Tao Te Ching XLVI

When the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses breed on the border.

There is no crime greater than having too many desires.

There is no disaster greater than not being content.

There is no misfortune greater than being covetous.

Hence in being content, one will always have enough.

Who is greater—the one who stretches his ambition to human limits or the one who lies content on the spherical meadow of time?  Who is greater—Caesar or Lao Tse?  We cannot say Caesar or Christ, for they are simply differently ambitious, reflecting the West’s schizophrenia regarding politics and spirit.  Caesar tries to encircle the earth, Christ tries to reach God, Lao Tse tries to do nothing.  Or rather, places himself in whatever current sweeps him along and so feels as if he is trying to do nothing.

Caesar reflects the common political ambition—Nietzsche’s lion.  Christ reflects the common spiritual ambition—the camel.  Lao Tse reflects the child.  They are popular in that order:  the majority want more money, comfort, security, pleasure and power and are envious of the few, like Caesar, who are hanged on history’s vast meat hooks; a significant minority—whether through common disgruntlement or much rarer inclination—seek self-abnegation.  The rarest of these is the mystic—Simone Weil is a classic modern case—who so successfully achieves it (physically, anyway) that she starves herself to death in her 30s.  But rarer than all these is the non-seeker, the contented one, who doesn’t particularly object to the rich and powerful any more than she objects to the anchorite, who ebbs and flows, enlarges and shrinks, not through any particular volition but through the natural ebbs and flows, enlargements and shrinkings, which are life’s.

By placing herself in life as opposed to her individual will, feelings, and thoughts, the sage conforms to the only possibly real notions of god.  Notions that are grounded, earthly, and realistic, yet also include certain traditional Western notions of god.  This grounded god is not something separate from life or earth; not something specific, nameable, or definable; not something subtractable but the sum of all things existing, possible, and imaginary; not something in itself graspable but the sum of all things graspable and ungraspable; not something benevolent or malicious though sometimes benevolent or malicious and frequently neither; not something ever static unless its constant is flux; not something abstract and beyond us by virtue of being beyond the senses but abstract and beyond us by virtue of including all senses, all memories, all things that have been and might have been and might be; not something of specific attributes and words but all attributes and words; something that feels as if it is boundless because we cannot see its bounds but something that could quite easily be bounded if something existed to bind it; not something which discounts the individual and specific but affirms all individuals and specificities; not something of particular hierarchy, ambition, scope, telos, or linear trajectory, but all hierarchies, ambitions, scopes, teloi, and linear trajectories; not something clear, though sometimes clear, but murky.

So she does not dissolve on the water, but is carried by it, and dissolves in it upon death.

Tao Te Ching XLV

Great perfection seems chipped,

yet use will not wear it out.

Great fullness seems empty,

yet use will not drain it.

Great straightness seems bent,

great skill seems awkward,

great eloquence seems tongue-tied.

Restlessness overcomes cold, stillness overcomes heat.

Limpid and still,

one can be a leader in the empire.

The Tao does not have ideals, for ideals exist outside of life—in the mind’s imagining of what life never is—and all the Tao cares for is life.  In life, even sunsets get tedious after 15 minutes.  What the people are impressed by—what they call great skill or eloquence—is usually that which affirms their vanities.  True eloquence, perfection, skill—they stumble like water over the rough rocks of ideals.

So greatness never comes from a straightforward walk in the sunshine, but through circuitous routes in manifold terrains and conditions.  And if one is truly great, one doubts whether one has arrived anywhere.  One probably doesn’t care.

And should greatness be achieved, emptiness is the reward.  Greatness’ chief attribute is emptiness—whether the greatness is achieved through art, war, love, money, or sacrifice.  And when emptiness comes, what then?

Tao Te Ching XLIV

Your name or your person—

which is dearer?

Your person or your goods—

which is worth more?

Gain or loss—

which is a greater bane?

That is why excessive meanness

is sure to lead to great expense;

too much store

is sure to end in immense loss.

Know contentment

and you will suffer no disgrace;

know when to stop

and you will meet with no danger.

You can then endure.

Does the Tao ask questions and frequently not answer?  The Tao doesn’t care to choose, so questions for it are simply different ways to articulate statements of itself.

Is the Tao so naïve as to believe in earthly justice, particularly of such a guaranteed causal kind that states meanness and greed will lead to retribution?  Does it seem to think that it will provide the retribution?  The Tao doesn’t particularly care about individual things—whether lords or dogs, this particular river, that particular prince.  Does this mean the sage freely cuts individuals down?  Why would she do this?  Is not the one who cares about individual things—and cares about his own individuality above all—the one who freely cuts things down?  All things call out their destruction—stockpiling calls out depletion, exuberance calls out despair.  A hoarding grasping merchant may look at his stockpile grow throughout his life and on his deathbed say to himself, I have been mean but I have died a rich man.  But someone meaner comes along and the merchant’s grandson is set aside.  The Tao looks at the life of a stockpile, of meanness, of love and lust—without blinding itself to any related aspect in time or space—and then speaks the way it does.

The Tao lacks the twins, romance and tragedy.  The Tao points to life but no particular kind of life other than all—continuous repetitive contradictory themed stretching-but-limited life.   There might be comic life but romantic and tragic life is a debunking of life, a preference of death over life, and the Tao doesn’t prefer.  For the Tao, there is simply life, simply enduring life; there is no concept of life as something to be sweetened, embittered, soured, or salinated … no concept of human life, tree life, baby seal life, machine or aesthetic life as superior to any other …  no sweet and sunny life, though this is included … no cold and brutal life, though this is included … no fiscal or impoverished life, though these are acknowledged.  Only life.  Water endlessly pouring over awards and monuments, titles and company cars.

Tao Te Ching XLIII

The most submissive thing in the world can ride roughshod over the hardest in the world—that which is without substance entering that which has no crevices.  That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action.  The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action:  these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.

Esoteric knowledge.  Those with the distinctive and elite guardianship of truth’s murky core.  Artists or warmongers.  Spiritualists or madmen.  Scientists or martyrs.  Certain perspectives, arcane theses, obscure formulae and phrases.

Yet the collectivity of sages crawls only into the perspective of all perspectives, thereby reaching an emptiness that is not a nihilism but an empty fullness, in the manner of mystics and children.  Words collapse, not from any despair but from their own emptiness.  Action dissolves, not from any futility but from its own weightlessness.  Words are used, action happens; but it is not more important than the silence and stillness that precedes and follows.  They are equal in volume and effectiveness and while the sage knows both, she teaches from the side of the murky myriad one.  This is what makes her a sage.