I’m not sure if, for me, the hara can be a second seat of being in the body, a place of consciousness of a kind the brain-mind can’t conceive or experience.  But it’s easy for me to see the hara as a place of yin, of receptivity, yielding, darkness, passivity, infancy, as opposed to the head space’s yang, with its adult will, its words, its determinations and projections.  But it’s not easy to re-affiliate oneself to a space without words, without will, without expectations and desires.  (The hara is not the stomach—which must have its desires—though perhaps the stomach can have desires without doing anything to meet them—as the mind / self cannot?)

If I include “infancy” among the hara’s qualities it’s because so much in the Tao Te Ching offers us the infant child as a symbol of the being fully in tune with the Way. 

One who has an abundance of Te

is like a newborn child: […]

Its bones are Soft, its sinews Weak,

but its grip is firm.

It has not known the union of man and woman,

but its organs get aroused:

Vital energy at its height.

It will scream all day without getting hoarse:

Harmony at its height.

                                                (Chapter 55, Lafargue translation)

With typical hyperbole and amusement, Lao-Tzu gives us an image of the human being in full alignment with the Tao that must trouble anyone who has been interested for a lifetime in maturity, wisdom, balance, calm, peace.  Can infancy really be a model for renewal, for the spontaneity of being at the heart of a life in the Way?  And are such images the reason the hara—with no power to effect its will to receive, with no wisdom in the way of its spontaneous responsiveness to the world—might be a preferable seat of consciousness for the seeker?

I try not to “scream all day.”  But this is “harmony at its height”: the image suggests crying when crying is called for rather than permanent distress.  It would follow that quiet when quiet is called for is also part of the wisdom of infancy; as would be receiving when receiving is possible, pleasure when pleasure is available.  The bridge between infancy and the hara is probably spontaneity, the being-of-itself that is captured in the richness of tzu-jan.  And both must be akin to the desired state of the Uncarved Block*—the form of consciousness we enjoyed before the world began its carving.  At the very least we might understand these three analogous states as adumbrating a form of enlightenment to which meditation might lead.

At any rate, I have grown pretty tired of the kind of consciousness that resides in the head, wired hard to all the senses and ready to respond to every stimulus with assertion.  Even the yang grows weary of all that banging about.  Perhaps listening—for the silence in the abdomen where the hara resides—is the necessary gift of yin that can move us towards a balance the head and the belly so rarely enjoy.

*Also mentioned in the post “Spontaneity,” linked above. See Lafargue’s discussion in the glossary of his translation of the Tao Te Ching.

21 August, 2024.