260829 What I learned in my studies this morning 6

Today's Meditation:

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (trans. by Jacob Needleman), One

Still one of my favorite passages in any book ever. It was the first line that gave me my natal glimpse of a world beyond wisdom: that if I am to find enlightenment, it is, it must be, my personal experience. No one can give it to me. I cannot take it from another.

No matter how deep a thought I learn from another may be, it is only a signifier, one of ten thousand names. It is not the eternal name.

The Tao is formless and formed, all things encompassed. Beyond all and within all.

The Name is the mother of ten thousand things. Naming, by it's nature, differentiates and separates, breaking things into pieces and obscuring the Tao. There is an eternal Name, but I cannot know it or learn it or read it in any book or scroll. I can discover it, but I may never see that Truth.

The Tao begins and exists through and ends all things. The Named delineates and constrains ten thousand things into their own concept and definition.

They seem to stand in opposition but there can be no opposition to the eternal Tao. It is all that is and was and will be. Challenge means nothing to the eternal Tao.

As incomplete as my grasp of the first six lines may be, it still exceeds my connection to the last six. Comments there must needs wait.

Ever desireless, one can see only mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

This appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery.