CALL ME MAGGIE

July 7, 2013

Daodejing 41

#41*

The person having
most excellence who
hears DAO practices
assiduously.

The person having
average excellence
who hears DAO only
practices on occasion.

The person having
least excellence
who hears DAO
laughs at it.

Yet, if DAO were not
laughable, it would not be DAO.

Thus, the old saying
goes this way:

Brilliant DAO seems opaque.
Progressive DAO seems regressive.
Smooth DAO seems rough.

Magnificent excellence like a valley.
Abundant excellence like emptiness.
Vigorous excellence like idleness.

Simplicity and purity like turbulence.

Infinite whitness like black.
Infinite squareness without corners.

Magnificent minds mature slowly.
Infinite sound like silence.
Infinite image wthout shape.

DAO: concealed and nameless.

Only DAO can help
All-under-heaven
Achieve fulfillment.

Daodejing 42 (keithwaynebrown.com)
Holding onto the Infinite (keys2change.wordpress.com)
Daodejing 40 (keithwaynebrown.com)
The Feminine Principle (amartingarcia.wordpress.com)
Daodejing 39 (keithwaynebrown.com)

Published by

Keith “Maggie” Brown

I have a Ph.D. in Existential Phenomenology from the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas-Denton. I began my vocation through a nine year apprenticeship with my mentor, Richard M. Owsley, a primary founder of our philosophy program. I can be found around Denton troubling students and professors about this and that. A fringe scholar wandering like a. mountain dog through the borderlands between the Academy and the World, I love the hell out of Socrates and Yoda while tending to act like William S. Burroughs and Jaba the Hut. My current projects include studies of the Dào Dé Jing, the critical intersection of of Karl Jaspers’ periechontology with queer theory, and the challenge of finding freedom under the Current Empire.

Tags: abundant, askesis, brilliant, dao, Dao de Jing, Dao De Jing, Daodejing, daoism, DE, discipline, empitness, emptiness, excellence, keith wayne brown, Laozi, laughable, literature, LU Wenlong, magnificent, magnificent minds, moral excellence, opaque, practice, progressive, regressive, rough, smooth, Tao Te Ching, Taoism, vigorous, virtue, Zen

7 responses to “Daodejing 41”

Daodejing 40 | Reason & Existenz

July 12, 2013 at 8:52 pm

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Daodejing 42 | Reason & Existenz

July 12, 2013 at 9:10 pm

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Daodejing 43 | Reason & Existenz

July 13, 2013 at 4:19 pm

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amartingarcia

July 13, 2013 at 5:21 pm

Very good! (I do not practice, though). Contradictions are only apparent, or actually reinforcing subjacent meaning, though seemingly contrary to it. No attribute or description of Dao is possible, language being inadequate. (I am probably wrong on all counts)

Reply
1. Keith Wayne Brown
  
  July 13, 2013 at 5:28 pm
  
  I have enjoyed greatly your elucidation of the feminine principle through a study of Tristan and Isolde. I am not sure that any can practice Dao… but being aware of this, we let-go our doing and allow Dao to do. Yin and Yang flow, as you say, reinforcing subjacent meaning. I would go even farther: we are both probably wrong on all counts. Yet our awareness of that is the provocation to never stop philosophizing. 🙂
  
  Reply
  1. amartingarcia
    
    July 15, 2013 at 5:04 am
    
    It has been said, ‘to philosophize is not to live, and to live is not to philosophize’. Yet, man is a thinker by nature, and right thinking is not possible without right philosophizing. In order to get rid of philosophy (and of the tyranny of mind) one must go to the limits of both, philosophy and mind. A sage of our times, Francis Lucille, has said:”Certainty cannot exist as a concept, only as an experience of Truth, which resides beyond the mind”.
Keith Wayne Brown

July 15, 2013 at 8:29 am

Yes, I think that when philosophizing is taken up as a way of life, we are moving toward a transcendence where the kind of philosophy that does not live but merely speculates becomes unnecessary and is seen for the over dependent thinking that it is.

Lucille appears to be intimating what Karl Jaspers calls our “possible Existenz” which singularly experiences Transcendence beyond everyday consciousness.

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