Living under the Tree of Life

We are part of the planet we live on.
The tree of life is a symbol appearing in many cultures that we are living on a living planet. From people living in contact with nature it is a symbol of something they feel deep inside. The ancient Tao sages expressed this deep knowledge very well. So I think it is good to begin our expansion of the awareness of our deep connectedness to planet Earth by referring ourselves to the old Toa perspective.

I begin with an old Chinese Tao tale I found in the wonderful little ‘Book of Tea’ by Okakura Kakuzo, first published in the year 1906. Okakura Kakuzo was a Japanese scholar who mostly wrote in English on Japanese art. Drinking tea is an art, and as all real art, is an expression of the art of living. The Tale of ‘Taming the Harp’ shows this and thus the essence of Tao.

Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lungmen stood a Kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver dragon that slept beneath. And it came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of musicians. For long the instrument was treasured by the Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings. In response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they fain would sing. The harp refused to recognize a master.

At last came Peiwoh, the prince of harpists. With tender hand he caressed the harp as one might soothe an unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of nature and the seasons, the high mountains and flowing waters, and all the memories of the tree awoke! Once more the sweet breath of spring played amidst its branches. The young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the budding flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy voices of summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain, the wail of the cuckoo. Hark! A tiger roars, -- the valley answers again. It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with fierce delight.

Then Peiwoh changed the key and sang of love. The forest swayed an ardent swain deep lost in thought. On high, like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like despair. Again the mode was changed; Peiwoh sang of war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds. And the harp arose the tempest of Lungmen, the dragon rode the lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the hills. In ecstasy the Celestial monarch asked Peiwoh wherein lay the secret of his victory. ‘Sire’, he replied, ‘others have failed because they sang but of themselves. I left the harp to choose its theme, and knew not truly weather the harp had been Peiwoh or Peiwoh were the harp.`

In this old tale you find some of the basic elements of the Tao way of life. First, the connection with nature is very dense. The word Tao is only a name for ‘something’ you can’t name. It refers to the force behind the universe, points to the basic vital spirit, but doesn’t denote it. Lao-tzu,’the old master’ says in the seventh chapter of the Tao Te Ching: ‘The Tao is infinite, eternal. Why is it eternal? It was never born; thus it can never die. Why is it infinite? It has no desires for itself; thus it is present for all things.’ The Tao refers to the force that created the universe, embraces it and lives in everything. This early Taoist teaching expresses a universal wisdom, the same wisdom as in the early Upanishads, for instance in the Isha and the Kena Upanishad. The songs sung by the Sufi mystics and poets is in its core the same as the inspirations of the European medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart. Eckhart says in one of his sermons: ‘God is infinite in his simplicity and simple in his infinity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere complete. He is everywhere on account of his infinity, and he is everywhere complete on account of his simplicity. Only God flows into all things, their very essence.’

Tao simply means ‘way.’ The way is the way to live in harmony with nature, according to the working of the natural order and thus in tune with the aliveness in each of us. The overall way of Tao is also the way to access your deeper sources and let this ‘flowing with’ evolve in you. By doing this you let in wisdom. And beyond all this, the way simply means the way things are. Tao is a very pragmatic approach to life, it means participating in life, being completely present in life, fostering aliveness.

The core of this approach to life is personal integrity. I believe that this understanding of integrity is one of the core elements of early Taoism that has a great value for our current transition. This integrity gives us a clear eye, a natural wisdom that comes from seeing the whole and being in the living thing that is in front of you, like that harp. it’s a pragmatic hands-on approach and beyond any book wisdom. In human relationships this natural integrity enables spontaneous caring. A form of caring that evolves from the solid stand clearly connected to the Tao, the way.

The pragmatic approach of early Taoism lays a strong impetus on competence and solid craftsmanship in everything you do. It gives a vision of craftsmanship beyond the sort of professional training you can learn in schools. Such craftsmanship always is going to the essence of the thing, of the relationship, or of the matter at hand.

Taoism is a very old Chinese view and way of life dating to some centuries B.C. Coming out of tribal lore and shamanic practices, it grew into a broad practical philosophy embracing ethics, art and the art of living, the relation to nature, medicine, bodywork, government and even folk religion.

Its basic principles are

Harmony, seeing dualities as part of a whole, as visualized in the yin-yang symbol,
the Te is our potential that we only have in a responsible form of life, te is thus meaning the active expression of Tao as power, virtue and personal integrity
Qi is the vital force of life. It is in us and all around us. We foster it by connecting with the flow of life that is an expression of the Tao
Tze Jan means being your spontaneous and authentic self, the inner health that enables intuition
Wu Wei, the ‘effortless doing’ going with the soft and invisible power within all things, going with the flow.
Tai Ji is centering and expanding in harmony with inner stillness and focus
Feng Liu, is the wind-like grace of following the stream, or going with the wind
Pu, the state of receptiveness in open awareness

The harmony with nature is the basic focus for health, or sexuality, the striving for longevity and powerful body presence.

The ethics of the ‘te’ is living in connection with the Tao and its wisdom. Living in unison with the living core enables intuitive action according to the ‘way’ expressing the inner integrity. The ‘Three Jewels’ of Taoist ethics, compassion, moderation and humility then come naturally.

Wu wei, the watercourse way, as Alan Watts called it, is going with the stream, not enforcing, but yielding and influencing by alignment with the Tao.

In the tale we started with, you feel the spirit of early art, an art directly connected with the forces of nature and living this connection in an intuitive way.

Connected with art you can sense the sources of craftsmanship in the transpersonal forces – it’s a wizard who creates the harp.

Creativity is – and this is essential for understanding the Tao – never linear. It flows.

The approach to life is based on sensibility, before you do something, you go into listening, feeling how things go, what their spirit is. Then it comes naturally. No effort, no stress, no striving that is proving your connectedness with God.

In the early Taoist writings like the I Ging and the Tao te Ching you can, just like in the tale of the beginning, still feel the living sources, the shamans, people that lived the connection to the deeper forces in and behind nature and went deep into themselves to help their people. They where artists, (singers, dancers), curers and visionaries with a social function. The wise men like Lao-tse paved a way to responsible living , in the early transition from tribal culture to a life in city states, with administration, formal laws and complex social settings. Like Heraclitus and Pythagoras in early Greece, they where able to see the transition as an opening and by transforming these deep changes into a sort of practical wisdom the people needed to cope with the new framework of life. Of course, we can‘t simply take the concepts of the old Taoists or the ancient Greek philosophers, but we can think again, use our period of transition as an opening, use the chance of the in-between. With an open and honest eye, this can help us to cope with our current transition.

The old masters say we should keep our minds at one with the spirit of the world we are part of. We can learn from them, when they give us the view and the inner strength not only to cope with the current changes, but to see the unpredictability, the insecurity, the ungraspable flow of events as a chance to adapt to the planet we live on and are part of. The hard part is that we have to be ready to accept not to cling to our norms, goals, emotions and knowledge structures. We often have to feel our way where we used to follow given structures. We often have to let it appear, wait, not enforce … follow the flow of the Tao.

‘Before the creation of the world, Ein Sof withdrew itself into its essence, from itself to itself within itself. It left an empty space within its essence, in which it could emanate and create. KABBALAH We have this essence inside ourselves and with it the space, the core, the source
The moment we access this level inside ourselves, we see differently and we are different. Meister Eckhart expresses this beautifully in the language of the medieval mystics: ‘To see color, my eye must be free of color…The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye, that is one eye and one seeing and one understanding and one loving.’That’s the basic point, connected to the source we ARE the loving. The connectedness to nature is part of this loving.

Fragrance of an Invisible Flower
I see the essence of being alive as water flowing
from the invisible to here, then back there. …
When I deeply know my senses, I feel in them the way
to God and the purpose of living.
      Look at the surprising flower
      Which can not be seen, and jet
Its fragrance cannot be hidden.
God is the invisible flower. Love is the flower’s fragrance, everywhere apparent.

             Bahauddin

Tao Te Ching, Version by Stephen Mitchell, Harper Perennial New York et alia 2006
Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, Selected and Translated by Oliver Davies, Penguin Books, London 1994, p. 258.
Cited from Janet Adler, Offering from the Conscious Body, The Discipline of Authentic Movement, Inner Traditions 2002 p.110
Meister Eckehart: Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, ed. A. translated from mediaval German Josef Quint, Zürich: Diogenes 1979, p. 216, my translation.
Bahauddin Valad, Maarif, The Drowned Book, trans. Coleman Barks a. John Moyne, HarperSanFrancisco 2004, p. 5, Bahauddin is the father of Rumi.