I am revisiting the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tsu, a contemporary of Confucius.  It is old by the standard of my short lifetime.  And it is not so old in terms of our Earth, estimated at 4.5 billion years. Thus the text of the Tao Te Ching is both old and not so old.  Everything depends on what you chose as your standard of measurement. The essay in verse form composed by the “Old Master” is a meditation on the function of measuring, on the purposive thinking behind making comparisons, and the consequences of goal directed thinking.    

These short lines begin the essay by Lao Tsu.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the
manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness,
The gateway to all understanding.

It is difficult to say anything about these words.  I am sure they are a radical critique of the great polarization that we currently experience between citizens who are conservative minded, and those of us who are liberal minded.  Lao Tsu describes both manifestations as “caught in desire seeing only” what the lens of desire permits one to see.   These words indicate silently, in either case, a great deal is edited out.  Taking a position, especially a defined, “hard” position results in being blind to everything else but what you want to see. 

Every morning upon rising one of the most important questions to ask one’s self:  What do I want?

It is quite impossible to live free of desire.  All living things are energy processing entities, even a single celled organism is a complicated system for receiving and using energy sources to maintain itself, as long as it can.  Desire is built in.  For human beings desire is transformed into a tool, or into a weapon.  Often this occurs gradually, step by step concealed from conscious reflection — the individual, even whole societies are dragged behind a fatal desire, in a death spiral if you will. 

It is possible to manage desire.  This is the theme of the Tao Te Ching.

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And what of a tune to carry us through the day?  I am sure that you might predict this one as the one I’d chose!

Desire
by U2
(Yeah)

Lover, I’m on the street
Gonna go where the bright lights
And the big city meet
With a red guitar…on fire
Desire

She’s a candle burning in my room
Yeah I’m like the needle, needle and spoon
Over the counter with a shotgun
Pretty soon everybody got one
And the fever when I’m beside her
Desire, desire…

And the fever…getting higher
Desire, desire…burning, burning

She’s the dollars
She’s my protection
Yeah she’s a promise
In the year of election
Oh sister, I can’t let you go
Like a preacher stealing hearts
At a traveling show
For love or money money money
money money money money money
money money money
And the fever, getting higher
Desire, desire, desire, desire
Desire, desire