Tao Te Ching: Chapter 1 Commentary

This is part of a series examining the Tao Te Ching from a Christ-centered, LDS perspective.

Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching contains incredible beauty and depth--especially considering it is only nine lines long. Read it slowly: 

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

God led me to this as I was floundering in the depths of what I call my "gender crisis." It's not that I felt transgender or something; I was just unhappy about the role of women and that I was doomed, as I felt at the time, to the feminine role. I hated femininity, and to be honest, I didn't really understand it, except that I felt it was inferior to masculinity. While I was struggling with the concept of gender and gender roles, that was when I started feeling the Holy Ghost nudge me to the text of the Tao Te Ching.

Temple Sealing

Image here.

I love this first chapter because it gets to the root of the Gospel. Or rather, what we know to be the root of the Gospel thanks to modern prophets and the temple. According to this chapter, the unity of masculine and feminine essences--the nameless and the named; the origin of Heaven and Earth and the mother of all living--is the "mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders." That's Tao Te Ching speak for the Mormon term "eternal marriage." In the temple you have the opportunity to be sealed to your spouse for time and all eternity, creating a unity of both masculine and feminine essences that holds the key to all creation.

I love how it explains that the "two emerge together but differ in name," before explaining that their "unity is said to be a mystery/the mystery of mysteries, door to all wonders." This nine-line chapter can be interpreted so easily as a creation text, referring to God or to Adam and Eve. 

Fascinatingly, as Adam and Eve, yang and yin, or masculine and feminine, have differing names--but, in unity, they share the same name. Genesis 5:2 and Moses 6:9 both state that "Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam" (emphasis mine). This unity is said to be a mystery.

Parallel Structure

The chapter starts with a beautiful example of parallel structure: 

A: The Tao that can be spoken  

B: is not the eternal Tao  

A: The name that can be named 

B: is not the eternal name

This two-line introduction serves to explain the idea that the Tao, the way of the universe, is ineffable--too great to be described in words. Additionally, the "name that can be named is not the eternal name." Later on in the chapter, names are brought up--as Christians and Mormons in particular, we know that names are very important! The Tao Te Ching teaches that there is only so much we as mortals can understand about the nature of the universal force (Tao) or the "name," which I interpret as being the feminine aspect of the universal force. I make this assumption based on the next few lines, which refer to the nameless being the origin of the universe and the named as the mother of all things.

"The Tao is the way." Image here.

Chiastic Presence

One of the great testimonies of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is the presence of chiastic structure throughout the text. (This Wikipedia page has a good example of the chiasmus in Mosiah 3:18, but the Book of Mormon includes gigantic chiasms and chiasms within chiasms--for example, the entirety of 3 Nephi 21 is a chiasm.) 
There are multiple chiastic structures within this brief chapter. The most important one, to me, is made up of lines 3, 4, 5, and 6: 

A: The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth

B: The named is the mother of myriad things
B: Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence

A: Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations

The one constantly without desire, whose essence we observe, is the mother of myriad things. Yin. The one constantly with desire, whose manifestations we observe, is the origin of Heaven and Earth. Yang.
Lines 8-9 also contain a chiasm:

A: The unity 

B: is said to be the mystery
B: Mystery of mysteries, 

A: the door to all wonders

"The mystery, mystery of mysteries," is the center part of this chiasm. The center of a chiasm is its focal point. From the chiastic structure here, we can understand that the unity [of masculine and feminine, yang and yin] is the door to wall wonders, as well as the mystery of mysteries.

Notably, read this about the English word "mystery" (emphasis mine):

English “mystery,” on the other hand, comes, via Latin, from Greek mysterion — a secret religious ceremony attended only by initiates. Mysterion, in turn, derives from mystes, the officiating priest at such a ceremony, and is related to the verb mnein, to seal one’s eyes or lips — that is, not to reveal the contents of the mysterion to others.

Now, obviously I haven't read the TTC in its original language. So I don't know if the word "mystery" here is an accurate translation of the literal meaning of the word in English. But if it is, it would indicate that the unity here is accomplished through sacred rites.

Temple sealing, anyone?

Implications for Yang and Yin

I mentioned earlier that God led me to this text while I was in the throes of a "gender crisis," basically hating everything feminine. As I read this, it broke my heart that the feminine is about essence while the masculine is about manifestation. At the time, I very much prized doing over being.

Later I realized that, as C. S. Lewis wrote,

Yin and yang. Public domain.

we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

Gender is a reality outside of our own minds. The Proclamation to the World on the Family really points this out. I realized that I could fight the fact that I am yin, feminine, by nature, and attempt to "do" instead of "be," to "manifest" instead of have an essence, but I would only fail. In the long term, as Lewis writes, we do not deal with male and female--they deal with us.

For me, realizing this meant I had to alter my worldview from one that was achievement-based to essence-based. Instead of "what have I done?" or "what will I do?" or "what am I doing?," I have had to learn to ask, "what am I?" and "who am I?"

Astoundingly, as I have made the shift from a yang-based view to a yin-based view of my own life, I have been rewarded with an increase in my spiritual gifts, an increase in my understanding of and testimony of the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ, an increase in the peace and order of my home, an increase in the love of my husband and children, and in increase of joy in my heart. When I first made the shift, or first thought of making the shift, I wasn't sure what there would be in it for me. I was so focused on doing, finding joy in being seemed impossible.

It isn't.

Conclusion

The way of the universe is ineffable. Gender is eternal. The door to all wonders is the mystery of the unity of the genders: temple sealing?

Jacob's Ladder and dreams as reality

My mother teaches Sunday school for the youth in our ward, and she's been teaching them a lot about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lately. She found a fascinating talk on LDS.org that refers to a fact that I guess I'd known but never really considered very deeply. Mainly, that Jacob, father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, received his temple covenants in a dream.

Image here. 

The famous dream, called Jacob's Ladder, which is also the premise of the hymn Nearer My God to Thee on page 100 of the 1985 edition of the LDS hymnbook, was a temple experience. 

Examine this excerpt from the talk:

With this blessing fresh in his mind, Jacob left Beersheba on a journey that would ultimately take many years. Perhaps on the first leg of his travels, he pondered the covenants and promises extended to Abraham and his posterity by the Lord. When Jacob reached the place he would later name Bethel, he settled down to spend the night. While he was asleep a marvelous vision was opened to him. [...]

When Jacob arose in the morning, he sanctified the site of his vision with anointing oil and vowed, or covenanted, to live in complete harmony with God’s will. He concluded his affirmation with a promise to tithe all that he would come to possess (see Gen. 28:18–22).

The talk goes on to address six points illuminated by Jacob's dream. Here is the last of those points, emphasis mine:

Sixth—and this point ties the other five points together—Jacob had a templelike experience on the occasion of this vision. 

This phrase is repeated throughout the Ensign article--that Jacob's vision was a templelike experience. The writer goes on to quote Elder Marion G. Romney, and then add some more insight (emphasis mine, again):

Image here. 

“Temples are to us all what Bethel was to Jacob. Even more, they are also the gates to heaven for all of our unendowed kindred dead. We should all do our duty in bringing our loved ones through them.” ² 

Thanks to Elder Romney’s insight, Latter-day Saints can more fully understand that their temple experiences are really the experiences of every Saint in every dispensation. Jacob’s faithfulness was rewarded with an opportunity to make eternal temple covenants. But the great promises and blessings proffered to Jacob in Bethel at that time were conditional rather than absolute. Nowhere does the text say they were sealed or ratified with surety at this point, as is sometimes supposed; Jacob would have a long time to prove his loyalty and secure for himself the unconditional guarantee of all the terms of the covenant. Neither does the text say that Jacob’s dealings with the Lord at that time constituted the ultimate theophany, or revelation of God, which the scriptures promise to the faithful. This would come later, after years of his righteousness. But Jacob undoubtedly came away from Bethel understanding the order of heaven, the possibilities for exaltation, and the promises of the Abrahamic covenant if he proved faithful. So it is with all of us.

The whole article is great, but the main point I wanted to discuss on this blog is the potential reality of dreams. Is this to say that all dreams are somehow prophetic in nature, or that everything we do or say in dreams is somehow true or spiritually binding? I don't think so. But it remains that at least for one man, Jacob, his temple covenants were literally made in a dream, while he was literally asleep.

Implications

The obvious implication here is that dreams can be true. True things can happen in dreams.

True things can happen to us when we are not awake.

And these things can affect us permanently. You can make covenants in your dreams. You can change your life in a dream.

Another implication is the importance of sleep. You can't have significant dreams if you aren't sleeping! It is so important for the health of both body and spirit to get enough sleep.

Another thing I like to think about in the context of Jacob's dream is how important faith is. It can be so easy to look back at spiritual experiences, particularly those experienced in a less-than-fully-conscious mental state, and doubt them or not take them seriously. Another person might have experienced a dream like Jacob's and woken up to tell himself it was just a dream. One of the greatest things I have done in my life is decide to always trust: if there's ever a question about whether or not what I experienced was true or "just in my head," I decide to trust that it was true. This has led to some startling spiritual experiences that I never would have ever believed possible a year ago, had they not happened to me.

Lucid Dreaming

What does this mean in the context of lucid dreaming?

Jacob's dream. Image here.

Well, first, I wonder if Jacob's dream would be appropriately labeled as a lucid dream. I do believe it would count as one, it's just that people typically wouldn't call it that because it was spiritual in nature. We would prefer to call it revelation rather than a lucid dream, even though in reality neither term ought to diminish the other. Why can't a person receive revelation in a lucid dream? The dream is just a vehicle for another aspect of reality to present itself.

Maybe I'm just projecting my own beliefs onto this issue--maybe it's just me that feels kind of weird labeling something like Jacob's dream or Lehi's dream as a lucid dream. But that would be how such a dream would be categorized, as far as I can tell.

Are you looking for more spiritual connections in your dreams? Developing your daily awareness will help. I just read a book where it talked about how frequent lucid dreamers will touch every doorframe they pass through and ask themselves, "Am I dreaming?" This practice prepares them to ask that question in their dreams--but just as importantly, it wakes up their conscious waking mind to reality. So much of the day we can spend almost hypnotized, just doing things out of habit or by rote. Ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?" as you go about the day. I did it yesterday. Although I've felt much more aware of my self during the day, generally speaking, the practice did continually bring me back into the moment.

Image here.

I'm not a lucid dreamer, typically--I can't think of a lucid dream I've had, so I'm hardly an expert on this stuff. But dreams are clearly a vehicle for spiritual communication for many people. And it would seem that scriptures and modern prophetic interpretation both agree that the things that happen in dreams can be very real, and have very real effects on the people who experience them. For Jacob, his dream directly related to his eternal salvation.

Perhaps taking up a routine encouraging lucid dreaming can help you in your journey toward enlightenment. Something to consider.

Conclusion

The imaginative state of dreams can be a powerful vehicle for spiritual information--and not just information, but even things so serious and binding as sacred, eternal covenants. Getting enough sleep is crucial to physical health (our bodies are temples!) and spiritual health (can't have spiritual dreams if you don't sleep!). It may be wise to consider dreams as being more than just the venting of a tired mind at the end of the day--perhaps at times they consist of a reality greater than we may suspect.