Letting Go

The copy of the Tao te Ching I have carried around with me for more than 50 years has disappeared. Or, more likely, I left it on some hotel room floor. The question I ask myself is, have I unlearned enough to let it go, or do I need to replace it? Certainly it serves (served) as a reminder, but at some point sometime I'll need to venture out on my own.

I remember when I came across the book, and the concept of Taoism, long ago, when I was a college student working part-time in the university library. I worked in the new books area, and one of my jobs was to remove the dust covers from books as they came in, the thinking being, I guess, that those covers are going to get torn and dirty anyway, so why not remove them. Anyway, this version of the Tao te Ching, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, with an introduction by (and my first introduction to) Alan Watts, was a coffee table type, with beautiful black-and-white photos, was my entrance into that whole world of what was then known as "the counter-culture." I was entranced and somewhat intellectually transformed by it. This whole new way (old way) of looking at the world, at least partly in terms of contradictory concepts. I can truthfully say that, for better or for worse, I became a different person. I also ended up dropping out of school, but then that's a whole different story.

If I haven't found my truth as it relates to the Tao, one wonders if I ever will do so in this lifetime. But perhaps that's part of it, the realization that the words will vanish into the ether, as will the reader, but that truth will likely remain (or perhaps not-be) in its own way. It certainly doesn't need me, the question is how much I need it. I think I need it a lot.