Or, let’s unleash Dustin Hoffman.

Heaven and earth are not kind;
The ten thousand things are straw dogs to them.

The Sages are not kind;
People are straw dogs to them.

Yet Heaven and Earth
And all the space between
Are like a bellows;
Empty but inexhaustible,
Always producing more.

Longwinded speech is exhausting.
Better to stay centered. (trans. Addiss/Lombardo)

Straw Dogs is, of course, a really disturbing Peckinpah film. If you had that mental reaction, you might be the fabulous languagehat, who seems to have investigated matters.

It can be hard to accept that we are at the mercy of forces we don’t really understand. Many religions offer a path that distills these forces into a synthetic entity that can be the object of praise, blame, fear or awe. Science offers explanations for troubling forces or events, which are often dazzling but frequently offer little comfort. It does seem like we stumble along the path of the straw dog. Endowed with the sense of our own significance that allows to live as individuals, we strain against the immensity of the world.

I had a problem for the longest time thinking about absolute death. I think my obsession with science fiction and other worlds as a kid really made a demarcation in my mind between what is solid and what is fantasy, and some kind of afterlife always fell on the latter side for me. So I was sort of a passive atheist, and all I could think about when I considered death was the total absence of thought. Not decay or physical demise, but the complete cessation of self. This terrified me to the point where the thought would come into my head unbidden on occasion and keep me awake at night.

At some point in the past few years this fear just disappeared from my life. Maybe it’s part of getting older, although I think the existence of midlife crisis sports cars suggests otherwise. Maybe I can give at least a little credit, though, to the Tao. Trusting yourself to find peace through emptiness, trusting the unstoppable motion of the invisible world even though you know it doesn’t care for you… seeing the beauty in things without regard to their personal utility. There is a small comfort in watching life without the benefit of an easy illusion, but it is a real comfort.

Thinking of the bellows of heaven and earth, I suddenly had Heraclitus pop into my head.

This world-order, the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.

If the world is fire, then maybe I’m an ember briefly flared by the bellow’s breath. I’m okay with that.

The subtitle in the previous post refers to a Bob Dylan song. My head actually plucked it out of the Andrew Bird cover, which is so good that I’ll share it below.

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I recently watched a documentary called Lake of Fire, which is about abortion. It’s an absolutely brutal movie, hard to watch regardless of your beliefs. Abortion can be spoken of clinically, religiously, politically, even hatefully. It fills me with a great sorrow, though, and a respect for the women that will have to face the choice in a way I never will.

Or, you may not see me tomorrow.

The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.

Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.

Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.
Whose child? born
before the gods. (trans. Le Guin)

I hesitate to post quotes from the Le Guin, even though I like it, because it’s very interpretive. I think she took the right approach, given that she is not an expert on the Chinese language but is instead a really excellent writer in English. But it bears mentioning.

Here, though, instead of trying to explain Le Guin just seems to exalt in the mystery. “Good luck untangling this one!”

The second stanza lists three simple things undergoing entropy, then suggests finding the Way in the detritus of this entropy. Other translations make a stronger suggestion that the way is performing these acts, and Feng-English instead transforms it to the imperative.

If entropy results in final destruction, then the destruction is of something named. A knife, a knot, a day of sun. The dust remains; the material was used, but not used up, and is now something less certain. The Way that encompasses this naming and un-naming is not seen. Quiet, it is persistent and inexorable. We must participate, though we cannot really choose how. Filling ourselves and emptying ourselves, we can see it and the Names of the things it touches.

Where does the Way come from? Not even Lao Tzu wants to go there.