May 13th

Cooper

Barrel maker planes staves to exact angles.
His shavings glow in the afternoon sun.
He joins fragrant wood together,
Fitting shoulders like building an arch.
Until the bands, there is no barrel.

There is no barrel until the cooper builds it. Until then, there are pieces of straight-grained wood, shavings, a round bottom, and metal bands, but there is no barrel. All parts are there, but they need to be composed in order to take shape. It is the same with the facets of our personalities. Until they are held tightly together as a single unit, there is no completeness, and usefulness will not be forthcoming.Spiritual practice can be the outside order that the personality needs. While such an order can be initially restricting, perhaps even feel artificial in its arbitrariness, it is absolutely necessary. It is a means to an end. Perhaps at the end we will not need such structure, but neither will we reach the end without the means. Before we leave the image of the barrel, there is one more thing to notice about it. A barrel encloses only one thing : void. That is the way it is with us, too. All the pieces of our personality, no matter how perfectly formed, only enclose what is inside us. All spiritual practice, while it may bind us into a cohesive whole, points to the emptiness of the center. This emptiness is not nihilism but the open possibility for Tao to enter. Only with such space will we have peace.

Personal Interpretation

Before the cooper assembles the barrel it is little more than wood and bands. It takes a skilled hand to assemble the end product, a thing that has been used for myriad purposes throughout the ages, and which, despite its usefulness, contains only void.

We are like the unassembled barrel. We need something to bring together the various aspects of ourselves. But what can do that? Spiritual practice fits the bill particularly well, and while it may seem stifling at first, it can liberate us in ways we never expected were possible. In the end, we too receptacles, containers that can only be filled once we empty ourselves. The void is so intimately connected to Tao because the former is the prerequisite for the existence of the latter. Through Tao all things are possible, and through nothingness is Tao itself rendered possible.