In The Mists, At Nightfall

Sometimes you find yourself in some part of a winding back roads, perhaps halfway up the side of a heavily wooded elevation leading further and further, deeper, into those uninhabited places well away from the last sign of human civilization, the last roadhouse before the long climbs and then descents through valleys across the major escarpment.

You are driving alone, the radio set or podcast on your digital device your only companion.

When you are back in cities, in the urban communities, there is the crush of people, the loud noise of humanity in its dense throngs - in the fast-pace and 'take-away' mentality of modern people all gone off the rails but pretending to be doing something.

In the jungle there are beautiful 
animals, but these are also dangerous 
animals regularly.

Most people who read are fairly familiar with the Tao Te Ching. And therefore they are very well aware that there are numerous translations of it, none of which completely agrees with any other of the translations.

This is the nature of Chinese script and the obscure grammar of especially poetic verse as written in the logograms of the Chinese language form.

Occasionally you will find some scholar who mentions that during the Tang Period in particular, Chinese philosophers understood the divine beings - usually termed 'fairies' but regarded also very much as gods and goddesses - as sometimes being interested in the curious ways of mortals, but then inevitably dismissing them as a trifling affair; a trifling form of only temporarily living creature.

Fundamentally, the logograms being written down by poets are subjected to a lot of differing interpretations and explanations. Although something has been 'set down in writing,' nevertheless the nature of the exact ideas and meanings are not set in stone.

The widest public generally laughs at the deep scholars and deny that these will really know what is being intended in the classical texts.

With technology, it makes us think
that we can control 'nature.'

The scholars and intellectuals are 'up in the clouds,' so to speak, according to the common mind all the time.

The scholars themselves on the other hand, refuse to dispute with the common minds, and proceed as though they have some esoteric knowledge - but a knowledge so valuable and practical and beneficial, that they want to keep it exclusively and not share it with others who are not fit to be granted access to the precious meanings.

A secret is in the dual way one can translate the phrase 'consort with heaven,' for instance:

It could mean conspiring or being solicitous with the gods, seeking their assistance, asking them for things...

Or, it could literally mean being or becoming a consort - a sort of a concubine to the gods!

And then, as a consort, instead of asking or seeking or praying, the person of knowledge makes themselves attractive to the divine personages and to their divine minds and way of thinking - their outlook.

In the human world we see so much suffering, so much grief and pain...

We cannot understand it on the basis of any logical concept that a divine mind is anywhere in the loop but then just stands there failing to intervene when tragedy strikes.

The presence of evil and gratuitous suffering is not genuinely explainable if there is a god and the nature of that god is goodness.

The presence of evil however, is something which exists here because human beings are evil.

You might not be evil but the rest of the world on the whole is very evil and obscures its responsibility and pretends things are all just naturally transpiring on their own.

How evil is 'very evil?'

Well, once you realize that even the mortal man is part-way to being immortal and a god himself, you are potentially more willing to accept that the other gods are intentionally not stepping in and thereby treading on the rights of the human 'part-god.'

No sooner though that you have decided to consort with the heavens, than it comes to be that those gods intervene with you - and but with you alone.

And then at that point suddenly you yourself will become what will appear like a massively disconnected and disinterested person - of all the other fellow human beings around you; their fate, their pain, their struggles, their suffering.

These will become to you like small things, of little or no consequence.

And then you will become like the stranger at the Hibiscus Inn, about to begin his journey - in the great Tang Chinese classic:

"With this cold night-rain hiding the river

You have come into Wu

In the level dawn, all alone

You will be starting for the mountains of Chu

Answer, if they ask of me at Loyang

One hearted as ice in a crystal vase."