Is not the way of heaven like the stretching of
a bow?
The high it presses down,
The low it lifts up,
The excessive it takes from,
The deficient it gives to.
It is the way of heaven to take from what has in
excess in order to make good what is deficient.
The way of man is otherwise. It
takes from those who are in want in order to offer this to those who already
have more than enough. Who is there that
can take what he himself has in excess and offer this to the empire? Only he who has the way.
Therefore the sage benefits them yet exacts no
gratitude,
Accomplishes his task yet lays claim to no
merit.
Is this not because he does not wish to be
considered a better man than others?
The difference between heaven in Daoism and
heaven in Christianity is a matter of geometry and possibly genitals—or at
least their corresponding spiritual potencies.
In Dao, heaven collapses—through a radical relativizing—the relation
between things (the relation between relations), and so any expected moral
hierarchy, by drawing a circle around heaven and earth. In Christ, man sustains the expectation of
moral hierarchy by drawing arrows (teleologies, etiologies) between heaven and
earth. Time, death, origins are central
monuments, inexorable, in Christ; they are as wispy and nomadic as words, in
Dao.
Yet we have in both this notion of good, of
justice. In Dao, of goodness apart from
its opposition to evil, of justice apart from its opposition to the law (of
words apart from their opposition to silence, of things apart from their
opposition for their opposition is a part of them). A goodness without center or end; a goodness
that, if it has a means, its means is not particularly known, other than as one
knows the memory of a dream.
The sage does not offer what she has
essentially, only what she has in excess.
Yet if the sage has anything essential is no clear outline. Regardless, the sage does not offer what she
has in excess to the deficient or the low, but to the empire, bypassing the
rough dualities of high and low, heaven and earth.
This is the only authentic democracy. The tree is the tree and does not consider
itself better than the cockroach. The
human is the human; why should it be better than the slug or a bog? I am i; why should i be better than you?
If i am muscled, beautiful, successful, rich,
talented, famous, fortunate, how easy it is for me to take credit for my state,
to draw taut lines of causation. I am powerful because of my will, my drive,
my virtue, my persistency, my blood and heritage, my intellect, my kindness, my
perspicacity and judgment.
But Dao collapses such pleasant conclusions,
such self-serving satisfactions. Was not
this person formed this way, in the same way as a particular tree (by genetic
formula and context—in the case of the tree: wind, soil, environment; in the
case of the human: culture, home, environment)? How can he then take credit for what has been
formed into him, what he has been formed into, when he is the murky sum of a
formula and a context, a tentative addition, a transient conglomerate of murky
inputs and tangled roots?
Dao dissolves virtue and morality through their
absolution. It places humans in their
place—not slightly lower than the angels or made in the image of God or the
unacknowledged legislators of the world or a virus to be eradicated or
something to tell the oceans how to live their lives … but as a myriad set of
somethings among myriad sets of myriad sets of somethings. And who can be better in such a context?
One only is, on a sea of is-ness.
This is the way.
