Tao Te Ching IX

Rather than fill it to the brim by keeping it upright

better to have stopped in time.

Hammer it to a point

and the sharpness cannot be preserved forever.

There may be gold and jade to fill a hall

but there is none who can keep them.

To be overbearing when one has wealth and position

will bring calamity upon oneself.

To retire when the task is accomplished

is the way of heaven.

Because nothing lasts, should one attempt nothing?  Because power is given to abuse and ponderousness, should one avoid it?  When greatness and beauty have frequently emerged from stretching capability and resistance to and past known limits but have as or more frequently destroyed and torn, should one walk some tepid middle way?  Because the Tao is natural and human nature is excessive, is this not a contradiction?  Does not that sage of the imagination correlate wisdom and excess?  Did not an older suffering sage destroy the correlation between morality and justice? 

These are the questions of one who doesn’t walk the Tao, who forgets the sage is ruthless and the body is neither to be succumbed to nor negated (though sometimes it is to be succumbed to or negated) but accepted.  Who neglects the Tao’s contradictions, both internal and external, and systematizes, simplifies, verbalizes what cannot be systematized, simplified, verbalized.  Who translates transience into apathy, the perversions of wealth into poverty, and the proclivities of power into cheap victimization and hermitic retreat from the world’s bloody scrimmage.

Why is there poverty and wealth, male and female, wisdom and foolishness, moderation and excess, full and empty, blunt and sharp, calamity and calm?  The Tao includes all and denies none.  So the sage includes all, denies none.  Whereas the one who is moderate requires excess external to him, even as the wealthy require the poor, and calm calamity, the sage, by including all within herself, is able to stop when it is time to stop.  She mirrors the totality of the world within herself.

Does she attempt to create more sages?  Does she evangelize?  Does she strive to expand enlightenment and share heaven’s wisdom with those of earth?  Why should she? 

The Tao Te Ching is not a guidebook for CEOs, bums, bakers, programmers, strippers, or fools, but for sages.

To retire when the task is accomplished might be the way of heaven:  however, we are on earth and on earth the task is never accomplished.  The sage, however, walks the way of heaven.  Not because she is superior, but because she is a sage and this is what sages do.