The Feminine Principle
It is almost as if our civilization were suffering from an eclipse of the feminine principle, and it is no mere chance that this coincides with the extreme of self-consciousness. Traditionally, the dark side of life, the unknown, the mysterious was always female; its great symbol is water, the mysterious depth out of which life appears, and because of its passivity and depth, water has always been accounted feminine. Therefore for us the words of Lao Tzu have a special point:14
He who knows the masculine and yet keeps to the feminine Will become a channel drawing all the world towards it.
And again:
Man when living is soft and tender; when dead he is hard and tough. All animals and plants when living are tender and fragile; when dead they become withered and dry. Therefore it is said: the hard and tough are parts of death; the soft and tender are parts of life. This is the reason why the soldiers when they are too tough cannot carry the day; the tree when it is too tough will break. The position of the strong and great is low, and the position of the weak and tender is high.
In other words, acceptance as a feminine technique reawakens our lost “better half” and makes us whole, for acceptance is the way of the tree that is weak and tender—like the willow. Under the weight of snow its boughs bend down and cast the snow off; but on the boughs of the knotted, rigid pine the snow piles up and up until they crack. This is called stooping to conquer.
The best soldier is not soldierly;
The best fighter is not ferocious;
The best conqueror does not take part in war;
The best employer of men keeps himself below them.
This is called the virtue of not contending;
This is called the ability of using men;
This is called the supremacy of consorting with heaven.
Every true woman knows the virtue of not contending by which she gets her own way, for
The highest goodness is like water. Water is beneficent to all things but does not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao.
Cutting it, you can leave no wound because it always yields; grasping it, you cannot hold it because it always falls through your fingers. You can only hold it by making a cup of your hands. Now water is a symbol of life and a cup of acceptance and a sword of aggressiveness. The cup is also a feminine symbol, and of this Lao Tzu says:
Clay is moulded into vessels
And because of the space where nothing exists we are able to use them as vessels.
Doors and windows are cut out in the walls of a house.
And because they are empty spaces, we are able to use them.
For acceptance is emptiness in the Buddhist sense of sunyata, which is sometimes likened to a crystal or a mirror. “The perfect man,” says Chuang Tzu, “employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.” So, too, a crystal takes into itself whatever lies around it. When you hold it up before a busy street, it holds the busy street; when you hold it up before the empty sky, it seems to hold nothing—but only because it is reflecting the emptiness of the sky. What is its own real nature? It is neither full nor void; it is beyond all opposites, and thus is a symbol of spiritual freedom. This reminds me of the conversation between the Buddhist sage Tozan and one of his disciples. Said the disciple, “Cold and heat alternately come and go, and how can one escape them?” Tozan answered, “Why not go where there is neither cold nor heat?” “Where,” persisted the disciple, “is the place where there is neither cold nor heat?” “When the cold season is here, we all feel cold. When the hot season is here we all feel hot.”15
5. THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
A curious feature of the quest for freedom is the appearance of a snag just as you think you are getting somewhere. The snag appears for the very reason that you think you are getting somewhere, for the essential point of spirituality, the point so difficult to grasp, is that it is not a question of going at all. You cannot get the freedom of the spirit by climbing up to it; it is not reached by any kind of ladder, for otherwise it would be possible to describe a specific technique by which wisdom and enlightenment can be “obtained” and the whole matter would be as apparently simple as buying a ticket and taking a train. But the steps and stages are not laid out in black and white, and there are no fixed rules and regulations the mere observance of which will achieve the desired result. It is very much like learning to love someone. You cannot look up a book of rules and find out how to love, although many such books have been written.
Now the practice of any kind of technique is going somewhere, yes, even the technique of acceptance. If this is true, it will be asked why anyone should go to the trouble of talking about it at all; if even the technique of acceptance will not, of itself, achieve the desired object, why introduce it? Because, according to the proverb, the longest way round is the shortest way home. It seems to be necessary to try to discover the secret by going somewhere in order to learn that this can never be done. The path always takes you round in a circle, back to the place where you stand. It is the parable of the Prodigal Son over again, and the Buddhists describe it as the journey of a lunatic all over the world in search of his head, which he had never lost. There is no doubt at all that from one point of view the technique of acceptance actually works, but it is always partial. It is admirable for solving an immediate problem, in instances of pain, depression, and sorrow, but there is always something it leaves unsolved, for there remains a subtle, indefinable, and elusive inner discontent.
The Longing for God
This is truly a “divine discontent” for I believe it to be what the mystics describe as the yearning of the soul for God; as St. Augustine says, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, therefore we may not rest anywhere save in Thee.” By a hundred different techniques we can adjust the details of our lives and make ourselves happy in the superficial sense of having nothing specific to be unhappy about. But techniques can only deal with details, with separate parts; something different is required to transform one’s attitude to life as a whole, and to transform the whole of one’s life. Without this transformation the real unhappiness remains, expressing itself in all manner of disguises, finding innumerable substitutes for God which do not work because they are always partial things. They are, as it were, the parts of God, but not the whole of Him. Technique can find these parts; it can find acceptance, wealth, pleasure, experience, knowledge, and all the lesser gods and demons of the unknown realms of the soul. But even when all these many parts are brought together, there is still something which no technical trick or device can discover, and this is the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
Those who have followed partial techniques know that in a life where there is nothing special to be unhappy about there is a kind of barrenness; it is like a wheel without a center, or a perfect lamp without a light. There is nothing to supply any creative fire. Everything is going just as it should go; the daily routine may be a little dull, but it is by no means unbearable. Certainly there are troubles, but nothing overwhelming. As for one’s own character, well, that is quite normal. There are no serious neurotic troubles and no moral defects. For the most part life is quite agreeable and if death comes at the end of it, that is a matter of course for which nature will prepare us; when the time comes to die we shall be tired and ready to go. That is not a happy life, even though it may be contented; it is simple vegetation. There is not that joyous response of the individual to the universe which is the essence of spirituality, which expresses itself in religious worship and adoration. I suppose there must have been times in everyone’s life when there has been such a response, even for a short moment. In those moments most of us like to be alone, for we are afraid to let others see us become so childish. After all, we are dignified adults and it would not do at all for Mr. Cornelius Pomp, president of Grand International Railways, Inc., to be seen dancing wildly around on a hilltop in the middle of the night for sheer joy at seeing the stars. But I have no doubt there was an occasion when Mr. Pomp, in the dim recesses of his being, felt very much like doing this but could not unbend.