I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I shuddered when Phaedrus articulated his theory of “quality,” only to experience a breakdown when he realizes that he simply rediscovered Laoxi’s insight–codified in the Tao Te Ching some 500 years before the birth of Christ:
The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name…
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, rendition by Ursula K. Le Guin, pg. 26
How we need our theories, our stories to ourselves and each other of our interpretations of maddening sensory data. How we long to encapsulate reality into some type of lens, through which we can make sense of it. The Quantum physicists and the heirs of Einstein struggle to craft their unified field theory. Psychologists and evolutionary biologists still debate Nature v. Nurture. Objectivists and subjectivists spar in philosophy. Our collective intellectual cacaphony goes on and on.
All because we can’t bear the mystery of being, even though Laoxi articulated it so long ago:
The Way bears one.
The one bears two.
The two bear three.
The three bear the ten thousand things…
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, rendition by Ursula K. Le Guin, pg. 132
starlight
the reflection on
a still pond
for dVerse Poets’ Poetic: Theories of Everything andย Anything (pubtended by Merril). The Pub opens at 3PM EST. Come join us!
and Real Toads’ Tuesday Platform (imagined by Sanna Rizvi)
Frank J. Tassone 
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