It's the Tao, Dude!

Sunday evening, in a course I'm taking, we were discussing the Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu (abt.551-479 BCE) and we were presented with this portion of his teaching:

21.
The Master keeps her mind
always at one with the Tao;
that is what gives her her radiance.

The Tao is ungraspable.
How can her mind be at one with it?
Because she doesn't cling to ideas.

The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it.

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

We were asked to reflect on this and come up with what we think it means, or what it means to us. Most in the group found it confusing and "ungraspable" in and of itself, but I must be odd, because this was so easy, so clear to me. This radiance in the presence of the ungraspable is exactly what I feel when I look at those I love, and when I go to my church...the beach. Here's a somewhat feeble attempt of mine to put this into words from this blog posted August 6, 2008:

"...And always, there's the island, the sea and the sky; constant yet ever-changing in the light. It's a haven of peace, truly. To be surrounded by such soul-opening beauty is wonderfully healing and inspires a sense of peace and contentment. There are normal stresses of life here, certainly, but I've never felt them melt away with quite the same evaporative ease as they do here. All it takes is a sunset, a rainbow, the scent of flowers on the air, a view from on high, a walk on the beach. And I can see the same reaction on other faces, too. Absorbing such natural loveliness visibly changes people; muscles relax, eyes blink slowly, soft smiles warm into being from the inside and light people up like tiki torches...."

Connection with natural wonder, the unfathomable, produces a radiance from within. To me, it's a manifestation of love; think how the face lights up when the heart sees someone it loves. It's not necessary to understand it in order to feel it, to be part of it. The very fact that it is ungraspable makes it all the more wondrous. To me, that's the Tao.

At which point another participant added that he'd once heard Lao-tzu referred to as "the original surfer dude". Makes sense to me. :)

Aloha pumehana...