Taking things away. To recognize you no longer need certain things eases life. Self-denial also often grows power, forces you onto other more self-sufficient paths. Take exercise. You do not require a gym. You do not require weights at home. The body itself can be lifted and pressed and stretched and pulled. A man once trained for the marathon at the Olympics by running in place in his room while outside a war raged in the streets.
The discipline of taking things away begins with objects and physical things. Prison life teaches this discipline in a profound way. But this extends next to ideas. One realizes he cannot attain the Good. One realizes he cannot define the Good. He cannot see its border with the Non Good. So many borders seem to exist which must be taken away. When the borders have been taken away so our the things. The things did not exist. The things were unnecessary. Though the things are very necessary to those who would exercise control over a man. The things as objects of desire, cars and toys and homes, as well as those things of fame and being Good (or seen by others as good?) are taken away.
The Tao is then the man. The man is Heaven. The man is no longer a branch but the trunk. He is no longer a man, the individual branch. The individual is no more.
THE SELF, THE INDIVIDUAL, SEEMS TO BE THE ONE THING WE ARE SURE OF HAVING ITS BORDERS. BUT THE BORDERS ARE NOT THAT ASSURED AFTER ALL.
The border between a man as individual and others is the last border. The individual is the last thing to be taken away.
So much seeks to make a man an individual, to set his borders: HE feels pain and pleasure. HE has desires and that which repulses him. HE is looked at and given a number by the State and by his bank; a password only he knows for his Gmail account; HE is made out to be uniquely that combination of characteristics. A special snowflake to appear once and never again, for his lifetime is just his and no other's.
But there is much that crosses these borders of a man. He shares his life with others who came before him and who may come after him and he thinks of these others; He is visited in dreams; he can remember and forget and he cannot control what he remembers and forgets. Even his pleasure and pain is not his own for when he is in pain his mother may hurt to see him. His pleasure may inspire another. See how the smiling man makes the others smile. See how the yawning man makes others sleepy. Where would be the border between men if one's pain and pleasure, one's fatigue and joy can be shared so easily? Our these feelings really one's own then?
You say man has a birth and a death. That a life has a span. But what do we say of a man remembered by other men? Has he not lived on in memory? No that is not the man you say. But what of my memories of myself? Am I not that man if even I am the man doing the remembering? If I am not that man, than why cannot another man remember me in the same way? What is being remembered? What then is memory if memory is separate from a man? Where is the border?
A man is a contested place; a contested dream. A place pulling and receding. His borders are never clear and only through his words can he say there are borders--can he say he is a man, an individual.
Self-awareness is the highest forgetfulness. In recognizing a self man forgets the Way.
