Not to honor men of worth will keep the people from contention; not to value goods which are hard to come by will keep them from theft; not to display what is desirable will keep them from being unsettled of mind.
Therefore in governing the people, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones. He always keeps them innocent of knowledge and free from desire, and ensures that the clever never dare to act.
Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
The root of reality is the body, thus the body is at the center of the Tao. To know the body is to know the world. When one is scared of the body, when one is scared of the world, one reverts to violence—against oneself, against others; by means of the body, by means of the mind. The body is truly the one and only thing to be afraid of; even death is included in the body. But the body includes so much more than death: contradiction, vulnerability, beauty, unpredictability, hunger, amorality. To counter the body, many build fortresses against it: homes and wars, morals and systems, ideologies and philosophies, institutions and analysis.
The one who follows the Tao does not build a fortress against the body, but deals with her fear of the body by entering into the body’s center and using that center as her strength. That center is the Tao.
If the people have as much food and sex as they want, if their needs for comfort and pleasure are easily gratified, if they are not given the opportunity to dream of impossible structures and otherworldly schemes, then why would they rebel? Such easy gratification is, of course, difficult for some and impossible for a few. But for many, this is all they require … and, in human society, the many is the boat, the leader the rudder, the Tao the sailor, and nature the elements.
The evolution of a life, a culture, or a species seems to follow a line. And in some ways it does—stretching forward in time, reaching for dreams and ideas, extending to attach words and objects to itself. Monument and temple; masterpiece and system; script, plan, and story. As the line thickens and lengthens—ossifying, cracking, swirling, yet continuing—it whips the minds of individuals and cultures, scourging them with incessant urgent calls to decisively unambiguously add to the line’s thickening and lengthening.
The line is mind and will; flesh is a circle. The Tao doesn’t dismiss the line but if it were given tokens to lie on the nearest shape, the circle would mostly be nearer.
Existence is a fearful jewel. To deal with our insignificance alongside this jewel, we cover it with dirty rags, build strident taunting structures that mirror splinters of the jewel, boast of our supremacy, and proclaim ourselves—directly, indirectly, subtly, surreptitiously— knowledgeable and powerful. But the greatest of our structures are neither strident nor taunting but rather calm attempts to straightforwardly remove the rags and polish the jewel, revealing it for what it is. So existence is a small circle and our greatest efforts large ones and the Tao the breath that expands and contracts and does nothing.
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