ON CONTENTMENT

Nothing like gazing upon your own well-stacked cord of firewood turning golden in the morning sun to get a person feeling contented, and then in that contentment set that person thinking about contentment itself and how it gets here and where it goes and what it is exactly, what is it made of, is it part of me or is it more like a transitory shaft of sunlight moving across a patch of still earth? Firewood serves in so many ways...

I've always loved the mystery in that Tao Te Ching phrase that each time I read it shimmers with the gleam of truth that cannot be pinned down, that coruscates in the mind's eye: "There is no disaster greater than not being content."

Content? Why content? Mere contentment? What does contentment have to do with disaster? Lao Tzu knew that contentment is the beginning of all that is worthy, the seed and germ of every happiness, its absence accordingly the tiny breach that in time massively ruptures into every disaster, like the pinhole in the dam, like the lost horseshoe nail.

Contentment is the beating heart of every joy, because it is egoless; contentment is the deep you, the genuine you, the universal you, feeling at home where you are in particular; there is no self in contentment, which centers all worthy matters. All purely self-centered matters, in contrast, are perturbed, and palpitate with discontent (insert the seven cardinal sins here for starters); they never know contentment, for they chase it, they do not contain it.

And where contentment is wanting, deception is essential, falsehood opportune, theft advantageous, violence whimsy and death irrelevant. No one knew this better than the Chinese of Lao Tzu's day, who had seen it all for millennia, from murder and rapine to plague and famine, and knew the silent dry seed of the whirlwind that begins with the end of contentment...