Tao Te Ching: A commentary

Chapter 40

2021-02-08T16:27:00.002+02:00

The movement of the Tao consists in returning.

The use of the Tao consists in softness.

All things under heaven are born of the corporeal:

The corporeal is born of the Incorporeal.

The Chinese word fan may be translated in many ways and ‘returning’ is one of the common options. As ever, the opening couplet speaks to us at two levels: an everyday, and an esoteric, and we shall discuss one and then the other.

Everything that builds and grows and seeks to endure in its own individuality will succeed for a while, but there comes a time when the pull of the Tao will re-exert itself. Atoms will agglomerate into molecules, which will organise into tissue and whole organisms. During this process the corporeal is in the ascendant and the Tao may be said to be in abeyance. But with time, the phenomenon will reach the end of its lifespan and the process will reverse, in exactly the same order that it grew. Tissue will dissolve into chain of molecules which will in time return to the atomic.

At a more esoteric level, the phenomenal is dissolving moment by moment. Even the hardest granite is annihilated the moment we softly close our eyes. To the witnessing consciousness, change is a radically constant process and ‘the movement of the Tao’ is nothing other than this irresistible stream of impermanence. Things arise and return back to the Tao with the same rapidity, says the Buddha, of a lightning strike or a bubble of foam.

The Daoist sage is able to witness and abide and find their place in the stream of change without needing to go through the endless frustrations of growth that is followed by decay.

The use of the Tao consists in softness.

We charted the rise of the living organism but it is the weakness inherent in the body that will eventually allow time and the Tao in, and the decay to set in. But if we never oppose the Tao in the first place then there is nothing to decay. Softness is never seeking to prevail; softness is always remaining in the starting position. We observe the changing tableau and stay exactly as we are. Our needs are small and insignificant, we are simple beings at peace with ourselves.

So in order to use the Tao for our own health and happiness, simplicity and small actions are the way. By taking our pleasure in small simple satisfactions, nothing accrues that must later be undone. When we are already at peace we have no need to go into combat with opposing forces in order to secure our peace.

All things under heaven are born of the corporeal:

The corporeal is the word for the world that pre-exists before arrival. The mountains were formed out of the pre-existing mass that was the Earth. The planet Earth was formed from the pre-existing matter of the Cosmos. And of course, the acorn is born of the pre-existing oak tree and we are born of our pre-existing parents.

Not everything in the Tao Te Ching has to be so mysterious, this scheme is the one we all know and accept.

The corporeal is born of the Incorporeal.

But even to distant galaxies and ancient stardust, there is a backdrop. The Incorporeal is the subtle realm from which all that we see is formed.

The existence of the subtle realm is not recognised by modern science; science deals exclusively with the corporeal matter discussed in the previous line. The subtle realm is, however, insisted upon at one time or other by all peoples and all religions. For this reason it is called the Perennial Philosophy and is the view that consciousness is prior to matter. Consciousness is the energy that congeals and solidifies into matter, and the solid world that we know is prefigured in our deepest recesses by our dreaming selves.

A belief in the subtle realm only tends to take hold in a person as result of some remarkable or miraculous experience where we may find ourselves knowing or seeing something, perhaps in a dream or a daydream that then turns into truth in the real world. We might see the vision before time, or we may see it in a far off place. We may also gain sudden intuitive insight into a situation of which we had no empirical knowledge. Whichever it is, there is a strong subjective element to the experience and is so unique in its application that it can’t be verified scientifically.

In the world of science there are two universally acknowledged phenomena that do point to the primacy of consciousness over matter. The first is in the famous experiments into the behaviour of light, whereby conscious witnessing causes the photon to behave as a particle rather than a wave.

The second is in the placebo effect in medicine, whereby believing in the efficacy of a medicine is enough to effect a cure even when the medicine is bogus. If our incorporeal mind has accepted a truth then our corporeal body will follow suit. As the sages knew: ‘the corporeal is born of the Incorporeal.’

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Chapter 39

2021-02-05T16:46:00.001+02:00

From of old there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness.

The sky attained Oneness and became clear;

The earth attained Oneness and became calm;

The spirits attained Oneness and became charged with mystical powers;

The fountains attained Oneness and became full;

The ten thousand creatures attained Oneness and became reproductive;

Barons and princes attained Oneness and became sovereign rulers of the world.

All of them are what they are by virtue of Oneness.

If the sky were not clear, it would be likely to fall to pieces;

If the earth were not calm, it would be likely to burst into bits;

If the spirits were not charged with mystical powers, they would be likely to cease from being;

If the fountains were not full, they would be likely to dry up;

I the ten thousand creatures were not productive, they would be likely to come to extinction;

If the barons and princes were not the sovereign rulers, they would be likely to stumble and fall.

Truly, humility is the root from which greatness springs,

And the high must be built upon the foundation of the low.

This is why barons and princes style themselves “The Helpless One,” “The Little One,” and “The Worthless One.”

Perhaps they realise their dependence upon the lowly.

Truly, too much honour means no honour.

It is not wise to shine like jade and resound like stone-chimes.

A long and lengthy chapter from the normally laconic old man! Yet so much of it is an exposition of a single, yet radical idea: The world is as it is because it has found harmony with the abiding principle; the Tao. The permanence and stability of the earth is the near-perfect expression. The minerals and the metals are not excitable; they endure and exist over time frames unimaginable, and in their simplicity, their crystalline structures are almost perfectly adjusted to the vicissitudes of time.

And if we want an even more perfect expression of the Tao, consider the sky! The earth will crumble away over the millennia but the sky remaineth. Pure, clear and yet dynamic and ever changing, the sky is cleansed of nearly all materiality. With nothing except the simplest atoms, the ethereal sky is as close to the Tao as we can imagine.

As is often the case in the Tao Te Ching, the argument then proceeds through a hierarchy of attainment. Water, gods and spirits and animals are all dependent in their own way upon the Tao for the qualities that define them. Living vitality is the trait of the animal; the power to adapt, respond and self-regulate is our inheritance from the Tao and without it we are dead. Of course, special concern is how we, as ordinary human beings, can best embody the Tao.

If the barons and princes were not the sovereign rulers, they would be likely to stumble and fall.

Truly, humility is the root from which greatness springs,

And the high must be built upon the foundation of the low.

While barons and princes must be the exemplars of how to abide with the Tao, the lesson is for all of us. The discussion proceeds as a meditation on statecraft; what is most striking here is that the sovereignty of the ruler is dependent upon the degree to which they can abide by the Tao. This cuts through the dilemma that has plagued Western civilisation: is there, as Shakespeare suggests, a ‘divinity that doth hedge a King? Or is the King an all too human figure who must continuously warrant his position by merit, or else be overthrown?

The Tao Te Ching suggests the ruler accrues merit by obedience to the Tao, and the Tao in return will confer upon him the ineffable stamp of sovereignty that all recognise, and before whom all will bend their knee.

Humility is clearly presented as the correct method: but what does it mean that the high must be built upon the low?

If we don’t have a conception of a higher force shaping who we are then we will inevitably ‘take the credit’ for all the good fortune that comes our way. We will consider ourselves clever, powerful and determined. We will view others as less clever, powerful and determined as we are. We will place too much faith in our own judgement and less on the judgement of others. Dissenting voices will be dismissed as misguided; agreeing voices will be judged as most wise for no other reason than that they concur with our own.

As we discussed in Chapter 39, when our opinions about the world start to become fixed we lose the ability to appreciate situations in their complexity. Our conduct is based on what happened ‘last time’ and we fail to realise that circumstances never repeat exactly. Actually, we are faced with something novel and unprecedented and we must carefully appraise the situation as something unknown. Our rich experience and wonderful wisdom must count for nothing; so too must our status and power to ‘strong-arm’ events. The only wisdom here is a humble beginner’s mind.

This is why barons and princes style themselves “The Helpless One,” “The Little One,” and “The Worthless One.”

Although when we take stock of our current crop of world leaders it is hard to imagine any of them following suit!

Truly, too much honour means no honour.

If we have honour it is because we are willing to accept it. Perhaps we should be embarrassed – mortified to have people subjugate themselves before us. To not correct people in their subservience is itself proof that you are not deserving of the honour people wish to give you.

It is not wise to shine like jade and resound like stone-chimes.

You are the one who will be found out in the end. One is reminded of Napoleon, Emperor of Europe to all except his peasant-born mother. ‘Pourvu que ça dure,’ she would say: ‘So long as it all lasts!’

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Chapter 38

2021-02-02T13:43:00.001+02:00

High Virtue is non-virtuous;

Therefore it has Virtue.

Low Virtue never frees itself from virtuousness;

Therefore it has no Virtue.

High Virtue makes no fuss and has no private ends to serve:

Low Virtue not only fusses but has private ends to serve.

High humanity fusses but has no private ends to serve:

High morality not only fusses but has private ends to serve.

High ceremony fusses but finds no response;

Then it tries to enforce itself with rolled-up sleeves.

Failing Tao, man resorts to Virtue.

Failing Virtue, man resorts to humanity.

Failing humanity, man resorts to morality.

Failing morality, man resorts to ceremony.

Now, ceremony is the merest husk of faith and loyalty;

It is the beginning of all confusion and disorder.

As to foreknowledge, it is only the flower of Tao,

And the beginning of folly.

Therefore, the full-grown man sets his heart upon the substance rather than the husk;

Upon the fruit rather than the flower.

Truly, he prefers what is within to what is without.

The opening lines of this chapter demonstrate well the mind-boggling paradox that makes the Tao Te Ching so famous. To wrap our heads round what is being said, the first thing we need to understand is the distinction between capital ‘V’ Virtue and small ‘v’ virtuousness. Small ‘v’ virtuousness is what we develop with our intellects. We look at nature, we take a preference for some aspects of it more than others, and then we try to emulate what we like in our behaviour. It is the mind-set that knows what is good and what is bad, and then tries to shape nature to include more of the former and less of the latter.

Capital ‘V’ Virtuousness doesn’t do this. The man or woman of Virtue is safe and secure in themselves. They are at peace. They therefore no longer think to divide reality into the good and the bad because they are genuinely at peace with all of it. The flow of nature is not opposed. Things are left to happen, without judgement, and the sage is able to live alongside his fellow men and women without the need to coerce or control their behaviour according to any agenda…’therefore it has Virtue.’

High Virtue makes no fuss and has no private ends to serve:

Low Virtue not only fusses but has private ends to serve.

This is the perceptive insight into all those that are so very keen to live the virtuousness life: they wish to get something in return. Whether it is just the day-to-day admiration and respect of those around them, or the ‘end of days’ entry into Heaven, the do-gooder is engaged in a transaction. They are wishing to coerce the Tao into serving private ends.

The do-gooder is not at peace. They do not have the inner confidence to simply let things be and so must fearfully orchestrate their lives according to their own illusory agenda. And of course, because it so intellectually based, it is certain that some other do-gooder somewhere has come to the exact opposite conclusion. The moralist is always on a collision course, if not with other people than with Nature itself.

High humanity fusses but has no private ends to serve:

High morality not only fusses but has private ends to serve.

A very interesting distinction is made here between ‘humanity’ and ‘morality’. Both ‘fuss’ over the situation, but the humane person seems to be able to keep themselves out of the picture. They are seeing the requirements of the individual situation, and the needs of the individuals involved. The humane person is not concerned about the status quo, about what normally happens. They are not invested and attached to the usual moral outcomes.

High ceremony fusses but finds no response;

Then it tries to enforce itself with rolled-up sleeves.

Then the argument turns mystical. Ritual is deployed in order to petition the hidden powers; this way we will gain the outcome with which we know and love and feel safe – the outcome that will not rock our boat and upset our order. But we do not realise that our desires are unreasonable, and will therefore ‘find no response’. If the universe will not maintain the order easily and naturally, then we must do it the hard way. We roll up our sleeves and enforce order through fear and intimidation.

As every tyrant knows, this strategy works very well… up to a point. Fear of pain and death is woven into the fabric of the universe, a gravity-like constant imprinted in the hearts of living beings. But as the history books show, order is always restored by the virtuous ones. The wise beings secure in the immortality of their inner self, who are not afraid to stand up to injustice because they are not afraid of death.

Failing Tao, man resorts to Virtue.

Failing Virtue, man resorts to humanity.

Failing humanity, man resorts to morality.

Failing morality, man resorts to ceremony.

Now, ceremony is the merest husk of faith and loyalty;

It is the beginning of all confusion and disorder.

The sequence of events is spelled out here in a nice summary. As we start to develop ideas about the way things should be, so we begin the spiralling descent into injustice. This is the paradox of morality. Our most heinous crimes are committed through the attempt to preserve the ‘good’. The hard hearted are naively convinced of their own righteousness, and cannot and dare not change course. Blatant evil is perpetrated with a desperate clinging to a fading vision of good.

Let others go their own way. The wise person stays close to the source of things. Small adjustments here and there, allow time to grow and time to prune. Nothing will get too far off centre.

As to foreknowledge, it is only the flower of Tao,

And the beginning of folly.

The term foreknowledge here is perhaps more mystical than it sounds and refers to what we might call clairvoyance or soothsaying. Then, as now, clairvoyance is a rare but undoubtedly valid experience and is granted to us a kind of gift from the Tao. A beautiful adornment of life that reminds us that the world is more magical than we suppose.

Foreknowledge can sometimes provide us with the right answer, and inspire a course of action that we couldn’t have made without superior guidance. Become dependent on it though, and we risk falling into the same trap as those at the ceremony. There is nothing more injurious than the belief that we are the special ones who can reliably know the Tao ahead of time.

Nothing is fixed; events are probabilities only. There is always room for the miraculous intervention. Even our sacred visions are twice translated interpretations.

Therefore, the full-grown man sets his heart upon the substance rather than the husk;

Upon the fruit rather than the flower.

Truly, he prefers what is within to what is without.

If we describe our lives as blessed, and refer only to our material circumstances, then we likely don’t understand what blessing is. There is an inner peace required before we can enjoy a stable appreciation for our material goods. Ironically, if that inner peace is in place then the bar of expectation gets set very low. Our rusty old car will serve very well as a beautiful symbol of our inner condition – it will be poignant in its beauty, as anything can be. Nothing is irredeemably ugly; all is ready and waiting to be redeemed by the loving eye of the wise.

This chapter has been about those who desperately seem peace outwardly, in the form of political harmony. To be free from harassment is the only tranquillity some people can understand. But the Tao Te Ching tells us that the political peace we crave is only a symbol of true peace. Yet find what is within, and you will find it without as well.

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Chapter 37

2016-03-09T23:55:00.006+02:00

Tao never makes any ado,

And yet it does everything.

If a ruler can cling to it,

All things will grow of themselves.

When they have grown and tend to make a stir,

It is time to keep them in their place by the aid of the nameless Primal Simplicity,

Which alone can curb the desires of men.

When the desires of men are curbed, there will be peace,

And the world will settle down of its own accord.

If we can only reconcile ourselves to the way things are; if we can find our peace on the inside and cease always trying to manipulate nature in order to meet our demands, then we will discover to our astonishment that all our basic needs and desires will be met of their own accord. Like Jesus said: ‘look at the lilies of the field – they do not labour or spin.’ This is because having our needs met is our birth right as a citizen of this planet. When we find peace on the inside, we will find life unfolding easily and naturally and without the need for any fretting on our side.

Our work will issue from us easily and joyfully. The people will beat a path to our door wishing to remunerate us for what we have done. They seek out the fruits of our labour as naturally and as joyfully as the bee seeks out the nectar of the flower.

If a ruler can cling to it,

All things will grow of themselves.

The ruler errs from the Tao when he starts to imagine how he wishes his people to behave. And with these vision in mind he issues laws and edicts designed to coerce the people into following his vision. But there is no need for all this interference. If the ruler is at peace with himself he will trust his people and enjoy them. They will be left free to act as their desires and instincts tell them. They will regulate themselves. They will have the native insight into what true infraction of the Tao is, and the transgressor will be corrected in the best and most natural way.

When they have grown and tend to make a stir,

It is time to keep them in their place by the aid of the nameless Primal Simplicity, Which alone can curb the desires of men.

When matters have grown and tend to make a stir – that is, when things have departed from the Tao and grown out of balance – the usual remedy taken by man is to correct them with the opposite course. An economy that has been allowed to develop too much national debt must retrench and pass through a period of austerity by way of correction. This is the usual course.

But here the sage is saying something rather different. For the trouble is with the above strategy is that it shall before long go too far in the opposite direction. There is the danger that austerity will become the new normal, and green shoots of economic growth will be suppressed out of fear. This situation will continue until all balance is lost. New strategists come in and announce the wisdom of more spending, and soon the original problem is repeated…and round we go.

So what is the sage recommending? The return to primal simplicity is the stepping back from the world into the realm of Emptiness: the abode of the Tao itself. At the level of the Tao none of this disturbance is happening. The Tao is the steady backdrop that remains even when we have lost touch with it and fallen into imbalance. Abiding in the primal simplicity gives us the peace and the patience to let balance restore itself very naturally. It gives us the strength to work hard and pay back the deficit, while knowing that our boundless energy is arising from a limitless source. Knowing what is backing us up, we do not need to fear poverty and we do not need to adopt austerity as a policy. We are confident that we can pay off the deficit and have enough to spare. Our peace and our pleasure is taken in that which need not be paid for. Only when we find this shall our deficit creating desires by fulfilled for free.

When the desires of men are curbed, there will be peace,

And the world will settle down of its own accord.

This is the beautiful message of hope that we find in all the religions, and the truth of it can be found within us all if we only take the trouble to go within.

Say we desire a new sports car because we want the beauty and we want the thrill of the speed and we want that feeling of warmth that we get from our neighbour respect (and envy). Well, what the sage is telling us here is that the essence of all these things is a certain inner feeling. The sports car makes us feel good in so many different ways.

When we find the Tao there is no sports car in our drive, but the exact same feelings that the sports car gives are there in bucket loads. And this is the important lesson. We don’t really want the sports car itself, we want the feelings that it gives us. And these feelings can be gained in a way that is infinitely more intelligent. We do not have to compete and strive in the business world in order to find the Tao. We do not need to worry that our neighbours are trying to steal our Tao, or that some mindless vandal will scrape a key along the door in pure envy. The Tao is ours. It is safe and pristine and available to us whenever we want it.

When we gain this inner treasure our behaviour in the world completely changes. We become calmer, simpler and happier. Our actions are authentic and necessary and entirely in keeping with the basic, inviolable order of things. This is why the sage promises us that the ‘world will settle own of its own accord.’

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Chapter 36

2016-03-08T23:46:00.002+02:00

What is in the end to be shrunken,

Begins by being first stretched out.

What is in the end to be weakened,

Begins by being first made strong.

What is in the end to be thrown down,

Begins by being first set on high.

What is in the end to be despoiled,

Begins by being first richly endowed.

Herein is the subtle wisdom of life:

The soft and weak overcomes the hard and strong.

Just as the fish must not leave the deeps,

So the ruler must not display his weapons.

So often we imagine our own behaviours, our own projects, our own works to be somehow above the forces of nature. We imagine that we live in a world of concepts and theorems that are universal and can survive the cycles of growth and decay that apply to organic life. But this is the chief error that the Tao Te Ching sets out to expose.

If something has grown stronger than all else around it. If one aspect has attained predominance over its competitors, then that is an unstable situation that cannot endure. Nature is nothing other than the ceaseless process of correcting balance. If too much air has descended in one place, and the air pressure is high, then the air will be sucked towards where the air pressure is low. The wind will blow. Why this is no-one knows. It is simply a law of physics that we cannot explain and can only accept. Excess will flow to the place of deficit and balance will be maintained.

What is in the end to be weakened,

Begins by being first made strong.

If a man gains too much power over his fellows then laws of physics – mysterious forces – will ensure that the balance is maintained. If we want nature to weaken something, then we can hasten the process by first, of our own volition, making it strong. If we did not first make it strong then balance will prevail. The wind will not start to blow. But once something has become strong then the situation is set up for the process of weakening to commence.

This is such a hard lesson for most people because we attached to certain outcomes. We wish to be always strong, and therefore cannot tolerate or even consider the necessary times of weakness that must precede our strength. Conversely, we imagine that our position of strength can be forever maintained, and our desperate attempts to buck the course of nature only contribute to our eventual downfall.

The wise person of course not only understands all this but accepts it. They are as at peace with the highs of life as with the lows. This is because their peace is in the Tao itself.

Herein is the subtle wisdom of life:

The soft and weak overcomes the hard and strong.

That the hard and strong overcomes the weak is not a lesson we need to be told. But how many of us understand how the soft and the weak have the Tao working for them? And as our weakness grows so too are the hidden forces that will one day burst out to correct the balance.

Just as the fish must not leave the deeps,

So the ruler must not display his weapons.

When the fish rises from the deeps and finds the light, then that very motion will lead it into the fisherman’s net, or the jaws of the heron. For the ruler to display his weapons is the very action that will lead him to use them. The ruler reveals himself to the light, and thus presents himself as a target to be fought.

This is how upside-down our thinking can be! For the ruler imagines that his fearsome display will deter people from fighting him. He does not understand that the only deterrent to aggression is to appear mild, and defenceless. Then the forces of nature, acting through men, will not need to weaken his strength. Such forces will, instead, strengthen his weakness by granting him the true strength that comes from being able to cooperate productively with all the nations around him. To display your strength will ensure that you will be weakened by the need to wage war.

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Chapter 35

2016-03-03T00:04:00.002+02:00

He who holds the Great Symbol will attract all things to him.

They flock to him and receive no harm, for in him they find peace, security and happiness.

Music and dainty dishes can only make a passing guest pause.

But the words of Tao possess lasting effects,

Though they are mild and flavourless,

Though they appeal neither to the eye nor to the ear.

With the Great Symbol we see an ancient idea that can be found in spiritual thought all around the world. Just as Jesus Christ was the Son of the Father, God, so is the holder of the Great Symbol the physical representation of that Tao itself. Whatever this person’s political standing is, the holder of the Great Symbol will be a leader of the people. By virtue of their great docility they have been able to embody the principles of the Tao in their own person. His will is not separate from the flow of events that we see in nature. He will provide comfort and nourishment to the people, just as the Earth provides comfort and nourishment to all the animals on the planet.

To flock to the holder of the Great Symbol is not a guarantee of physical safety. Clearly, all living beings will fall ill and die eventually. The security is spiritual in nature. It is the discovery that the deepest, most essential aspect of who we are cannot come to any harm. We are literally untouchable. This is what the great sage teaches us, and can demonstrate very clearly with his own being. And when we see that this is true, we understand that all our physical notions of safety and security – the cosiness of being in bed while the storm rages outside – are nothing more than metaphorical preparations for the true security taught by the sage. To discover that we are entirely safe and secure exactly as we are is the greatest good fortune that can befall us, and it is for this reason that the people ‘flock’ to their beloved ruler.

Music and dainty dishes can only make a passing guest pause.

But the words of Tao possess lasting effects,

This passage clarifies that same point. The world is full of appealing things – ‘music and dainty dishes’ – but these are all just transient hints of the true joy of the Tao. Te wise person in all of us is able to recognise the beauty and the goodness in the dainty dish. We know how to recognise pleasure. But the foolish person in us does not understand that there is a limitless source of pleasure and it exists inside the very being of each and every one of us.

Though they are mild and flavourless,

Though they appeal neither to the eye nor to the ear.

This deeper source of pleasure is very hard to discern. Not only is it mild and flavourless, it is as nothing as far as we are concerned. It is so subtle that it seems we need a whole new set of faculties in order to discern it.

The learning process begins in darkness also. For some reason, a part of us starts to wonder if there is more to life that just ‘music and dainty dishes’. A part of us starts to feel rather dissatisfied that all the good things in life seem to be very brief and transitory, and bring suffering once they have passed. A part of us starts to feel very tired and weary of the effort required to secure these transitory things and starts to wonder how this life could be so empty and meaningless.

These questions are the start of the Quest. If we asking these questions then it shows that our deepest self already knows that somewhere out there is the Holder of the Great Symbol.

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Chapter 34

2016-03-02T00:09:00.000+02:00

The Great Tao is universal like a flood.

How can it be turned to the right or to the left?

All creatures depend on it,

And it denies nothing to anyone.

It does no work,

But it makes no claims for itself.

It clothes and feeds all,

But it does not lord it over them:

Thus, it may be called ‘the Little’.

All things return to it as to their home,

But it does not lord it over them:

Thus it may be called ‘the Great’.

It is just because it does not wish to be great

That its greatness is fully realised.

When the river is on flood there is nowhere that is not the river. And though the river turns right, the Tao is there no less than if the river had turned left. Indeed, the Tao is like the gravity that acts upon the waters; and it is like the ocean that is waiting at the river’s end.

All creatures depend on it,

And it denies nothing to anyone.

Even when a creature dies the Tao remains as the consciousness that animated the creature. The Tao cannot be lost; it is the constant space in which all living and dying occur and in which all living and dying are the same thing. We partake of it; it animates us and we can feel it in our deepest sense of selfhood. It cannot possibly fail us. If we are able to doubt the Tao then that ability guarantees that we can be denied. We depend on it, and yet the Tao allows us to partake of its own immutable nature that we do not, in fact, need to depend on it because we are already self-sufficient.

It does its work,

But it makes no claims for itself.

Those who make claims for the work they have done are just the puppets of the Tao, but yet imagine themselves the authors and the doers. When we come to see that we are just the vehicle for a higher power, we too, cease to take credit for the work that we do and want nothing other than to praise the true author of all that we are.

It clothes and feeds all,

But it does not lord it over them:

Thus, it may be called ‘the Little’.

When we go out to work to buy food, it is the Tao that sets up the whole charade. At no point are we independently acting; the whole project is the Tao at work. But we are not lorded over! If we were we would be acutely aware that there is a master who is granting all the goods of Earth to us. But so humble is the Tao, so ‘Little’, that most of us never even suspect the reality of the Tao and see only ourselves and an illusory autonomy.

All things return to it as to their home,

But it does not lord it over them:

Thus it may be called ‘the Great’.

When the illusion falls away, we cannot fail to return to the Tao and it is in this moment of recognition that the tables are turned: we are nothing, and the Tao alone is ‘Great’. This is a beautiful moment is anybody’s life. With a sudden release, we feel the weight that we were carrying when we imagined we were the great ones.

It is just because it does not wish to be great

That its greatness is fully realised.

We, on the other hand, do wish to be great. We come up with all sorts of plans and schemes that will raise us above our fellow men and women, and fixated, in our minds, we go against the natural patterns of rise and fall that keep our progress slow and steady; we ward off failure, we go to all measures to avoid it, but this pent up force of the Tao will always have its way in the end. The greatness we aimed for turns into abject failure. And all this the Tao lets us do…for It does not wish to always play the Lord.

It is a moment of great liberation when we realise that we no longer need to be great. Our confidence and self-esteem is not needed when we have the peace of the Primal Simplicity buoying us up in every moment. We are safe, and secure and realised. And this gives us options. We do not need to achieve what the world considers to be achievement. The bliss of achievement and respect is already felt deep inside as a warmth and a peace that never goes away. So what to do with ourselves when the world’s projects no longer inspire? We can follow our hearts and do what we love to do! What else is there except to do what we want to do for its own sake. And as every happy, successful individual will tell us: when we are doing what we love, then greatness is never far away – a greatness that we no longer even need.

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Chapter 33

2016-02-29T23:38:00.002+02:00

He who knows men is clever;

He who knows himself has insight.

He who conquers men has force;

He who conquers himself is truly strong.

He who knows when he has got enough is rich,

And he who adheres assiduously to the path of Tao is a man of steady purpose.

He who stays where he has found his true home endures long,

And he who dies but perishes not enjoys real longevity.

To see other people objectively and to understand why they behave as they do is of course a great and necessary skill. But it takes an extra effort to understand the person who looks at others - that profile of biases that shapes and distorts all the information that comes to us through the senses. Who were are, and the way we see things, is not at all easy to see. We are all shaped according to the family, the culture, the time we are born into yet these shaping factors can seem so obvious, so given, that we rarely assume that they might be distortions that we might get any perspective on.

As we develop in our spiritual practice, our sense of identity shifts more and more towards the empty observer. Our self in time and space, our ego, becomes as much an object to this silent witness as the other men and women on the street. Slowly we develop the ability to see and gain perspective on aspects of our behaviour that before were entirely unconscious. Who we are in this world becomes an object to be studied alongside our study of other people.

What we gain is called by the sage ‘insight’. And with insight we are given the space and the opportunity to actually reflect on who we are in the world, and modify those aspects that do not please us. And the more we become rooted in the silent peace of the witness, the more we are able to creatively shape our lives according to our actual wishes. For the first time we have the power to stop acting automatically. And by gaining this power, and by making visible changes in our conduct, we become ‘a new way of doing things’ for all those around us. What we gain through self-insight is liberating not just for ourselves but for all those people around us who are likewise trapped into habitual ways of doing things.

He who conquers men has force;

He who conquers himself is truly strong.

If we are acting badly then sooner or later we are going to encounter someone who objects to what we are doing. Of course, if we are in a position of power than we can make sure that this person suffers for opposing us. Or, more likely, the person will not openly oppose us in the first place because they are afraid of the consequences. This is why the path of power is still sought by an overwhelming portion of the population. With power we get our way, and our will can be fulfilled unimpeded.

But exercising our power in this way creates a tension in nature. Those who we trample on will not be trampled forever. There is a power that forever springs up in recoil, and before long we will feel this power and come to repent of our forcefulness.

The better way therefore is to conquer ourselves first. By conquering our self we gain power of those impulses that lead us to trample on others. We find a peace on the inside, and with this peace ever at hand, we do not need to strive and compete with other people over superfluous resources. We do not need to trample because we are already fully satisfied with what we have got. And if something must be fought over, then that is already proof that it does not contain the peace of the Tao, the Primal Simplicity.

So by foregoing our outer desires, and finding the compensation on the inside we conquer our self, and this makes us stronger than the strong. Whatever power can give us, we already have.

He who knows when he has got enough is rich,

And he who adheres assiduously to the path of Tao is a man of steady purpose.

Dissatisfaction feels precisely the same whether we are millionaires, or whether we are paupers. Either way it is discontent, and two million in the bank account is not enough for the person who wants the three million yacht. Satisfaction can therefore be found at surprisingly low levels, if we know where to look. Spiritual traditions from all places and all times have each taught that the cure for dissatisfaction is ‘finding the treasure within’. This is the essence of all pleasure of all satisfaction. When the tycoon makes a killing on a new deal, that feeling he gets is the treasure within. But what he may not understand is that he went to way too much trouble! A few simple practices, whether prayer or good works, might have brought him the exact same thrill.

The more we tune into the ‘treasure within’ the more we are capable of letting the Tao run its course. We do not need to intervene in search of pleasure and wealth. And the more he abides by the Way the more in tune his desires will become. It will only occur to him to desire what is already headed his way!

He who stays where he has found his true home endures long,

The true home is of course the Tao. The Tao is the place we are always at; the holiday or the business trip does not exist in the Tao, so it is no wonder we can call it our home. By staying home and never wandering far, we preserve our energies. We do not exhaust ourselves with fruitless voyages, and we do not despair that we never find what we seek.

And he who dies but perishes not enjoys real longevity.

The death that occurs is the death of a smaller identity. It is the ‘corpse’ that is left behind once we have shifted our identity to the Primal Simplicity that is our true nature. Once we have become the Primal, there is nothing that death can reach. Whatever dies, is no longer to do with us.

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Chapter 32

2016-02-28T23:42:00.000+02:00

Tao is always nameless.

Small as it is in its Primal Simplicity,

It is inferior to nothing in the world.

If only the ruler could cling to it,

Everything will render homage to him.

Heaven and Earth will be harmonised

And send down sweet dew.

Peace and order will reign among the people

Without nay command from above.

When once the Primal Simplicity diversified,

Different names appeared.

Are there not enough names now?

Is this not the time to stop?

To know when to stop is to preserve ourselves from danger.

The Tao is to the world what a great river or an ocean is the streams and the brooks.

Smallness is a useful metaphor for the Tao, for the small is that which can’t be seen. So even in the age of microscopes, if we can see a thing, then that cannot be the Tao itself. And if it can be seen, then it can be named, but the Tao is that which can’t be named. The thing named, and even the act of naming, are both just evidence of the action of the Tao. The Tao is therefore inferior to nothing. That which can be a thing, is just more of the Tao. The Tao is inferior to nothing, therefore is superior to everything – yet in humility the Tao does not show itself and remains forever in the background.

If only the ruler could cling to it,

Everything will render homage to him.

That is, if only the ruler could make himself the perfect expression of the Tao without introducing vulgar adulterations, then everything would be in obedience to him. The perfect ruler acts as the Tao acts. Utterly free and surrendered to the necessary, the appropriate acts always issues from him. He has no objection to the course events are taking; there is therefore no need for the people to oppose him. The people do not need to address his errors by their subordination. They are ever able to do whatever they wish and whatever their good sense tells them to do.

The mysterious principle that brings about this harmony is recognised by the people and worshipped. The ideal ruler is the clear symbol of the Tao itself, and he is not afraid, through the sense of false modesty, to play the role that they need him to play. He knows that Tao works through him, and if he is exalted then he knows it is because he is ever willing to be docile to the needs of the Tao.

Heaven and Earth will be harmonised

And send down sweet dew.

When Heaven and Earth are harmonised, our will and necessity are not in opposition. That which need happen is that which we want to happen. Our desires are not out of place; they do not conflict with those of others. We are mostly whole, but when a need arises in ourselves, there is a need in our whole system and events seem to conspire to allow it to happen. We have the whole will of the Tao on our side, for there is no difference between our will and the Tao’s. Of course to live this way is ‘sweet dew’. Whatever we wish for is precisely that which will automatically be granted.

Peace and order will reign among the people

Without nay command from above.

Commands only come from above when something has already gone awry, and needs to be corrected. But the flow of the Tao only went awry in the first place because the Ruler was not open and surrendered to the direction things were going and resisted the fitting transformation. Disorder had set in, and now the command must be given to get things back on track. But by now many of the people are more than happy with the disorder! For disorder, is that which creates imbalance and pleases some people but not all. Once the Tao is lost it can be very hard to get it back.

When once the Primal Simplicity diversified,

Different names appeared.

Are there not enough names now?

To see the Tao for ourselves is to see the one thing that is common to all. If we use only our senses then the Tao cannot be seen, for to the senses, everything appears unique. But when we can see that one that is in all, our lives become very simple and straightforward, Our minds are not thrown here and there by the apparent difference in things. We are centred, with our eyes fixed on the one constant aspect and this is known as the Primal Simplicity.

To lose it is to see a world full of many, many different things, And because we see difference, and because our mind is focussed on discriminating between the different we must give each thing a name and identifier. Science assumes the more things that can be identified and named, the fuller our understanding grows. But with spiritual awakening we begin to realise that knowledge can never be found in mere diversity. We most complement diversity with the vision of oneness, and ask ourselves ‘Are there not enough names now?’

Is this not the time to stop?

To know when to stop is to preserve ourselves from danger.

The Tao is to the world what a great river or an ocean is the streams and the brooks.

With the vision of diversity comes the arising of value. This is better than that, and we must chase after more of this and avoid or exterminate more of that. This is the mindset that throws the world out of balance and we with it. If we can stop the tendency in time, and return to the pursuit of oneness then we may avert the danger. Indeed, the sage here guarantees that this will happen: to escape diversity and find the One is a gravitational force that acts upon us – just as the various streams and brooks will necessarily return to the ocean.

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Chapter 31

2016-02-26T23:54:00.002+02:00

Fine weapons of war auger evil.

Even things seem to hate them.

Therefore, a man of Tao does not set his heart upon them.

In ordinary life, a gentleman regards the left side as the place of honour.

In war, the right side is the place of honour.

As weapons are instruments of evil,

They are not properly a gentleman’s instruments;

Only on necessity will he resort to them.

For peace and quiet are dearest to his heart,

And to him even a victory is no cause for rejoicing.

To rejoice over a victory is to rejoice over the slaughter of men!

Hence a man who rejoices over the slaughter of men cannot expect to thrive in the world of men.

Oh happy occasions the left side is preferred:

On sad occasions the right side.

In the army, the Lieutenant Commander stands on the left,

While the Commander-in-Chief stands on the right.

This means that war is treated on a par with a funeral service.

Because many people have been killed, it is only right that survivors should mourn for them.

Hence, even a victory is a funeral.

When the sun reaches a certain height in the sky, the first flowers of the year – the snowdrops – will blossom. There is a flow to events and the ascent of the sun leads to the appearance of the snowdrop. Likewise, when weapons of war appear in nature, fear and loathing will appear in the hearts and minds of men and all living things. This is the law. Fear and loathing are not what we wish to have in our hearts – all men and women are alike in this respect.

The wise person, therefore, learns how not to encourage fear and loathing in his heart and the hearts of other people. He knows to avoid the production and the use of fearful weapons. Like an illness, he knows to avoid such things. And, as we saw in the previous chapter, if he was not able to avoid the arising of weapons in the flow of events, then this a source of regret and an invitation to examine the correctness of his conduct.

In ordinary life, a gentleman regards the left side as the place of honour.

In war, the right side is the place of honour.

Through the eyes of the Taoist sage, even the customs of mankind contain a natural authentic truth and reflect the wisdom of the Tao itself. The switching over of the place of honour reflects both the awry nature of war, while recognising that the war, once commenced, is a reality that must be accepted. There is honour in the fight against evil, but it is a negative honour. The just war is the action of correcting that which should never have needed correction.

In the army, the Lieutenant Commander stands on the left,

While the Commander-in-Chief stands on the right.

This means that war is treated on a par with a funeral service.

We did not want this person to die, but still we maintain honour and propriety in our obsequies. In the case of war, we must treat the whole matter as if it was the funeral of a person who might have been saved had we not been negligent. As we can see, triumphalism and glory in war is very far from the manner appropriate to the Taoist sage.

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Chapter 30

2016-02-24T00:13:00.002+02:00

He who knows how to guide a ruler in the path of Tao

Does not try to override the world with force of arms.

It is in the nature of a military weapon to turn against its wielder.

Wherever armies are stationed, thorny bushes grow.

After a great war, bad years invariably follow.

What you want is to protect efficiently your own state, but not to aim at self-aggrandisement.

After you have attained your purpose,

You must not parade your success,

You must not boast of your ability,

You must not feel proud,

You must rather regret that you had not been able to prevent the war.

You must never think of conquering others by force.

For to be over-developed is to hasten decay,

And this against Tao,

And what is against Tao will soon cease to be.

When we have a clear idea of what we wish to happen, but doubt that it will happen, then violence is our solution. Violence is always the absence of trust, and the fear that the Tao will not deliver what we hope for. If we did not doubt, we would not use violence – for even the most rampant warmonger does not love death and destruction for its own sake. Not at peace with the natural unfolding of circumstances, the warmonger must attempt to gain peace through violence…but the Tao will not be beaten! After the war, the original plan will be resumed and if that plan was always against the warmonger’s wishes then, for the sake of the plan, the warmonger’s own weapons muct backfire against him.

Wherever armies are stationed, thorny bushes grow.

After a great war, bad years invariably follow.

Bad for the vanquished, but bad too for the victor. War is an unnatural disturbance – the result of one party at least refusing to accept the natural. War ensues when the natural is opposed and we take matters into our own hands and according to our own agenda. It is inconceivable that the harvests will be bountiful and the milk and honey flowing after such a vulgar interruption. For when war is chosen, and armies are stationed, then what can ensue but the thorny bushes that bristle like the sabres. And after the bloodshed, and the strong, young men killed, and the women bereft and listless, how can the thorny bushes be cleared and the grain fields planted? Only with remorse shall we re-examine our actions and return to the Way.

After you have attained your purpose,

You must not parade your success,

You must not boast of your ability,

You must not feel proud,

You must rather regret that you had not been able to prevent the war.

Only those who wage war unjustly need to feel proud about victory; for deep down they are the ones who need to convince themselves. For those who sought only to defend themselves, and were successful, there is nothing else but to pick up life where it had been left off. And perhaps more could have been done? And perhaps the other side’s aggression was merely apparent? Did we not goad them into it?

For to be over-developed is to hasten decay,

And this against Tao,

And what is against Tao will soon cease to be.

The signs of decay had already set in. It was the natural decay that the warmonger sought to avoid by declaring war. The decay was the situation not accepted with tranquillity. But the Tao will not be cheated, and whatever decay was due will be delivered whether the war is won or lost.

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Chapter 29

2014-05-09T22:42:00.001+03:00

Does anyone want to take the world and do what he wants with it?

I do not see how he can succeed.

The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or grabbed after.

To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it.

In fact, for all things there is a time for going ahead, and a time for following behind;

A time for slow-breathing and a time for fast-breathing;

A time to grow in strength and a time to decay;

A time to be up and a time to be down.

Therefore, the Sage avoids all extremes, excesses and extravagances.

When the person tries to do what he wants with the world, the Tao, whether he knows it or not, is doing what it wants with him. The person’s belief in his own self-will is exactly the deception the Tao needs for him to be a docile and compliant instrument. When we believe we can do what we want, we are unconscious to what is really being carried out.

And we don’t have to look to far to see how the Tao uses those who are unconscious. It is the world of nature, full of strife and competition – red in tooth and claw. If you have a desire, and are chasing it, then you are certain to fail, sooner or later. This is the price of your unconsciousness.

The spiritually realised person has no particular desires. In any given moment he is content with whatever happens to be; he is not in search of something else. He is fully aware. His metal realm is not totally dominated by imaginings of some future state.

This is why he notices, very loudly and clearly when the Tao seeks to use him. He knows the voice, recognises it, and trusts it. It is not his desire, but the Tao’s. He is fully conscious of the difference. And he feels that the Tao wants the outcome more than he does. And so he acts for the sake of the Tao, not himself. This is why he always succeeds.

The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or grabbed after.

To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it.

The person who seeks future outcomes through the belief that they will be better than the present is guilty of tampering. Such a one has not the delicacy to safely handle the affairs of the world. Only when we rest satisfied as a permanent state will the Tao start to make requests of us. The Tao will commission us to arrange the future. On these terms we can handle the sacred World with impunity.

In fact, for all things there is a time for going ahead, and a time for following behind;

The problem with people in general is that they imagine that one of these is better than the other. They become attached to the notion of ‘going ahead’, and then become despondent and confused when circumstances force them to ‘follow behind’. They resist the flow, and generally make a nuisance of themselves to other people and the world.

Once we accept the advice in this sentence, and become open to its truth, it becomes pretty easy to see whether activity or passivity is required of us.

A time for slow-breathing and a time for fast-breathing;

By this we mean a time for relaxation and a time for exertion. I'm sure most would agree with this, and yet insist that the appropriate time for exertion is between 9-5 and anyone who feels the need to rest between these hours should have their wages docked.

When we know for ourselves the restoring benefits of meditation, we find that the urge to completely slow down can occur at any time of the day. Sometimes only a few moments is all we needed! Actually in most jobs, taking these micro-breaks fit in easily – it is the social stigma that stops us from just putting everything down and going silent for a while.

A time to grow in strength and a time to decay;

The most obvious example is the physical decay that comes in old age, but similar cycles of various sizes are occurring throughout our life. To enter a period of decline and stagnation while in our mid-thirties is not acceptable for most people. The expectation is that we should all be at the height of our professional, social and even reproductive powers. Therefore, a period of decay is too often interpreted as a harmful depression; we do not see the period of growth that shall follow if only we stop interfering and let our decay sweetly run its course.

A time to be up and a time to be down.

When we are successful we imagine we achieved through our own talents. We then try to apply the same talents to subsequent situations, where the requirements are completely different, and then get despondent when we fail.

As soon as we realise that our successes and failures are the doing of the Tao itself, we ride both waves with an inner calm and do not attach ourselves to either. On the outside we shall look like heroes or losers, but on the inside there is a deep, unshakable peace that can’t be understood or justified in terms of events.

Therefore, the Sage avoids all extremes, excesses and extravagances.

By rising above them spiritually, he is not drawn into those excessive actions that are so characteristically human and which only occur when someone is trying with all their might to fight against the flow of events.

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Chapter 28

2014-05-07T21:59:00.001+03:00

Know the masculine,

Keep to the feminine,

And be the Brook of the World.

To be the Brook of the World is

To move constantly in the path of Virtue

Without swerving from it,

And to return again to infancy.

Know the white,

Keep to the black,

And be the Pattern of the World.

To be the Pattern of the World is

To move constantly in the path of Virtue

Without erring a single step,

And to return again to the Infinite.

Know the glorious,

Keep to the lowly,

And be the Fountain of the World.

To be the Fountain of the World is

To live the abundant life of Virtue,

And to return again to Primal Simplicity.

When Primal Simplicity diversifies,

It becomes useful vessels,

Which, in the hands of the sage, become officers.

Hence, ‘a great tailor does little cutting.’

The masculine and feminine here represent the twin poles of activity and passivity. As is usual in the Tao Te Ching the advice works on two levels.

In our everyday actions and friendships we must know when to lead and when to follow. We must avoid always trying to control others, whether as a boost to our ego, or out of fear of our fellows’ unpredictability. Likewise, we mustn’t get caught in a passive mentality through lack of self-confidence, or the belief that it is a virtue to be without will.

The deeper meaning of being the ‘brook of the world’, however, is about being always passive to the imperatives of the Tao, and being a faithful conduit through which the Tao can actively operate in the real world. This is simultaneously a state of activity and passivity and therefore transcends them both.

Unless we have developed the inner silence required to hear the call of the Tao, it is very hard to understand what the true meaning of the ‘feminine’ is. This is why it so often gets interpreted as being quietism, and by that we mean uncomplainingly getting bossed around by the active.

Actually, once we learn to be passive to the unseen Tao, we are able to be not only active in the world, but effective and commanding. And because we are no longer acting according to an individual agenda, our actions are able to be clear-sighted and benevolent.

The moment we lose the voice of the Tao, we cease to be passive in relation to it, and it is then that we ‘err that simple step’ and are likely to start behaving according to our individual desires. And these desires shall cast us into an active or passive role as regards other people on earth.

And to return again to infancy.

In infancy we have not yet learnt all the various desires that become the focus of our individual will. It is often said in the text that the infant is therefore one with the Tao. The difference between the infant and the sage is that the latter is consciously aware of the Tao’s commands. He recognises the voice, and waits passively to hear it, and loves and trusts it. To live this way is to live as a fully grown adult.

Know the white,

Keep to the black,

And be the Pattern of the World.

The pattern for the world to follow! The sage cannot be ignorant of the ways of the world. He must understand what motivates the people; he must be skilful in the various tasks and duties that are necessary to live. Wisdom that has been gained through separating yourself from the herd can’t be taken back and shared. They won’t be able to apply what you are saying to the mundane realities of their life.

True spiritual wisdom is accessible to all people, at all times and in all situations. We can be skilful, effective and prosperous and be at complete peace within ourselves.

We must be rounded individuals, we must first learn the ways of the world and then complete the picture with an understanding of the timeless realm that exists within ourselves.

Too often people have the idea that the spiritual life requires life in solitude at the top of a mountain. It is true that doing this is a useful technique , which helps to create the silence while the Tao is not yet distinctly felt; but solitude is not a good in itself, and only becomes a good when the person has the strength and the ability to end it and return to everyday life.

Know the glorious,

Keep to the lowly,

And be the Fountain of the World.

Glory comes to us all at times, and we shouldn’t avoid it through a sense of false modesty. To reach the peak is a natural and inevitable moment in the cycle of things. It only becomes a problem when we attach ourselves to that peak state, try to achieve it before its time, and then cling to it when it is time for it to leave.

The overall attitude of acceptance of the passage of both glory and lowliness is what is called ‘keeping to the lowly’.

As with the other verses in this chapter, ‘keeping to the lowly’ does not mean living in a small shanty and begging for your food. The lowliness is a transcendent state whereby we are docile to the changing situations in our lives. It is enjoying to be rich when we are rich, and accepting being poor when we are poor. As we discussed with passivity, the spiritual life is too often misunderstood as requiring us to be debased in the world.

To be the Fountain of the World is

To live the abundant life of Virtue,

And to return again to Primal Simplicity.

As in Chapter 6, the term ‘fountain’ is usually translated as ‘valley’. The abundant life of virtue is abundant because it is always satisfied and at peace, whether in glory or in shame. It is resting in the fundamental essence of ‘what is’ in the present moment. And the present moment is the one thing that is always with us, and is changeless despite all the changing scenery that appears within it. It is the ‘primal simplicity’ within which everything is contained.

When Primal Simplicity diversifies,

It becomes useful vessels,

Which, in the hands of the sage, become officers.

Hence, ‘a great tailor does little cutting.’

Normal everyday life is a chaos of situations, people and things that have all been brought into our orbit because of our insatiable need for pleasure and security. Once that security and joy has been found on the inside, our external life becomes hugely simplified as a result.

People and possessions still play their role, but they are associated with the most fundamental requirements of our external existence. They appear, or as this verse describes it, ‘diversify’ naturally in the flow in events. These people and possessions are therefore appropriate and just what we need at the time we need them.

We all occasionally experience occurrences that are so apt and needed that we can’t help describing them as ‘gifts from God’. The more we understand the way the universe works, and the more we learn to trust in the intrinsic meaning of all that comes our way, the more we experience this joyous feeling that the cosmos is ‘on our side’.

A complete change of heart comes over us. Whereas once we imagined that all good fortune is the result of hard, dedicated effort, now we feel uncomfortable with anything that comes through a muscular act of will. We start to feel for ourselves that things should come to us easier than this, and that the ‘greatest tailor needs to do little cutting.’

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Chapter 27

2014-05-04T22:20:00.002+03:00

Good walking leaves no track behind it;

Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at;

Good calculation makes no use of the counting-slips;

Good shutting makes no use of bolt and bar,

And yet nobody can undo it;

Good tying makes no use of rope and knot,

And yet nobody can untie it.

Hence, the sage is always good at saving men,

And therefore nobody is abandoned;

Always good at saving things,

And therefore nothing is wasted.

This is called ‘following the guidance of the Inner Light.’

Hence, good men are teachers of bad men,

While bad men are the charge of good men.

Not to revere one’s teacher,

Not to cherish one’s charge,

Is to be on the wrong road, however intelligent one may be.

This is an essential tenet of the Tao.

When we leave a track behind us we tempt the mass of people, who are always on the look-out for convention, to follow in our footsteps. But the way we chose, at the time we chose it, may not be the best way for them. Therefore it is always best not to leave a trace behind you. The best walking follows a trail that is not obvious to the follower; that way they are forced to find their own best way.

Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at;

The best speech is so natural, so apposite to the unique time and place that it features perfectly in the flow of events. It is so perfect that people don’t even consciously notice it.

Poor speech is based on abstract theories and principles and is spoken regardless of the actual situation. It therefore sticks out like a sore thumb, the people notice it, and then disagree, or agree as the case may be.

Very bad talkers are usually those who have all sorts of pet theories and opinions, and try to interject them whether they fit in with the flow of events or not. Unfortunately poor talkers are the ones who find it hard to perceive the flow, which is why they must rely on so-called ‘universal truths’.

Good calculation makes no use of the counting-slips;

The sum of a calculation shall appear naturally in the flow of events without the need for mental cogitation. To the sage who is one with the Tao, the correct sum will appear to him as is if by intuition.

If we don’t believe that this is true – and those who do not walk the perfect Tao will find it hard to believe – we must resort to laboriously recording the components of the sum with slips. But these slips can contain human error, can be totted up wrongly and so on.

Good shutting makes no use of bolt and bar,

And yet nobody can undo it;

Good tying makes no use of rope and knot,

And yet nobody can untie it.

When a door is meant to be shut it will not occur to the people to open it. Though the door might be passed by multitudes on their way to work, not one of them will think to turn the lock. The sage knows when a door shall be closed to the people.

Those who don’t have this insight, will try and lock doors according to their own prejudiced interpretation of reality. Perhaps for some distorted reason, the imagine it is in their interest for the door to be locked. So they fasten it with ‘bolt and bar’.

This man without insight could not read the Tao and did not understand that the door was not meant to be closed to the people. So as a result of that vulgar intervention, the people must reply with their own. They must force the door open with a crowbar!

Hence, the sage is always good at saving men,

And therefore nobody is abandoned;

Always good at saving things,

And therefore nothing is wasted.

In the world of people, the intuitive understanding of, say, a calculation becomes the understanding of what is best for them. His interventions do not appeal to some and not others, as is the case of bad speech. He does not act based on ‘principles’ that help some and not others. His actions are based on the pure flow of the Tao, which is always benevolent.

This is called ‘following the guidance of the Inner Light.’

Bu this guidance doesn’t appear in a crude codified form as it does with most people. He has risen above such coarse categories of perception. The guidance appears in concrete form from one moment to the next and to profane eyes might well seem highly contradictory. But it is only through being able to perceive this moment by moment guidance that he is able to always do the thing that is correct and excellent. His methods do not succeed in one moment and then fail in the next.

Hence, good men are teachers of bad men,

While bad men are the charge of good men.

The bad men may not even realise that they are being taught. Certainly good men do not have some kind of curriculum that they once learned and now must teach. It is simply the way that the good man is the example to all others. The process of learning is actually the process of unlearning all the coarse codes of behaviour we started picking up as children.

Bad men are not disciples to the good. They are the things in the world that the good men redeems and corrects. It is through their influence on the bad that we recognise they are the good.

Not to revere one’s teacher,

Not to cherish one’s charge,

Is to be on the wrong road, however intelligent one may be.

This is an essential tenet of the Tao.

For the bad man, it is an essential goal of his development to both recognise his own badness and aspire to the goodness of the good man. This is a big and important step and in real life is often the preliminary to the spiritual life.

Until you realise that the goodness you see in yourself, and the intelligence in all your codified thought counts for little you shall find yourself immune to the impact of true wisdom.

From the perspective of the wise man, all the wisdom in the world is worthless until it is actually bearing fruit in the people all around you. Unless you are setting an example for others to find the Tao, then you cannot be said to know the Tao yourself. If the Tao is in one man, it is in all who encounter him.

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Chapter 26

2014-05-03T22:03:00.000+03:00

Heaviness is the root of lightness.

Serenity is the master of restlessness.

Therefore, the Sage, travelling all day,

Does not part with the baggage-wagon;

Though there may be gorgeous sights to see,

He stays at ease in his own home.

Why should a lord of ten thousand chariots

Display his lightness to the world?

To be light is to be separated from one’s root;

To be restless is to lose one’s self-mastery.

That which is heaviest shall return first to the stable solidity of earth. And there is also a spiritual force of gravity which returns those of spiritual weight quickly back to the stability of the Tao.

That which we call light is also influenced by this spiritual gravity, but floats around aimlessly and requires more time to return to the Tao.

To be at one with the Tao is a state of peaceful serenity. The fortunate one has nothing more to attain, there is no need to disturb one’s peace to go in search of something more.

Therefore, the Sage, travelling all day,

Does not part with the baggage-wagon;

Though there may be gorgeous sights to see,

He stays at ease in his own home.

The baggage wagon, by being heavily-laden, does not get taken on the various pleasure excursions that are possible along the route. It stays on the intended path, and travels the fastest, smoothest route because it is so heavy and cumbersome.

The sage has found all the gorgeousness on earth within the immense depth of the moment, which is also the immense depth of his true self. He has no need to visit the lesser sights that earth has to offer. Therefore he rests content as he is, and therefore has the good fortune to travel the smoothest and fastest route.

Why should a lord of ten thousand chariots

Display his lightness to the world?

The sage, with his spiritual bounty. is compared here to a Lord who has been able to buy all the chariots in the world. But why would such a Lord admit that he is still light… still restless for more? Surely, the whole point of wealth is the kudos that comes with it. And this kudos only comes when the wealthy man at least pretends that he has become entirely happy and contented. If he doesn't pretend then the people won’t envy and respect him.

The same is true of the sage. He must act authentically and show the people what he has found on the inside. If they don’t witness his supreme contentment that needs no externals; if all they see is him chasing after the same things as they do; they won’t realise that the same inner peace could occur to them, and they won’t see the sage as an example to follow.

To be light is to be separated from one’s root;

To be restless is to lose one’s self-mastery.

We become ‘light’ the moment we start seeking on the outside what can be found on the inside. We become light the moment we make pointless forays into the thought world of time and space, when we could be knowing it all directly in the present moment.

To find one’s root and the mastery that comes with that is to realise that there is an alternative reality to the everyday world of time and space. The way to see this clearly is to meditate simply but with great concentration on the present moment.

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Chapter 25

2014-05-02T22:46:00.002+03:00

There was Something undefined and yet complete in itself,

Born before Heaven-and-Earth.

Silent and boundless,

Standing alone without change,

Yet pervading all without fail,

It may be regarded as the Mother of the world.

I do not know its name;

I style it ‘Tao’;

And, in the absence of a better word, call it ‘The Great’.

To be great is to go on,

To go on is to be far,

To be far is to return.

Hence, ‘Tao is great,

Heaven is great,

Earth is great,

King is great.’

Thus, the king is one of the great four of the Universe.

Man follows the ways of the Earth.

The Earth follows the ways of Heaven,

Heaven follows the ways of Tao,

Tao follows its own ways.

To the average westerner, heaven and earth pretty much cover everything – so what is this third thing that came first? To the answer that question we need to briefly recap just what heaven and earth mean in the worldview of the Tao Te Ching.

Earth is the place we all come to know first, and for most of the population, is the only place they will ever know. It is the world of time and space, and of lots of lots of things that exist in time and space. People live on earth, for a period, and we are all one of those people. Earth is governed by laws of causality, and the purpose of science is to elucidate these laws.

Heaven is earth seen from the opposite perspective. The tree, when seen through earthly eyes, exists independently of the observer – we shut our eyes but the tree still exists. Heaven is the realisation that the only thing that is actually real is what is being observed Now. And whatever that is is in a constant state of flux, changing at superspeed. Things exist for only the briefest instant before being entirely eradicated by change. The tree is eradicated forever by the darkness of the closed eyes.

When we look at the world from the heavenly perspective there are no independently existing things, everything is just a brief flash with only the barest hint of existence. The flash of our own hand is no more real to us than the flash of the tree. Everything is equal, and unified by being nothing other than a ‘Nowness’. Everything is Now. Time and space are an illusion - the time-based ‘memory’ is just another Now flash. Most significantly for us, heaven reveals to us that we do not simply exist as individuals, as we thought, and that our identities are also eternal and transcendent of selfhood.

So we have two perspectives on reality: the earthly perspective of time and space, and the heavenly perspective of eternity and infinity.

The Tao, as referred to in the first line of this verse, is ‘that’ which might be seen from either of these perspectives. It is a nameless, conceptually empty state that we either have and know, or we don’t.

There was Something undefined and yet complete in itself,

Born before Heaven-and-Earth.

This mustn’t be taken literally, it is just a figure of speech. But perhaps it is safer to say that the Something transcends heaven and earth and is the place where both of these viewpoints emerge. The Something is a perspective that synthesises the only two perspectives that we can think about it. It transcends time, and so therefore does not come before time as this verse suggests.

Silent and boundless,

Standing alone without change,

Yet pervading all without fail,

It may be regarded as the Mother of the world.

The author is trying to capture the Tao in the conceptual language of earth. Of course this can’t be done. Strictly speaking, it is as apt to call the Tao active and concrete as ‘silent and boundless’. The benefit of using the analogy of silence is that it makes the Tao less likely to be associated with any one of the noise-making things that we witness on earth. Such an identification is called idolatry, and is always a sure sign that the spiritual nature of the ultimate concept is being forgotten.

If we insist on explaining the Tao through the paradigm of causality then It becomes the first cause, the Creator. Whether this creator is cast as the Mother (as it is here) or the Father is immaterial, as either Parent is nothing more than a metaphor for something that transcends the realm of causality.

I do not know its name;

I style it ‘Tao’;

And, in the absence of a better word, call it ‘The Great’.

We know the Tao by using other faculties than the rational intellect. We therefore understand that any word does not have the ability to communicate this truth. It is a sure-fire sign of ignorance of the Tao (or God), when a person believes that words suffice. Their very attempt to argue the point is an advertisement that their arguments cannot be trusted.

When you are acquainted with the Tao, one becomes very forgiving to those who try to explain it. You are left thinking: ‘of course his words don’t capture it, but the attempt is as good as any!’

How do we know when someone knows? Again, not with our intellects. If we feel love and peace when we hear the words, however, that is a pretty good indication.

To be great is to go on,

To go on is to be far,

To be far is to return.

The Tao attracts labels like ‘great’ because of the way we use ‘great’ in everyday life. The great thing is that which seems to survive and prosper regardless of the ravages of time and misfortune. So of course the deathless Tao is like this. But all the great things in this earthly life are vulnerable to change and decay. In this sense ‘great’ doesn’t even begin to do justice to the Tao.

The great thing not only endures over time, it also spreads far over the land. The best ideas catch on and spread like wildfire. Likewise with the Tao: there is nowhere that the Tao is not.

Whether you go far, live long or stay put, the Tao goes with you, stays with you, returns to you!

Hence, ‘Tao is great,

Heaven is great,

Earth is great,

King is great.’

Thus, the king is one of the great four of the Universe.

Here the author does one of those genius flips which so often leave us baffled, but are characteristically Taoist. All through this verse we have been learning about the ineffability of the Tao, and the regrettable need to reduce it to terms that we already understand.

Now we are reminded that all the great things we know are made great precisely because of their accordance with the Tao. Their greatness is their Taoness!

We are taught here that we should never let ourselves think that there is some divide between the mundane and the spiritual. The King is the personification of the Tao. Our obedience to the King is our obedience to the Tao. Our problem comes when we imagine that the King is not of the Tao, that he is figure of worldly power only and therefore not deserving of obedience.

This is a very, very difficult point to understand intellectually. So much of the text sounds anarchic, and many people consider the moral of the text to be about withdrawing from the artificial laws of the world. And it is. But the withdrawal is a spiritual withdrawal, not one that we need to actually perform with our bodies.

There is no more loyal subject than the Taoist sage. He will insist on the observances, all the propriety. But it is only because he is above them that he is able to perform them with such exactitude. And he performs them because the time and place require them, and for that reason only. Later on that day he might well be encouraging new ceremonies, knowing as he does, that the old have lost their influence over the people. On the surface this will look inconsistent, but there is no inconsistency there in reality.

The true religious figure, of whatever religion is always misunderstood by the people on this very point. Because we are always trying to understand with our minds we get caught in the conflict between our individual relation to the Divine, and that required by our community. There is no conflict, but it takes great insight to truly understand why.

Jesus advises us to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". He was not with the insurgents, he saw no need to overthrow the Roman authorities. And yet it was on this charge that he was executed.

Man follows the ways of the Earth.

The Earth follows the ways of Heaven,

Heaven follows the ways of Tao,

Tao follows its own ways.

Yes, when it comes to the Tao the notion of leader and follower breaks down. The Tao is what we come to when we stop imagining all this metaphysical hierarchy and just Be!

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Chapter 24

2014-05-01T22:23:00.002+03:00

One on tip-toe cannot stand.

One astride cannot walk.

One who displays himself does not shine.

One that justifies himself has no glory.

One who boasts of his own ability has no merit.

One who parades his own success will not endure.

In Tao these things are called ‘unwanted food and extraneous growths,’

Which are loathed by all things.

Hence, a man of Tao does not set his heart upon them.

The image we have here is of a man trying to make himself appear taller and better, by standing on the tips of his toes. As we know, such a position can’t be maintained for long, we sway and totter about, eventually our strained muscles rebel, and we are forced to return to the height nature made us.

Not only are we then lowered in the estimation of our fellows, but the attempt to be something more than we are brings shame and ridicule.

Deep down, we all know that it is weak of us to resort to ‘standing on tip-toes’ but we are so desperate to have others think well of us that sometimes the temptation is irresistible.

One who displays himself does not shine.

A photo is taken and the man thinks the image becomes him – he decides to post it on Facebook. He is displaying himself it is because he needs some kind of recognition. He is a vulnerable person who, by lacking in intrinsic self-regard, must try and obtain it on the outside. Maybe he gets the regard he seeks, but the moment the warm feeling has passed, it becomes nothing more than a memory, growing more hazy with every moment…

It occurs to him that he needs the regard of others to be more effusive next time, and to be ‘liked’ by more people. His efforts must be doubled! But as he tries harder and harder, as he works on himself to become more and more dazzling, his spirit is made weary by the effort. Doubts start to creep in. What if this doesn’t work? But he labours on regardless, looking more and more desperate in the process…

The truth is, we all deep down understand what true human value is. And we recognise when people are trying to acquire a sense of value through unintelligent means. This is why the self-displayer doesn’t shine for us. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we only pity and perhaps despise those who are weak enough to resort to this.

One that justifies himself has no glory.

If you’re justifying yourself, you are tacitly admitting that what you are doing is not so special. Clearly you think that the people can’t see your grandeur for themselves, and need to have it pointed out.

But the people know grandeur when they see it!

Like the vain man from the previous line, an erroneous and quite patronising belief has crept in. The people, it seems, aren’t able to judge for themselves. But once they have your grandeur pointed out to them, then they will see it well enough. Or will they?

One who boasts of his own ability has no merit.

It is a psychological truth that the need to boast is itself the absence of merit. And we all know this from experience. When we are doing something that is truly of value, we have this deep belief in its worth – we know it will find its audience of its own accord.

Not only does this make us feel that boasting is unnecessary, the experience of expressing true talent actually makes us more humble. The sensation of high expertise is simultaneously the sensation of another power helping us out. We feel that the results exceed even our own expectation, and it feels wrong to take all the credit.

Only when this deep faith is absent, do we attempt to create it artificially by persuading our fellows to tell us of our worth.

One who parades his own success will not endure.

There are lots of reasons why. Primarily it is because parading your success goes hand in hand with a product that is second rate, and of doubtful appeal to the people. Secondly, parading your success aggravates the people, and makes them vindictive, which is nature’s way of restoring the false person to their natural stature. Finally, the people will ultimately recognise that the need to parade is a sure-fire advertisement for inferiority and will avoid what you offer on that account.

In Tao these things are called ‘unwanted food and extraneous growths,’

Which are loathed by all things.

Hence, a man of Tao does not set his heart upon them.

Even the most wholesome dish of fruit, vegetables and grains is only wholesome as long as the appetite exists. If you continue to eat beyond satiety, then even this food will make you ill. It will nauseate you to think back on it.

The person who must boast, parade and display is certainly offering something counterfeit, something that we have hardly any appetite for. It is likely to be a sham, a parody of something that is actually wholesome, and so therefore might appeal temporarily whose discernment is not good.

The man of Tao is the one of great discernment. He sees immediately the sham product, even while all his less insightful fellows are enraptured. The sage is therefore unable to participate in much that preoccupies the others. All that can be seen is that, in time, his judgement shall prove to have been sound.

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Chapter 23

2014-04-30T22:47:00.002+03:00

Only simple and quiet words will ripen of themselves.

For a whirlwind does not last a whole morning,

Nor does a sudden shower last a whole day.

Who is their author? Heaven-and-Earth!

Even Heaven-and-Earth cannot make such violent things last long;

How much truer is it of the rash endeavours of men?

Hence, he who cultivates the Tao is one with the Tao;

He who practices virtue is one with Virtue;

And he who courts after Loss is one with Loss.

To be one with the Tao is to be a welcome accession to the Tao;

To be one with Virtue is to be a welcome accession to Virtue;

To be one with Loss is to be a welcome accession to Loss.

Deficiency of faith on your part

Entails faithlessness on the part of others.

Often we misunderstand words – we treat them as mere symbols, floating above the real action in the world, the world of concrete people and things. But a word is a phenomenon in itself, it has its own reality, and exists as truly in the causal nexus as anything else. The sight of a fire arises in the world, and the people run for water; the word ‘Fire’ arises and the people also go running for the water. The Word is a most potent thing!

Some words are so simple and inconsequential that they escape the notice of men and women. Perhaps it is because they are so simple that they are beyond comprehension. Yet it is words of this kind that are of particular power. They too shall ripen into reality as surely as the word ‘fire’, but by being unnoticed their maturation goes unhindered.

What is the simple word? It is the word of the simple person. And the simple person is the one who is not perpetually lost in a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts, opinions, hopes and desires. It is the word of the person who is not chattering away the whole day long, and must therefore clothe his important word in rash, melodramatic declarations in order to get it noticed.

The simple word is that which ensues from the mind that sees clearly into reality and can therefore choose the right moment to say that the word that needs to be sown and then ripened into action. Simple words are used sparingly, but when they are used, they are so powerful that a quiet utterance is enough to get the process going.

Who is their author? Heaven-and-Earth!

Yes, the word is a valid creation of the cosmos, and has its legitimate place here along with all other phenomena. Words are not a by-product of man’s alienation from nature. The word must not be maligned so; it is the ignorance of the speaker, and his verbal incontinence, that turns words into such a harmful distraction from the truth.

Even Heaven-and-Earth cannot make such violent things last long;

How much truer is it of the rash endeavours of men?

The rash, ill-thought out word is likened to a torrential downpour, or a sudden freak tornado. Their sheer energy ensures that the effects are powerful, destructive, and short-lasting.

Just as freak weather events are a fact of life on this planet, so too are rash and ill-conceived declarations made by featherless bipeds. And it also happens to be a fact that, if we wish to acquaint ourselves through spiritual practice with our spiritual identities, we can stop loving life like a mad hurricane.

All things have their place in the universe, even human ignorance. We must always accept and endorse the regrettable ways of our fellow men, just as we must accept the ferocity of the wolves in our forest. But we have the choice not to be that way ourselves. We have the option to rise above the haphazardness of everyday human life. The Tao Te Ching was written for those who wish to exercise that choice.

Hence, he who cultivates the Tao is one with the Tao;

He who practices virtue is one with Virtue;

And he who courts after Loss is one with Loss.

The universe is rational and lawful. Your thoughts and beliefs are active participants in the causal chains that structure reality. I think about visiting the shop, and before long the shadowy thoughts are realised in the bright light of the present…I am in the shop!

What we think and believe, will eventually come to pass. This infallible law gets missed because we imagine that we have some kind of personal will that determines which thoughts will or won’t get realised. And because we believe in this personal will, we are blind to the fact that any of our thoughts could manifest if only we believed and understood how.

It takes great spiritual wisdom to understand that we have the ability to create our reality. It is such a lofty truth that it shall nearly always go unbelieved, or naively misunderstood.

Most people’s minds are such a maelstrom of thought that they cannot perceive those powerful truthful thoughts that are destined to ripen and manifest. But when our thoughts decrease – and it is disillusionment and withdrawal from the everyday world that brings this about – only truthful thoughts present themselves with any power.

But those who are preoccupied with fear, vulnerability and loss will create the situation they fear most. Conversely, to be preoccupied with the Tao is to have transcended the earth, and to transcend the earth is to have nothing left to preoccupy you but the Tao itself.

To be one with the Tao is to be a welcome accession to the Tao;

To be one with Virtue is to be a welcome accession to Virtue;

To be one with Loss is to be a welcome accession to Loss.

I think the use of the word welcome is slightly ironic here. But the point is: whatever you wish for, the Tao will gladly oblige you. It makes no distinctions; it does not seek to protect you from yourself. You want loss? You are truly welcome to it!

Deficiency of faith on your part

Entails faithlessness on the part of others.

As we have seen, the universe is rational and causally lawful. Day follows night, follows day. Thoughts exist in causal sequences too – they are real, living, dynamic things. Devote much thought to the mistrust of others, and people will certainly and infallibly let you down.

If you are very mistrustful, then this process has the certainty of mathematics. If you are only sometimes mistrustful then you will only sometimes be let down.

If you are spiritually secure, don’t care if people deceive you, and don’t give any thought to the matter…then you will never be let down. Maths!

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Chapter 22

2014-04-29T22:26:00.002+03:00

Bend and you will be whole.

Curl and you will be straight.

Keep empty and you will be filled.

Grow old and you will be renewed.

Have little and you will gain.

Have much and you will be confused.

Therefore, the Sage embraces the One,

And becomes a Pattern to all under Heaven.

He does not make a show of himself,

Hence he shines;

Does not justify himself,

Hence he becomes known;

Does not boast of his ability,

Hence he gets his credit;

Does not brandish his success,

Hence he endures;

Does not compete with anyone,

Hence no one can compare with him.

Indeed, the ancient saying: ‘Bend and you will remain whole’ is no idle word.

Nay, if you have really attained wholeness, everything will flock to you.

The analogy often given here is the swaying grass, which although flimsy, survives the same storm that brings the mighty oak tree crashing to the ground.

Life constantly requires us to change and to adept. And in those rare moments when we are happy to live spontaneously in the flow, we see that we might be soft in some situations, stern in others; with our friends we might be open and serious, with our colleagues reserved and superficially light-hearted.

Our problem arises when we start to imagine that we should be a certain way; or more commonly, we have a fixed idea about the kind of people we really are and then stick rigidly to these ideals despite their inconvenience.

Nothing in nature remains always in the same form. There is nothing essential about any one of the innumerable manifestations our characters adopt in the course of a single day. Opening up to the fact that there is nothing distinctive about our personalities, allows us to adopt a much more adaptable and flexible attitude to life.

Keep empty and you will be filled.

Grow old and you will be renewed.

Once we have become aware of, and taken refuge in our true spiritual identity, we are free to let the circumstances in our life come and go as they like. If we are not in this state of spiritual security we will become attached to those outer situations that we judge good or beneficial for our isolated individual selves.

But when we cling to things in this way, we start to notice that after a time, they become harder to cling to. It feels like there is some invisible demon seeking to rob us of their comfort; this makes us cling to them all the harder.

We do not realise that, should we let the demon have its way, we immediately create a vacancy in our life for something that is new and fresh to come in. By letting ourselves go empty, we ensure that we will be refilled. Life lived this way is truly rewarding. Not only do we learn to trust the universe to supply us; what it supplies seems ever timely, fresh and appropriate. It takes great trust to live this way, but we shall be amply rewarded.

We must also be prepared and happy to grow old, to decay. As a society we have practically no idea of the benefits that can arrive when we accept the ageing of our bodies, and not always resist it medically or otherwise. The ultimate test of our trust is when we face death with the attitude that death too shall bring renewal. To those acquainted with their spiritual selves, this is not only perfectly likely, but even obvious. To those who aren’t, death presents us with the final and inevitable opportunity to realise who we really are.

This is the benevolence of the Tao! If the Tao were truly heartless, it would not permit our physical bodies to die!

Have little and you will gain.

Have much and you will be confused.

This is the sentiment most commonly associated with Jesus – the camel passes through the eye of the needle easier than the rich man enters heaven. Actually, it is a common observation in all the religious teachings, and it is perhaps Islam which most effectively ensures that all are materially equal.

Being poor is not a virtue in itself. It is not a ‘good thing’ to deliberately deprive yourself of material wealth just for the sake of it. But, the fact remains, that those who are wealthy will find it much harder to locate the spiritual treasure that lies within them, every moment of every day. It is harder for the rich because they have the power and the opportunity to console themselves with all the wonderful goods on the outside.

The poor do not have this problem; the road to heaven lies straighter and with less obstacles. But they still have to make the journey! The poor man who lies complacent, accusing the rich while applauding their own lack is going nowhere. In fact they are worse than the rich – who at least are ‘enjoying their present reward in full.’

It is significant, however, that the text uses the word confused when talking about the rich. The rich person always has so many options available to them. Their life has so much potential because activities are not withheld from them through lack of funds.

But this makes it hard to feel confident in the path they steer. That sense of security and trust that we all develop in times of constraint does not come easily to the rich person. The perfection of each moment is tarnished by the consciousness that it might have been different, had they spent their money differently. Their individual will, and the inconsistencies and vagaries of that will, presents itself in a much more vivid fashion than it does to the poor man. This is why having much leads us to confusion and faithlessness.

Therefore, the Sage embraces the One,

And becomes a Pattern to all under Heaven.

When we forget about our individual will and live in accordance with the Tao, an entirely different set of behaviours ensues. Our sole purpose in life is no longer about securing individual comfort and well-being.

Something new comes in, something much higher than mankind. The people recognise in the sage one who is not like them, does not live as they live. They cannot help but suppose that this comes from a higher place, from God in Heaven. This is why the sage becomes a pattern to all those who are still on earth.

He does not make a show of himself,

Hence he shines;

Does not justify himself,

Hence he becomes known;

Does not boast of his ability,

Hence he gets his credit;

Does not brandish his success,

Hence he endures;

Does not compete with anyone,

Hence no one can compare with him.

These can all be summed up by some simple advice: Cease to attach importance to your acts, and the fruits of your acts, and those acts will be performed to a level of excellence that exceeds all others who attempt them.

When we have already attained all that we ever wished to attain – and I am talking about the inner bliss of spiritual realisation – we could never again get too wrapped up the works we perform on the outside. Just as the dancer only excels when he stops thinking about where to put his feet, we as people shall only live our lives beautifully and skilfully when we stop taking our silly fool’s errands so seriously.

Everything we do is quite useless, ultimately. But who has the courage to actually face this fact and see themselves so belittled? We fear the nihilist in society, the one who can see no meaning anywhere. We don’t want to hear his pessimism, and yet it is through nihilism that we can come to the realisation that it is precisely the meaningless of the world that makes it so adorable, beautiful and joyous.

Indeed, the ancient saying: ‘Bend and you will remain whole’ is no idle word.

Nay, if you have really attained wholeness, everything will flock to you.

Success brings rewards, and there is no one more successful at simply living than the saint. But these rewards are taken as they come, with the same unattached liberality which enabled them to accrue. The realised sage is free to enjoy the goods of the world, and has none of that anxiety of eventual loss and failure which haunts the successful man of the worldly world.

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Chapter 21

2014-04-28T22:22:00.002+03:00

It lies in the nature of the Grand Virtue

To follow the Tao and the Tao alone.

Now what is the Tao?

It is something elusive and evasive.

Evasive and elusive!

And yet It contains within Itself a Form.

Elusive and evasive!

And yet It contains within Itself a Substance.

Shadowy and dim!

And yet It contains within Itself a Core of Vitality.

The Core of Vitality is very real,

It contains within Itself an unfailing Sincerity.

Throughout the ages Its name has been preserved

In order to recall the Beginning of all things.

How do I know the ways of all things at the Beginning?

By what is within me.

The Grand Virtue is the transcendent Good that can only be known once we have shed all our local, one-sided opinions about what is best for us. The Tao Te Ching isn’t therefore amoral; it rather takes the position that good and bad cannot be understood intellectually; must therefore be expressed spontaneously according to the unique needs of the moment. The Taoist sage will appear highly inconsistent to anyone who believes that the moral life can be learnt, codified and then taught.

To abide by the Grand Virtue is therefore more akin to art than science. It is not any behaviour in particular, but rather the attitude of one who understands how to subdue one-sided intellectual judgements. To live this way is to live spontaneously, and this is the way of the Tao.

Now what is the Tao?

It is something elusive and evasive.

Evasive and elusive!

Evasive and elusive because the moment we define it , we have missed it. Like water, the Tao slips through the conceptual fingers that seek to hold it.

The Tao is the highest possible category. Whatever we could name, point at, sense, is an impermanent phenomenon. Phenomena vanish in the moment we perceive them – they exist for nothing more than the briefest flash of time. The Tao is that stable place which notices all this occur. The Tao itself is an emptiness, a total void. We cannot see it, hear it and we cannot even think it. A thought is just another phenomenon which is the Tao’s momentary manifestation.

And yet It contains within Itself a Form.

Elusive and evasive!

At any given moment the Tao is taking on a form: it is always one or other of the myriad things that are in the universe. But when it is that one thing, it is no other than that one thing. All else is gone. The moment is the universe itself! And with our spiritual selves we can feel the depth of this moment deeper and deeper until that single object is a thing of great immensity.

We can be observing the simplest, smallest of objects, and yet it is sufficient for us to perceive in it the whole depth of the cosmos! Just to stare at our hand can give us an immense sense of meaning and beauty. We understand intuitively that there is no actual limit to what might be known through this hand. We just feel immensely grateful that we can see the hand is this incredibly profound light.

And yet It contains within Itself a Substance.

Shadowy and dim!

Even in everyday life it is difficult to communicate our sense of the substance of things. We can only imagine for ourselves how differently we respond to something real, like our house, and something that appears only in our thoughts, like a fairytale castle. There is a belief and a conviction and a trust in that which we believe to have substance.

When we have become adept at concentrating on reality itself, all things, whether thoughts or perceptions, take on an equal significance. A thought of a desert cactus becomes as real (and therefore as unreal) as the sight of the tree in our garden. The feeling of substance does not die away, but rather becomes a feature of every possible moment. When everything becomes unreal, everything becomes real…and therefore everything we feel to be equally substantial.

Thought and action, we now see, are one and the same thing. There is no such thing as activity and passivity: all moments of our life are of the same nature and are part of the flow of reality. When the sage describes the substance of the Tao to be ‘shadowy and dim’ he is pointing out that substance no longer has the glaring obviousness about it as it does when we see through the world through everyday eyes.

And yet It contains within Itself a Core of Vitality.

The Core of Vitality is very real,

This is a reference to the basic feeling of aliveness, of being, that cannot be explained but which stays with us throughout. This feeling is something we all know. We imagine that it has something to do with being a living, as opposed to a dead human being. But the truth is that this feeling is the absolutely essential state of the universe. It transcends living and death. Indeed, spiritual realisation is the realisation that the feeling of living has nothing to do with being alive.

The feeling of being can therefore be felt in ourselves; and it can be perceived not just in people and animals but in every plant, rock, sound, light and smell in the universe. It can never be escaped. To imagine that the corpse is bereft of being is nothing other than a superstition. The corpse partakes of your own freshness and vitality – the two cannot be separated, except as an act of the superstitious imagination.

It contains within Itself an unfailing Sincerity.

Throughout the ages Its name has been preserved

In order to recall the Beginning of all things.

It has been preserved because it is here right now! The temporally minded will imagine that the awareness of the Tao has been transmitted through the ages through an unbroken teaching lineage. The spiritually minded will know that its presence Now, is its presence at every moment since the beginning of time. After all, limitless time is nothing other than an idea in the Now. If it is Now, it quite literally cannot ever not have been.

How do I know the ways of all things at the Beginning?

By what is within me.

What we find within is that which transcends all time. When we know this, we know all things. Time is nothing other than a metaphor, a teaching aid. By knowing what is within me now, I can teach you about the beginning. When you have understood what was there at the beginning I no longer need to talk about such nonsensical things!

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Chapter 20

2014-04-27T22:29:00.003+03:00

Have done with learning,

And you will have no more vexation.

How great is the difference between ‘eh’ and ‘o’?

What is the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’?

Must I fear what others fear?

What abysmal nonsense this is!

All men are joyous and beaming,

As though feasting upon a sacrificial ox,

As though mounting the Spring Terrace;

I alone am placid and give no sign,

Like a babe which has not yet smiled.

I alone am forlorn as one who has no home to return to.

All men have enough and to spare;

I alone appear to possess nothing.

What a fool I am!

What a muddled mind I have!

All men are bright, bright:

I alone am dim, dim.

All men are sharp, sharp:

I alone am mum, mum!

Bland like the ocean,

Aimless like the wafting gale.

All men settle down in their grooves:

I alone am stubborn and remain outside.

But wherein I am most different from other is

In knowing to take sustenance from my Mother!

It is certainly true that once we have ‘seen beyond’ the differences between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ we are no longer under the kind of delusions that vex the vast majority of mankind. Nearly everything that people do, everything they strive for, is based on distinctions they place on reality. When all is unified under the spiritual vision of the present moment, it certainly is true that we will be conspicuously more peaceful than those around us.

This verse is an honest description of exactly what that state feels like: spiritual realisation involves a drastic departure from the normal mindset, and before we become comfortable with this, we can feel uncomfortably in limbo.

Must I fear what others fear?

What abysmal nonsense this is!

And yet all those around us, who have not the perception to see the changes that have been wrought inside us expect us to behave just as they do, and as we once did.

Fear is the counterpart of desire, and together they are the major driving forces of human behaviour. But once we have become acquainted with our immortal spiritual identity, try as we might, we cannot feel fear as we once did. The emotion is no longer a part of our mental climate. And not only is fear weak and cowardly, it is, by being at root an intellectual error, nothing other than ‘abysmal nonsense’.

All men are joyous and beaming,

As though feasting upon a sacrificial ox,

As though mounting the Spring Terrace;

The same goes for the everyday pleasures of mankind. The freshly realised sage cannot help but observe the silliness of what the people call fun. It feels like suddenly like we are surrounded by children, or worse still, clowns. Perhaps we can try and join in, and for a while succeed. But ultimately taking pleasures in such things as ‘mounting the spring terrace’ is a pretence – and whatever we must pretend will surely be a weariness to our spirit.

But in these matters, as with our fears, there is a strong social expectation that we continue to join in. To stay home with you noodles when there is an ox to be eaten is depression…it must not be yielded to!

There is no way back from realisation. You can no longer see the world through the same eyes as others.

I alone am placid and give no sign,

Like a babe which has not yet smiled.

I alone am forlorn as one who has no home to return to.

A baby’s first smile is so important because it complements the tears that have been its emotional expression so far. The child knew sadness, and now it knows joy: it is initiated into the human condition.

The sage however has passed beyond such emotions. Nothing external could rouse him to such emotion.

With time his human emotions will be blended into that indescribable inner bliss that is the pleasure of all saints. But this state does not establish itself immediately. There is a phase, most difficult to pass through, where the everyday human pleasures have departed, but the spiritual pleasures not yet started.

The home that we knew and loved is ours no longer, and it shall not return. We suffer the disapproval of our loved ones; their fears and pleasures are nonsense to us and we are alienated by the attitude. But we have nothing to give back that might justify our change of heart, and we have nothing to enjoy for ourselves. This is why we are ‘forlorn’ and without a home.

All men have enough and to spare;

I alone appear to possess nothing.

Everyday men have their ideas about what is valuable: that which enhances pleasure and/or reduces suffering. The work of the world, the kind of labour the people get money from doing, is intrinsically related to the worldview of the people.

When the motivations of the people are seen as making no more sense than the antics of clowns, it becomes painfully difficult to apply yourself to the kind of labour on offer.

Everyone else throws themselves gladly into activities that are not only senseless, but seem diametrically opposed to the only activity you see purpose in: silent prayer. The inspiration that impels others to unconsciously perform senseless tasks skilfully and well makes them busy and prosperous. The absence of the motivation leaves you idle, poor, and even more contemptuous in the eyes of your peers.

What a fool I am!

What a muddled mind I have!

All men are bright, bright:

I alone am dim, dim.

When the distinction between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ has completely broken down, you are no longer in a position to hold a defined and coherent intellectual worldview. Everyone else knows exactly what’s what, and aren’t for a moment troubled by doubt or scepticism. But you see everything equivocally, there are reasons for and reasons against.

This really undermines your skills as a talker and a debater. You seem to say nothing that people can understand, you seem incapable of being clear and definite about anything. Those that try and listen to you won’t for long; the rest will walk away and instead ask the advice of people who know.

All men are sharp, sharp:

Decisive, pro-active, effective and prosperous: this is how the other people seem compared to you! They know what they want, and they know how to get it.

I alone am mum, mum!

Bland like the ocean,

Aimless like the wafting gale.

But you have thrown all of that away…for what? The truth is, that although you have seen through all the nonsense that motivates the other people, there is still a part of you that still believes in it all. This old attitude may be deep and unconscious, and barely flare up at all, but it is there – and it is stopping you from truly opening up to the inspiration of the Tao.

You are therefore completely aimless. You can’t run after, or from, all that the other people run for. You can no longer participate in the kinds of behaviours that makes sense to those around you. But you have not yet learn to hear the subtle call of the Tao, which shall be a faultless guide if you could only learn to trust it.

It’s no wonder the people despise you! You’re neither here nor there!

All men settle down in their grooves:

I alone am stubborn and remain outside.

You don’t why you turned out so differently; if you have learnt not to despise yourself for it then you are doing a good job. It takes strength and courage to be stubborn – to resist what all the others find irresistible.

But wherein I am most different from other is

In knowing to take sustenance from my Mother!

Yes. However I might appear, the moment the faith returns in the Tao we are justified. We will trust ‘the Mother’ and through this trust we will live as an example to others. We will have redeemed ourselves.

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Chapter 19

2014-04-26T22:02:00.003+03:00

Drop wisdom, abandon cleverness,

And the people will be benefited a hundredfold.

Drop humanity, abandon justice,

And the people will return to their natural affections.

Drop shrewdness, abandon sharpness,

And robbers and thieves will cease to be.

These three are the criss-cross of the Tao,

And are not sufficient in themselves.

Therefore they should be subordinated

To a Higher principle:

See the Simple and Embrace the Primal,

Diminish the Self and curb the desires!

The first three couplets are very typical of the Tao Te Ching’s ethical teaching, and have been discussed extensively in the previous eighteen chapters. The fundamental moral is: thinking splits reality up into pairs of opposites. We think we can pursue only the most desirable half, and yet as a pair they are inseparable. The perfect Tao is distorted by our attempt to chase our erroneous preferences. The sage is the man who cherishes no desires, he welcomes all, and therefore lives a life of perfect ease.

In this chapter, however, we are reminded that such practical wisdom is not enough.

These three are the criss-cross of the Tao,

And are not sufficient in themselves.

A mere description of the sage’s way is not enough, and we must not assume that the way of the Tao can be reduced to patterns of behaviour. When we do this there is always the danger of empty observance.

See the Simple and Embrace the Primal,

We must go further and feel the Tao if we are to know it for ourselves. We are getting the reminder that the spiritual life is ultimately a personal endeavour. And only when the Tao is felt and known as a living reality within is will we be able to implement the ethical recommendations that feature throughout the text.

We are being urged to live the religious life to its fullest; to supplement our concern for other people and society with the direct mystical communion with the Tao itself. ‘Seeing the Simple and Embracing the Primal’ is how the Taoist describes the sovereign method of this and all religions: some call it prayer, others meditation.

It is the act of pure, naked concentration on reality itself, entirely stripped of the mental speculation that brings time and space in its wake. We see the world in its absolute simplicity, its perfect and irrefutable isness. And as this vision becomes steady we embrace reality with our feelings.

Diminish the Self and curb the desires!

The world of time and space disappear through the act of concentration on present reality. When time and space disappear so too does the consciousness of all the separate things that exist in time and space, which indeed need time and space to be considered separate.

Of all the separate things, the most significant one to lose consciousness of is ourselves: our own individual egos. When we lose consciousness of our separate ego we lose consciousness of all the things the ego desires for its survival, well-being and happiness. Whoever we are in this state of consciousness, we are free of any sense of need.

This is spiritual liberation. It is what ensues when we have learnt to concentrate on reality and see things as they actually are and not as we think they are.

Only when we have gained this liberation we will be in a position to show true moral judgement and demonstrate truly ethical behaviour.

This is why the practice of meditation is the Higher Principle that comes before ethics.

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Chapter 18

2014-04-24T22:29:00.001+03:00

When the Great Tao was abandoned,

There appeared humanity and justice.

When intelligence and wit arose,

There appeared great hypocrites.

When the six relations lost their harmony,

There appeared filial piety and paternal kindness.

When darkness and disorder began to reign in a kingdom,

There appeared the loyal ministers.

Again the first line gives the impression of a long gone Golden Age, when the Great Tao was followed and everybody lived in perfect harmony. Another way of putting this is: to the follower of the Tao, even the display of humanity and justice are a degradation of the ideal.

When there are notions of humanity in people’s minds, there must also be notions of inhumanity; when justice is being applauded, there is, of necessity, the suffering of injustice.

The people are not living directly in the beautiful, peaceful clarity of the present moment; they are clearly filtering reality through thought, and seeing not with their eyes but with shadowy mental concepts. They are not living in simple spontaneous trust, but are being judgemental, acting on these erroneous judgements, and thereby distorting the natural flow of the Tao.

Remember: according to the Taoist, all judgement is made in error, and we are as wrong to extol the good as we are to deprecate the bad.

When intelligence and wit arose,

There appeared great hypocrites.

Intelligence only arises in the degraded all-too-human world where there are shared mental concepts of reality. Some people live easily and thrive in the conceptual world; others – very often those of innate spiritual clarity – find it hard to prosper in the abstract world of the intelligence.

The ‘intelligent’ ones therefore find it easy to dupe the more simple-minded. For where there is conceptual truth, there is the possibility of shielding this truth from those who believe they need it. The clever are able to use their skills to turn falsehood into truth and vice versa.

When the six relations lost their harmony,

There appeared filial piety and paternal kindness.

The six relations (father and son; elder and younger brother; husband and wife) are here describing the natural bonds the form between people in society.

It is perfectly natural, and entirely in keeping with the Tao if a man devotes more time to the woman who gave birth to his children, than to the woman living next door.

Such fidelity comes as an instinct, and he shall feel any force preventing this as a matter of conscience. This bond does not need to be formally consecrated in the form of marriage; any such ceremony is nothing other than a simulacrum of what shall naturally occur.

But, when the people start to reverse the situation, and imagine that the ceremony causes the faithful bond, great disharmony is likely to ensue. A man shall believe that fidelity comes after the ceremony. And the ceremony, he sees to his delight, can be wilfully performed with women who offer all sorts of quite irrelevant qualities: for example, women who have wealthy relations. The natural faithful love and solicitude, however, does not come as he expects.

And the reverse is also true. When there are no ceremonies of consecration, there is no bond other than what is felt in our hearts and sense of conscience. When this bond dissolves, as well it might, there is therefore no expectation that it should continue any further. A couple are free to come together by instinct, and then part by the same instinct, and there shall be no feelings of rancour nor regret.

If we are ignorant enough to believe that we can love as an act of will, we are likely commit ourselves to vows that we are unable to keep. And it is precisely this sense of failure that creates the very bitter mutual recrimination that so commonly surrounds divorce. The artificial joy of the wedding, and the unnecessary pain of divorce go very much hand-in-hand.

When darkness and disorder began to reign in a kingdom,

There appeared the loyal ministers.

The same idea is presented here as it applies to the world of politics. Loyal ministers are features of a situation where there are also disloyal ministers. What is the disloyal minister? He is the man who has developed different intellectual notions about how the state should be run. He can imagine in his mind all sorts of better ways. Now it is his master’s old enemy who seems to have the better ideas; it is to him that the loyal minister now turns, transforming himself into the disloyal minister.

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Chapter 17

2014-04-23T22:32:00.002+03:00

The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear.

Next comes one whom they despise and defy.

When you are lacking in faith,

Others will be unfaithful to you.

The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.

When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,

All the people say, “We ourselves have achieved it!”

Of course we would imagine that the ruler who is well-loved would be the most desirable ruler to have. But if he is loved by the people he must be doing things that the people all approve of, and because the Tao Te Ching doesn’t even pretend to be a democratic treatise, we are reminded that what the people approve of isn’t the same as what is best for them. People often love the leader who wages wars, wins territories and covers the nation in glory. But these Napoleons and Hitlers always find themselves disowned by the next generation.

The most intelligent decision maker is able to see consequences very early on, with only the slightest of hints. What is going awry is subtly corrected long before the more crude-minded have even noticed that something is amiss. Only the ruler who has already left things too late is forced to make grand and sweeping corrections that attract the attention of everyone.

This is why the highest type of ruler is often an obscure figure, ruling without the people realising they are being ruled.

If the ruler is not capable of this subtle pre-emptive style, of course he must be loved and endorsed by his population. This bond of love will make people follow the leader even when the times are hard and uncertain.

If the social contract is not based on love, then the bond must be forged by law and coercion. The unloving people must be placed in a situation where the consequences of insubordination are worse for them than the conditions of everyday life. This is of course the state of tyranny, and it is very typical of the rise and fall of things that the tyrant is often the leader who at one time was devotedly loved.

When there is neither love nor fear there is the leader who is despised by his people and defied in all he tries to achieve. Such leaders never last long.

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, chapters such as this are not only for the eyes of the politicians and captains of industry. We are all figures of influence in the lives of those who know us. So long as we are living, our words and actions will be leaving their mark, for good or for bad. We are capable of intelligent forethought, and it is not necessary that we always publicise the wonderful things we are doing for people. This chapter is a reminder to us that the wisest are ever humble and retiring, but still capable of truly caring behaviour.

When you are lacking in faith,

Others will be unfaithful to you.

This follows on from the lines above on leadership. If you do not trust in the goodness of the people; if you are not able to see that in the most essential sense all people are already redeemed, and that their errors and mishaps will only serve to teach them the truth of their redemption; if you do not trust in the impunity of the universe itself, and the moral justifiability of all that happens within it, then you are a person lacking in faith.

And when you lack faith, you will seek to control people according to your own ideas. Some behaviours you want to encourage, others you seek to stamp out at all costs.

The person lacking in faith is always the third of our four leaders: the tyrant.

But what the tyrant does not understand is that the people will not be controlled. What you try to eradicate is ineradicable. The people continue as they did, only now, thanks to your vulgar legislation, what was allowed to occur in the open must now occur in secret in an atmosphere of guilt and shame.

Ask them the truth and they will lie to your face. You lack faith in them; and so they lack faith in you. By lacking faith, you have forfeited the right to have the truth spoken to you. Your people see that you cannot cope with the earthy realities of humanity; that your control of natural tendencies and behaviours is at heart timidity and fear. The moment you lose faith in the people is the moment they despise you back; and they despise you so much that they won’t even say it to your face.

The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.

When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,

All the people say, “We ourselves have achieved it!”

The sage understands that when he acts it ‘is not me, but the Tao through me’. He has no desire to take the credit for what is not his doing. He is merely a channel through which actions based on wisdom and judgement ensue. But the people, who believe thoroughly in their own individual agency, assume that their actions are the reason for all this good order. In fact that only one who does not partake of the credit is the strange meditative one in the corner. He’s in his own world, that one. He never says or does anything!

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Chapter 16

2014-04-22T22:31:00.001+03:00

Attain to utmost Emptiness,

Cling single-heartedly to interior peace.

While all things are stirring together,

I only contemplate the Return.

For flourishing as they do,

Each of them will return to its root.

To return to the root is to find peace.

To find peace is to fulfil one’s destiny.

To fulfil one’s destiny is to be constant.

To know the Constant is called Insight.

If one does not know the Constant,

One runs blindly into disasters.

If one knows the Constant,

One can understand and embrace all.

If one understands and embraces all,

One is capable of doing justice.

To be just is to be kingly;

To be kingly is to be heavenly;

To be heavenly is to be one with the Tao;

To be one with the Tao is to abide forever.

Such as one will be safe and whole

Even after the dissolution of his body.

Emptiness is best understood as a state of consciousness and an attitude. It is an attitude we may take any moment we like, and does not depend on anything external. The attitude comes first, and if this is correct, then any time, place or phenomenon is automatically made sacred.

The feeling of Emptiness is a deep peace that is not the consequence of any situation in the world. It is not dependent on any beneficial opportunity or good fortune. Although it is the same feeling as we get when we get to bed after a hard day, the peace of emptiness is ours for the taking at any time we adopt the correct attitude! You must forgive the negative approach of explanation, for Emptiness is what the Book of Philippians calls ‘the peace that passeth all understanding’.

We are told here to ‘cling single-heartedly’ to this peace; indeed to do so is the way of the Tao. If the peace is lost, it is lost in its entirety. The moment we allow our thoughts to string together, one after the other, and when the luminous present is lost to the shady world of thought – we have entered the realm of time and space and things, and this is where Emptiness and peace is not.

While all things are stirring together,

I only contemplate the Return.

For flourishing as they do,

Each of them will return to its root.

Emptiness can be known directly by ourselves. But when we depart from emptiness and enter the realm of time and space, emptiness now features in the form of the annihilation that comes with death.

The wise person cuts straight to the chase, and enters directly into the state that all living beings are returning to.

We are perhaps prone to thinking that the two realms (Earth: time and space; Heaven: infinity and eternity) are distinct and separate, and the spiritual teacher often can’t help but perpetuate this illusion. But the truth is, time and space is the lesser reality – a kind of symbolic representation of timeless heaven. Yet this Heaven must be symbolised also, and so Heaven becomes death, the afterlife. But we fall into a most pitiable error if we imagine that we must actually die before we enter heaven. All spiritual teachings insist that heaven is ‘within us’ or as Jesus says ‘near at hand’. The hard part is getting people to believe that.

To return to the root is to find peace.

To find peace is to fulfil one’s destiny.

We have already talked about how the root state, emptiness, is felt as a deep unshakable peace. Now we read that finding this peace is our destiny. In other words, all that we do in this life is aiming towards finding this state of peace.

To many, it might come as a surprise to hear that we all headed towards spiritual realisation. And yet the moment we experience the deep transcendent joy and peace for ourselves, we can’t help but notice its intense familiarity! It is the deepest feeling of home-coming we have ever felt, and I mean this literally. In fact, you realise that finally getting home after a long, hard business trip, to your own bed amid your own things, is nothing more than a kind of weak metaphor for THIS, the true and real homecoming.

All that we call good and pleasurable in our everyday life is of the same nature as spiritual bliss. They are different not in quality but in quantity. Anyone who feels pleasure, is acquainted thereby with God, the Tao. And as we mature in life we become adept at finding God in ever deeper and more long-lasting ways. Becoming more ‘spiritual’ is nothing other than developing more sophisticated techniques to bring pleasure. This is why the text says that finding peace as a permanent state is akin to fulfilling our destiny. We have finally mastered living.

To fulfil one’s destiny is to be constant.

To know the Constant is called Insight.

We are constant because through our knowledge we become one with the eternal principle which is above birth, death and change. This principle is felt at any moment. All else changes, except this.

We are now possessed of Insight, which might also be called discernment. Before we only saw the differences between all the people and things in the world. This led to us being fooled by characteristics that weren’t essential. To know the Constant is to know the essential nature of all things. Now we are not readily fooled and are in a true position to observe the patterns of change in the world. We start to see what shall come next. We become skilful and wise.

If one does not know the Constant,

One runs blindly into disasters.

If one knows the Constant,

One can understand and embrace all.

If we are being cautious and accept the possibility of our ignorance we are unlikely to ‘run blindly’. On the other hand, it is when we are firmly convinced of our understanding that we march boldly on and actually hasten our own downfall.

How does our erroneous state of conviction arise? It happens when we draw false conclusions from the past, and think that there will be a repeat of something when it is not scheduled by the Tao to happen. Physicist Richard Feynman observed this error of reasoning in the real world in what he called Cargo Cult Science:

“In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.”

We see this all-too-human tendency very plainly when it comes to those naïve to our actions, but in our own everyday affairs, only the sage has the vantage point we seek.

Our first and fundamental mistake is to attribute objective reality to things that have no independent existence. Our second error is to imagine that we are part of this reality: as individuals existing in time and space amid other individuals. Our third and fatal error is to imagine that we have our own private will that can make things happen independently of the overall causal nexus. Like the South Sea Islanders who imagined they could materialise goods through their own device, we blindly chase outcomes that should not and cannot happen, creating havoc for ourselves in the process.

Only with the detachment and objectivity that comes with true wisdom, and the self-confidence to let things unfold as they will, will we be able to ‘understand and embrace all.’

If one understands and embraces all,

One is capable of doing justice.

To be just is to be kingly;

To be kingly is to be heavenly;

With this wise overarching perspective, and with the absence of a personal agenda, we finally have the skill that is so precious to society: judgement. The direction any judgement shall take is impossible to fathom. Each case shall be taken on its own merit, and a wise judge would never be what the world would consider to be consistent. Indeed, consistency, and formulated punishments for definable categories of crime is what a society must resort to when there is no wise sage available to judge truly and skilfully.

All we can bear in mind is that what looks like misfortune to day may well be good fortune tomorrow. And what the individual mortal in us finds hard to tolerate might be just the thing needed for our spiritual development. The sage therefore is able to truly be the sovereign that brings stability to a society. And because he acts not for himself, but in accordance with the imperatives of the Tao, we can consider his judgements to be divinely ordained.

To be one with the Tao is to abide forever.

Such as one will be safe and whole

Even after the dissolution of his body.

The person who has seen that the world of time and space is just a one-sided perspective of reality has seen that death is not, and has never been something that actually happens to us. Such a person has found a new place to root his consciousness, and that place is above time, and also above eternity; above space and also above infinity.

He cannot go back to his former beliefs – once he has seen through the world of time and space as being a naïve delusion, or a kind of dream, however hard he might try, he cannot undo what has been done.

His body is being born and then instantly dying all the time anyway. If one day it never again does one of those infinitely fast flashes into awareness, the sage will hardly notice that it is gone. Something else will be at hand.

But most importantly, he is safe and whole. Perturbation of spirit is for those who believe they have a body. This is no longer his way.

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