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.