Analysis of The Way of Nothing

About this poem

The human lack of material desire begins when one, being sanctified, and filled with the Holy Spirit, lacks for nothing. Pondering on this thought, and wishing to discover something new and perchance gain some sacred wisdom to apply to and transform my material outlook, I willy nilly opened Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching, an ancient, esoteric, philosophical Chinese text of wisdom poetry, written around 400 BC and translated and published by Chad Hansen (2009) as a “Guide of Ways and Virtues. ” My random opening of the book directed me to Poem (“Chapter”) Number Thirty Seven, entitled “Primitive Lack of Desire.” In the text the poem reads quizzically as follows: “Ways fix on not acting from constructs. Yet nothing is not assigned a construct. If fief-holding kings could sustain it, 10,000 natural kinds should self-transform. If transforming encounters desires to construct, I will mollify them with nameless uncarved wood. Nameless uncarved wood is, Generally, being about to lack desires. Don’t desire, use serenity; The social world should stabilize itself.” Upon reflection, I recognize that this ten-line Taoist poem begs for personal interpretation, and my three-stanza Japanese-style Tanka poem is the result of capturing what for me is the essence of the poem, an essence echoed proverbially in the opening line of Psalm 23, which reads In Biblical Hebrew: יהוה רעי לא אחסר (in transliterated Hebrew, as “Adonai rohi, lo ekhsar” and in English translation as “The Lord is my shepherd [provider], I shall not lack [have no anxiety]). To repeat: “The human lack of material desire begins when one, being sanctified, and filled with the Holy Spirit, lacks for nothing.” In essence, The Way of Nothing is the Way of Fulfillment and Completion. more »