Tao Te Ching LXI

A large state is the lower reaches of a river—

the place where all the streams of the world unite.

In the union of the world,

the female always gets the better of the male by stillness;

being still, she takes the lower position.

Hence the large state, by taking the lower position, annexes the small state.

The small state, by taking the lower position, affiliates itself to the large state.

Thus the one, by taking the lower position, annexes;

the other, by taking the lower position, is annexed.

All that the large state wants is to take the other under its wing;

all that the small state wants is to have its services accepted by the other.

If each of the two wants to find its proper place

it is meet that the large should take the lower position.

When one falls into the boggy depths of consciousness, one finds mud.  There are those who say that, upon emerging (should one emerge), one wears the cloak of light—spun from detachment and freedom from desire.  Hippies, New Agers, the Buddha, and an eclectic mix of charlatans and earnest well-intentioned fools.  Others, far more rare, such as the Judge in Blood Meridian, emerge in puissant darkness.

But in mud there is neither light nor darkness, morality nor immorality, male nor female, life nor death.  So the sage, having visited the muddy way and never really feeling inclined to leave, promotes nothing in particular—not war, not peace, not good, not evil.  The sage knows the enlightened one is bound to the unenlightened, the redeemer to the unredeemed.  The sage, though, being bound only to mud and its murkiness, sidesteps allegiances and the common opposites of the human spirit.

So the Tao recognizes that in the world there are pieces—large and small, annexing and annexed—which need each other.  Without the small, the large is excessive, imbalanced; without the large, the small is insecure, imbalanced:  finding each other, they temporarily unite that which is irreconcilable in the world and so find balance for a time.  Of course, the rule of the world is such that they rarely find each other, the one too obsessed with its excess, the other too insecure to act.  So the sage, finding the irreconcilable reconciled in mud, stays in mud and lets the world do what it is inclined to do.