Words go forth from one's own person and exert their influence on men. Deeds are born close at hand and become visible far away. Words and deeds are the hinge and bowspring of the superior man. As hinge and bowspring move, they bring honour or disgrace. Through words and deeds the superior man moves heaven and earth. Must one, then, not be cautious? (Ta Chuan — Great Treatise — Richard Wilhelm.)
Taoism, as a set of arts and practices, offers tools for the refinement of all aspects of our experience. Reading and writing is no different. This may seem a strange thing to say as, on the face of it, Taoism encourages us to look beyond words.
That is true. But just as in Tai Chi a student practices strict forms so that she might one day abandon them and move naturally, so words can, and do, lead us to a higher plain where they are no longer needed. It really is no different from the way a pianist needs to learn from sheet music before he can throw it away and play from memory.
Lao Tzu, to take just one very notable example, wrote with such mastery that reading his words now, 2,500 years later, can unravel old ways of thinking and introduce new ones.
Our brains are not built for reading and writing. They have to rewire themselves to accommodate the skill. It is thought we developed the ability when, for instance, the paw print of a wild animal became a symbol for the animal itself and it prompted an emotional reaction, thus helping us to develop the empathy that reading, especially, relies on.
What is so fascinating — and relevant to Taoism — is the fact that what we read shapes our brains as much as the fact we read at all. No single part of the brain is responsible for reading: all parts of it light up variously when we are buried in a book. Remarkably, if a character in a story is, say, running, then parts of our brain light up as if we are really running. We truly empathise with the characters and live their experiences in a very real way.
With repeated activity, new neural pathways are created in the brain and old ones fall apart. This is why the Taoists say endurance furthers, because lasting change to ourselves cannot come suddenly but over a period of consistent practice. And since reading about something works our brains in the same way actually doing it does, words can end up rewiring our brains. (That's why piano playing, so difficult at the beginning, gets easier with practice and, in the end, comes naturally.)
So when you read the Tao Te Ching, you are living the experience of Lao Tzu. The parts of his brain that were illuminated as he wrote flicker into life in yours, if only momentarily, and he, across the millennia, reaches out and touches you, which gives a fresh perspective on the quote this essay was introduced with.
The Ta Chuan, here again translated by Richard Wilhelm, says:
Writing cannot express words completely. Words cannot express thoughts completely. Are we then unable to see the thoughts of the holy sages?
The Master said: the holy sages set up the images in order to express their thoughts completely; they devised the hexagrams in order to express the true and the false completely. Then they appended judgements and so could express their words completely.
They created change and continuity to show the advantage completely; they urged on, they set in motion, to set forth the spirit completely.
In other words, they used a combination of images, symbols and words to express their thoughts completely and to begin a process within us which will lead to transcending all limits. The way of the universe (Tao) takes root in our very being and a transformation begins. We are told to ponder on the images and contemplate the judgements; even to take pleasure in them.
For a while now I have been saying that the I Ching gets inside you; that the hexagrams change you from within at a very basic level. You start to see the world and your relationships as a hierarchy of complex interactions and you start to instinctively know how to act and what to say. It becomes natural.
And through the endeavours of modern science, I can see how that might be happening.
And it also explains, perhaps, why the Tao Te Ching seemed so impenetrable to many of us when we first read it, and why it now makes so much sense. It may also explain why we no longer have to refer back to the text for advice as much as we used to, because our brains, and so our actions, have been shaped by it.
Even though the sages always warned about words they never assuaged them: they used them masterfully to be catalysts for change within those who read them.
Yes, the sages were right that the Tao is not in the words themselves, but they never underestimated their power as tools and nor should we. Reading and writing are skills, I believe, for Taoists to cultivate alongside any other.
For me, I am going to go on staring at those hexagrams and contemplating the words attached to them. I am going to let them get to work on reshaping my brain so it may accommodate them and then I will be able to say that the Changes are operating through me.
One day.
