11 We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
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Layer upon layer
She finds deep in her own experience the central truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on the surface: that the more truly solitary we are, the more compassionate we can be; the more we let go of what we love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can embody the good. Until finally she is able to say, in all humility, "I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life." S. Mitchell
Translation of the Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell, Harper & Row, 1988. In keeping with copyright law only the chapter under study is fulltext. All other chapters show only the first stanza.
Study Group Contac: Lissa Lord:lissalord@gmail.com
Tao in WordLayers
Layer upon layer
Earlier this week, our dog, Cody, ate two different translations of the Tao. Being a Border Collie, he probably knew that the value of the Tao is released when swallowed whole and ingested completely. I, on the other hand, was really REALLY disappointed. I love my Tao collection! Remember chapter #3? “If you overvalue possessions, people (and Border Collies) begin to steal.” My husband added a phrase to chapter #1: The Tao the dog swallows is not the eternal Tao.
ReplyDeleteEmpty, the useful of full. I have developed an art form based on journal writing in layers: word on word and layers of words written over existing layers of words and writing continues until all words are written and become an integral part of the whole—so many layers of words that no one word is visible—no words at all, empty.
Where there is no word
Word upon word has been written
All words have been said
All word layers have been laid
You are left with nothing
A clear mind
A magical design
A heart bursting with joy
This is the space of empty fullness
Like the spokes of a wheel
centered on empty space
WordLayers is centered on
the connection of all words
flowing into no words at all
Art falls into empty space where words once were
Connections are randomly formed where letters used to be
Art is first seen ... here.
After the book has been read and the cover closed, word returns to the artful nothing of fertile mind and is carried until it spills out as creative word found in the ink on a writer’s page as something new.