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The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things.

All things have their backs to the female
and stand facing the male.
When male and female combine,
all things achieve harmony.

Ordinary men hate solitude.
But the Master makes use of it,
embracing his aloneness, realizing
he is one with the whole universe.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. Stephen Mitchell

Early traffic this morning brought reminder of my younger working years. Bumper to bumper at 55 mph on Randall Road bring both a memory and serves as metaphor for my America. We Americans, siloed in our automobiles, in our houses, and fixated inside the media channels alluring to others minded like me.  I am “thrown” into this world. Context “makes” me, the flow of circumstance, the flotsam, debris-like, among which chance and time propels me.

Not unlike my experience in/of early morning traffic. I am only semi-aware of details, seldom checking the speedometer, manipulate brake and accelerator instinctively to become “one” with those other anonymous composites of metal and plastic and rubber and human… What need do I have to distinguish road, from vehicle, from driver? Where are we/am I going? Why? Does it matter, really? To just ‘keep going’ feels the most important. Traffic is making me!

The chapter quoted for today states the cornerstone of Taoist cosmology. The literal rendering is offered above. A more expansive descriptive rendering is offered below by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall:

Way-making (Tao) gives rise to continuity,
Continuity gives rise to difference,
Difference gives rise to plurality,
And plurality gives rise to the manifold of everything
that is happening.

A life-force pervading the cosmos is the ground of continuity, that relatedness of all things. What? Does that mean I am linked, have commonality even with a Trump devotee? I’ll have to think about that, still it seems certain. And the explosion of diverse life-ways, of views represented by cultures, regions, cities and villages, etc., etc.. The differences are legit, no illusion, and nevertheless all are still related. You the reader are one-of-a-kind, never another copy, anywhere or anytime. Difference, yes. And continuity too. “The manifold of everything that is happening” begins from the heart of that life-force…

Radical contextuality and continuity as described by Sinologist Ames and Hall involves the returning. I’ve never before realized that aging and at some moment, a of time my death is none other than a form of the continuity of all things. (反) Fan, the return, is the turn over, back into the flow of all things. To entertain this thought, that I have in common with all things, my return. My Fall is to fall. Everything that lives dies and this thought alone is enough to drain the violent, even murderous intention from our hearts.

There is nothing more to be added. I relax and my pulse rate slowly, slowly lessens…