The Paradox Of Speaking: Verse One Of Laozi’s Daode Jing

From the start, Taoism presents with an utterly paradoxically relationship to speaking. The most oft-quoted words of its founding father -- Laozi -- from verse one of the Daode Jing are: “The Tao that can be spoken, is not the Eternal Tao / The name that can be named, is not the Eternal Name.”

And yet .... Laozi goes on from there to offer, in words, not only the remaining lines of verse one, but another eighty verses, to boot -- presumably because he felt that there was indeed something valuable that could be transmitted via words -- even if it weren’t the unmediated version of the Eternal Tao.

Voice As An Aspect Of Qi In Taoist Practice

Many of Taoism’s associated practices -- e.g. qigong, acupuncture, taiji and other martial arts -- are rooted centrally in the gathering and cultivation of qi (chi) -- life-force energy -- which is associated not only with the movement of our limbs, but also with the energy of our voice. Qigong practices such as the Healing Sounds (e.g. transforming fear into wisdom or anger into kindness) acknowledge the potency of voice as pure vibration -- an acknowledgment echoed, even more fiercely, in the battle-cries of martial artists: in verbal expressions used to enhance the power of kicks and strikes, and/or as a kind of psychological exclamation point (think: Bruce Lee’s famous “whaaaaa!”).

Ten-Thousands Ways To Say “Hello!”

In considering the role of voice in Taoist practice, I’ve been reflecting upon my own relationship to speaking: to expressing sounds, words, ideas, intuitions .... and, like the Taoist path itself, it’s a paradoxical one.

In general, I’m much more comfortable abiding in silence, than I am expressing myself verbally.

This has been true for as long as I can remember -- even as a young child. And yet, I also love to write -- both poetry and prose -- perhaps because the physical act of drawing pen across paper, or tapping keys with fingers, somehow mediates the passage from silence to sound, making it less abrupt, or more direct?

And yet, as I step into the role of a qigong-instructor or yoga-teacher, there’s a voice that emerges that feels utterly unique to these kinds of teaching-situations. Once I get into it -- surrender fully to the context -- I can usually feel completely relaxed and joyful in a playful-serious voicing of what seems most useful to be conveying. It’s a space from which I’m able to speak (or, perhaps more precisely, “speaking happens”) in a way that feels largely impersonal, yet paradoxically also deeply intimate and honest and mysteriously precise.

On the other hand, I tend to feel rather shy and awkward in social situations characterized by a lot of “small talk.” Often this will manifest as an almost literal inability to speak -- as though there simply were no energy, no power whatsoever, available to form and articulate and extend word-sounds. It’s really strange .... yet also is a good reminder, when I notice it happening, that I may have strayed significantly from what feels “true” or “right” for me to be doing or saying, in that moment.

On the other hand, I am quite comfortable, and actually very much enjoy, nonverbal “conversations” of the sort that happen, for instance, in dance improvisation: where shapes and movements and physical gestures take the place of words. Similarly, I can totally get into the verbal game of “speaking” to one another in a nonsense-language, as though using the language of beings from another planet, to “say” or “sing” (or whine or grunt or cluck or chime) what we wish to communicate, via sounds that have no specific conceptual meanings.

Years ago, I had a sweet friend with whom I frequently played a similar game -- which we called “chess,” though it wasn’t really chess. We had a collection of small semi-precious gemstones, sea-shells, marbles and other similar objects, and a square piece of cloth that we’d lay out as the “board.” Then we’d take turns making “moves” -- which consisted of choosing one of the “pieces” (stones, shells etc.) and placing it somewhere on the cloth. Again, it was a kind of playful conversation, back and forth .... which oftentimes ended with a very beautiful creation on the cloth. Versions of the game would occasionally appear spontaneously, in other contexts: e.g. while sitting in a restaurant, we’d begin to “play” using the various items on the table -- the silverware, glasses, salt-and-pepper shakers, etc. -- “speaking” to each other via (with all due poetic license and mock seriousness) rearranging the objects of our environment.

Now, I’ve sometimes wondered (not entirely seriously, though nevertheless wondered) if there might not be some kind of schizophrenia at play here -- in terms of the various “voices” manifesting through my bodymind -- since they appear sometimes to be so distinct from one another, so uniquely “their own.” At yet, there's also a part of me (which is writing this now!) which “sees” them all, and so provides a common context, if you will: like the stage upon which they all are dancing. My sense is that certain aspects of my psyche are simply less integrated than others, into the space of silence, in which I feel most comfortable; while others haven't quite learned how to dance or play "in the world." Who knows .....

Ting Jing -- Listening Energy

The types of nonconceptual-conversation games I’ve described above bear a certain resemblance to the cultivation of what in Taoism in known as Ting Jing or “listening energy” -- the capacity to “hear” and “know” through channels other than our usual mental/conceptual ones. It’s what allows a taiji player or martial artist to tune into their partner/opponent’s intention, prior to that intention’s manifestation as physical movement. It could perhaps be described as a form of intuition, or even of telepathy -- mind-to-mind communication which bypasses speech entirely -- though one which operates largely at a feeling level.

Conversations: Conceptual, Nonconceptual, Silent

So what then is the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual conversations -- between speaking via words whose conceptual meanings we (more-or-less) agree upon, and speaking via sounds or gestures or a kind of intuitive “tuning-in” to the other person, which for the most part bypass conceptual language? Can the Truth of the Eternal Tao flow more easily through nonconceptual forms of communication, than it can via conceptual forms? Is everyday conceptual language necessarily “noise” to the “signal” of the Tao? Or do the words of an enlightened being, an awakened sage, carry such a strong “signal” so as to render largely irrelevant the “noise” of the word-concepts which are its carrier?

Or is silence, in the end, the only true carrier of “that which can’t be spoken”?

Is seemingly dualistic communication (conceptual or nonconceptual) in and of itself that which veils the Truth; or does the problem lie, instead, with imagining the “other” -- with whom we’re having the conversation -- to be something other than all-that-is, something other than our very Self?

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