Post #127: Traveling and the Taoist Clown

13 Aug. 2024 (Budapest)

     I spent most of my flight from Gatwick to Budapest listening to Stephen Mitchell read his own translation of the Tao Te Ching. I needed some soothing on “easyJet,” seat 1A, with immediate neighbors who were anything but—the species of Brit who make up for not speaking to strangers by being especially loud and spilling their spiked lemonades on you.

     Mitchell’s rendering may be a little too free for the purist, but he captures very well the spirit of ease and freedom that breathes through one of the foundational texts of extant human culture. The famous treatment of The Way speaks in the most welcome voice to me at this peculiar stage of my life, and yet the message (or rather its reliable application to life) seems perhaps more out of reach than ever. I can sense, in a modest way, the truth of wu wei, doing without ado; but the childlike ease that is at the same time a reflection of profound maturation keeps eluding me, sad to say.

     Indeed, it can seem at times (this being one of them) as if my days were filled with little more than one misstep after another.* Of course that impression cannot be strictly true, or I could not survive the day in one piece. But still, even with such necessary qualifications, I marvel (and shudder) at how there seems to be not a raised little edge or bulge on the ground that I don’t trip over; not a clumsy move that I don’t make; not an untoward word that I don’t say. Just a few minutes ago, wandering like a lost ghost through the empty halls of an old university here (abandoned in the great European August exodus), I managed to overlook that I was walking into the women’s bathroom. Only on the way out did I check the sign, and sure enough, it was labeled fairly unmistakably, even if the “Toalett” had apparently captured all of my attention and left little over for reading the second line.

     When I sit down at an unfamiliar table with sharp edges, I will invariably bump into them, even after having recognized the hazard, as I promptly did just now. If I am at a cafe in an unfamiliar place, feeling uneasy in my skin and correspondingly keen on making a presentable impression, for sure I will spill my coffee and make the most awful mess. (It happened only yesterday in the Jewish quarter; fitting enough, in its way, but not very enjoyable for me. Needless to say I made a point of cleaning it up myself.) Even when gulping down a mere sip of water, there is every chance that I will either spill it on myself or else choke on it. Who would have thought that drinking is so difficult? What’s next, breathing? Lord, have mercy on me (or must I now write ἐλέησόν με κύριε?)…

     Nor do I seem to do very well in my interactions with the European locals, either in Britain or here on the continent proper—once more while I mean to be on my best, most agreeable and charming behavior. It doesn’t seem to go very far in these parts anymore, if it ever did. My peculiar species of friendliness—unfeigned enough, somewhat Americanized perhaps, with a touch of Thailand—is not much appreciated; my remonstrances, or even mere questions regarding local customs, are not well-received. It makes, alas, for rather the opposite of wu wei: a mortifying sequence of undoings with much ado! The spitting image of a Taoist master in action. Instead of the self melting effortlessly away in spontaneously skilled action, behold the Taoist clown, hilarious to others precisely because he tries so hard not to stumble over his own feet, and fails of course.

     Perhaps most troubling of all is the hovering question, not easily dismissed in view of the sheer abundance and variety of my mishaps, just what is wrong with me. Perhaps I am simply getting old; but much as I feel my years, 52 in good health (by the doctors’ accounts anyway) should still be a little early for going from one senior moment to the next. Insufficient mindfulness, then? No doubt, but how much attentiveness to the moment could ever be enough for a desperate case? And besides, the worst part of these silly misadventures is not only their indignity, but that they seem to occur even when I am only too aware of the danger and paying heed accordingly! Alas, it seems to make little difference.

     A cracked brain, perhaps, in urgent need of more serotonin or some such fix? Quite possibly, alas, as I’ve discussed and conceded in passing, though with little conviction, on several occasions (especially #32). Or is it all, as some would insist, primarily a matter of misguided attitudes and a mistaken outlook? I notice with wonder that when my girlfriend—in the very bloom of life and not liable to suspicions of dotage—blunders or forgets, or drops something without provocation, she does not reproach or worry herself about it. Instead, she laughs. “The Buddha way,” she says, and smiles lovingly at my persistent failure to understand the very basics.

     Then there is the Miller-Bukowski axis, lately warmed over by Mark Manson. His best-selling title may be little more than a vulgar bid for sales, but there is truth in it nonetheless: it really is an art, and a subtle one at that, not to give a fuck. (For the Tao’s sake, if you must say it, do so and don’t hide behind a ridiculous asterisk.) There is nothing artful about being merely uncaring, mind you; the Tao (and Manson’s writing in its better moments) is about knowing what is worth caring about and what not, and even more importantly, how to care in a way that is free and loving and does no harm—or that at least minimizes any collateral damage that may be unavoidable.

     It might be advisable, in a difficult case like mine, to rule out categorically any giving of thought to what others might think of me and my ways. This not out of indifference to their concerns and interest, but simply because I am already wary enough of injuring anyone without driving myself altogether to distraction with an imaginary universe of speculations about what someone may or may not be thinking. In most cases I would probably be wrong anyway, seeing only reflections of my own mental disquiets and disturbances in their supposed reactions.

     A strong dose of desirelessness would be a helpful ingredient, it is said. Not in the sense of forgoing all preferences, of course, but in a spirit of not allowing self and self-interest in the narrow sense to run the show all on their own, lest disappointment and dissatisfaction abound accordingly. How to make one’s way across this mighty and turbulent river, however—that is the big question. The traditional raft, regular meditation, gets laughed off all too frequently these days as undue self-regimentation by a surprising number of would-be walkers in the Way. Let the scoffers come to their own conclusions; it looks indispensable to me.

     Meditation or medication, as I have thought before (see #32)—a somewhat melancholy formula, perhaps, but a recognition of the facts, welcome or not (yatha-bhuta, once again). Whether the two would work best in combination remains an open question, not only for me, but also for our attempts at understanding how the mind and the physical world truly interact. For now I stick to one side of the equation, admitting its non-negotiable status; we shall see about the rest. One can always go on the pills, as on to a one-way highway; it’s finding the exit again that makes the proposition more troubling than it appears at first.

     Perhaps it would be most salutary of all if I could keep reminding myself, every moment anew, that in the end the great display of life may not matter as much as we are prone to imagining. Nothing in particular needs to happen here in Budapest, for example, or anywhere else. On so-called vacations it is especially tempting, and especially perilous, to think that all kinds of good times should be had. Nice if it happens for you, congratulations! But time off can easily into a trap that way (see #61). Vacation or no vacation, try not to make your days a burden, for yourself or others; and in the attempt, be careful about how much you feed your expectations, and on what fare.

     Live, love, and learn, these three, keeping in mind that the great swirl around you is a lifelong school, not just a joyride—or perhaps, to split the difference between the two, a kind of educational playground, with sundry games and lessons of varying degrees of gravity. (As I’ve said before, in the previous post for example, my musings in this vein have nothing to do with minimizing the ugliness and great misery of many games that human beings are wont to play with each other—for they know not what they do—or that Mother Nature in her cruel and destructive moods foists upon us unbid.)

     Beyond that, make whatever contribution you can; but fret not over what you are not managing and accomplishing, or what you are messing up despite your best efforts. If you can do better, go ahead and get it done, without ado. But if you cannot, which will be the case more often than we like to think, then maybe the Tao is also about learning to accept things just as they are, including yourself, however inadequate you may be feeling. It is not a matter of complacency, a cause for which I am temperamentally unsuited; but bumblers and laggards too need love, and the race to the top, or the bottom, or the sides, is not everything.

     So better not to encourage your own faults and follies too recklessly; push back against them whenever you can; but when you find that you cannot, smile at them, and at yourself, forgivingly. No one else will do it for you—not because others mind your faults so much, but because they have too many cares and worries of their own to be overly concerned about yours, so long as you don’t make a point of stepping on their toes. A Taoist clown, needless to say, will discover a thousand ways of doing just that without even meaning to…

*I have mentioned before (in #46) the Zen tradition of shoshaku jushaku that Shunryu Suzuki associates with the great master Dogen in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Weatherhill 1995, p. 39). Life on the Path, it is suggested there, is nothing more than making one mistake after another, somewhat in the spirit of Churchill’s enjoinder (apocryphal as it may be) that one must keep buggering on, with undiminished enthusiasm whenever possible. I don’t feel I understand Zen any better than the Tao, so I am not sure what to make of their take on failure; I can only say that it doesn’t feel as if there is anything very skilled about my largely involuntary improvisations on the theme.