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.
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