Tao Te Ching XXXIV

The way is broad, reaching left as well as right.

The myriad creatures depend on it for life, yet it claims no authority.

It accomplishes its task, yet lays claim to no merit.

It clothes and feeds the myriad creatures, yet lays no claim to being their master.

Forever free of desire, it can be called small.  Yet as it lays no claim to being master when the myriad creatures turn to it, it can be called great.

It is because it never attempts itself to be great that it succeeds in becoming great.

The way gently comforts, as a parent might his child; the way sorrowfully slaughters, as a noble warrior might the enemy.  Despite the way’s ability to move into any thoroughfare or corner of the soul—without judgment, attachment, or unfamiliarity—it does not establish itself above anything.  How can it establish itself above anything when there is no above?  Or, when every above is also below and beside?  How can it claim when all around it claims and claimants obviate the need for claiming?  The Tao is great because it allows the myriad creatures to proclaim what it does not need to proclaim.  The Tao is a rolling sphere, in which everything jostles and has its time at the bottom and top.

If the Tao could be said to be intentional about creating the myriad creatures, it might be said that it created them so that they could proclaim what it does not.  But this cannot be said.

Small, it can fit into the crevices of freedom; great, it can fit onto the canopies of meaning and desire without attempting to become them.

Volition is the mind telling the body that it’s in control.  It’s history telling humanity that it matters more that it does.  Volition creates beauty, peace, and devastation; this is its ambiguity.  But what it does not do is create what it says it’s going to create; this is its eternal deception.

The Tao moves where it wills according to whatever flow seems right, without regard for itself.  It never cares about promoting itself or constructing systems that explain anything.  How rare this is.  How unqualifiedly beautiful and minimally devastating.  How great.

Tao Te Ching XXXIII

He who knows others is clever,

she who knows herself has discernment,

he who overcomes others has force,

she who overcomes herself is strong,

he who knows contentment is rich,

she who perseveres is a person of purpose,

he who does not lose his station will endure,

she who lives out her days has had a long life.

The vessels, the mandarins and bureaucrats, the splinters of the uncarved block, the specialists and proponents, the advocates and the good—each one aligns himself with a tribe that promotes a particular set of ideals and behaviors from within life’s morass of ideals and behaviors.  Each set is a realm and each realm is separate, peering at the others from its own peaks, plains, and chasms.  Sometimes there is activity to join realms, but all that is done is the creation of a new realm with its own set and peering.  A new interdisciplinary sphere becomes a discipline.

So the psychologist speaks from the tribe of psyche—and often a very particular sub-tribe; the businessperson from the tribe of business; the virtuous from the tribe of virtue; the citizen from the tribe of citizenry; the healthy from the tribe of health.  Each is right, each is insufficient.

The way is a strange circle embracing all realms.  Players in the realm of spirit—like all specialists—attempt to warp the geometry of the circle into the line (the female into the male, disgrace into honor, sullied into white, dubious virtue into virtue)—and the myriad creatures are anxious for this warping—devoted to placing names, ideas, and artifacts in piles, with themselves inevitably at the top.  But the one of the way refuses this devotion, this piling, this geometry; refuses not from any effort, desire, force, intelligence, intent, power, or perspicacity, but because this is the way she is.

So all unities are not false, but limited, except the way.  But the way achieves the true unity only by refusing to advocate, refusing to join any realm of names, by not aligning itself with anything but everything.  So all is fulfilled and all is cancelled; it is because this cannot be put into words that the sage uses words sparingly and is shadowy, incapable of being given any particular attribution.

Tao Te Ching XXXII

The way is forever nameless.

Though the uncarved block is small,

no one in the world dare claim its allegiance.

Should lords and princes be able to hold fast to it,

the myriad creatures will submit of their own accord,

heaven and earth will unite and sweet dew will fall

and the people will be equitable, though no one so decrees.

Only when it is cut are there names.

As soon as there are names,

one ought to know that it is time to stop.

Knowing when to stop, one can be free from danger.

The way is to the world as the river and the sea are to rivulets and streams.

History can be seen as the relentless attempt by humanity to name what cannot be named, to stick large indelible heavy things on what is elusive and fleet.  It’s true—things seem to stick for a time:  ideas, names, artifacts, feelings, desires, lords and princes.  But, in history, heaven and earth will not unite, sweet dew will not fall, and the people will not be equitable without decrees.

The Tao points to a past golden age, outside of history; it does not point to a future utopia.  Whether this past age existed or not is not the point—a debate about what exists outside of history is a debate of academics and fools.  To be outside of history is not necessarily to not have existed; yet, according to our rules of existence—the rules that arise from the cancerous growth of names—it is to not have existed.

Can humanity know when to stop?  Is there evidence of this capability?  Is our increasing love of names inexorable?  Even though humanity may lack such aptitude, are individuals capable of such restraint?  If they are—even if there are one or two—is it sufficient to balance the speed and acceleration of the rest?  Is the effort required for restraint such that it results in strange and almost unnamable energies, a curious and unexpected counterbalance to the more obvious lack of cutting, naming, and desiring?  If we were inclined to names, we might want to say things like, The Way knows, in the way that some say, the Lord knows or your gut knows or that guru knows.  But we do not seem to be so inclined.

To be free from danger is not to be free from danger in the realm of names and knives; it is because the sage has removed herself from the realm of names and knives that she is free from danger.  What happens in that realm is real to her and can strip her of goods, reputation, lovers, and life; but it cannot strip her of dignity, nobility, detachment, and the dark perspicacity of the way.  Thus, she is free from danger.

The way empties into the world.  It can neither be polluted nor exhausted.  Whether this is comforting to polluting, exhausting humanity depends on how one is oriented to it.