At last week’s Kinship Cafe, we discussed a passage from Liezi, one of the key early writers who shaped Daoism. Here is another quote from chapter one that I find interesting: “The man who, when his actions go wrong, begins to play about with moral distinctions in order to put them right, cannot find the way back.” (Chapter 1, A.C. Graham) This is the story of justification. A man screwed up, and rather than admit his mistake, he seeks to justify it through clever moral distinctions. But in doing so, he gets himself so tangled up that he can’t find a way back out. Has this ever happened to you? I know I have found myself bound in my own trap many times. Why is it so hard to admit when we are wrong? I hate to admit it, but I often desire not to look like I made a mistake. Which is silly because we all do. In trying to hide it, we complicate relationships, and most people can see through the masquerade anyway. I find it interesting that the passage does not say he tries to come up with excuses, but instead he “begins to play about with moral distinctions”. Moral language is the most incendiary language we can use. It strives to create a division that goes beyond a disagreement, to “if you disagree with me, you are immoral.” Morality assumes itself to be objectively true, that it can’t be questioned. Stepping into moral justifications for one’s actions is an attempt to silence disagreement or discussion. Moral justifications cancel the possibility of compromise and create the strongest possible “us vs. them” mentality. Resorting to moral justifications is a clear indication that a person lacks valid reasons for their actions. Playing about with moral distinctions risks inciting hate or even violence. We can see how going down this road, we might find ourselves so lost we “cannot find our way back.” What do you think?

In my years of teaching Philosophical Daoism, there is one parable that my students consistently remark on as the most helpful. This came from a collection of writings known as the Huainanzi (18.7) from the 2nd century BCE and paraphrased here: A farmer's horse escapes, and his neighbors come to console him at this misfortune, to which the farmer responds, "We'll see." The horse returns with several wild horses, and the neighbors come to celebrate his good fortune, but again, the farmer says, "We'll see." Then, the farmer's son breaks his leg while trying to tame one of the wild horses; again, the neighbors come to console him at this misfortune, but the farmer maintains his stance and says, “We’ll see.” Later, when conscription officers come to the village to draft young men into the army, the farmer’s son is spared due to his broken leg, an event the neighbors now deem fortunate. Yet again, the farmer says, “We’ll see.” The Daoists illustrate the distinction between an event and the value we judge it to have. The neighbors judge each of these events (the horse’s escape, the horse’s return with more horses, and the son’s leg breaking) one way, and then the judgment is reversed over time. Judging an event as unfortunate leads to negative emotional reactions, and judging an event as fortunate leads to elevated emotional reactions. On the other hand, the farmer maintains a more tranquil emotional equilibrium by not adding a judgment to the event but instead taking it as it is. Next time you get upset about a situation, try telling yourself, “We’ll see,” and then paying attention to how things unfold. You may be upset over something that transforms into something very different from your initial judgment. Shakespeare made a similar observation when he wrote: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)

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Have you ever experienced a spiritual awakening? My first spiritual awakening happened in 2004. I grew up as a rational, materialistic atheist in the Bible Belt, and for the first 22 years of my life I had no conception whatsoever of spiritual consciousness. Something I was deeply passionate about (you might say obsessed with) from very early on was martial arts (I basically wanted to be a Ninja Turtle). So when I was 10 my parents signed me up for lessons at the local taekwondo chain school. It was the kind of place where I started at age 10, had a black belt at age 12, and a second degree black belt at age 14. After that I branched out into other martial arts, including Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian, and Filipino styles. What they all had in common was that they were all external styles, meaning that the emphasis was on athleticism and external results: lots of jumping around, kicking high, and doing various kinds of stunts. Something else that interested me from a very young age was ancient stories and mythology. I enjoyed reading the Greek myths, and I found and read copies of the Panchatantra and the Tao Te Ching. I thought the Panchatantra was really cool, but at the time the Tao Te Ching didn't make any sense to me and came across as a bunch of gobbledygook. In college I studied math and physics, but I went to a small, private liberal arts school where you had to learn a little bit of everything. The class I took for my religion elective was Buddhism. I learned about the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama sitting under the Bodhi Tree and experiencing satori, the “instantaneous awakening”, and arising as the Buddha, the “awakened one”. They were cool old stories, but at the time meant nothing to me beyond that. I also kept learning new martial arts, including Japanese, Chinese, and Brazilian styles, all still externally focused. I tried out a tai chi class, but found I didn't have the patience for it at the time. For graduate school I moved to the west coast, still studying math and physics, and still on the lookout for new martial arts to learn. One day I saw a flier for a place called the Kung Fu Academy and decided to check it out. It turned out this was a school that taught internal kung fu, largely rooted in the tai chi classics. If it had been called "the Tai Chi Academy" I probably wouldn't have gone, due to my earlier boredom when I tried a tai chi class, but I found the training to be very effective for where I was in my development.