When the government is muddled the people are simple,
when the government is alert the people are cunning.
It is on disaster that good fortune perches,
it is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches.
Who knows the limit? Does not the straightforward exist? The straightforward changes again into the crafty, and the good changes again into the monstrous. Indeed it is long since the people were perplexed.
Therefore the sage is square-edged but does not scrape,
has corners but does not jab,
extends himself but not at the expense of others,
shines but does not dazzle.
Clarity, truth, honesty, precision … aren’t these the values of the evolved and noble? Murkiness, confusion, slipperiness … aren’t language and love—aren’t society, technology, and culture—designed to eliminate these undesirable traits? But the Tao in its very roots and eyes uses language but trusts it no more than anything else, including itself; accepts the world’s cornucopia but does not give it more credence than death.
The sage is not particularly surprised when an enemy becomes a friend, when his highest love betrays him. The soul is a hydra and humans, should they ever be able to achieve emptiness, might then realize that emptiness is what is said about it and no conclusions, proofs, or assurances live there, but only the very experience of emptiness itself. The sage knows that love is often draped over a thousand fences and that which society celebrates is often born in that which society despises, that time is just a function of geometry, and science a symbolization of what we already know in our vision. But the light of our vision is not enough and so we try to stuff the light into our minds and there it becomes imprisoned and dies.
And if it was long since the people were perplexed, it may be even longer now, in an age when doubt—not as intellectual inquiry but as the ground of experience—is derided and one’s volition has become the one true indicator that one exists.
The sage possesses the necessary tools to damage others and things but rarely uses these tools and if she does so does so sadly. She knows that emptiness leads in itself to the monstrous as easily as to the good and that the causes we tell ourselves, whether moral or otherwise, often simply serve ourselves.
Why does the sage, then, not use the tools at her disposal, when it seems patently obvious that such equipment exists to further herself and that the normal path is, as one advances in years, to ensure one is protected and to transfer the naïve exuberance of youth into systems of control and oppression for all and comfort for oneself? Why does she not? If you were to find a sage and ask her, she would not give you any clear answer, for no clear answer exists; rather, she might smile and offer you an orange.
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