Tao Te Ching LII

The world had a beginning

and this beginning could be the mother of the world.

When you know the mother

go on to know the child.

After you have known the child

go back to holding fast to the mother

and to the end of your days you will not meet with danger.

Block the openings,

shut the doors,

and all your life you will not run dry.

Unblock the openings,

add to your troubles,

and to the end of your days you will be beyond salvation.

To see the small is called discernment.

To hold fast to the submissive is called strength.

Use the light

but give up the discernment.

Bring not misfortune upon yourself.

This is known as following the constant.

The Taoist sage can seem surprisingly and perhaps disturbingly like a bourgeoisie:  doing all to avoid misfortune, never excessive or exuberant, balanced, boring, vacantly content.  If this is so, the key difference between the sage and the bourgeoisie can be seen by randomly changing their circumstances.  Rip away the savings, house, car, career, and spouse—the bourgeoisie breaks down and possibly jumps from a window, the sage sings a little tune and moseys on.

The difference, then, is not be in outward circumstances, but inward ground.  The bourgeoisie’s ground, in fact, is not within him, but in his prosthetics; thus when his prosthetics disappear, he falls.  The sage’s ground, however, is the way, and should her prosthetics disappear (if indeed she has any, for she doesn’t particularly care), she does not fall for there is nowhere to fall.

The bourgeoisie knew the mother—the void of creation—as an infant, then moved on to know the child of society and culture.  But he gets stuck there and thus returns to acting like an infant when his things are taken away from him.  The sage, however, after knowing the child, returns to the mother—not as a grasping infant, but as an adult whose mother is the world.  This is why she blocks and shuts, sees and holds fast, uses but gives up, believes in light but not distinction—she has no need to build worlds around her; she has the world.

However, in modern times, with so much data and so many artifacts having been erected between the individual mother of our physical infantility and the collective mother of spiritual maturity, who can claw her way through and back?  Who can negotiate the mass seduction of sensual and intellectual knowledge in such a way as to say no, instead following a distant way?