Dao De Ching on Sin: #62

Reading the Tao Te Ching, and trying to come from a place empty of preconceptions about the book. Thankfully I know next to nothing about daoism, other than perhaps what’s inherited through blood, but that may be stretching it.
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Did they not say,
“Seek and thou shalt receive,
Sin and thou shalt be forgiven”?
~ #62, Dao De Ching

Ah! I silently exclaimed when I read this verse, amazed to see the familiar line from the Bible* (why it's called perennial philosophy, right?), then immediately thunderstruck by the line following: “Sin and thou shalt be forgiven?” Indeed??!!? Two armies rose up out of nowhere it seemed, in the dusty and barren landscape of my mind, which was flat-lining in placid complacency only a moment ago. The army on the left is red, the one on the right blue. The red army stood up into being from a murmur to a roar in a couple of heart beats, promptly spitting with outrage. Sin and thou shalt be forgiven? Blasted blasphemy! Sin and thou shalt be dealt with and dispatched to Hell forthwith! Indeed, if sins are forgiven, would the sinners not sin again, even more brazenly? Would we not be swallowed up by moral decay and anarchy? Stomping their feet in unison, the red army held aloft their weapons in righteous indignation. Who can blame them? I thought, I’m getting pretty riled up too by their cries for war, the heat of fire and brimstone licking at my backside.

But upon the invocation of anarchy, the blue army reared as one mighty wave of the ocean, swooping down with their shields in front of them, then rolling back up to centre again. They stood still then, and one after the other their shields interlocked to become a wall all around. An eerie silence hung then, until it was pierced by a shout, actually more like an urgent chant: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven!

Responding to this as a declaration of war, the red army surged forward like molten lava, led by their god of war riding in on horses and chariot of flames. Meanwhile I saw more blue as shields continued to come up, this time from those inside the outer blue wall, and raised high overhead to block out the sky. The collective rolling of the wave began as before, perpetual as the ocean. Sword blows and flaming arrows were now raining down in earnest, and everywhere cries went up that either curdled the blood or fired your lust. But dare I look? And dare I believe my eyes? The blue ocean of shields appeared to bear up under the barrage of red artillery, their strength seemed to be replenished as the waves rolled, back to front, and with every arching of this great body they rose to meet their enemy’s well-aimed attempts to breach their frontline. A low drone was beginning to be heard above the clashing and clanging of battle: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven! Sin and thou shalt be forgiven!

Soon, the red army began to run out of steam, or perhaps they were becoming quite as hypnotized by the rolling and the droning as I was, and surrendering to the great womb-like embrace of the ocean seemed now of greater comfort than winning the battle. The bodies of the spent warriors were carried afloat the waves until they were washed ashore. When, upon waking they saw in front of them a village of people in blue, they were seized with fear, then panic, as a group of villagers advanced towards them. Some of the soldiers cast about for anything they could use as a weapon, the rest huddled or lay on the sand, too shattered and weary.

The children approached first, chattering and giggling like newly flown nestlings, their plumage the flowers and palm fronds they cradled in their arms. A line of women followed, each carrying a basket or a jug or blanket. By the time the men reached them the soldiers were a frozen tableau of shocked faces, speechless and rooted to the spot until some of the villagers began to lift the ones prone on the ground unto litters they had brought. All at once the blue wave descended upon them again, this time bearing food, drink, warmth and comfort, to the familiar refrain of Sin and thou shalt be forgiven… Sin and thou shalt be forgiven…
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It took a couple of twists and turns for my mind to get over the counter-conditioning of the statement: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven – because for sure that’s not what we have been taught! If you go so far as to sin in most human societies, chances are you will be punished according to the law of the land, or of the hand which catches you. The last thing you can expect is to be forgiven, even though as all Christians know, forgiveness is what Jesus came to the human realm to teach and deliver. We have, for the most part, ignored that message. At any rate, we have not been able to reverse the damage done by our belief in the Old Testament God of terrible wrath and vengeance, fully capable of wiping off entire populations with the same hand that sent manna from heaven. In my imagination, the Isrealites must have been the first and most traumatized people in ancient times, having to live under the rules of an all-powerful tyrant, knowing that if they ever strayed they can expect anything from genocide by natural catastrophe to murder by the masses. Thousands of years of law and order under patriarchy did not exactly prepare us for the feminine wisdom of forgiveness.

But what if, what if we were all weaned on the milk of human kindness and forgiveness? What if, instead of being smacked or yelled at when we did something mommy told us not to do, we were pulled aside and talked to gently but firmly with simple wisdom and love, so we learn about the consequences of our action, without learning how to blame and frame, without the threat of losing mommy’s love and affection? What if we were all brought up that way, knowing that we make mistakes, by intention or otherwise, and that is just human and acceptable, so we can learn from them and grow? There will be no heavy luggage of guilt and shame to carry, no need to hide them, no acting out of harm from these regressed states of childhood, no perversion of these repressed impulses into psychopathic or sociopathic expressions. There will be no war because we were not conditioned by acts of resentment, revenge and abuse of power, and all the energy we conserve from making wars can be channeled into education for body, mind, spirit and soul, because no doubt there will still be the dark side of our nature needing balance and expression. But if we were born and raised in the wisdom traditions, working with our shadow will simply be another way to becoming more whole, not the monster that we need to stuff back under the bed.

We will know how to forgive, because we were forgiven.
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*The translation I have is by Victor M. Mair, who may or may not have been a Christian, but perhaps he thought it best to translate this verse, if not the whole work, through use of biblical language, because most of its audience in the English-speaking world is Christian??