Tao Teh Flip
This is all about nothing really
PART I Regarding us
1 Nothing
We may be and we may go
And we know it
This knowledge of our being can never be explained
On the basis of what we know… our knowledge
There’s no-thing to understand it
An outright miracle!
Whatever we deploy to explain our concious being, like photons, electric currents or processes of a chemical nature, all of these grounds rely on the conciousness we try to explain. Such an explination is just a tautology. The knowledge of our being can be based on no-thing. But don’t worry, we can build on this conclusion, better than on false presumptions that poison our lives.
2 Distinction
Whatever you see, smell, hear or feel
It’s there for sure, but it is not you
It’s all a thing
As you are not
You distinguish things from yourself as far you are no-thing, ‘nothing’. Some thing… to thing-k about for a while.
3 Elusiveness
All we don’ t immerse in
Can be there for us
Elusive as we are, there is no end to this
There’s always a different world to be seen
If you distinguish yousrself from the world as ‘nothing’ in a specific way, you will also see the world in a specific way. If you stick tot his specific way, you reduce yourself, indirectly, to a specific ‘some thing’. When you understand the importance of being an illusive ‘noting’ you see that you can distinct yourself from the world in infinite ways.
4 Constancy
A Kaleidoscope will run away with you
And make you feel lost
But focusssing gives you guidance
And constancy for a longer duration
Elusive as we are, we could change our view on the world any moment. Then we would wonder about in a kaleidoscope of perspectives and experiences ,like babies, in an ever changing cloud. For a more specific distinction between ourselves and the world we can focus on some constancy to hold on. Like a language, and a place to live and work.
5 Direction
Focus on language and customs
Can give us a direction
A world of loads and reliefs
Deliberation and discrimination
Initially the world of constancy is the world in which we are raised. We grow up in England, the US, the Netherlands or Upper Mongolia, and that is the world we are committed to.
That does not just happen to us, we also make choices, as we distinguish qualities we like to belong to and qualities we want to stay away from.
6 Sparks
When we strictly stick to it
Customs and language are heavy stuff
Defocus, associate and make a joke
Causing a spark can lighten us up
If constancy is absolutised then the 'nothing' that we are is captured as 'something' constant …Which makes us ignore and neglect ourselves as the source of all that is. And slowly we would waste away and become reduced to a bunch of dead branches. Some absence of the mind, associations and joking can keep us alive.
7 Freedom
Everything exists
That’s not you
Whether you undergo
Or face it
We are ‘not’ the world, not only when we sit back and let the situation influence us, but also when we act and try to influence the situation, when we eat or drink, or when we walk, climb or stumble. This can also be expressed by saying that we are ‘free’.
8 Development
We taste and we try
We worry and we learn
And develop our strive
For fulfillment in life
Constancy and freedom can work together to develop the direction we are going.
9 New
We may go in one direction
But that’s no obligation
As we can always try
To find another way
Because we are free, we are not tied to the world that we experience. We may see all kinds of opportunities, and based on what we like or dislike, we can try to convert these oppotunities into new realities. Thus, we can always change direction.
10 Knowledge and Wisdom
We seize the day
And we go back to work …
But unexpectedly we scratch our head
Where are we going, what is this about?
As a child we are put in a world of constancy, a world that we begin to develop as we grow up, by choosing a direction, based on what your experience as positive and as negative. As it happens we start to wonder what we are doing.we gain a certain knowledge about 'what we do' and at the same time we gain a certain wisdom when we reflect on the fact ‘that we do what we do’.
11 Bilingualism
What are we going to make
And how will we like it?
We discuss these things
In terms of knowledge
But questioning the maening of it
We’re looking for wisdom in terms of 'nothing'
When we focus on our situation,by undergoing it receptively or by working actively, we are involved in ‘what we do’, in the world of concrete knowledge, the world of taste and cause and effect. When we reflect on’ that we do all this’, we are involved in wondering, creativity and freedom, we have entered the world of wisdom that can be described in abstract terms that refer tous as 'nothing'.
12 Others
Building knowledge, we can’t do it alone
We build it together, brick by brick
And thinking of wisdom, do not be cocky
Only together we can make up our minds
Where would you be if you were alone. At the level of 'what we do' we rely on each other, as we do at the level of ‘that we do’. 'Nothing' or 'freedom' make you aware. And you’re not the only one.
13 Developing wisely
Knowledge is a sevenheaded dragon
Where does it go, and can it be stopped?
The language of the wisdom must lead the way
Enslavement is not not what we need
In which direction development goes? Remember our bilingualism: a development can be called wise, as long as it includes us as 'nothing' and free.
14 Crystallize
Relevant knowledge and wisdom that matters
Can help us discover how to be
But when we are finished
We may be in danger!
As we are acting and thinking, we engage ourselves a specific direction. Ideas about 'what we do', and ‘that we do' have evolved. Our knowledge and wisdom are crystallized. When we are lucky,we have erected a beautiful building. But as always 'nothing' may be neglected. Without windows and secrets that require research this building looks more like a prison.
PART II Regarding our legacy
15 Anchored in the past
The building of your life is marked
By everything that ever meant something
It may fit in the present
But it’s anchored in the past
What you think and what you do refers to everything you ever have thought and done before. In everything you were involved in. You can move with the times, but the times also move with you.
16 Going on and on
Going on for ever
Is that what you want?
Longing for the future
And forgetting your own past?
If you would like to go on building forever, one day you would have to let go your anchoring. All things and events that made you: the language, the memories of your childhood, your adventures, all you have learned and loved, all this would disappear in a dot on the horizon.
17 Someone else
Always proceeding
To new ways of life
Is giving up the past
And look through someone else's eyes
Memories give depth and meaning to what you have reached. If you would continue to build, for ever you would have to let go all of this and look through the eyes of ‘someone else'. Is that what you really want? Your children and the children of your neighbors are also someone else. In order not to lose your life you will have to let it go one day.
18 Passing it on
Whatever we end up with
Our children have to live in it
That’s where their past begins
And their present in the future
The fact that you cannot build for ever is not the end of the mysterious ‘nothing’. Our children may continue where we stopped, and stand on our shoulders.
19 Twinkling
Try to make a building
That rings a bell and twinkles
Avoid that the heirs must spend their lives
Demolishing most of it
What use is a building that looks like a final solution,that looks like a prison without openings that point to the future? If there is no roomleft for 'nothing' our children wil have to make or to brake room for it.
20 In Tao
As ‘nothing’ we bring the world into being
We undergo things here or tackle them
Reflecting on this we develop the world
Making it clear for our children to see
And if they decide to be true to themselves
We may continue to be in Tao
You can not keep on building yourself, but you can pass on your work to your and our children. If you can show the essence of the mysterious and elusive 'nothing', it may live on and florish in the future, in builders and buildings as well.