USUALLY, WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “YOU’RE SO THOUGHTLESS!” IT MEANS you’ve done something wrong, something about which you should feel shame; but it’s not always so.
Recently, I’ve been re-reading Brian Walker’s rendition of the Hua Hu Ching (now spelled Huahujing), a Daoist text attributed to Laozi, which had been preserved only through oral tradition for at least the last six centuries. The 46th chapter opens with a three-line summary of the Daoist account of the creation of all things from the Dao. Reading these lines, every good student of Daoism would be nodding in agreement and smiling appreciatively at the elegant simplicity of the formulation. Then, surprisingly, Laozi says, “Now forget this.”
The chapter goes on to list a number of other things Laozi says we should forget, including the whole that’s also complete in any part … and the ego … and time and space … and supernatural beings … and Daoist practice. We’re told not to think of any of these things, to forget about them all — to become thoughtless.
Oh … uh … huh? … Oh!
In a typically playful Daoist manner, the Laozi we meet in the Huahujing is trying to push us beyond conventionally accepted modes of thought and expression toward direct, transcendent experience. Yes, it sounds like Zen and Prajnaparamita Buddhism, but it also sounds like Zhuangzi — and like Juan Delacruz (John of the Cross) and Thomas Merton. Indeed, it sounds like all of the innumerable masters and mystics in every spiritual tradition we know.
Here, we come face to face with a great paradox: even emptiness is empty. The Dao called “Dao” is not the eternal Dao (Daodejing, chapter 1, line 1).
The “ultimate truth” is subtle, ineffable. It can be experienced, but it can’t be expressed. Symbols and metaphors can point to it, but their words and images are not it. Concepts, no matter how comforting, are never as evocative of the experience as symbols and metaphors, and so, are even further from the truth.
Words and images have meaning, but only according to the conventions of their languages. Words and images, however, are the media of thought. Beyond words and images, therefore, we become thoughtless.
If the cruelty of ordinary or conventional carelessness toward others is a naïve and undeveloped manifestation of “thoughtlessness,” then arriving at the form of thoughtlessness known to spiritual masters and mystics must be a fulfillment of T.S. Eliot’s prophetic vision: “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time (from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets).
Soul Spirit Wisdom 