Zen Roshi, Lola McDowell Lee, provides a detailed exploration of Chapter 14 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, “Praising The Mysterious.” In it Lao Tzu calls Reason the form of the formless. Reason’s clue. But if we can’t touch it or see it, how are we to understand it? Don’t to endow it with qualities. Don’t describe it. It may appear bright, but it is simply reflecting our brightness. But that is only what we perceive. It is, itself, not bright. Our perception is limited. We perceive in twos. But the Tao is one. So how do we see it? To understand the world with the intellect…we compare, etc. But that is all abstraction. Light is limited. But darkness has no boundaries. When light hits a prism, it becomes a rainbow of colors. Take the prism away and the colors disappear. But we love colors and are captivated by them. They say, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” That’s because if you see him, it is not him. You can’t see him. Like the Neti Neti approach, when we sit we discard all we hear. Until we reach the inaudible. Lola recounts a tale from the Upanishad of a father who instructs his son to visit a guru and find the inaudible. The son goes to the guru and asks to know the inaudible. The guru sends him into the forest with 400 cows. “Return when they become 1000.” The son goes off into the forest and spends all his time serving the needs of the cows. Eventually, he returns to his father… to remarkable result. Jesus said: If you have eyes, then see. Lola asks: what do you think you are looking at? May 8, 1988
