Taoism and Imperfectionism

[wandelaar]

https://books.google.nl/books?id=U8ghCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

How does the Laotian idea of avoiding ideal extremes relate to the promotion of imperfectionism in the above book?

[Aetherous]

I don't know enough about the Laozi to give that much of an informed comment, but my impression from having read a couple different versions of it from time to time over the years, is that it would be more about transcendence as opposed to idealizing imperfection.

For instance, it's said that being ethical (or however one wants to translate the word) is basically a loss of the Dao. This doesn't imply that being unethical is the Dao...that would be at the bottom of the list. Those two things (ethical vs unethical) are a duality, and the person who strives for being perfect ends up having many failures...think about Catholic priests...due to the nature of how one side of the coin follows the other.

But there's a transcendent way which is more effective.

[wandelaar]

Yes - as far as I could see transcendence is lacking in the linked book. But on the purely practical side I saw some correspondences in the sense that striving for perfect solutions or accomplishments is self-defeating. Paradoxically: good enough is best.

[Marblehead]

Dao allows for imperfection.  I think I am a perfect example of this.

 

[wandelaar]

Perfect!

[OldDog]

What does "perfect" mean? I have always thought of it as well suited ... rather than correct or even complete.

 

One of my martial arts masters used to say that a perfect form always has room for improvement. I have turned that notion over in my head for years before coming to understand what it involved.

 

What I learned is that it is a natural impulse for people strive for perfection in the sense of correctness, completeness and all encompasing ... in so far as a human mind can conceive of such. It is an attempt to make the resukt conform to a predetermined notion of form.  But in the finished product there needs to be room for adaptation and interpretation. Without such space the product risks being inflexable and unable to respond to real world conditions. In this sense a product or result can be over done.

 

So, I have always tried to keep this in mind in any effortsi undertake to accomplish something.

[Zen Pig]

18 minutes ago, OldDog said:

One of my martial arts masters used to say that a perfect form always has room for improvement. I have turned that notion over in my head for years before coming to understand what it involved.

 

I hear that. I am reminded of Wabi Sabi,  " the art of finding beauty in imperfection" . not a good western translation for this concept, but more of the perfection in imperfection......

[wandelaar]

@ OldDog

 

I think the Tao Te Ching contains lots of common sense wisdom, together with transcendental visions that go beyond it but don't contradict it. Common sense wisdom can be found everywhere around the globe. And it looks like an interesting part of it is explained in the book that I linked to. What you are writing also falls under the same category.

 

I am somewhat of a perfectionist myself, so I have ordered the book to see what can be done about this. And to help me in interpreting certain passages on perfectionism and overdoing things in the Tao Te Ching.

[dawei]

If Dao is perfection [formless] then humanity is imperfection [form].    As LZ said, formless begets form.   

[Nintendao]

1 hour ago, Zen Pig said:

I hear that. I am reminded of Wabi Sabi,  " the art of finding beauty in imperfection" . not a good western translation for this concept, but more of the perfection in imperfection......

What i like most about wabi sabi is that it really can't be faked. Like trying to wear pre-faded denim or leather just looks kind of silly.

Only time and use gets you the real thing..

 

[rideforever]

Seems like a book with excellent ideas, which in their essence are good.
However the author himself seems to use these ideas to reinforce his false self : see his Blog posts entitled "How to dominate life like a lion" (false yang) and "using content" (false mind).
Also his urge to monetize his ideas.
There are other books of the same ilk but written by spiritual people.

Meeting imperfection with your courage and developing mini-routines are excellent ...but the devil is in the detail, if you have routines to force your way unconsciously through difficulties, or if meeting imperfection is always about acting to get to some destination .... then you use these techniques as a way to remain totally unconscious.

A big difference ...  the quality of your teacher is more important than his teaching.

Gurdjieff / Fourth Way uses very similar techniques but with a vastly deeper focus ... for instance regarding mini-habits Gurdjieff talked of the Horse / Carriage / Driver :
http://www.doremishock.com/manuscripts/horsecarriagedriver.htm

 

As for TTC what is the similarity to this book, well not much as Laozi is vastly further along on the path.   However the TTC does not really have techniques in it more like attitudes to have to life that are the result of maturity gained through spiritual work.   Also the kind of will emphasised by the author is working with the head, rather than the belly in Taoism.  Working with the head you would never see the way the belly sees.
Does Taoism talk of imperfection : not really, it just talks of the subconscious movement of the universe between the poles and for the sage to enter into the flow of this.

TTC also is about dying from the manifested universe into the unmanifested .... living actually from the energetic substrata beneath the visible universe of 10,000 things.
 

I do very much appreciate the idea that life is a series of imperfect situations and our job is to make them straight, to make a picnic out of anything we find, to make a harvest in any weather, any conditions and in so doing we enter into the life learning about itself through its many interactions.

 

 

[Zen Pig]

58 minutes ago, dawei said:

 "formless begets form".   

•  

Yes, and for what I have seen so far,  Form begets the Formless. kind of what the late Shunryu Suzuki use to call, "different sides to the same coin"  LOL

[dawei]

29 minutes ago, Zen Pig said:

Yes, and for what I have seen so far,  Form begets the Formless. kind of what the late Shunryu Suzuki use to call, "different sides to the same coin"  LOL

 

or:  Form = Void 

 

[OldDog]

1 hour ago, rideforever said:

Also the kind of will emphasised by the author is working with the head, rather than the belly in Taoism.  ...  it [TTC] just talks of the subconscious movement of the universe between the poles and for the sage to enter into the flow of this.

 

Wuwei

[wandelaar]

It looks like it is not a spiritual book. That's correct. But as far as common sense wisdom goes, the book appears to have some very good ideas. And Lao tzu is not against plain common sense, quite the opposite. So I think (and hope) that the book I linked to can be used to assist in adopting a (philosophically) Taoist way of life if we simply ignore its ego boosting aspect (that unhappily is found in most self-help books).

 

Edited November 17, 2018 by wandelaar

[OldDog]

5 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

(that unhappily happens to be part of most self-help literature).

 

 

Yeah, who's gonna buy a book that leaves them feeling bad. The self-help industry (yes, they seem to get cranked out on an industrial scale) has really homed in on this. While many of them offer tips and quick fixes, most, sadly, do not address the idea of self-development over the long run.

[Zen Pig]

5 hours ago, OldDog said:

Yeah, who's gonna buy a book that leaves them feeling bad. The self-help industry (yes, they seem to get cranked out on an industrial scale) has really homed in on this. While many of them offer tips and quick fixes, most, sadly, do not address the idea of self-development over the long run.

yes, old dog.  to really get into it, to really look deeply, and keep looking is something that is both simple, but also not something we want to do today. we want others to tickle our asses with a feather, and make us feel good for a short while, but in the end, we got to drop all ideas, all beliefs, and just walk the unknown road.  but what the fuck do i know?  

[wandelaar]

Last night my thinking about imperfectionism continued in my sleep and so I dreamed about it. I was searching for some kind of solution or answer. And as no rational answer was forthcoming, I took a look at Chinese mythology. There I found a deity or something that had to do with imperfectionism and the way to deal with it, but I don't remember its name. Anyhow, in my dream I put in endless time to look up books about Chinese mythology, but still no answer was forthcoming. Waking up I thought about the Zwarte Piet-discussion in this country (I live in the Netherlands) that is slowly escalating year by year. And then I suddenly realised that our own effects on the world at large (whatever one's position) are negligible. (At this point some people might resort to violence to get their way, but that often doesn't work either and brings huge cost in terms of human suffering.) So we are stuck with essentially two possible choices: (1) You either accept the world at large as it is (including the minute effect of your own dealings with it); or (2) You go down a cynical road of pessimist rumination and ruin your own remaining pleasure in simply being alive. So paradoxically the answer I was searching for resides in accepting that there is no answer. We just have to accept the world (at large) as it is, and make the best of it within our own minute space of possibilities.

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by wandelaar

[rideforever]

Perfectionism means being in the false mind.   The mind has a cutting tool that can cut things into two halve left and right, and that is fine, however when you are lost inside the tool then you start to understand life as 1s and 0s.    It's a sign of being in total disconnection with reality, and lost in a tool that is supposed to be in a tool box for occasional use.

 

Imperfection .... well this word is not really correct either.   There is just life, as you walk through it you might fix something, you might leave it in a better state than before.   We spend life meeting many situations .... non of which are perfect, obviously.    The question is about engagement, are you will to meet life.   

 

When you talk about perfect / imperfect you have already disconnected yourself and hide in your head.   That's the real problem.

 

Deep things :
Perhaps someone gives you model of how to live, like marriage between man and woman.  Well this is a sort of image from someone who is either ahead of you on the road, or who is in a better state that you and can tell you how to be healthy, or someone who intuits a good future.   So in this case perfection is a sort of image that we can work too that comes from someone who's eyes are better than ours.

 

Another important thing is that people get lost in their mind not because they like thinking .... but because it is when they think that they feel their inner identity most strongly ... but unfortunately they seem unable to convert that into a  resting sense of themselves .... i.e. they cannot awaken consciousness.   And so they keep thinking and keep being disconnected from reality.    This is a species wide problem.

Additional to that, societies go in cycles and at certain cycles the material wealth leads to indulge laziness and cowardice that multiples the escape into the head.

[OldDog]

3 hours ago, wandelaar said:

... accept the world at large as it is ...

 

This is a great observation/realization. 

 

As I read this, a couple of things came to mind from Laozi.

 

One was the passage 

 

Nature is unkind:
It treats the creation like sacrificial straw-dogs.
The Sage is unkind:
He treats the people like sacrificial straw-dogs. 

 

I mentally substituted the word 'treats' with 'accepts' ... and the passage had new meaning. It seems to underscore the notion of impartiality. Not to be confused with indifference ... impartiality would seem to arise from not forming distinctions or judgements ... accepting the world, as you say, as it is.

 

It followed that probably the greatest ... most consequential ... distinction there is, is the distinction of 'self' and 'others'.

 

Overcoming this distinction would lead to what might be called a kind of natural morality. If one regards others as one does one's self, then one's actions will benefit all.  

 

The reason the universe is everlasting

Is that it does not live for Self. 

 

And this would seem to shed light on the idea of wu wei ... not as 'no action' in a literal sense ... but as action that does not contend with the natural flow of existence. 

 

Thanks for the thought.

[wandelaar]

Thank you - still I think there is a problem with regarding and/or treating others as oneself. It's natural to care for oneself and one wouldn't survive for long if one didn't. But there are way too much people walking around on planet earth to personally care for each of them. We don't even have the time to meet more than a minutely tiny fraction of all the people now alive even if we did nothing else for all of our lives. If I remember correctly there even is a criticism in the Chuang tzu of the idea of universal love as being completely impractical. But suppose some well-meaning idealist would do his best to approach the ideal nevertheless, that would mean that he would have to care precisely as much for his close friends and partner as for somebody he only had some small talk with several years ago. To be true to his conviction he should keep himself informed about the well being of many thousands of people he hardly even knows each day. And in that case there would hardly remain any time and energy left for his close friends and partner. I'm sure his close friends and partner would very soon consider him as not being a friend at all! This is forcing reality in a mould that simply doesn't fit, and the result would be disaster.

 

The natural thing is to care more for those people you know than about those you hardly know or don't know at all. And forcing yourself to give each and everyone the same amount of attention would only result in nobody getting any real attention at all. So this again leads to the conclusion that one should be content with restricting one's involvement to a relatively tiny fraction of the world because there simply is no other workable alternative. And if one achieves something good by that, than the positive influences will spread out from there.

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by wandelaar

[OldDog]

As you point out, there is a practicality to these considerstions. Not practical at all to seek out each and every one.

 

But in ones wanderings, one encounters others and in doing so has a choice to regard them impartially ... without discrimination or prejudice  ... or to judge them. The standard for judgement is typically one's self. If one responds to others based on judgements of inferiorty or superiority this can lead to difficulties. 

 

Do unto others ...

 

Loved ones and partners occupy as special place in our regard. They are those for which we have special relationship to ... some type of affinity towards. This is part of the human condition. It might be biological. It might simply be recognition of a likeness to ourself. It's not that we threat them 'different', it is just that we form a bond and choose to spend a lot of time with them ... maybe a lifetime.

 

But should we really be making a conscious decision to treat others less than we treat ourselves or our loved ones ... as if we only had so much care, compassion or love to give? Do we really want to adopt the view that some others are worth less? 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by OldDog
Garbage characters removed

[rideforever]

There are no straw-dogs in existence, everything is part of the growing tree.  Some work the bottom, some the top.   In the same way, a man with high intelligence does one kind of work, and another man builds his house.   So what ?   Within is a deep faith, that comes from knowing that we are on the same tree.   No problem.

 

It's neither acceptance nor indifference or anything like that.   Neither it is universal imagi-love.   These are all silly delusions.   Does a leaf concern itself with loving all the other leaves on a big oak tree .... not really.   And if some leaves are shed in the fall, shall we all cry ?  Not really.  Do they have no purpose ?  Not really.   Can we accept the situation ?  Not really, stop making big statements about it.

 

All comes from human monkeys simply being at a threshold of consciousness and being very confused about who they are.   It's all silly.

 

Love for a leaf simply means knowing you are a leaf, then naturally you "love" the tree, same for wuwei it's just that you know who you are and are happy to be part of the project and feel good.

 

Human ego clings to many things, and attempts to dramatise his life with big ideas .... but when you find yourself it's just simple and a walk in the park in the afternoon.

 

To be honest, humans through their confusion have penetrated a bit too far into the spiritual dimensions ... again looking for who they are.   If we were a little more conscious of who we are ... we wouldn't bother with exploring the outer realms.

[wandelaar]

10 minutes ago, OldDog said:

But should we really be making a conscious decision to treat others less than we treat ourselves or our loved ones ... as if we only had so much care, compassion or love to give? Do we really want to adopt the view that some others are worth less? 

 

I don't like that statement either, but to be honest I have to admit that in actual fact that is how we as human beings behave. And I don't see  how as finite beings we could do otherwise without losing our humanity. Confucius was more realistic and down to earth about the concern for relatives without becoming immoral. Indeed we only have so much care, compassion or love to give. We better face it.

[OldDog]

6 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

... I have to admit that in actual fact that is how we as human beings behave. And I don't see  how as finite beings we could do otherwise without losing our humanity. Confucius was more realistic and down to earth about the concern for relatives without becoming immoral. Indeed we only have so much care, compassion or love to give. We better face it.

 

Wow, a lot to consider here.

 

Indeed, we are human ... and we "inherit" much of what we are as individuals from those around us. If we were born of or into a society of the enlighted and realized, we might behave differently. But we all start out the same, as blank slates (hmm, that's going to get me into trouuble) to be molded by our circumstances. The Path is our life long journey of development.

 

I think in general, we tend to have a overly restrictive notion of our finite-ness ... in the sense of what we are capable of doing or becoming. That notio. of finite-ness is like a burden the restricts potential. Part of realization seems to be shedding some of that burden.

 

Humanity. Is it something to fear being lost ... overcome ... or ultimately realized? I would tend to be more open to potential and change.

 

Confucius I have to admit I have struggled a lot with. Mostly, I have not given him much attention. Probably because he seems to be at odds with Daoist thought which is where I have spent most of my time. But there has always been this nagging sense that there is more to it than that. How could Confucius, who was a product of the same times as Laozi be so different. I have taken the view that Lao and Confucius are dealing with different things: Lao with individual personal development and Confucius with societal development. Lao and the Daoists suggest that if all lived in harmony with the Dao that everything would sort out. Confucius, being the more practical, sees need for structure. 

 

I don't see care and compassion as quantifiable in the sense of being able to measure how much there is at one time or another.. I see it as a state of being ... a way of living that determines how we view and interact the world. In that sense it has infinite capacity. So, can the infinite be expressed in the finite?