I keep teaching books that I want to understand.  I never end up truly understanding any of them fully, and then I will stop and then later come back to them later, at another semester, feeling pretty confident until I realize that there is still so much I haven't seen yet and so much that I have forgotten.

Thank goodness! 

I think it's good to give loved books a break though, so that we can go back to them without flinching and feeling slightly green at the gills that we have to read them again.  I needed at least these five months between Hamlet doses, and I'm thankful that Belle has started the Lear festival so that I can get into the new saddle of this old favorite.

What I started reading this morning is the Tao Te Ching.  I can't say that I teach this at all because I can't live maybe one centimeter of the precepts and ideas within.

For instance, try this one:  "Content with an ordinary life . . . "

Or, "If you keep your mind from judging/and aren't led by the senses,/your heart will find peace."

Or, "He never expects results;/thus he is never disappointed."

Yeah, okay. 

Now, let me pontificate about the history and time frame and culture from which this set of chapters or poems emerged and I can talk pretty reasonably.  But when my students and I start reading them aloud, I usually tell them that all that Lao-tzu said is just a big yes.  But can I live it?  For about fifteen minutes a day.  Maybe.

So every other semester, I find a way to teach this book.  It fits into just about everything.  We read, we talk, I remember what I have forgotten that I can't remember, and then we move on to something else.

It's my hope that one year I will open this book, and know that I know the Tao in a way I haven't known it before.  But I am not holding my breath.  Maybe that means I am expecting results.  Damn!  Screwed it up again.

Off to the Oakland City Impound lot where I will be content, not judge, and not expect one result.

Jessica