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.