Heaven and Earth

Heaven (Ch’ien: the Creative)

The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.  Lao Tzu

Creative self-organizing systems are embedded within larger creative systems– energy arising out of the void and forming particles forming atoms forming molecules forming cells forming body systems, forming human systems, family systems, social systems, communities embedded in ecosystems, forming planetary systems, solar systems, spinning galactic systems.  All constantly transforming and interdependently connected, falling apart and reforming, evolving and creating new forms.

That is our experience.  Those are systems we can observe and name.  Yet what of the system in which what we call the universe is embedded, which in turn is embedded in yet another larger or even smaller system?  Our understanding of what is has limits and is merely an approximation, our best guess that is often found wrong.  What is begs to be known, and the light of our knowledge of it slowly brightens, yet in that process we discover so much more that we do not know.  The unfathomable we can call heaven, the Mystery, the Tao. 

Heaven is the origin of all beings and things, and is called Nature, the positive principle.  It is the primordial originating power which causes emergence and its virtue is love, which embraces all other virtues. 

Heaven is development and strength, the extension and expansion of positive energy causing all things to flourish.  This is the Way of the Tao, the universal law that runs through the end and beginning and brings all phenomenons within time.  Each step prepares for the next.  Time is not an obstacle but the means of making actual what is potential.  Its virtue is morality which regulates and organizes expressions of love and makes them successful.

Heaven is the achievement of goodness, the proper benefit of positive energy.  When positive energy achieves its proper benefit, all things come to fruition.  Its virtue is justice, creating conditions in which each is fulfilled according to its being.

Heaven is persisting.  The Tao’s energy transforms and changes so that each accords with heaven’s harmony.  It is the power which separates what survives from what decays and dies.  Its virtue is wisdom.  It is the discernment of immutable law of all that happens, thus bringing about enduring conditions.

Earth (K’un: the Receptive)

Nothing is more flexible than the earth.  It is the ultimate of breadth and calm, lowliness and humility, unchanging in its yielding.  It is what we consider matter but more profound than matter.  K’un can bear anything.

The earth represents nature in contrast to heaven, space as against time, the lower as against the higher.  It connotes spatial reality in contrast to the spiritual potentiality of the Creative, heaven.  The potential becomes real and the spiritual becomes spatial through persistently holding fast to the good.  This duality appears in the coexistence of the spiritual and the world of the senses.

Devotion defines the place occupied by this primal power in relation to heaven, the creative.  K’un is altogether still within as it is wholly dependent, yet is bound immutably to definite laws of Tao in its manifestations.  The sage shows devotion through obedience to the laws of heaven.

Only because nature in its myriad forms corresponds with the myriad impulses of the Creative can the Earth make these impulses real.  Nature’s richness lies in its power to nourish all life.  It greatness lies in its power to give them beauty and splendor.  It prospers all life. 

Within the world, K’un represents action in conformity with the situation, not independently but as an assistant.  Thus one has a duty to fulfill.  Trying to lead would result in losing the way.  One follows the Tao, meeting fate with an attitude of acceptance and thus finding guidance.  One does not go blindly head imposing one’s will but learns from the situation what is needed and then follows this natural course.

Earth supports all things and allows them to fulfill their potential.  Because K’un adapts itself to Ch'ien, all comes to be exactly as they should be.  Thus earth brings forth all beings, each in its own kind, according to the will of Ch'ien.  The earth has no need of a purpose.  Everything spontaneously becomes what it should rightly be, for it obeys the law of heaven. 

Sages do not act on their own initiative but keep quietly receptive to the impulses flowing from the creative forces.  Life achieves the height of wisdom when all that is done is evidence of what nature does.