Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (3 page)

So wise souls are good at caring for people
,
never turning their back on anyone.
They’re good at looking after things
,
never turning their back on anything.
There’s a light hidden here.

Good people teach people who aren’t good yet
;
the less good are the makings of the good.
Anyone who doesn’t respect a teacher
or cherish a student
may be clever, but has gone astray.
There’s a deep mystery here.

The hidden light and the deep mystery seem to be signals,
saying “think about this”—about care for what
seems
unimportant. In a teacher’s parental care for the insignificant student, and in
a society’s respect for mothers, teachers, and other obscure people who
educate, there is indeed illumination and a profoundly human mystery. Having
replaced instinct with language, society, and culture, we are the only species
that depends on teaching and learning. We aren’t human without them. In them is
true power. But are they the occupations of the rich and mighty?

Knowing man
and staying woman
,
be the riverbed of the world.
Being the world’s riverbed
of eternal unfailing power
is to go back again to be newborn.

Knowing light
and staying dark
,
be a pattern to the world.
Being the world’s pattern
of eternal unerring power
is to go back again to boundlessness.

Knowing glory
and staying modest
,
be the valley of the world.
Being the world’s valley
of eternal inexhaustible power
is to go back again to the natural.

Natural wood is cut up
and made into useful things.
Wise souls are used
to make into leaders.
Just so, a great carving
is done without cutting.

The simplicity of Lao Tzu’s language can present an almost
impenetrable density of meaning. The reversals and paradoxes in this great poem
are the oppositions of the yin and yang—male/female, light/dark,
glory/modesty—but the “knowing and being” of them, the balancing act, results
in neither stasis nor synthesis. The riverbed in which power runs leads back,
the patterns of power lead back, the valley where power is contained leads
back—to the forever new, endless, straightforward way.
Reversal,
recurrence, are
the movement, and yet the movement is onward.

Those who think to win the world
by doing something to it
,
I see them come to grief.
For the world is a sacred object.
Nothing is to be done to it.
To do anything to it is to damage it.
To seize it is to lose it.

Under heaven some things lead, some follow
,
some blow hot, some cold,
some are strong, some weak,
some are fulfilled, some fail.

So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.

For Lao Tzu, “moderation in all things” isn’t just a bit of
safe, practical advice. To lose the sense of the sacredness of the world is a
mortal loss. To injure our world by excesses of greed and ingenuity is to
endanger our own sacredness.

A Taoist wouldn’t advise a ruler
to use force of arms for conquest
;
that tactic backfires.

Where the army marched
grow thorns and thistles.
After the war
come the bad harvests.
Good leaders prosper, that’s all
,
not presuming on victory.
They prosper without boasting
,
or domineering, or arrogance,
prosper because they can’t help it,
prosper without violence.

Things flourish then perish.
Not the Way.
What’s not the Way
soon ends.

This first direct statement of Lao Tzu’s pacifism is
connected in thought to the previous poem and leads directly to the next.

The last verse is enigmatic: “Things flourish then perish”—
How
can this supremely natural sequence not be the Way? I
offer my understanding of it in the note on the page with chapter 55, where
nearly the same phrase occurs.

Even the best weapon
is an unhappy tool
,
hateful to living things.
So the follower of the Way
stays away from it.

Weapons are unhappy tools
,
not chosen by thoughtful people,
to be used only when there is no choice,
and with a calm, still mind,
without enjoyment.
To enjoy using weapons
is to enjoy killing people
,
and to enjoy killing people
is to lose your share in the common good.

It is right that the murder of many people
be mourned and lamented.
It is right that a victor in war
be received with funeral ceremonies.

The way goes on forever nameless.
Uncut wood, nothing important
,
yet nobody under heaven
dare try to carve it.
If rulers and leaders could use it
,
the ten thousand things
would gather in homage,
heaven and earth would drop sweet dew,
and people, without being ordered,
would be fair to one another.

To order, to govern
,
is to begin naming;
when names proliferate
it’s time to stop.
If you know when to stop
you’re in no danger.

The Way in the world
is as a stream to a valley
,
a river to the sea.

The second verse connects the uncut, the
uncarved
,
the
unusable, to the idea of the unnamed presented in
the first chapter: “name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.” You have to
make order, you have to make distinctions, but you also have to know when to
stop before you’ve lost the whole in the multiplicity of parts. The simplicity
or singleness of the Way is that of water, which always rejoins itself.

Knowing other people is intelligence
,
knowing yourself is wisdom.
Overcoming others takes strength
,
overcoming yourself takes greatness.
Contentment is wealth.

Boldly pushing forward takes resolution.
Staying put keeps you in position.

To live till you die
is to live long enough.

The Great Way runs
to left, to right
,
the ten thousand things
depending on it,
living on it,
accepted by it.

Doing its work
,
it goes unnamed.
Clothing and feeding
the ten thousand things
,
it lays no claim on them
and asks nothing of them.
Call it a small matter.
The ten thousand things
return to it
,
though it lays no claim on them.
Call it great.

So the wise soul
without great doings
achieves greatness.

Hold fast to the great thought
and all the world will come to you
,
harmless, peaceable, serene.

Walking around, we stop
for music, for food.
But if you taste the Way
it’s flat, insipid.
It looks like nothing much
,
it sounds like nothing much.
And yet you can’t get enough of it.

What seeks to shrink
must first have grown
;
what seeks weakness
surely was strong.
What seeks its ruin
must first have risen
;
what seeks to take
has surely given.

This is called the small dark light
:
the soft, the weak prevail
over the hard, the strong.

There is a third stanza in all the texts:

Fish should stay underwater
:
the real means of rule
should be kept dark.

Or, more literally, “the State’s sharp weapons ought not to
be shown to the people.” This Machiavellian truism seems such an anticlimax to
the great theme stated in the first verses that I treat it as an intrusion,
perhaps a commentator’s practical example of “the small dark light.”

The Way never does anything
,
and everything gets done.
If those in power could hold to the Way
,
the ten thousand things
would look after themselves.
If even so they tried to act
,
I’d quiet them with the nameless,
the natural.

In the unnamed, in the
unshapen
,
is not wanting.
In not wanting is stillness.
In stillness all under heaven rests.

Here the themes of not doing and not wanting, the unnamed and
the
unshapen
,
recur together in one pure legato. It is wonderful how by
negatives and privatives Lao Tzu gives a sense of serene, inexhaustible
fullness of being.

Great power, not clinging to power
,
has true power.
Lesser power, clinging to power
,
lacks true power.
Great power, doing nothing
,
has nothing to do.
Lesser power, doing nothing
,
has an end in view.

The good the truly good do
has no end in view.
The right the very righteous do
has an end in view.
And those who act in true obedience to law
roll up their sleeves
and make the disobedient obey.

So: when we lose the Way we find power
;
losing power we find goodness;
losing goodness we find righteousness;
losing righteousness we’re left with obedience.

Obedience to law is the dry husk
of loyalty and good faith.
Opinion is the barren flower of the Way
,
the beginning of ignorance.

So great-minded people
abide in the kernel not the husk
,
in the fruit not the flower,
letting the one go, keeping the other.

A vast, dense argument in a minimum of words, this poem lays
out the Taoist values in steeply descending order: the Way and its power;
goodness (humane feeling); righteousness (morality); and—a very distant
last—obedience (law and order). The word I render as “opinion” can be read as “knowing
too soon”: the mind obeying orders, judging before the evidence is in, closed
to fruitful perception and learning.

Those who of old got to be whole:

Heaven through its wholeness is pure
;
earth through its wholeness is steady;
spirit through its wholeness is potent;
the valley through its wholeness flows with rivers;
the ten thousand things through their wholeness live;
rulers through their wholeness have authority.
Their wholeness makes them what they are.

Without what makes it pure, heaven would disintegrate
;
without what steadies it, earth would crack apart;
without what makes it potent, spirit would fail;
without what fills it, the valley would run dry;
without what quickens them, the ten thousand things would die;
without what authorizes them, rulers would fall.

The root of the noble is in the common
,
the high stands on what’s below.
Princes and kings call themselves
“orphans, widowers, beggars,”
to get themselves rooted in the dirt.

A multiplicity of riches
is poverty.
Jade is praised as precious
,
but its strength is being stone.

Return is how the Way moves.
Weakness is how the Way works.

Heaven and earth and the ten thousand things
are born of being.
Being is born of nothing.

Thoughtful people hear about the Way
and try hard to follow it.
Ordinary people hear about the Way
and wander onto it and off it.
Thoughtless people hear about the Way
and make jokes about it.
It wouldn’t be the Way
if there weren’t jokes about it.

So they say
:
The Way’s brightness looks like darkness;
advancing on the Way feels like retreating;
the plain Way seems hard going.
The height of power seems a valley
;
the amplest power seems not enough;
the firmest power seems feeble.
Perfect whiteness looks dirty.
The pure and simple looks chaotic.

The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is never finished.
The great tone is barely heard.
The great thought can’t be thought.

The Way is hidden
in its namelessness.
But only the Way
begins, sustains, fulfills.

The Way bears one.
The one bears two.
The two bear three.
The three bear the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things
carry the yin on their shoulders
and hold in their arms the yang
,
whose interplay of energy
makes harmony.

People despise
orphans, widowers, outcasts.
Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves.
Whatever you lose, you’ve won.
Whatever you win, you’ve lost.

What others teach, I say too
:
violence and aggression
destroy themselves.
My teaching rests on that.

Beginning with a pocket cosmology, this chapter demonstrates
the “interplay of energy” of yin and yang by showing how low and high, winning
and losing, destruction and self-
destruction,
reverse
themselves, each turning into its seeming opposite.

What’s softest in the world
rushes and runs|
over what’s hardest in the
world.

The immaterial
enters
the impenetrable.

So I know the good in not doing.

The wordless teaching
,
the profit in not doing—
not many people understand it.

Which is nearer
,
name or self?
Which is dearer
,
self or wealth?
Which gives more pain
,
loss or gain?