Tao Te Ching XXXIII

He who knows others is clever,

she who knows herself has discernment,

he who overcomes others has force,

she who overcomes herself is strong,

he who knows contentment is rich,

she who perseveres is a person of purpose,

he who does not lose his station will endure,

she who lives out her days has had a long life.

The vessels, the mandarins and bureaucrats, the splinters of the uncarved block, the specialists and proponents, the advocates and the good—each one aligns himself with a tribe that promotes a particular set of ideals and behaviors from within life’s morass of ideals and behaviors.  Each set is a realm and each realm is separate, peering at the others from its own peaks, plains, and chasms.  Sometimes there is activity to join realms, but all that is done is the creation of a new realm with its own set and peering.  A new interdisciplinary sphere becomes a discipline.

So the psychologist speaks from the tribe of psyche—and often a very particular sub-tribe; the businessperson from the tribe of business; the virtuous from the tribe of virtue; the citizen from the tribe of citizenry; the healthy from the tribe of health.  Each is right, each is insufficient.

The way is a strange circle embracing all realms.  Players in the realm of spirit—like all specialists—attempt to warp the geometry of the circle into the line (the female into the male, disgrace into honor, sullied into white, dubious virtue into virtue)—and the myriad creatures are anxious for this warping—devoted to placing names, ideas, and artifacts in piles, with themselves inevitably at the top.  But the one of the way refuses this devotion, this piling, this geometry; refuses not from any effort, desire, force, intelligence, intent, power, or perspicacity, but because this is the way she is.

So all unities are not false, but limited, except the way.  But the way achieves the true unity only by refusing to advocate, refusing to join any realm of names, by not aligning itself with anything but everything.  So all is fulfilled and all is cancelled; it is because this cannot be put into words that the sage uses words sparingly and is shadowy, incapable of being given any particular attribution.

Tao Te Ching XXXII

The way is forever nameless.

Though the uncarved block is small,

no one in the world dare claim its allegiance.

Should lords and princes be able to hold fast to it,

the myriad creatures will submit of their own accord,

heaven and earth will unite and sweet dew will fall

and the people will be equitable, though no one so decrees.

Only when it is cut are there names.

As soon as there are names,

one ought to know that it is time to stop.

Knowing when to stop, one can be free from danger.

The way is to the world as the river and the sea are to rivulets and streams.

History can be seen as the relentless attempt by humanity to name what cannot be named, to stick large indelible heavy things on what is elusive and fleet.  It’s true—things seem to stick for a time:  ideas, names, artifacts, feelings, desires, lords and princes.  But, in history, heaven and earth will not unite, sweet dew will not fall, and the people will not be equitable without decrees.

The Tao points to a past golden age, outside of history; it does not point to a future utopia.  Whether this past age existed or not is not the point—a debate about what exists outside of history is a debate of academics and fools.  To be outside of history is not necessarily to not have existed; yet, according to our rules of existence—the rules that arise from the cancerous growth of names—it is to not have existed.

Can humanity know when to stop?  Is there evidence of this capability?  Is our increasing love of names inexorable?  Even though humanity may lack such aptitude, are individuals capable of such restraint?  If they are—even if there are one or two—is it sufficient to balance the speed and acceleration of the rest?  Is the effort required for restraint such that it results in strange and almost unnamable energies, a curious and unexpected counterbalance to the more obvious lack of cutting, naming, and desiring?  If we were inclined to names, we might want to say things like, The Way knows, in the way that some say, the Lord knows or your gut knows or that guru knows.  But we do not seem to be so inclined.

To be free from danger is not to be free from danger in the realm of names and knives; it is because the sage has removed herself from the realm of names and knives that she is free from danger.  What happens in that realm is real to her and can strip her of goods, reputation, lovers, and life; but it cannot strip her of dignity, nobility, detachment, and the dark perspicacity of the way.  Thus, she is free from danger.

The way empties into the world.  It can neither be polluted nor exhausted.  Whether this is comforting to polluting, exhausting humanity depends on how one is oriented to it.

Tao Te Ching XXXI

The gentleman gives precedence to the left when at home but to the right when he goes to war.  Arms are instruments of ill omen not the instruments of the gentleman.  When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish.  There is no glory in victory and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of people.  One who exults in the killing of people will never have his way in the empire.  It is because arms are instruments of ill omen and there are things that detest them that one who has the way does not abide by their use.  On occasions of rejoicing, precedence is given to the left; on occasions of mourning, precedence is given to the right.  A lieutenant’s place is on the left; the general’s place is on the right.  This means that it is mourning rites that are observed.  When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow.  When victorious in war, one should observe the rites of mourning.

Some religions tend toward sadism—primitive expressions of war which exult in the real or metaphorical killing of men.  Others seem to be masochistic responses to this impulse, rejecting aggression toward others in favor of aggression toward oneself:  the elimination of desire, the turning of desire against oneself.

The follower of the Tao does neither.  She avoids aggression but acknowledges that it is sometimes necessary.  The necessary, however, is neither joyous nor desirable; rather, it is coupled with the dark spaces in the human soul and only brought to light under severe duress.  The sage is acquainted with these spaces and neither fears them nor acts from them; but she does occasionally weep because of what they entail.

So it is that the sage is no bodhisattva, no saint, sadguru, sadhu, tzadikim.  She is sullied; no sane person would describe her as virtuous; she knows the body and neither seeks nor avoids it; she is shadowy, elusive, dark.  This is why she does not need to act darkly, for she stays close to the heart of darkness and only manifests it when there is no other choice.

Typically, the good ally themselves with preserving and extending life; the bad ally themselves with ending and diminishing it.  The sage, however, sees this separation as unnatural; she neither is inclined to preserve nor terminate.  This is why she is murky, why she slips through the thick vast definitional nets and swims in ancient waters.

Tao Te Ching XXX

One who assists the ruler of men by means of the way does not intimidate the empire by a show of arms. This is something which is liable to rebound.

Where troops have encamped

there will brambles grow.

In the wake of a mighty army

bad harvests follow without fail.

One who is good aims only at bringing his campaign to a conclusion and dare not thereby intimidate.  Bring it to a conclusion but do not boast.  Bring it to a conclusion but do not brag.  Bring it to a conclusion but do not be arrogant.  Bring it to a conclusion but only when there is no choice.  Bring it to a conclusion but do not intimidate.

A creature in its prime doing harm to the old

is known as going against the way.

That which goes against the way will come to an early end.

There exists between the myriad creatures and the way a diffused grey band which comprises the limits of humanity:  the point or space in which the elastic between the body and the mind will likely snap.  To stay within this limit is traditionally called virtue, mediocrity, or weakness.  To attempt to go beyond it is traditionally called hubris, greatness, or foolishness.

The sage—the one aligned with the way, the one who is good—does not attempt to go beyond the grey space, but not through virtue, mediocrity, or weakness.  She can go beyond and in a sense has.  But her going beyond is a going beyond within, a going beyond through the eye in the mirror; whereas a Herculean going-beyond necessitated actions in the world which overwhelmed the world and in the overwhelment apotheosized and destroyed the hero.  The sage—in contrast to the virtuous, the mediocre, the weak—has seen and so experienced the grey and the white-black way that is walked beyond; she has seen but does not go.  She does not go, not from fear or indolence, but because she sees that not-going weighs equally to going on the scales of heaven and earth.  Because this weighing is the same to her, she is a sage.  She does not walk the way, but allows the way to walk her.  The one who walks is the hero; the one who is walked is the sage.

Hubris, excess, arrogance, transgression … what, then, is their use?  Are they to be scorned, as the virtuous, mediocre, or weak might scorn them?  Are they to be dubiously praised, as the hero, artist, or common fool might praise them?  The sage does neither.  The sage sees the way—its mute and equal acceptance of conformance and transgression; she sees heaven and earth and the myriad creatures and the diversity among them:  those who stay still, on land; those who must venture forth, on the dark whale-ridden waters of the open sea.  She is neither.  She is of air, and belongs to nothing and everything, no one and everyone.

The traditional western hero goes on an Odyssean journey, dies, and is merged with the gods.  But in the breakdown of tradition, the gods, and individual heroism, only the future, humanity, and mass democracy remain.  So individual humans can be anti-heroes, but only humanity can be the hero—extending itself to and past the limits of itself, thereby giving itself over to the earth, and becoming divine … not a divinity of the heavens but, quite literally, a divinity of land.  Anonymous, mute, amoral, cycloid, transmuted, diffused, nameless; now not schizophrenically in relation to the way, but harmonious with it.

So as God became silent, humanity, if it is capable of spiritual evolution, might become silent.  Not a silence of absolute muteness, but the silence of trees … of trees that have been conscious and may very well—who knows?—retain that consciousness.  A shimmering emptiness of light.

Tao Te Ching XXIX

Whoever takes the empire and wishes to do anything to it I see will have no respite.

The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it.

Whoever does anything to it will ruin it,

whoever lays hold of it will lose it.

Hence some things lead and some follow;

some breathe gently and some breathe hard;

some are strong and some are weak;

Some destroy and some are destroyed.

Therefore the sage avoids excess, extravagance, and arrogance.

The external empire—the one politicized, institutionalized, departmentalized, democratized, commercialized, and industrialized—no longer exists as something that should not be tampered with.  Instead, it has become that which must be tampered with—that which has as its very function, being tampered with.  The externalized empire has evolved to a point at which it cannot survive without incessant, rabid, and comprehensive tampering; in short, it has become the property of the vessels, whose very nature is tampering with what-must-be-tampered-with.  The vessel and the external empire exist in symbiotic relationship and cannot tear themselves away from each other without fundamental destruction of both.

What then has replaced the external empire as that about which nothing should be done?  Something has surely replaced it, for the vast scales that balance the vagaries of the universe demand an equal weight of passivity to counter activity, an equal weight of destruction to creation, strength to weakness, gentleness to hardness, leading to following.

Life is now being lived on the other side of the mirror:  we live in technology not nature, art not God.  So the empire has crawled from the visible elements of land and monarchy to the invisible elements of soul and psyche.  No one other than the bureaucraticized mad believes in the sacredness of the external empire; its profanity is well established.

Now, whoever attempts to tamper with the empire of the soul will have no respite.  Whoever does anything to it—whether by technical, medical, or spiritual means—will ruin it.  Whoever attempts to grasp it will lose it.  The soul’s boundaryless kingdom is elusive, ungraspable, contradictory, changing in detail and relation but not in its entirety of energy and composition, sacred.  Whatever singular entity thinks it possesses the intelligence, perspicacity, knowledge, and power to tamper with something so vast and unknowable has no intelligence, perspicacity, knowledge, or power.  The sign of intelligence, perspicacity, knowledge, and power is yielding to the empire and accepting its greatness.  This is the closest a human can get to the center of the universe and, with the external world mapped and profaned, the journey is now within.

The empire—whether external or internal—is no reducible beast.  Despite the constant global attempts to reduce the empire to these words, these signs, these ideas, these passions, these tendencies—and the masses’ predilection to believe these reductions to maintain and increase their comforts—the empire is never anything but the sum of all words, signs, ideas, passions, and tendencies about, toward, and for it.  So some preach peace and some war, some preach proactivity and some quietude, some wildness and some restraint, some usurpation and some generosity.  But the sage preaches nothing, leaving preaching to the empire.  The empire speaks, but with a trillion tongues and a trillion eyes and many of these are silent and many of these are closed.

Tao Te Ching XXVIII

Know the male but keep to the role of the female and be a ravine to the empire.

If you are a ravine to the empire then the constant virtue will not desert you

and you’ll again return to being a babe.

Know honor but keep to the role of the disgraced and be a model to the empire.

If you are a model to the empire then the constant virtue will not be wanting

and you’ll return to the infinite.

Know the white but keep to the role of the sullied and be a valley to the empire.

If you are a valley to the empire then the constant virtue will be sufficient

and you’ll return to being the uncarved block.

When the uncarved block shatters it becomes vessels.

The sage makes use of these and becomes the lord over the officials.

Hence the greatest cutting does not sever.

The great quest for unity—as articulated here in the triad of infant, infinite, and monolith—refuses to fit into the compartmentalized unities of the teeming religions, spiritualities, ideologies, philosophies, systems, and desires.  Here, forced male unity becomes masked, contradictory female unity; honor, convention, and respectability pay their respects to disgrace, subversion, and disreputability; white becomes sullied.  Unity exists in the Tao, but beyond words, time, thought, and laws; it may exist in the body, it may in water or the wordless soul; it may exist in calm doubt, spontaneous action that loves other creatures as much as oneself; it may exist on the elusive scales that balance the heavy weight of desire and the weightless freedom of none.  It may exist in these things or it may not.  It may exist if the mass of human civilization and power could speak and said upon seeing you in your totality of actions—this one is larger than us, this one that does not speak and lacks a name; this one that is confused about its own name—this one provides empty spaces upon which we build ourselves.

Nature—as the empire, as the soul, as the sage—is a complex and irreducible unity.  Humans—being nature but other than nature; being given to nature but antagonistic toward it—are the one entity that specializes in reducing the unity of nature to component parts that it abstracts from nature, externalizes and internalizes, and identifies with.  This process of reduction, abstraction, externalization and internalization, and identification is the process of vesselification.  The vessel thinks it makes use of nature—that in specialization it becomes lord, though all it becomes lord of is its little bundle of tangible abstractions, those who reify those abstractions—but … no … it is made use of.  By nature and the things that are close to nature—infants and timelessness and old old stone.

Tao Te Ching XXVII

One who excels in traveling leaves no wheel-tracks.

One who excels in speech makes no slips.

One who excels in reckoning uses no counting rods.

One who excels in shutting uses no bolts, yet what he has shut cannot be opened.

One who excels in tying uses no cords, yet what he has tied cannot be undone.

Therefore the sage always excels in saving people and so abandons no one;

always excels in savings things and so abandons nothing.

This is called following one’s discernment.

Hence the good person is the teacher the bad learns from

and the bad person is the material the good works on.

Not to value the teacher nor to love the material,

though it seems clever, betrays great bewilderment.

This is called the essential and the secret.

Travelling, speaking, reckoning, shutting, tying—while these are no longer skills at which we can excel (for there is always exhaust; stumbles are captured, replayed; reckoning requires a laboratory; shutting and tying are the very jobs of machines), these excelings have been replaced: so, now, one who excels in acting leaves no doubt.

But the sage’s role has not changed and does not change—people and things always need to be saved.  Saved from what?  Themselves?  Life?  Death?  To themselves, life, and death?  This “to and from themselves, life, and death” is the Tao.  This is no proselytizing salvation, no active message, no evangelizing.  There are no saved and damned in the Tao, unless we are all saved and damned—neither eternally nor ontologically, but in moments and only moments.  You lie in the ditch, you have no money, you are bereft of pots to bang on, you require a night of sweaty love; who saves you from the ditch, poverty, pots, and isolation?  The Tao, through heaven, through earth, through the myriad creatures.  Yet, even so, the myriad creatures, the earth, heaven, and the Tao also push you into the ditch, strip you of your acquisitions and your pots, shove you into the abyss of yourself.

So the sage doesn’t distinguish between the pulling and giving and the pushing and shoving—she values and loves both; she doubts the distance between the teacher and the material; she doubts whether she is the sage and this may be a reason she is the sage.

These days, as many days, there is talk of the secret.  Esoteric knowledge, codes in numbers, alien messages in letters; the image, the formula, the leader, the program, the lover, the drug to bind it all, lurking in and behind life’s thorny facts.  The Tao says “yes”—there is a secret … but it is a secret not because it is hidden but because people hide it though it manifests itself daily through all acts and in everything.  In the horrible glorious democracy of life, the reality but transience of salvation, beneficence, and goodness; the equal reality and transience of damnation, falling, and evil; the blurring of our pretty distinctions; the illusion of cleverness; the institutionalization of bewilderment; the fact that the secret is no secret but our lives.

Tao Te Ching XXVI

The heavy is the root of the light,

the still is the lord of the restless.

Therefore the gentleman when travelling all day

never lets the heavily laden carts out of his sight;

it is only when he is safely behind walls and watchtowers

that he rests peacefully and is above worries.

How, then, should a ruler of ten thousand chariots

make light of his own person in the eyes of the empire?

If light, then the root is lost,

if restless, then the lord is lost.

But what of the one who tosses like an unmanned dinghy on the soul’s dark seductive ocean?  Who abdicates his roots or has them torn from him and, by choice or force, explores the rootless air?  The untethered poet? The raving prophet? The nomadic bum? The capricious trickster? The feral adventurer?  Are these any less part of the Tao?

No.  They are simply, from the Tao’s perspective, lost.  Lost from rootedness and stillness.  Are the lost less necessary? Are they any less grand? insignificant? confused? hapless?  No—they are simply not sages.  The sage, she places her roots in the heavy silent center; she casts the chaos of her desires and thoughts—their violences, contradictions, and unpredictabilities—into orbit around the mysterious still center.  The center of what?  The center that you don’t find in the body’s death, in desire’s insatiability, in the intellect’s tsunami.

In an age when almost all is inverted, the sage still plants the flower in the ground and while she hardly ignores the insects and rain, the seasons and trampling, her attention is drawn to that which is below the ground, and that which does not move, that which does not have a name and never will.

Tao Te Ching XXV

There is a thing confusedly formed, born before heaven and earth.

Silent and void, it stands alone and does not change, goes round and does not weary.

I don’t know its name, so I style it the way.

I give it the makeshift name of the great.

Being great, it is further described as receding;

receding, it is described as far away;

being far away, it is described as turning back.

Hence the way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and the king is also great; within the realm, there are four things that are great and the king counts as one.  People model themselves on earth, earth on heaven, heaven on the way, and the way on that which is naturally so.

As the West’s mythologies have been found wanting and the East’s have crawled from their previously denigrated caves into desperate arms, is it surprising that we have found what is resting in the Tao long ago:  chaos is not something to be denied but is integral to the way.  Chaos is not something be conquered, to be overcome, to be struck down with light and order.  Nor is it something to give oneself over to utterly and always.  The Tao is formed, but it is confusedly formed.  So are we all, so are all acts, so all thoughts, powers, and words.

The traveler who sojourns through the world, tasting its bitter pleasures, its salty energies, gains a cloak of weariness from the inability to escape existence’s monotonous themes, its repetitive acts, conversations, and senses.  The Tao does the same—and is worn, like the traveler—yet, unlike the traveler, remains a babe:  receptive, vulnerable, open, questioning, doubtful, capricious, inappropriate, wondrous.

The Tao is far-near and so embraces mystical notions of God.

The king is great but dubiously great as he is almost apologized for in the counting … a curious emphasis in a book not given to such emphasis.  Even further, the king is part of the earth—not heaven or the way—even as we all are part of the earth; the distance between the king and heaven is far greater than the distance between you and the king.  Any competent king knows this and acts accordingly.  These days, though, with kings diminishing, read king as one with significant political authority, with vast hierarchies churning beneath him.  The king is great only because the people need a king, whereas the earth, heaven, and the way are great irrespective of the people.  The sage, however, does not need the king; she does not even need the way … the way just is and what we all live within.

We confront the offensive and disturbing assumption that that which is naturally so exists.  Hasn’t it been disproven that human nature exists? Hasn’t it been proven that nature imitates art, revealing nature as artifice?  Hasn’t the very volume of the vast vats of inks spilled extolling our freedom sufficiently convinced us that nature’s circumference is limitless, its essence dubious?

Yet.

Replace the oceans with desire, pile words to Andromeda, pave the earth with microchips, project art on the clouds … does this do anything but increase the distance we have to travel to acknowledge the foundational reality of nature, the limitations of physical and spiritual substances.  And we are travelers, aren’t we?  Thus we increase the distance between nature and ourselves just to give ourselves new paths to walk.  The sage is she who walks the present path to the end, sees the path turning back to nature, and returns.