Tao Te Ching VIII

Highest good is like water.  Because water excels at benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way.

In a home it is the site that matters.

In quality of mind it is depth that matters.

In an ally it is benevolence that matters.

In speech it is good faith that matters.

In government it is order that matters.

In affairs it is ability that matters.

In action it is timeliness that matters.

It is because it does not contend that it is never at fault.

Water is not a specialist.  Construction, scholarship, alliances, oratory, politics, business, and war—dentistry, golf, web design, advertising, prostitution, poetry, trafficking, and bishopry—are.  In each specialty, there are specific attributes and forms of knowledge that are required to excel in that trade; there are, as much in the so-called anti-social trades as in the so-called proper ones, social protocols that comprise entering and remaining in that trade.  It is true—water has attributes and so in that sense can be considered a specialist, in the way that everything named is in some sense a specialist, so fulfilling its name.  But water, unlike the standard specialists, has no objective, no ambition, no resentment; it is full of life, creates primarily but does destroy, and is acquainted with worms and mud.

The one who is close to the way is also acquainted with worms and mud.  So, like worms, she is not unacquainted with the arts of enriching, aerating, decomposing, circulating, and transforming the putrid decay most avoid into the blabby light most desire.  So, like mud, she is not unacquainted with providing habitats, sustenance, and hiding places.

She is close to the water and not unacquainted with its methods.  She spurts and froths, calms and eddies, quenches and nurtures, and on occasion destroys—often for good reason, sometimes for none.

Water’s goodness is unlike the common good—the good that trades in perks and prestige, comforts of all kinds, and evil.  For the common good has evil as one of its trading interests, but the highest good—though including its lower forms—does not keep evil at a distance, across its borders, but knows it well, even settling on its muddy wormy bed, close to the way, hidden from fault.  The highest good does not need to trade, as elements and creatures naturally embed themselves in it and trade emerges from deficiency.

Water goes anywhere and is found everywhere.  So the sage.  She does not distinguish between hotspots and cold, between renowned banks and anonymous ones, between wide and narrow, shallow and deep, torrential and still, turbid and clear, populated and empty, nutritious and unpalatable, complicated and sparse.  All of life is fascinating and good—and who is she to say that one aspect is better than another, that she is destined to only exist in one milieu?  Is she so small?  If she is, she is not a sage, but a specialist and she has a name and she contends to maintain it.

Tao Te Ching VII

Heaven and earth are enduring.  The reason why they can be enduring is that they do not give themselves life.  Hence, they are able to be long-lived.

Therefore the sage puts her person last and it comes first,

treats it as extraneous to herself and it is preserved.

Is it not because she is without thought of self that she is able to accomplish her private ends?

The cosmos, while not eternal, in comparison to us is eternal.  Certainly the cosmos is indifferent and unconscious.  How then can that which is passionate, conscious, and very transient emulate that which is cold and long-lasting?  Why should it?

The sage does not become heaven and earth, even as she does not become the Tao.  Nothing becomes the Tao; the Tao becomes.  The sage loses herself in heaven and earth to become herself.  This loss is no Christian kenosis, though it is not entirely antithetical.  It is no subjection of the individual will to some larger will; there is no larger will, there are simply many wills.  The sage still has her private ends; she still comes first; she is preserved.  How can this be if she is hidden in the infinite folds of the universe?  It is because she is hidden in the infinite folds of the universe.

The sage does not lack a will; she simply directs her will to the becoming of the Tao, which is to say the becoming of all creatures.  As this is her becoming, why should she not accomplish her ends?

The universe is the only thing that truly and endlessly affirms; it affirms by not speaking and that which speaks—no matter how large, how historic, how numinous, how affective—is always only an aspect of the Tao.  The universe affirms, but it is no cuddly affirmation; it is an affirming that provides brief space for your existence and that is all.

Western dualism posits egoism against selflessness, good against evil, male against female, transience against permanence.  But the Tao, while nodding toward the existence of these categories and affirming them, at least in speech, is not inclined toward separating them.  If you love your daughter and she dies, her death is a negative act.  But if you also love the Tao—or perhaps more aptly are inclined toward it—you know that her loss is the gain of something else.  That the earth—flowers, beetles, squash—benefits from her decay and so, in turn, all creatures on the earth benefit.  Death always includes love and gain.  And who is the sage to say she is the only one that matters, the one that matters more?  It is not that she does not mourn her daughter, but that she does not equate her own place and feelings with the universe.  Everything is in its rightful place.  She mourns but like Chuang Tzu she may very well be singing, drumming, and dancing within days.  Society might be shocked—propriety is broken—but society is not the sage’s master.  Society continually strives to give itself life, maintain and increase it.  Whereas the sage turns her will toward that which looks at life and death, smiles, shrugs, and walks along.