The Useless Tree

Taoists in Texas Moving to Vermont

    A story in today’s NYT reports on a family in Texas that has embraced the "voluntary simplicity" movement: the are giving away most of their possessions, to free themselves from the burdens of material things, and moving to a mountain cabin in Vermont (just up the road from me!):

Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first
years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture,
clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys,
toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding
bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land
as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are
donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the
road at the end of May.

       A variety of American sources are mentioned as an inspiration for this move:

Though it may not be the stuff of the typical American dream, the
voluntary simplicity movement, which traces its inception to 1980s
Seattle, is drawing a great deal of renewed interest, some experts say.

“If
you think about some of the shifts we’re having economically — shifts
in oil and energy — it may be the right time,” said Mary E. Grigsby,
associate professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri and the author of “Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement.”


“The idea in the movement was ‘everything you own owns you,’ ” said Dr.
Grigsby, who sees roots of the philosophy in the lives of the Puritans.
“You have to care for it, store it. It becomes an appendage, I think.
If it enhances your life and helps you do the things you want to do,
great. If you are burdened by these things and they become the center
of what you have to do to live, is that really positive?”

Juliet B. Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College
and author of “The Overspent American,” said the modern “downshifters,”
as she called them, owed debts to the hippies and the travel romance of
Jack Kerouac.

     Seattle, Puritans, Hippies, Kerouac.  Come on, this is a Taoist impulse.  These people are heeding Chuang Tzu, even if they have not read him.  They are "getting free" and no longer allowing themselves to get tangled in things.   They are following the spirit of passage 12 of the Tao Te Ching:

The five colors blind eyes.
The five tone deafen ears.
The five tastes blur tongues.
Fast horses and breathtaking hunts make minds wild and crazy.
Things rare and expensive make people lose their way.

 The Harris family have a blog, Cage Free Family.  So, we can watch their progress as they go.  Someone should give them a copy of the Tao Te Ching.

Sam Crane Avatar

Published by

Sam Crane
I have moved The Useless Tree to WordPress. Hope this works!
Categories: ,

4 responses to “Taoists in Texas Moving to Vermont”

  1. Comment Avatar
    Comment

    “Seattle, Puritans, Hippies, Kerouac. Come on, this is a Taoist impulse. These people are heeding Chuang Tzu, even if they have not read him.”
    I wonder if anyone has thought of actually ASKING the Harrises about the motivating influences informing their decision.
    The Tao philosophers didn’t exactly have a lock on the evanescence of and renunciation of the material – in fact, I think anyone would have a really hard time tracing the roots of early Christian mystic philosophies back to China. I believe here is coincidence, not connection. However, those are quite distinct from later Puritanism., or American transcendentalism, for that matter – both of which are more likely as (in)direct sociological influences on the Harrises even in our multi-kulti postmodern world.
    I do agree on the contention against Seattle, which has largely become California Redux (CA having played host to several of the most materialist cultures on the planet). As for claiming links of “voluntary simplicity” to the hippies – erm, that’s more than a bit risible. Just read David Crosby’s autobiography as one source among many to understand the lack of validity of this assertion for the hippies. As for the earlier Kerouac, a lot of his “geist” arguably had more to do with articulating and refining Western thought from the 1910s-1930s (specifically “futurism” and “Dada”) rather than “voluntary simplicity.”
    At root, I’d contend that there’s no fundamental difference between Vermont and Texas to the Taoist. Nor is there an unacceptable difference between the presence of material things – in moderation – or their absence to the Taoist – they are complementary at root. In fact, Chapter 11 concludes:
    gu you zhi yi wei li
    for in that which exists is advantage
    wu zhi yi wei yong
    (and) in that which is absent is utility

    Incidentally, the end of Chapter 12 as you have it may run something more like:
    chi cheng tian lie,
    riding horses and hunting beasts,
    ling ren xin fa kuang;
    render men’s hearts unsettled
    nan de zhi huo,
    hard-to-find treasures
    ling ren xing fang.
    render men’s strides crippled
    “xin fa kuang” here does not appear to mean the same as modern-day Chinese “fa kuang.”
    “nan de (zhi) huo” is glossed as “jin-yin-zhu-bao zhi lei” – or literally “gold, silver, pearls, treasure sorts of things” in one of my copies.
    “xing fang” – “fang” here is glossed as “wounded” in two of my copies – “xing fang” therefore “crippled.” This is not true in Lin Yutang’s translation, which opts for the somewhat bizarre “keeps their owners awake at night” for the line (?!?).

    Like

    Reply
  2. Comment Avatar
    Comment

    On second thought, strike “hard-to-find” and replace with “hard-to-obtain” which seems closer to the original.

    Like

    Reply
  3. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Thanks Comment for your…comments.
    I am not a translator and I appreciate you attention to it. In seeking to apply the old texts to contemporary issues, I find that, if I get caught up in translation issues (of which, as you know, there are many), I will never be able to get to the actual application of the thought. I have been attracted, in recent years, to the translations done by David Hinton. Some have criticized me for this; they believe Hinton does not really get the philosophical nuances. But I find his work to read very well in English. He gets the lyricism of the texts, which I think is important.
    And, yes, I agree with you: for a Taoist there is not difference between Texas and Vermont – to know Way you do not have to leave your front door…

    Like

    Reply
  4. Comment Avatar
    Comment

    Thank you, Sam, for responding.
    Rather than nitpick hermeruditically (now THERE’s a word) I’m concerned with whether the sense of the original is preserved. Arguably we’d all have to be archaeologists to REALLY do that. I’d certainly appreciate whether my apprehension of the Chapter 12 lines is at least as “accurate” as the present discourse allows. Particularly “xin fa kuang” and “xing fang,” which are rendered differently by people with a great deal more attainment than has been my lot.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to Sam Cancel reply