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Tao Te Ching Verse 4

 The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honored Ancestor of all things!

We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should temper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would ever so continue!

I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God.

On Infinity

The good news is that infinity is not that difficult of a concept to think about, mainly because we already just ‘know’ what it is - otherwise, we wouldn’t be aware of it.  My job here is to introduce the aspects of infinity that have helped me in my journey.

Space - Infinity is easy to think about in terms of math - all I need to do is start counting and never stop.  There are enough numbers to keep me going, well, forever.

So that’s ok, I can get that.  But how can I think of infinity beyond abstractions?  I usually like to think of the very big, and then the very small.  So the very big, as far as my mind will currently go, is the universe and maybe a little bit beyond.  To me, infinite space means no end.  And that’s the concept of infinite space.  Pretty simple.  I feel like the real magic comes when I can get quiet and contemplate infinity for a little while, which is what we’ll do in the practical application part of this episode.

Time - Once again with math, all I need to do is start counting, and the amount of time it takes will last as long as it needs to.  So time is infinite as well.  Let’s introduce a bit of a twist, though:  if time is infinite, that means that there is no beginning and no end.  It stretches out forever - but how do we fathom this?  

It’s easy, actually.  The only thing we need to do is meet time where it actually exists - in the right now.  This moment is the only one of which I can be sure.

But here’s the thing - I can’t experience the past and future - I can only remember it or project it.  The only ‘time’ I can experience it is in this moment.  I don’t live in the past or the future.  I only live in the now.  So if I can be aware of the present, I find myself in the right circumstances to experience the Tao, because the Now is the only time the Tao is.

So that’s the concept of infinite time.  The implication here that I’d like to point out is that if there is an infinite amount of time, but in order to experience time, I have to break it up into little chunks that represent seconds, minutes, hours, etc - I’m trying to measure the immeasurable.  So in a sense, since time is infinite, it has no beginning and no end.  Therefore: time does not exist.  We create it for convenience.  So why should I take the past and the future so seriously, then?  Can’t I just live presently...in the Tao?