I have long had some differences with certain sections of the Tao Te Ching.  At one point (I’m at home and all my copies are in the office), the text tells us that you do not need to step out your door to know Way, which I agree with.  Coming to understand Way – if we can call it "understanding" – is an interior process.  But then the text says something like: the further you go the less you know, which suggests that traveling, and the process of moving out from the interior search, is not just futile but destructive to the process of apprehending Way.

     I disagree.  While Way is not to be found in such exterior wanderings, traveling is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, it can be a good thing in that it widens one’s field of experience and, potentially, one’s appreciation of the vastness and multiplicity of Way.

     All of this is, of course, a preemptive defense.  I am leaving soon on a  European holiday with my family.  We will spend four days in Utrecht, Netherlands, visiting friends who used to be our neighbors here in Williamstown.  Then we will head down to Paris for four days, just because it is Paris.  Maureen and I were there once before, for only a weekend, and it is one of those places that lives up to its press.  Then, we were not able to go into the Louvre.  Now, I have the museum tickets in hand already. 

      This is a sad time of year for us.  Getting away, moving about, seeing something new will not make us forget, but it might make the days pass more easily.  We are not running away from the sadness, just finding a way to live through it.  We bring our interior lives with us wherever we go.

     I have set up a series of posts to pop up here while I’m gone.  And perhaps I will post from Europe.  Until then just remember: you do not have to leave home to know Way.