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.