Everything is just an interpretation

This is my interpretation of Book 1, Chapter 1 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.

The Tâo that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tâo. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.

(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.

Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 1 (trans. James Legge, 1891)

If you can fully express TAO in words, it's already not a real thing, only a description or an interpretation.

If you think of a language as a map, then TAO is the terrain.

TAO is what we refer to as the truth, order or process of reality.

Any formulation, doctrine or system that comes out of that same truth, is at best a pointer, never the truth itself.

So we should not confuse concepts about reality with reality.

We are carving reality into categories by labeling or naming it: "this is X, this is Y…"

But the moment you name something, you instantly limit it to a role, function or a label itself.

The truth, order or process of reality precedes labels. Whatever identity things in reality have is prior to, and deeper, than any name or label you give them.

Names and labels are useful for coordination, but misleading when you treat them as the ultimate truth.

So therefore, all is just an interpretation.

Interpretation is an interface, abstraction of the truth, order or process of reality, which is the TAO.

Because before any distinctions or naming, there is a unified undivided truth. And labeling or naming that truth instantly creates a division from it.

In life, from that undivided ground, all structured reality emerges. The source, which is the TAO, is beyond words, beyond categories, labels or "things".

Once you start distinguishing and naming, you get multiplicity: this person, that object, this event, that identity, that feeling.

The act of naming generates the world of separate entities.

So what is referred to as the nameless, is the origin. That which is fundamental. Naming and labeling things gives birth to the manifested, differentiated world.

If you are driven by desires, and it's really difficult not to be, at least on the conscious level, you do not see the reality for what it is.

Because to desire something, means to label a separate meaning to it then what it is.

By desiring, we don't see "what it is", we see what we "want or fear".

And therefore by clinging and grasping for things that are labeled makes our perception biased.

So when attempting to be desireless, in that non grasping state, we perceive the deeper layer: the underlying pattern, what is in TAO referred to as SECRETS, in other words the previously mentioned truth, order or process of reality.

And therefore, to percieve the world or what it is, you should be desireless, empty, quiet and receptive.

However, you should also allow yourself to have desires.

Because without any desire at all, you might see the depth, but ignore the surface play.

By allowing ourselves to desire, we participate and see how TAO manifests as change, movement and drama.

This is the active, worldly mode: acting, doing, creating, failing, learning.

So we need to be able to operate in both:

• Desireless: to see the world for what it is
• Desireful: to experience that what it is

After all, do not be surprised if you eventually figure out that both of these are just different views of one reality.

They sound very different, and they feel different from the inside.

But contemplation and action, emptiness and form, depth and surface are not two separate interpretations. They are exactly the same process looked at from different angles.

The division of them is simply conceptual and performative.

Because both the deep source and its expression are ultimately the same TAO. And even if you try, you can't fully explain both either.

The more you look, the more layered it is: any explanation you give raises further questions.

Reality is not fully exhaustible by concepts, what we decide to interpret is simply an interpretation and nothing else.

The more you look at an interpretation, it simply renders itself as an interpretation of an interpretation. You will never get to the fundamental by labeling or naming.

And, holding both perspectives together, non-grasping insight into the nameless source yet engaged participant in the named world, is how you should operate.

Becase, if you only live in the desireful, you are trapped on the surface. Never seeing the world for what it actually is.

Yet if you only live in detachment and nameless, you're disconnected from life, experience and play that world has to offer.

So the one that is able to move fluidly between both states, is the one that is considered to have achieved the perfect balance.

And in this fluid state, is when you are able to discover the SECRETS which TAO has to offer.