Where Opposites Attract: Or on the Point of Opposites
The way is not found in words, goes an old Taoist parable. The way is where the words point. And one can be deceived by words just as the cat has deceived itself as it looks to the master’s raised finger, as if the intent the master had in mind were, in fact, the gesture itself. But unlike the cat, the dog is a fairer student of the ways of humans. For the dog, the raised finger is a clue. The dog knows if it follows the direction of the raised finger it will find what the finger intends. Like the treat the master intends by his raised finger, so too is the way not of words themselves but where they point.
Like the good student, the dog will see a layer of intent that the cat cannot. But unlike the dog, the cat grasps a step divergent from that of the dog’s. Here there is also an intent, an intent that is implicit in one’s being.
Lao Tzu tells us “he who talks doesn’t know / he who knows doesn’t talk,” which seems a paradox that might well intend nothing at all. And indeed, much like the point of a vase is its emptiness, the point of the paradox is also not what it says explicitly with words but what it does not, or even cannot. And might there be a manner of understanding the world that cannot be propositionally grasped in much the same way that one cannot grasp the point of the vase without also holding the hardened ceramic?
As we look upon the present, how does one define the present? A strange question. But look for a moment. You see, as you grasp a moment in your mind’s eye, you will simultaneously see that that very moment that you have grasped hold of is just then not the moment itself but only a recollection of it. If we let go of this grasping at moments we see that we have been grasping with a desire to hold on to what cannot be held on to¹, as if there were some propositional manner in which to encapsulate the present only to find that any proposition we make about the present is instantaneously a proposition concerning the past. Though propositions often reveal great insight about ourselves and our place in the world, how quickly do those insights loose there validity as they drift away from their origin in that now extinguished present?
In the same way, to spend one’s life reading the works of the great masters is to misunderstand what it is they had been trying to convey to us. We do not read merely for the sake of reading, per se, though enjoyable and immensely liberating we may take it to be, in and of itself. But in this way, it may also be the case that we have preoccupied ourselves with mere reading.
It is quite fascinating, as a matter of fact, how many have dedicated their lives to the studying of the artists and literary figures of the ages only to live lives so completely devoid of consequence and passion, much like the main character of John Williams’ novel Stoner. Is this not the very life their insight had been intending to persuade us against?²
As the psychoanalyst and philosopher Otto Rank has said: “Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death.” To live is to perceive and engage with the process of life: to look to the moon and know that someday it too will no longer glow in the night sky is to know that life cannot be held on to. It must be lived just as it is, whether we agree to its forward momentum or not.
Though we can live in our delusions about our own finitude in the safe repetition of routine, custom and habit, to engage fully with life is to be aware that it runs out, that our own demise has been born with us. And so we live our lives out in habit and delusion and the safety we feel with feeling just as bereft of passion as a stone, and, nevertheless, our life is running out, but at least the pain of being numb is reliable and familiar. At least, in this way, we will never succumb to the risks that passion entreats us to.
Though wise in its own way the dog may be, we cannot live our lives at the master’s side, which is to say that the master cannot live our lives for us. And so here we see the wisdom of the cat. For ultimately the greatest insight of all is gaining one’s personal freedom and autonomy, to shed allegiance to any master and to choose a path that most closely fits the most central focus of one’s character, regardless of whether or not that path will disappoint. For a master who will not abide disappointment is no master at all, but a tyrant.³
For the cat, living well is to live in whatever manner one can with the tools one has. As Sartre has said, we are not responsible for the facts of our lives, but we are responsible for what we do with them. Though admirable in its own right, to live as the cat will leave much unconsidered about how one might take a more complete responsibility for leading a meaningful life. To base one’s intuitions on one’s unexamined and unconsidered habits and propensities will also leave one in the dark about what might have otherwise been had they only known a layer further outside themselves.
The dog will never find in itself the capacity to strike out on its own, that is to become its own master. Though the cat seems to possess a lesser intelligence than the dog, its relative “slowness” might be an indication of the difficulty of the task the cat has put before itself.
Though the great distinction of human insight, as far as this essay is concerned, is that it possesses both the capacities of the dog and the cat. And thus, our task is differentiating between when one form of wisdom will yield greater results than the other, and that neither can occupy our minds entirely.
There is a point as the student matures in which it is to the student’s benefit to no longer be persuaded so readily by the master. Indeed, to only ever look where the master points and to never rely on one’s own intuitions as a guide, the student will miss their opportunity at becoming a master onto themselves.
In the end, the Tao is not found in the Tao Te Ching. The Tao is only a pointing to life itself. For what is the Tao but a placeholder for us to grasp more fully life itself as it really is.
Footnotes:
- which is to say that we cannot hold onto what we cannot hold on it much like we cannot hold on to the emptiness of the vase without holding onto the hardened ceramic itself.
- It is true that the character Stoner was very passionate about his intellectual pursuits, but what’s there any real passion or consequence anywhere else in his life? I am inclined to see his character as a non-positive protagonist. Not an anti-hero, but a non-hero.
- An interesting aside to consider is that isn’t it in this way also true that freedom is itself composed of a kind of emptiness much like our previously mentioned vase and its enjoined paradox?
