Tag Archives: Tao Te Ching

Mothering the World, A Tall Order

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Creative Nonfiction, Family, Love, Spirituality

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Margarita Sikorskaia 1968 | St. Petersburg, Russia | TuttArt@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica |

Margarita Sikorskaia

My novel From the Far Ends of the Earth is about relationships between mothers and children and all the ways that is expressed, from the most fearful and destructive to the most trusting and freeing.

A huge influence on my understanding of what “mothering” is, or could be, is found in the Tao Te Ching (CHXXV):

There was something complete and nebulous

Which existed before the Heaven and Earth,

Silent, invisible

Unchanging, standing as One,

Unceasing, ever-revolving,

Able to be the Mother of the World.

This Mother of the World, of course, is Tao, the all-pervading, all embracing, unchanging, and unceasing. It’s the thing that evolves, supports, nurtures, protects, and provides space for its “children,” all individual being.

A tall order for a mere human.

Yet something about that passage spoke to me as a woman and mother. It drew within me the desire to embrace my children in that spirit. And I found the mothering of my own two children improved immensely when I was able to step back and project in some way this more expansive sense of mothering that allows them to feel loved and supported without all the worries and anxieties and criticism and fear that accompany a mere human sense of mothering.

This mothering is not as personal, intense, or myopic, as the latter. It doesn’t hover, it doesn’t obsess, it doesn’t fret. It frees them “to be,” and is based on an immense sense of trust—in myself, in them, and in the universe at large. In God, or Tao, or some divine presence or higher power that embraces all of us, and gives each of us the capacity to mother each other.

This is not to say that I often meet this ideal. Far from it.

But I know I mother my own children best and make fewer mistakes when I’m able to embrace them in that larger, more expansive way. And it feels more natural, less constricted, to mother that way.

I find this kind of mothering works best when all-inclusive. When I embrace all around me with the same mothering spirit. Not just my children, but all children, all people, all things—my home, my community, my work—even the individual objects that fill the space around me and the space outside my window.  When I’m able to actually feel and identify with that potential, to “be” the “Mother of the World.”

Mothering, I learned, is a capacity that anyone can embrace: man, woman, child. You don’t have to be a mother, or have children of your own, to mother the world. When you adopt that stance, all things become your children to nurture, cherish, support, love—to help bring to their full potential.

Here’s wishing you all a lovely day of “mothering.”

First printed on these pages in 2015.

 

Fascinating Faces, Tao & the Arts

23 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Art, Culture, Photography, Spirituality

≈ 14 Comments

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DSCN4141

Some works of art speak to you on a level that is hard to define. You gaze and are drawn inward. Something in you identifies with what you see there. It’s not outside, it’s in here. It was there before you saw it, and the seeing is just a reminder of its presence.

I felt that way when viewing some of the artwork at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Especially in the faces that follow. The one above is my favorite. I cannot help smiling when I see it. I’ve paired the faces with a few favorite Tao verses and Zen anecdotes that capture a glimpse of what I see in each face.

THE MONK – OH SO DELICIOUS

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Once there was a monk fleeing for his life, a tiger at his heels, chasing him over the edge of a cliff where he grabs hold of a branch.  He dangles there just out of reach of the tiger’s snapping jaws, while below another tiger is snapping at his feet.  No escape.  Just then he notices a fat juicy strawberry dangling from a nearby vine. He plucks it loose and pops it into his mouth.  “Oh, so delicious!” he sighs.

THE SAGE – WHERE WONDER RISES

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“From mystery to further mystery is the entrance to all wonders.”  -Tao Te Ching, (Ch. I)

THE SAVANT – RIDING THE WIND

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“My eye becomes my ear, my ear becomes my nose, my nose my mouth. My bone and my flesh melt away. I cannot tell by what my body is supported or what my feet walk upon. I am blowing away, east and west, as a dry leaf torn from a tree. I cannot even tell whether the wind is riding on me or I am riding on the wind.”  -Lieh Tzu

THE MYSTIC – WHO AM I?DSCN4140

“Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there. Suddenly I awoke and was surprised to be myself again. Now, how can I tell whether I am a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreams she is a man?” Chuang Tzu

THE MOTHER – OBTAINING THE ONE

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Knowing the Male,
But staying with the Female,
One becomes the humble Valley of the World. – Tao Te Ching (Ch.XXVIII)

There was something complete and nebulous
Which existed before Heaven and Earth,
Silent, invisible,
Unchanging, standing as One
Unceasing, ever-evolving,
Able to be the Mother-of-the-World.  – (Ch. XXV)

“Able to Be the Mother of the World”

12 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Creative Nonfiction, Spirituality

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holly-irwin-madonna-and-child

Madonna and Child by Holly Irwin

These words from the Tao Te Ching are my mantra. They inspire me to identify with and live larger than what I appear to be individually. I turn to this felt-sense of self when I want to have a clearer, purer, more expansive sense of who I am at heart, when all that’s extraneous is removed.

The words refer to the Tao, that which is all-pervading, all-embracing, unchanging and unceasing. But I take them in a more personal way, as something to aspire toward–as a mother, a writer, a homemaker, artist, citizen. The world has much need of our mothering.

Each part of the mantra inspires me.

“Able to be” speaks to the capacity, the potentiality, of all humans, male or female, to aspire to something more, something beyond our current understanding of who we are or can be. “Something more”–that intangible, mysterious Other we yearn toward.

“Mother” is the symbol of all things round and fertile, life-giving and nurturing. Unconditional love and acceptance. The ground or source of being. The creator.It refers to inscrutable urge to turn ourselves inside out, to bring that which we love into fruition.

“World” refers to the entirety of creation, the universe and all that lies within. But it also refers to all that is yet to be. All those intangible, interior unwritten landscapes.   It refers to that hidden nebulous thing within which longs to be brought into full, vibrant, elegant being.

The mantra leans toward the female but the male is not excluded (note how the words  male and man are included within the words female and woman).It’s impetus is the male and female in blissful, rapturous union. The male rooted within the female, the female pierced by the male, the two wrapped together, one being. No “mother,” no “creator,” emerges without this union. No creation, no art, no worldly domain. No new life or exterior being.

There’s a sense of fullness here, within the mantra. A sense of  completion, satisfaction, fulfillment. A sense of power and presence. Powerful presence. There’s nothing static or final about it, despite the fullness, the sense of completion. It doubles back to the “able to be” part:  Capacity. Potentiality. Ever fertile. Ever reaching toward the intangible, the unknown, to bring it into being. Ever reaching toward that “something more” waiting to be born.

When I meditate on this mantra and feel its full potential within, feel myself as some reflection or expression of that woman “able to be the mother of the world,” I know I’ve come home. Home within myself, and within this world that embraces me.

To Mother the World

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Family, Love, Spirituality

≈ 6 Comments

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Painting_by_Manoj_PaturkarThe novel I am working on is about relationships between mothers and children and all the ways that is expressed, from the most fearful and destructive to the most trusting and freeing. So I’ve been thinking a lot on this topic lately.

A passage that had a huge influence on my understanding of what “mothering” is, or could be, is found in the Tao Te Ching (CHXXV):

There was something complete and nebulous

Which existed before the Heaven and Earth,

Silent, invisible

Unchanging, standing as One,

Unceasing, ever-revolving,

Able to be the Mother of the World.

This Mother of the World, of course, is Tao, the all-pervading, all embracing, unchanging, and unceasing. It’s the thing that evolves, supports, nurtures, protects, and provides space for its “children,” all individual being.

A tall order for a mere human.

Yet something about that passage spoke to me as a woman and mother. It drew within me the desire to embrace my children in that spirit. And I found the mothering of my own two children improved immensely when I was able to step back and project in some way this more expansive sense of mothering that allows them to feel loved and supported without all the worries and anxieties and criticism and fear that accompany a mere human sense of mothering.

This mothering is not as personal, intense, or myopic, as the latter. It doesn’t hover, it doesn’t obsess, it doesn’t fret. It frees them “to be,” and is based on an immense sense of trust—in myself, in them, and in the universe at large. In God, or Tao, or some divine presence or higher power that embraces all of us, and gives each of us the capacity to mother each other.

This is not to say that I often meet this ideal. Far from it.

But I know that I mother my own children best and make fewer mistakes when I’m able to embrace them in that larger, more expansive way. And it feels more natural, less constricted, to mother that way.

I find this kind of mothering works best when all-inclusive. When I embrace all around me with the same mothering spirit. Not just my children, but all children, all people, all things—my home, my community, my work—even the individual objects that fill the space around me and the space outside my window.  When I’m able to actually feel and identify with that potential, to “be” the “Mother of the World.”

Mothering, I learned, is a capacity that anyone can embrace: man, woman, child. You don’t have to be a mother, or have children of your own, to mother the world. When you adopt that stance, all things become your children to nurture, cherish, support, love—to help bring to their full potential.

Here’s wishing you all a lovely day of “mothering.”