Welcome to the fifth of my posts on The Tao of Storytelling
For this chapter I am using the translation by Stephen Mitchell.
Throughout my explorations of the chapters, I will use various translations. Each time I will include links to the previous chapters, although you can read them in any order. These are included at the bottom of the post.
As well as a discussion of the chapter of the Tao Te Ching and how we use it to inspire storytelling, each post includes a reading of a short story and sometimes these will be available to read online, other times they’ll be from a short story collection or anthology so will only be available to buy and read. I will include links each time for both kinds. This month’s reading is in The New Yorker where you can read 5 free articles a month.
I hope you enjoy these posts and I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about my interpretations, and to hear your own and read any work you create from the prompts.
All of the posts are free for everyone to read, but if you appreciate them, please consider buying me a coffee. It’s greatly appreciated and makes a real difference.
With love,
Chapter Five
The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.
The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
The Dark and the Light
I chose this translation as, for me, it is one that clearly shows the impartiality of the Tao and the oneness of all of us who are being created from it. That good and evil, light and dark, resides in everyone.
In the introduction to the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching he says this:
The teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest sense. Unencumbered by any concept of sin, the Master doesn't see evil as a force to resist, but simply as an opaqueness, a state of self-absorption which is in disharmony with the universal process, so that, as with a dirty window, the light can't shine through.
So in applying this understanding to ourselves, and to the fictional characters that we create in our stories, we can see that for some of us our windows have just a few smears of dirt that need cleaning up. Whereas others have windows that are filthy where only small slivers of clear glass let the light shine in. So we have to write all of our characters with nuance, our protagonists and antagonists, as nobody is ever just one thing, nobody has just one way of being. If we don’t bring this to the characters in our stories, we’ll be writing two-dimensional caricatures.
The concept of the Tao not taking sides and giving birth to both good and evil is very important in the times we find ourselves living in, when the them and us mentality is so strong. When societies are splintered into smaller and smaller factions believing only those within their faction are good, and those outside, the evil ones, are against them.
Storytelling
Dark versus light has always been a major theme in stories. Characters in the light being drawn towards the dark, those in the dark realising that the light offers love and peace instead of fear and chaos.
The stories that stay with us are the ones where the protagonists battle between the light and the dark inside them, with these internal struggles provoked by the external world and the plot of the story. For a story to have resonance there must be a conflict of character that means the protagonist has to overcome an element of their darkness to find hope and happiness in the light.
In the craft book, Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc by Dara Marks (written for screenwriters but I find it just as relevant for novels and short stories too), she calls this the quest for wholeness. And it is this quest, in the many forms it comes in, that is at the heart of all of the stories we read, write, watch and remember. It’s the quest that shows the truth of this chapter of the Tao Te Ching — the Tao gives birth to good and evil and doesn't take sides. It doesn’t take sides as there is no side to take. The light and the dark are in all of us to varying degrees. Wholeness can be achieved by finding the balance between them.
Marks also says that stories that don’t show us this, don’t reflect these inner truths, are not just forgettable and shallow, but they are having a detrimental impact on who we are and how we see ourselves as humans. So for us as storytellers to write stories that matter, we have to go inward and find the dark within ourselves and shine a light on it through the characters we create.
What do you think about this? Do let me know in the comments as I would love to hear your thoughts.
Reading
Dimensions by Alice Munro
You can read it online in The New Yorker and it also appears in the 2010 collection, Too Much Happiness.
Synopsis
Dimensions tells the story of 23-year old Doree who is visiting her controlling and abusive husband, Lloyd, in an institution for the criminally insane, where he is imprisoned for murdering their three children. The story weaves back and forth between the present day and their past relationship. It also focuses on Doree’s therapy sessions with Mrs Sands, in which Doree doesn’t feel able to be truthful about her actions, feelings and beliefs about what has happened.
I chose this story as it is very much focused on this idea of both darkness and light inside of us. Of those in the light being drawn to the dark, and those in the dark understanding that the light is where peace can be found. It is not an easy read, but it is compelling, thought provoking, and completely immersive. Something we all want for our own stories.
Although Lloyd has done this terrible thing, there is compassion both in how Munro writes his character, and in how Doree sees him. So we the reader are invited to question the ways in which killers are portrayed. To see beyond the headlines into the very human stories that lie behind them.
As well as tapping into the first element of the chapter about good and evil, I believe this story also encompasses the final section too.
The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
It is in silence and solitude, contemplation, that Lloyd comes to understand himself, to see the dark and the light within.
Please do let me know in the comments your thoughts and feeling about this story; and how it ties into this chapter of the Tao Te Ching.
Writing Prompt
For a story you are already working on, spend some time with the protagonist, and the antagonist, looking deep inside to find both the dark and the light within them. Then think about how you can weave this into the story so that the way you write them, and the way the other characters see them, is filled with compassion in the way Alice Munro has made us see Doree and Lloyd.
I would love to hear anything you discover in this exercise if you would like to share it.
I found the discussion of this chapter on Taoism Reimagined interesting too and it features three other translations, all of which mention straw dogs in the first section, as do many translations.
Dimensions is an amazing, harrowing and beautiful story, full of texture and pain. Really magnificent Alice Munro. I read it a long time ago. Thank you for getting me to read it again.