Tao Te Ching XL

Turning back is how the way moves; weakness is the means the way employs.

The myriad creatures in the world are born from something and something from nothing.

How can it be said that the Tao is all when the Tao moves in certain ways and employs certain means?  Doesn’t this limit the Tao and isn’t the Tao limitless?

When does one turn back, why, and to what extent?  One turns back when one sees one’s roots in one’s destiny; one turns back because one sees they are the same and going forward requires effort and causes destruction while turning back requires less effort and causes less destruction; one turns back to one’s roots and becomes them—past the acquisitiveness of maturity, past the exuberance and despair of adolescence, past the belching and climbing of childhood, past being a babe, into the dark vermiculous soil that pushes, and aerates, and is stepped on.

Turning back is not necessarily turning back to things once familiar; it can be turning back to things long forgotten; it is turning back to the dark inarticulate mysteries of the valley.  Not dark in that they’re fearful, not inarticulate in that they seek expression, not mysterious in that they inspire reverence; but dark in that they never reach the light, inarticulate in that they cannot be changed to words, mysterious in that they exist between the reaches of the human and the reaches of desire.  This is how the Tao is limited and only how.

So weakness is not to be without claws.  It is not the negation of ambition, money, power, reputation, or security—though it seems to people that it negates because it stands apart from these.  It affirms these in the way it affirms all by acknowledging them.  But it does not identify with them and that is the weakness it chooses.  Like a bicyclist winding through urban traffic, so the sage winds through life.  A bicycle is not considered strong next to a car, is it?  So the sage is not considered strong next to a president, guru, or entertainer.

There is a continuous movement from darkness to elusiveness to the named; from inspiration to creation to commodity.  This movement exists as readily in love, justice, art, religion, business, and thought as it does in individuals and cultures.  Yet because something has become named does not mean that the darkness has left it, just that the darkness has hidden itself.  So the people are surprised when it reaches a long invisible hand from the valley and stabs them.  But the sage is not surprised for she lives in the valley and the darkness is her sight and so in not-seeing sees.

Tao Te Ching XXXIX

Of old, these came to be in possession of the One:

Heaven in virtue of the One is limpid;

Earth in virtue of the One is settled;

Gods in virtue of the One have their potencies;

The valley in virtue of the One is full;

The myriad creatures in virtue of the One are alive;

Lords and princes in virtue of the One become leaders in the empire.

It is the One that makes these what they are.

Without what makes it limpid heaven might split;

Without what makes it settled earth might sink;

Without what gives them their potencies gods might spend themselves;

Without what makes it full the valley might run dry;

Without what keeps them alive the myriad creatures might perish;

Without what makes them leaders lords and princes might fall.

Hence the superior must have the inferior as root; the high must have the low as base.  Thus lords and princes refer to themselves as solitary, desolate, and hapless.  This is taking the inferior as root, is it not?

Hence the highest renown is without renown.

Not wishing to be one among many like jade nor to be aloof like stone.

The sage is neither limpid nor settled nor potent nor full nor alive nor a leader.  She in virtue of the One is one; without what makes her one she might be heaven or earth or a god or a valley or a myriad creature or a lord.

If you wish, you may think of the superior as superior but it is not; if you wish, you may think of the inferior as inferior but it is not.  If the superior must have the inferior, how can it be superior?  Picture the One as a circle, the superior as sections in the upper half, the inferior as sections in the lower.  A lord is not a lord because he is better; he is a lord simply because he is a lord.  Only those splintered divorce parts of the circle from the other parts that make it a circle.

By making and giving and keeping, it is not meant that the One doles out limpidity, settlement, potency, fullness, aliveness, and leadership as a manager or the government might dole out funds, benefits, awards, or praise.  Each exists as it is because of its context not because of itself.  This is so though it may claim—as it often does—that it exists as it is largely or solely because of itself.

So the One came to be perceived as separate and history is the accumulation of separations and the increasingly audible derision of context.  For as there is more to see so it becomes more difficult to see the One.

Tao Te Ching XXXVIII

A person of the highest virtue does not keep to virtue and that is why she has virtue.

A person of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue and that is why he is without virtue.

The former never acts yet leaves nothing undone.  The latter acts but there are things left undone.

A person of the highest benevolence acts but from no ulterior motive.

A person of the highest rectitude acts but from ulterior motive.

A person most conversant in the rites acts but when no one responds rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force.

Hence when the way was lost there was virtue; when virtue was lost there was benevolence; when benevolence was lost there was rectitude; when rectitude was lost there were the rites.

The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty and good faith

and the beginning of disorder;

foreknowledge is the flowery embellishment of the way

and the beginning of folly.

Hence the person of large mind abides in the thick not in the thin, in the fruit not in the flower.

Therefore she discards the one and takes the other.

Even as everything dies, everything, gradually, eases away from the space that doesn’t require names to a space that demands names and uses force—of whatever means:  physical, emotional, mental—to attempt full conformity to the demanded names.

Look around you.  In the halls of politics, education, business, religion, art, media, family, philanthropy, friendship, eros.  See the tyranny of names and rituals.  Watch how seeming kindness and cooperation turn to brutality and vengeance when the required names and rituals are bypassed or transgressed.

The one who stays in the loose airy space of no-naming does not avoid names and rituals; she does not move or think like the animals.  But for her they are not required and the solid spaces of demand that others live within and fight over are to her light and diffused.  This is why she walks alone and wears a cloak that others cannot see.  Words fall lightly on her like rain; they form puddles and return to the earth.

Between the loose light space and the myriad solid spaces is a spectrum of spaces.  The supposed sage preaches some of these with conviction and many paragraphs; the nameless sage laughs, the spectrum turns to dark light, a rainbow of dubious visibility and beauty.

To plan is nothing special.  The sage aligns herself with life—which acts but doesn’t plan, which thickly grows and regards death no differently than a radish.