Only he who practices the Tao understands it.
That there is much in our lives that is not simply unknown but, in fact, unknowable is not a view that is particularly appealing to those of a modern sensibility. To say that we live in mystery is to willingly accept a set of limitations or, worse, to favour obscurantism over enlightenment.
I believe in order that I understand.
One can imagine how that grates. Axioms, inherited traditions, inescapable frameworks; does all of that suggest a leap into the wild, the abdication of reason? To suggest so is to put the case too extremely for there are many areas in which trust, an accepted vulnerability (in Annette Baier's astute turn of phrase) is understood to be vital for the flourishing of any individual life-and for the sanity of a society that insists on resisting the despotic prospects of total monitoring, auditing and 'quantification'.
A soul remembers there is an up
and there is a down.
--Milosz.
To say there is an order of the soul...none of that can be freely admitted. Instead: the body: a constantly moving happiness machine. Without the mediating function of the soul there is only a body with its blind appetites or an abstract intelligence that has no grip on us or the world as it is. In fact, a formal and mechanical intelligence is made the servant of the body.
The abolition of man (and woman) occurs when we lose the image of man (and woman). It is replaced with false images of who and what we really are. Or, as the case now stands, only shattered fragments of an image since the notion of a whole image, a life that expresses an inner unity, is not something easily granted by those held in thrall to the divisiveness of late capitalism.
The way that is not the way is not the way.
I believe in order that I understand.
One can imagine how that grates. Axioms, inherited traditions, inescapable frameworks; does all of that suggest a leap into the wild, the abdication of reason? To suggest so is to put the case too extremely for there are many areas in which trust, an accepted vulnerability (in Annette Baier's astute turn of phrase) is understood to be vital for the flourishing of any individual life-and for the sanity of a society that insists on resisting the despotic prospects of total monitoring, auditing and 'quantification'.
A soul remembers there is an up
and there is a down.
--Milosz.
To say there is an order of the soul...none of that can be freely admitted. Instead: the body: a constantly moving happiness machine. Without the mediating function of the soul there is only a body with its blind appetites or an abstract intelligence that has no grip on us or the world as it is. In fact, a formal and mechanical intelligence is made the servant of the body.
The abolition of man (and woman) occurs when we lose the image of man (and woman). It is replaced with false images of who and what we really are. Or, as the case now stands, only shattered fragments of an image since the notion of a whole image, a life that expresses an inner unity, is not something easily granted by those held in thrall to the divisiveness of late capitalism.
The way that is not the way is not the way.
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