Tao Te Ching, Ch 4
The Door of all Wonders:
The Commentary on the Tao Te Ching
by Nirguna CK Lam
Chapter Four
Truth
is like emptiness.
Its uses will never be exhausted.
So
deep! It seems to be the source of all creatures.
It blunts the sharpness, untangles the
knots,
softens the glare and smooths the dusts.
So
invisible! It seems to vanish but exist.
I do
not know whose son it is.
It
has already existed before the Heavenly King.
Review
In this Chapter,
Lao Tzu tells us what the Truth (Tao) is:
“Truth
is like emptiness.
It uses will never be exhausted.
So
deep! It seems to be the source of all creatures.
It blunts the sharpness, untangles the
knots,
softens the glare and smooths the dusts.
So invisible!
It seems to vanish but exist.”
It
is like emptiness, i.e., formless, non-material. It is prior with all materials
and forms. It is nothingness like a big hollow, with deep and vast space,
far-reaching and invisible. Although people cannot see the Truth with eyes, its
uses will never be exhausted. It is the origin, the sovereign, the Lord of all
creatures. As the Truth has no form by itself, it exists with all creatures
invisibly. It can blunt the sharpness of harming weapons. It can untangle the
knots of any difficulties and obstacles in every situation. It can soften the
glare, making it shine gently to people without harming the eyes. It can mix
with the dusts and make them smooth which means Truth is friendly to all walks
of life, whether people are of high or low classes. Therefore, the sages having
the Truth in their life can be close to people like neighborhood.
Without the nourishment and sustenance of the
Truth in each creature, no one can exist well. In this Chapter, we can see how
the Truth is being utilized in us and how the real sages living with the Truth
showing their life to us. They never act as an idol for people to worship. Nay,
on the contrary, they abide by the Truth without showing off. People feel so benefited
from being close to them. The Truth works and we all need it so much, but we
cannot realize its existence by being informed, just like we are breathing with
air but even we do not realize our breathing with air which is so essential to
us. We all feel good with good breathing. In the same way, the Truth can be realized
by our subtle mind only. Then Lao Tzu says:
“I
do not know whose son it is.
It
has already existed before the Heavenly King.”
Where does the Truth come from? The Truth
is nothing, non-being. All the creatures with names and shapes are beings with
something. As we are told in the first Chapter about the mystery of creation,
something comes from nothing, beings come from non-being, here Lao Tzu says, “I
do not know whose son it is.” If the Truth is a kind of creatures, as being one
of us, whose son it is? Who is his father or mother? Lao Tzu tells us without more
words, but the meaning comes out obviously:
The Truth is neither father nor mother
because the Truth exists before all creatures, before all fathers and all
mothers. There is no relationship like
father, mother and son in the realm of the Truth. All these relationships are
human imagination about God, like in Christianity founded by the Roman Empire,
and there are many mythical stories about gods and goddesses in ancient Greece,
Rome, India and China by human imagination, therefore, Lao Tzu says:
“It has already existed before the Heavenly King.”
In Christianity, God is depicted as trinity
which consists of the father, the son and the holy spirit. This understanding
of the Ultimate Reality, i.e., the Almighty God, however, does not exist in
ancient scriptures like the Tao Te Ching in Chinese culture and the Upanishads
in Hinduism. In the Quran, Allah clearly says that He is the only One, without
two or three. He does not give birth, nor was He born. In the Quran, Allah
tells us:
“Say, “He is Allah, (who is) One, Allah,
the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, nor is there to Him any
equivalent.”” (Quran 112:1-4)
In Islam with the revelation of the Quran,
there is no father, mother or son in the concept of the Almighty, the Lord of
the worlds, the Lord of all creatures because Allah is far greater than the
concept of father and mother. Allah, in Arabic, means God, the One only. It is even not a name to
anyone, as no one would say, “My name is Human.” Jesus the Prophet did not know
Hebrew nor Latin. His native language was Aramaic which is closer to Arabic
than Hebrew or Latin. Prophet Jesus addressed the Lord God as “Allahi”. “Allahi” in Aramaic is “Allah” in Arabic.[2]
Our relation to Allah is closer than all
the fathers and mothers to their children. In the Quran, Allah tells people
that it is a severe offence to the Truth which says that Jesus is the son of
God and God is composed of father, son and the holy spirit. The warning of
Allah to tell the mankind not to insist on falsehood is very serious that
people should not be heedless about the revelation of Allah:
“Indeed, they are deniers of the truth who
say, “God is the Christ, the son of Mary.” For the Christ himself said, “Children
of Israel, serve God, my Lord and your Lord.” If anyone associates anything
with God, God will forbid him the Garden and the Fire will be his home. The
wrongdoers shall have no helpers. They are deniers of the truth who say, “God
is one of the three.” There is only One God. If they do not desist from so
saying, a painful punishment is bound to befall such of them as are bent on
denying the truth.” (Quran 5:72-73) [1]
The concept of Allah is the Truth (Tao) in
the Tao Te Ching. It has already existed before all the gods, goddesses and
even the Heavenly King. In Chapter 42, there will be more elaboration about the
One Creator and the whole creation.
Note
The Upanishads are volumes
of literature compiled as the last part of the Veda telling the sacred
knowledge of the realization of Supreme Lord. The Veda is a large compilation
of the ancient scriptures in India. Veda, in Sanskrit, means “enlightened”.
They were narrated by ancient sages who could see the Truth. The scriptures were
edited and developed through history which surely not purely revealed by Allah
unlike the nature of the Quran which is the only scripture purely revealed by
Allah without human editorial work. In this sense, the Quran is unique which no
scriptures in our world can be the same.
The Quran is purely the
revelation of Allah to the whole mankind. Islam is the religion with the revelation
of the Holy Quran which is free from any human editing unlike all the religious
scriptures available in the world. The earliest words of Allah were revealed to
Prophet Muhammad in 609 A.D. when he was forty years old in the cave of Hira
near Mecca. The head of the Angel, Jibril, told Prophet Muhammad the first
verses:
“Recite in the name of your Lord who created – created
man from a clinging substance. Recite, and your Lord is the most Generous – who
taught by the pen – taught man that which he knew not.” (Quran 96:1-5)
The last words of the Quran
were told to Prophet Muhammad in 623 A.D. in Medina shortly before his death:
“This day I have perfected
for you your religion and completed My favour upon you and have approved for
you Islam as religion.” (Quran 5:3)
There are 114 Chapters in the
Quran which two-third of them (86 Chapters) had been revealed for 13 years
(609AD-622AD) when Prophet Muhammad was in Mecca. The other one-third had been
revealed to Prophet Muhammad for the last ten years (622AD-632AD) when he was
in Medina. The revelation of the Quran came with fragments of words directly
revealed to Prophet Muhammad through his meditative stage or conveyed by Angel Jibril
in person according to the situations of Prophet Muhammad and his followers.
The arrangement of the order of the verses was told by Angel Jibril to Prophet
Muhammad frequently, mostly once yearly, and twice in the last year of the
Prophet to make sure the recitation of the Quran was accurate without
distortion. Reciting the Quran by Prophet Muhammad and his companions became a
must for their spiritual life to make sure the Quran could be purely
transmitted from ages to ages. The Quran is the words of Allah with miraculous
effect to people as the direct way of communication between Allah and His
creatures. The whole Quran is complete in conveying the messages with deep
meaning without any disorder of texts or mismatching of themes. The Quran is
the miracle of Allah.
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