover an ironic truth in the book– namely, that one must exercise his reason if he genuinely wants to get what he wants in the midst of political conflicts. Wasn’t the ambition or greed the very driving force behind his political maneuvering? Nevertheless, he should not act impulsively out of desperation; rather, he would have to bide his time and act accordingly, planning beforehand “every permutation” of events possible.

Of course, I know that Lao Tzu’s intention regarding the quotation in the first chapter is totally different from what Greene means by curbing a compulsion to act in political competition (which will probably result in “moronic blunders”). Lao Tzu probably meant to indicate that we are blindfolded by our innate desires.  A clearheaded person would see the world much differently than a greedy person does. However, I would say that “freed from desire” is a little different from absolutely abstaining from satisfying our desires. I personally believe that emancipation from desire means that one no longer feels the compulsion to satisfy the desire, by any means to his detriment. This state of mind either involves having satisfied the desire already only to realize its vanity (as in the case of Solomon in Ecclesiastes) or having gone through personal practices to reach a certain “nirvana” such that he would no longer be able to see any worth in it.

However, I should say that the meaning of “desire” is subject to one’s interpretation. The above quote can also be interpreted as follows:

The more you seek knowledge, the more you confine yourself to the related particular subject matter. However, the less you seek to establish concrete knowledge of the particular subject matter, the more you appreciate its depth and profundity.

Simply put, when you distance yourself a little from a goal that you seek, you can gain an understanding of the target that you could not have otherwise. However, as you approach the goal closer and closer, you only observe it superficialities and not quite the core essence of it.

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Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

What are seemingly different types of understanding or knowledge actually originate from the same source. In the preceding verse, it is indicated that as you stay farther from the source, you acquire a subtler understanding of the subject matter. The closer you approach it, you only see its manifestation. However, these two types of knowledge are of equal importance because they are generated by the same source.

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Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.

The “beginning” in here actually literally means “gate” according to the Chinese text. In addition, the original texts never show the word “understanding” itself. The texts simply say “all.” In other words, it is the “gate” of “all,” or everything.

The further you dig into the source, the more mysterious it becomes and unknowable. This is what the verse means to say.