alignment

So, I have a copy of the  Tao Te Ching on my nightstand - the new annotated translation by Derek Lin - and I have been reading a single-page chapter each night before I go to sleep. Well, maybe three nights a week is a good average on how often I actually do it, considering how often sleep starts upstairs on the couch, snuggling with Coco and the kitty. I think Lin's translation is more accurate and instructive than it is poetic, and perhaps that was his intent. It's a nice little ritual of contemplation, at any rate.

Last night I read chapter 14. The first stanza goes like this:

Look at it, it cannot be seen
It is called colorless
Listen to it, it cannot be heard
It is called noiseless
Reach for it, it cannot be held
It is called formless
These three cannot be completely unraveled
So they are combined into one

As I read that, an almost fifty-year old memory immediately came to mind. A few minutes Googling confirmed my uncannily accurate memory of this:



Now, I have no way of knowing whether Herman Miller, who wrote the pilot for Kung Fu, ever read the Tao, although Wikipedia says that many Tao-based aphorism were used in the series. There is a connection between the Shaolin tradition and Taoism, and although Zen Buddhism plays a primary role in the order, it's quite possible that Lao Tzu might be quoted by way of illustrating a point. In any case, it was a remarkable late-night convergence that brought me back to sense of wonder than only a youth can have and lines that I quoted oh so many times without knowing their true source.