ZHUANGZI ON THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS II

Blog:  “Two roads at once!” We should have expected that—it seems to be your answer to just about every conundrum.

Zhuangzi:  True enough. Would you prefer something more logical? The way I experience it, being a human being is to embody paradox—there’s no escaping that. And the metaphor of having to perpetually walk two roads at once sums that up pretty well. You wonder how I could be politically active and yet simultaneously appreciate that politics do not ultimately matter. As you put it: “All is well in the Great Mess. No historical outcome can deviate from Dao. Every happening is the Great Happening.” So why bother with politics? How could I choose one candidate over another when I appreciate the equality of all points of view? How could I work to be the change when I preach non-doing—non-being the change? I just walk two roads at once. It’s simple enough.

B:  Simple for you perhaps, but not so easy for most of us.

Z:  I disagree. We are all forever walking two roads—even when we don’t know it. Death puts the nix on our every waking moment, but we enjoy life just the same. Isn’t that walking two roads? Humanity will likely one day become extinct, as will the cosmos, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to save ourselves from ourselves in the moment. We all obviously walk two roads at once—we just don’t realize and embrace it. But that’s where the freedom from fretting is—caring while not-caring, believing while not-believing, wanting while not-wanting, being angry while not-being angry, hoping while not-hoping. That’s living Dao. Living Dao is just being authentically human—nothing more. There’s nothing “spiritual” about it. To be human is to be a paradox—living Dao is happily living the paradox.

B:  So, walking two roads at once is unavoidable, but it’s hard to acknowledge that that’s what we do. And your “walking two roads” is like on a higher level—the awareness that we do it and fully embracing and living that. That’s the hard part it seems. Have we got it right?

Z:  Yep.

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