Chapter 12

Commentary::

This chapter answers the question, “What are the senses?” Many contemplative and yogic traditions find the senses to be the basis of delusional perception and ignorance. Some feel the senses give rise to a “false” world and self,¹ and it is common for commentators and translators of this chapter to assume Laozi is joining the crowd, when in fact he is not.

The message here is very radical. The answer is that the senses are simply part of our capacity to connect with our environment, the five senses² connecting with the ten thousand beings/things,³ as it were. The senses are one of many opportunities we have to naturally and playfully resolve separateness into unity. To resolve the dual.

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five tastes spoil the palate.

As is so often the case with Laozi, the chapter begins with what appears to be a quote, a commonly spoken wisdom, or an adage. Laozi uses this quote to ask, “Why is it that we are so easily convinced of the solidity of a self and a world and all the false views and conflicting emotions such dualism generates?”

Wuweidao suggests that it is not the senses themselves that misinform us, but our qi mismanagement that deludes us. “Hunting and chasing” is what creates delusion and the obscuration of Dao. Hunting and chasing make the heart/mind mad. It is not that the senses create a delusional perception or dual world; rather, it is aggressive, compulsive activity that does so. The stuttering and lurching qi of this kind of aggressiveness jams the senses, creating a kind of madness that invents distinct “otherness.”⁴

”Hunting and chasing” also refers to the common Zhou custom of using the hunt as a means of divination. Using divination as a hunt in the sense of having an intense interest in “needing to know” makes the means of communication (divination) too anxious and frantic for proper results. The hunter’s aggression rushes ahead and warns the animals to escape.

Hard-to-acquire goods, the objects of desire that inspire chasing and hunt-ing, impede movement. To impede movement simply means to lose freedom and a chance at an open perspective, so the suggestion is that we practice apart from “hard-to-acquire goods.” Even after pointing out a form of gi mismanage-ment, Laozi does not say that anything is inherently wrong or unnatural about this kind of urgency/compulsion syndrome. He only implies that perhaps we can arrange circumstances to create a natural and easy setting for practice by recognizing that material riches and ideas of self-perfection and spiritual glory may run counter to the free and easy movement of qi.

If we focus our gi outwardly upon that which we perceive by the senses as hard-to-acquire, separate, and outside of us, we are entrapping ourselves in dualism, inhibiting our natural qi flow⁵ with aggression. Relax! Our naturally uninhibited qi flow-our true nature, health and sanity-shows itself in the way the five senses and our universal reciprocity work. This free flow is a relationship of exchange with the environment⁶, a spontaneous choreography of fate and freedom dancing gracefully together.

How do we keep the flow going and avoid the jam up of compulsion/ aggression and stagnation/complacency? We may deduce from Laozi’s suggestion that we can let the senses be as they are. We needn’t renounce them or make an effort to avoid them. The advice is clear: just let them be as they are: open, involuntary. We need only let go of willfully charging them with the primary governance of our experience. In so doing, Laozi suggests we can expect a fuller experience in both our formal and informal practice that is well beyond the limited perception of our five senses.

Therefore: Adepts are for the middle, not the eye.⁷

There are various complementary ways in which this line may be translated and interpreted. To be “for the middle and not for the eye” could be understood as being for the natural whole and not for the distracting fragments created by our objectified sensory data. The middle may refer to modesty. It may also refer to the navel dantian, or to qi itself (a “middle” between jing and shen). The “eye” is not just sight or the mind or the perceived problem of excessive thought. It is also an allusion to intentional, willful, aggressive entanglement in the seemingly external beings and things encountered by the senses and the mind. Adepts experience a full and open feeling quality of life, and are not hemmed in by the fixed ideas and names generated by the mind. They are satisfied with the unknown,⁸ and are not anxious to make it known.

Adepts let this⁹ slip and hold onto that!¹⁰ This does not describe the Adepts’ desire, some kind of “good” desire or preference that is generated by the “good guys,” the spiritually accomplished followers of Laozi. Wuwei adepts do not need to generate fixed preferences. This book, Laozi’s teaching, contains no doctrines, no “correct truths to replace delusional truths.” “Holding to that” is not how we should be, but how we truly are. Observing the sense data¹¹ arise and simply flow away is natural when we are relaxed and open. Being relaxed is automatically a “holding to,” effortlessly staying with our authentic natural condition and experience,¹² the Mother, wuweidao.

Footnotes::

1. duality
2. five elements/phases/lights/ spirits
3. wan wu
4. shen disturbance and blame
5. wuweidao
6. the ten thousand beings/things
7. literally, "those who acknowledge/practice wuwei" are for the "inner, balance, stomach, belly," not the "edge, other, outer"
8. the "so-of-itself"
9. eye, thought, names and their attachments
10. Dao, middle
11. thoughts, attachments
12. Daode