Christ the eternal tao pdf

The realization of this creator principle was, of course, not new with Lao Tzu. Chinese sages before him, as well as the philosophers of Greece and other cultures, had spoken of the same first cause. None of these philosophers, however, had actually described it in human terms, as well as did Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. The greatest achievement of this man who so valued non-achievement, was that he came closer than any sage before him, to defining the indefinable Tao, without the aid of special revelation.

Lao Tzu did not know, nor could he have attained purely through intuition, the state of intimate personal union with the Tao that primordial man had enjoyed when he had been filled with the uncreated energy or grace. However, Lao Tzu did partake of and experience this energy or grace acting on him from the outside.

By the way, the title of the Tao Te Ching includes the first two words, Tao, Te, and then the last word is Ching, which means book. So the title of the book means, the book of the Tao and the Te. So as I said, the word Te, I believe, in many places in the Tao Te Ching , where it speaks of the power of the Tao, corresponds with the English word, grace.

Respect of Tao and honor of Te are not demanded, but they are in the nature of things. Deep and far-reaching is mysterious Te. It leads all things to return, until they come back to the great harmony. The essence of the Tao cannot be directly known by man, but the Tao can be experienced through the manifestation of its power, or Te. The 13 th century writer, Wu Cheng, commenting on chapter 51 of the Tao Te Cheng , asserts that Te is divine and uncreated, as is the Tao, itself.

The Tao and Te are mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. This is because Te is also the Tao. The Tao is what Te contains. As for the manifestation, itself, it is eternal, for it is the glory of God. So both the essence and the energy of God are God.

This understanding of the cultivation of grace is found in several places of the Tao Te Ching. Here, according to the Tao Te Ching , we have translated Te as grace. He who follows the Way is at one with the Way. He who cultivates grace is at one with grace. When you become the valley of the world, eternal grace will never depart. Such is the return to the babe. Modern Western interpreters, and some Chinese, as well, have made the mistake of thereby assuming that the Tao is to be equated with nothingness, or non-being.

As Ji Ming Shen makes clear, however, this interpretation is far from the real meaning of nothingness in Lao Tzu. For although the Tao is infinite and indefinable, it remains in the realm of existence with particular things.

We may say the Tao, of the metaphysical One, is the infinite and all-embracing principle. However, despite the fact that we cannot give it a definite, particular name, the all-embracing principle does exist, and therefore, is not the meaning of nothingness. Ji Ming Shen observes that while nothingness is not the Tao, it is in the nature or essence of the Tao.

Spontaneity is the nature of being. The full development of spontaneity results in forgetfulness. Forgetfulness results in a feeling of nothingness. In other words, because the Tao is self-existent, self-sufficient, and conscious of no wants, it can create, give and sustain life, and at the same time, seek nothing of its own.

As Ji Ming Shen says, the Tao forgets itself and its own existence, being totally spontaneous and selfless. All things depend on it for life. None is refused. When its work is accomplished, it does not take possession. It clothes and feeds all things, yet does not claim them as its own. Ever without desire, it may be named small. Yet when all things return to it, even though it claims no leadership, it may be named great.

In this sense, as in others, man had been made in the image of God. Lao Tzu, then, had arrived at a profound affirmation concerning absolute being. It is selflessness. From this realization alone, however, he could not fully realize another primary fact about the Tao—the fact that the Tao is a person. As stated earlier, Lao Tzu did not experience the personal union with the Tao that man had known before the primordial departure from the Way.

However, he did approach the realization of the ultimate divine personhood of the Tao, for as he observed the Tao at work in nature, he saw actions that were benevolent, like those of a person.

They are nourished, developed, cared for, sheltered, comforted, grown and protected. He also said that the Tao, while not being a respecter of persons, that is, paying no attention to distinctions of race, class, creed, wealth, etc. The Tao of heaven makes no distinctions of persons. It always helps the virtuous.

Lao Tzu had gone far on the path of return to the Way, the path to the state of man before the departure from the Way, but much more was needed to return man to what he had lost, and beyond this, to take man to where he had originally been meant to go.

What was needed could not be accomplished by a mere man. It had to be accomplished by the creator, Himself. The Tao of the ancient Chinese, the Logos of the ancient Greeks, had to accomplish it, and He would do this by coming to earth as man. And so He appeared, He to whom the world owed its creation.

The Tao, or Logos, now, in a way, surpassing nature, took flesh in Jesus Christ. Christ even referred to himself as the Way, or the Tao. With the coming of Christ, all was changed. The new revelation affected the destiny of the whole cosmos. In taking flesh, Christ, the incarnate Tao, united human energy with divine energy in one person.

Divine energy did not act upon him as it had upon Lao Tzu. It was by this Te, the same that Lao Tzu had said nourished all creation, that Christ performed His miracles. The gospels record that the whole multitude sought to touch him for power—in Greek, dynamis, which, as I said, corresponds with the Chinese Te—for power went out of Him and healed them all.

The people around Christ could not see this energy. On the mountain of Tabor, however, Christ opened the spiritual eyes of his apostles to let them see it, and they beheld it as light. His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as the light. He came in selflessness, in humility.

He had no authority, neither in the state, nor even in the temple, founded on revelation from on high. He did not fight those who spurned him. He made himself of no reputation, as the scripture says, and took upon himself the form of a servant, submitting finally to scourging and execution. As the creator and true master of all that exists, He had no need of force, no need to display the power to punish opposition. All things return to it, yet it claims no leadership over them.

It does not contend, and yet it overcomes. Unlike the ancient Hebrews, Lao Tzu did not live in expectation of a Messiah, a savior, and yet, as Father Seraphim Rose believed, Lao Tzu would have followed Christ if he had seen Him, for he would have recognized in Him the humble, selfless Tao, which he had intuited in purity of mind. Having taken human form, the Tao, or Logos, made the personhood of God far more tangible than it had ever been known before.

In so doing, he had also brought the meaning of human personhood into sharper focus than had previously been known. In the scriptures, this personal dimension of self-emptying is called perfect love, love for everyone equally. Lao Tzu understood that a person who asserts himself as an individual, far from becoming a full person, becomes impoverished.

It is only in renouncing his possessiveness, giving himself freely and ceasing to exist for himself, that is, being reduced to nothingness, that the person finds full expression in the one human nature common to all.

In giving up his own advantage, he expands infinitely. He renounced His will in order to accomplish the will of the Father, by being obedient to Him. For as we know from revelation, the Logos, who incarnated in Christ, is the only begotten Son of God, of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The outpouring, self-emptying of Himself, only produces the greater manifestation of the deity of the Son to all who are able to recognize greatness in abasement, wealth in being robbed, liberty in obedience.

The very fact that Christ was sent into the world by the Father, shows His obedience to Him. This culminated in the ultimate self-emptying of undergoing the most humiliating and painful death known at the time—being scourged, stripped naked, and crucified in public view. If Lao Tzu had known that the Tao, which he said dwells in lowly places that all disdain, would one day take the form of a man, he could have conceived of no greater self-emptying, no greater lowliness, no greater nothingness, than the incarnate Tao being nailed to a cross and dying in a body that would rise again.

Father Seraphim Rose once wrote that nothingness, in the meaning that Lao-Tzu gives it, is the point of convergence, or axis, of the universe. It is the center hole that is the space where there is nothing, that makes the wheel useful. Christ stands at the axis, and there in the space where there is nothing, we find not an impersonal void, but the personal heart of the selfless, self-forgetting God.

Now, having looked at what Christ revealed of the Tao, let us look more closely at what He has made possible for those who follow Him. Christ was the fulfillment of what Lao-Tzu had been pointing to. To such an extent that man becomes deified by participation in the uncreated energy of God.

With Christ, man not only returns to the primordial state which Lao Tzu sought, now he rises beyond even this, in the mystical union with a personal God, that was originally intended for man. Finally, through Christ, the way to heaven becomes open to man, and man experiences what Lao Tzu called the Tao of heaven, in all the fullness of His being.

By coming in the flesh and dying on the cross, the Tao of heaven took on Himself the sentence of physical death that man had brought upon himself with the fall, at his departure from the Way. And yet, the Tao, having never in the slightest departed from the Way, for how could the Way depart from Himself, was wholly undeserving of the sentence. And being the author of life, he could not be held by death. Thus, in dying as a man, and the rising from the dead, the incarnate Tao abolished the sentence of a spiritual and bodily death that had lain on human nature, offering man freedom from all the consequences of his primordial departure from the Way.

Through Christ, our union with the Tao, or Logos, can begin in this life, only to continue forever in the life to come. During his time on earth, Christ spoke of special means by which he would affect this union—Holy Baptism, which Christ called being born of water and the Spirit, Holy Confession, which Christ spoke of when He said that His disciples would have the power to bind and loose sins, and Holy Communion, which He spoke of as eating His body and drinking His blood.

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