Or Spiritual Guide. I am actually in school for it now. I am Christian, but I recognize the spark of the True and Divine in everyone’s tradition, and look forward to supporting others as they explore their beliefs more deeply. This semester I am taking a class on religious texts, and this was what I wrote about:
| From The World’s Wisdom, p. 156-7: Do you want to improve the world? I don’t think it can be done.The world is sacred./It can’t be improved./If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it./If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it…The Master sees things as they are,/without trying to control them./She lets them go their own way,/and resides at the center of the circle. | From Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, p 173 Those who would gain the world and do something with it, I see that they will fail.For the world is a spiritual vessel and one cannot put it to use./ Those who use it ruin it./ Those who grab hold of it lose it…This is why sages cast off whatever is extreme, extravagant, or excessive. |
These are two translations of a Taoist verse that I wanted to show side-by-side because I wanted to explore it deeper. This is in the section “Creative Letting-Be in Political Life,” but I connect more with it in a nature-focused sense. The idea in the chapter that the world is “sacred” or a “sacred vessel” is more broad than ‘letting be in society.’ I think the sage is called to improve society still by freeing herself from whatever is “extreme, extravagant, excessive.” In our day and age and culture, Americans use more resources than just about any country, and even 2000 years ago, the Tao Te Ching speaks to the heart of the matter: we must stop treating the earth like an object and recognize its beauty and preciousness. We cannot actually change it and make it ‘better’.
Underneath this is a metaphor for other aspects of our lives. Can we ‘improve’ others? No, we just push them away with the message “you need to be different.” If we try to bend the message of the Tao to our own will, we “ruin it.” The world ‘vessel’ is also used in Chapter Four (p. 161 in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy) to describe the Tao: “The Way is like an Empty vessel;/No use could ever fill it up.” The earth though is a spiritual vessel. Maybe this means not literal, or maybe this means sacred like in the Novak translation. Either way, the association with the Tao is there, and I really like that.
The last part I want to meditate on is this line: “She lets them go their own way,/and resides at the center of the circle.” I have been trying to cultivate an equilibrium like this for quite awhile. Just as other chapters discuss the flow of water, I think this is about not holding onto things and only strengthens the metaphors inherent: you cannot hold tight to people or the Tao! Reading the other translation, it is clear that the meaning is about finding that middle-ground of sense pleasures (nothing extravagant or distracting, like in chapter 12). But the poetry of ‘resides at the center of things’ really sticks with me as admirable and something that I want to feel for myself. “[Casting] off whatever is extreme” just doesn’t speak to the soul as succinctly, even if it is a bit clearer.
I would recommend following your heart to whatever it is you find out you need to be doing. The world already has enough hurt, pain, and sorrow for you to be clipping your wings before you even flew. I’m not doing this for money. In fact, I am definitely going into more debt for this. But I am lucky for family support. It’s hard but it is also so worth it. And you deserve that, too.
Actually an Artist 
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