Tao Te Ching XLI

When the best student hears about the way

she practices it assiduously.

When the average student hears about the way

it seems to him one moment there and gone the next.

When the worst student hears about the way

he laughs out loud.

If he did not laugh

it would be unworthy of being the way.

Hence the Chien Yen has it:

the way that is bright seems dull,

the way that leads forward seems to lead backward,

the way that is even seems rough,

the highest virtue is like the valley,

the sheerest whiteness seems sullied,

ample virtue seems defective,

vigorous virtue seems indolent,

plain virtue seems soiled.

The great square has no corners.

The great vessel takes long to complete.

The great note is rarefied in sound.

The great image has no shape.

The way conceals itself in being nameless.

It is the way alone that excels in bestowing and in accomplishing.

Is the way a mask or that which wears the mask?

Even as life hides in death, death in life; evil in good, good in evil; male in female, female in male; so the way hides in the named; it wears the named and is the mask it wears.  It hides in and behind, confusing grammar and geometry.

How can one say that the way alone accomplishes when all the accomplishments we know are attributed to names?  And does this way’s comprehensive accomplishing not sound suspiciously like the Christian god’s—claiming all for itself and nothing for the myriad creatures?  Yes, but the way can sound suspiciously like anything.  The way does not claim, though some who speak about the way makes certain claims about the way.

If the best student practices the way assiduously, how can it be the way—for isn’t the way natural and simply what something or someone does or is, not what one strives to become?  But it is the way because it readily refuses such questions.

So the way can be accused of being slippery, a charlatan, deceptive, absurd, impossible, ignorant, naïve, ridiculous, Machiavellian, cunning, circuitous, bottomless, elusive, risible, lacking morality, dirty.  And so it is.  But it is not just this.

The people laugh because the way seems outlandishly outlandish, as if they’re hearing that the world is run by marshmallows.  So all the deep systems are strange to the world’s political and common ears.  And the Tao is the non-system which runs beneath them all—stranger, darker, quieter, deeply ungraspable.

Tao Te Ching XL

Turning back is how the way moves; weakness is the means the way employs.

The myriad creatures in the world are born from something and something from nothing.

How can it be said that the Tao is all when the Tao moves in certain ways and employs certain means?  Doesn’t this limit the Tao and isn’t the Tao limitless?

When does one turn back, why, and to what extent?  One turns back when one sees one’s roots in one’s destiny; one turns back because one sees they are the same and going forward requires effort and causes destruction while turning back requires less effort and causes less destruction; one turns back to one’s roots and becomes them—past the acquisitiveness of maturity, past the exuberance and despair of adolescence, past the belching and climbing of childhood, past being a babe, into the dark vermiculous soil that pushes, and aerates, and is stepped on.

Turning back is not necessarily turning back to things once familiar; it can be turning back to things long forgotten; it is turning back to the dark inarticulate mysteries of the valley.  Not dark in that they’re fearful, not inarticulate in that they seek expression, not mysterious in that they inspire reverence; but dark in that they never reach the light, inarticulate in that they cannot be changed to words, mysterious in that they exist between the reaches of the human and the reaches of desire.  This is how the Tao is limited and only how.

So weakness is not to be without claws.  It is not the negation of ambition, money, power, reputation, or security—though it seems to people that it negates because it stands apart from these.  It affirms these in the way it affirms all by acknowledging them.  But it does not identify with them and that is the weakness it chooses.  Like a bicyclist winding through urban traffic, so the sage winds through life.  A bicycle is not considered strong next to a car, is it?  So the sage is not considered strong next to a president, guru, or entertainer.

There is a continuous movement from darkness to elusiveness to the named; from inspiration to creation to commodity.  This movement exists as readily in love, justice, art, religion, business, and thought as it does in individuals and cultures.  Yet because something has become named does not mean that the darkness has left it, just that the darkness has hidden itself.  So the people are surprised when it reaches a long invisible hand from the valley and stabs them.  But the sage is not surprised for she lives in the valley and the darkness is her sight and so in not-seeing sees.

Tao Te Ching XXXIX

Of old, these came to be in possession of the One:

Heaven in virtue of the One is limpid;

Earth in virtue of the One is settled;

Gods in virtue of the One have their potencies;

The valley in virtue of the One is full;

The myriad creatures in virtue of the One are alive;

Lords and princes in virtue of the One become leaders in the empire.

It is the One that makes these what they are.

Without what makes it limpid heaven might split;

Without what makes it settled earth might sink;

Without what gives them their potencies gods might spend themselves;

Without what makes it full the valley might run dry;

Without what keeps them alive the myriad creatures might perish;

Without what makes them leaders lords and princes might fall.

Hence the superior must have the inferior as root; the high must have the low as base.  Thus lords and princes refer to themselves as solitary, desolate, and hapless.  This is taking the inferior as root, is it not?

Hence the highest renown is without renown.

Not wishing to be one among many like jade nor to be aloof like stone.

The sage is neither limpid nor settled nor potent nor full nor alive nor a leader.  She in virtue of the One is one; without what makes her one she might be heaven or earth or a god or a valley or a myriad creature or a lord.

If you wish, you may think of the superior as superior but it is not; if you wish, you may think of the inferior as inferior but it is not.  If the superior must have the inferior, how can it be superior?  Picture the One as a circle, the superior as sections in the upper half, the inferior as sections in the lower.  A lord is not a lord because he is better; he is a lord simply because he is a lord.  Only those splintered divorce parts of the circle from the other parts that make it a circle.

By making and giving and keeping, it is not meant that the One doles out limpidity, settlement, potency, fullness, aliveness, and leadership as a manager or the government might dole out funds, benefits, awards, or praise.  Each exists as it is because of its context not because of itself.  This is so though it may claim—as it often does—that it exists as it is largely or solely because of itself.

So the One came to be perceived as separate and history is the accumulation of separations and the increasingly audible derision of context.  For as there is more to see so it becomes more difficult to see the One.

Tao Te Ching XXXVIII

A person of the highest virtue does not keep to virtue and that is why she has virtue.

A person of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue and that is why he is without virtue.

The former never acts yet leaves nothing undone.  The latter acts but there are things left undone.

A person of the highest benevolence acts but from no ulterior motive.

A person of the highest rectitude acts but from ulterior motive.

A person most conversant in the rites acts but when no one responds rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force.

Hence when the way was lost there was virtue; when virtue was lost there was benevolence; when benevolence was lost there was rectitude; when rectitude was lost there were the rites.

The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty and good faith

and the beginning of disorder;

foreknowledge is the flowery embellishment of the way

and the beginning of folly.

Hence the person of large mind abides in the thick not in the thin, in the fruit not in the flower.

Therefore she discards the one and takes the other.

Even as everything dies, everything, gradually, eases away from the space that doesn’t require names to a space that demands names and uses force—of whatever means:  physical, emotional, mental—to attempt full conformity to the demanded names.

Look around you.  In the halls of politics, education, business, religion, art, media, family, philanthropy, friendship, eros.  See the tyranny of names and rituals.  Watch how seeming kindness and cooperation turn to brutality and vengeance when the required names and rituals are bypassed or transgressed.

The one who stays in the loose airy space of no-naming does not avoid names and rituals; she does not move or think like the animals.  But for her they are not required and the solid spaces of demand that others live within and fight over are to her light and diffused.  This is why she walks alone and wears a cloak that others cannot see.  Words fall lightly on her like rain; they form puddles and return to the earth.

Between the loose light space and the myriad solid spaces is a spectrum of spaces.  The supposed sage preaches some of these with conviction and many paragraphs; the nameless sage laughs, the spectrum turns to dark light, a rainbow of dubious visibility and beauty.

To plan is nothing special.  The sage aligns herself with life—which acts but doesn’t plan, which thickly grows and regards death no differently than a radish.

Thoughts on Memorization on the Ides of May

At the end of posting Book I (Vignette XXXVII) of DC Lau’s translation of the Tao Te Ching and my meditations on it, I would like to comment briefly on my experience of memorization—before writing each meditation I memorize each vignette and am working toward having the full text memorized, hopefully finishing sometime this year.  Historically, it’s not a big feat—there are only 81 fairly short passages and many mnemonic devices throughout.  Nevertheless, while in some sense we are very much a memorizing culture (I listen to my sons quote entire Simpsons episodes to each other), we do not typically memorize texts much anymore.

I had read the Tao Te Ching well over a hundred times and over many years before I decided to memorize it.  Growing up as a Christian and formally studying the Bible for many years, the Tao attracted me as a living concept and as a text … it seemed to me to articulate the human experience in spiritual terms from an almost completely different orientation than the bulk of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Its core concepts—including its relationship to the earth; its attitude toward humanity’s place in the cosmos; its weighing of elitism, equality, and humility; its indistinction between politics and spirituality—seemed foreign, enticing, and somehow, despite various antiquated curiosities, true.

Yet having a text outside of you and having it inside of you are two different things.  If you eat Big Macs all the time, the cells in your body will—metaphorically at least—be made of Big Macs; you will, in a weird yet true sense, become a Big Mac.  So as the text of the Tao Te Ching migrates and stays inside me, I, in a weird yet true sense, become the Tao … or at least the principles intimated in the Tao become more natural to me and the principles I’ve associated with the West, with Christianity, and with myself—of assertiveness, volition, firm distinctions, rationality, causation, striving, knowing—begin to dissipate.

A text inside—especially one like the Tao, which is murky, meditative, slow, and calm—modifies not just one’s mind and heart but one’s body.  A text moves in the blood and feels like the blood.  It feels like the eyes … or the eyes behind the eyes.  It wraps other words in itself and slowly digests them.  Things inside become liquid, gaseous, and so nothing to be clung to, but simply part of the transient flow and vapor of existence.  This particular text becomes the nature that is lost in the city—the nature that affirms one in one’s insignificance and in this affirmation diffuses restlessness and weaves a murky thread throughout the self and the world.  It strips me down to darkness, a darkness that doesn’t seem like the fearful night of the child but a darkness that lies quietly at the center of light, a darkness that is light.

None of this is really possible when a text is outside.  Outside, it’s still something of an object, a commodity, an it.  Inside, it talks at odd times and fornicates with other inside things.  Inside, it begins to grow and gradually replace dying cells of words, cognition, attitudes, and behaviors.  Inside, it blurs distinctions and so becomes love.  Not necessarily a love of laughter and hope, but a love of drowsy acceptance and muddy days.

Tao Te Ching XXXVII

The way never acts yet nothing is left undone.

Should lords and princes be able to hold fast to it

the myriad creatures will be transformed of their own accord.

After they are transformed, should desire raise its head,

I shall press it down with the weight of the nameless uncarved block.

The nameless uncarved block

is but freedom from desire.

And if I cease to desire and remain still

the empire will be at peace of its own accord.

Naturally, the empire’s nature is to not be at peace by any accord, even as my nature is to desire and move.  The Tao sleeps under the growing weight of artifacts and ideas and the heat of piling desire.  We extend our lives to give us time to crawl through the weight, heat, and heaps to cessation, namelessness, and stillness; but often it is only death that gives us time by taking it away.  No, it is always death; the only difference is the kind of death.

We are transformed to our roots and destiny through desire or no-desire, yet we are transformed.  This is the way that will always have its way and will have it without effort or possession.  But the myriad creatures resist and battle it with cunning futile massive arsenals of words.  Some are beautiful, some are not; some are good, some are not:  the way doesn’t particularly care.  It is because it does not care about goodness that it is good, because it does not care about beauty that it is beautiful, and because it does not care about ends that it does not end.

Tao Te Ching XXXVI

If you would have a thing shrink

you must first stretch it;

if you would have a thing weakened

you must first strengthen it;

if you would have a thing laid aside

you must first set it up;

if you would take from a thing

you must first give to it.

This is called subtle discernment.

The submissive and weak will overcome the hard and strong.

The fish must not be allowed to leave the deep.

The instruments of power in a state must not be revealed to anyone.

The Tao, to the exploitative, seems to exploit.  The people are straw dogs.  In order to suck the life from something, you must fatten it first.  Yet to the one who follows the way, the Tao ducks past morality’s comfortable words; she sidesteps slaves and masters with equal disregard, quite happily allowing them to feud on their various predictable battlefields.  Long before Nietzsche’s supposed revelations, she erects an alternative morality—neither a morality nor an erection but a dance that shadow-steps flesh’s peculiar moves.

One cannot exploit if one has neither desire to gain nor nothing to gain.  So the submissive and weak overcoming the hard and strong is no Christian morality—no advocacy of flagellation and blood; it is the recognition that worms will outlive humanity and that moist grass is trampled on yet thrives but dry grass is trampled on and snaps.

The sage is nimble, not committed to anything.  Nevertheless, she leaps on things for a ride, for this is what humans do and she is human.  She bends and laughs but does not snap; others walk on her and think they gain from her.  Yet she loses nothing for she has nothing but reflections to be lost.  And what is a reflection but something that can be given freely and yet never lost.  So all laugh—some because they think they gain, others because they do not think about gain.

Petty secrets are lost when they’re shared; great secrets can be shared yet remain secrets.  Everyone knows how to save the world yet no one does it.  The secret is not in the mind or the will, but in the belly.  If you become the stomach and don’t fear it, you become the secret that is freely shared yet always mysterious.

Tao Te Ching XXXV

Have in your hold the great image

and the empire will come to you.

Coming to you and meeting with no harm

it will be safe and sound.

Music and food

will induce the wayfarer to stop.

The way in its passage through the mouth is without flavor;

it cannot be seen,

it cannot be heard,

yet it cannot be exhausted by use.

The small image is the image that, brilliant and precise though its reflection might be, only reflects certain images and ideas.  The great image is the image that does not refuse to reflect but blankly, openly, without protest, takes in whatever is before it but has no desire to possess what is reflected.  The great image denies nothing, affirms nothing, is blind to nothing, desires nothing because it desires everything.

If one holds the great image and nothing else, one holds only reflections, but all reflections.  Hence, the empire meets with no harm because it has already been reflected in its entirety—its contradictions, horrors, and potencies.  To one who holds this way, it is neither a threat nor a joy; it is just another concatenation of images.

It’s not the flavorless way that induces wayfarers to stop, but the myriad manifestations of the way—not the no-desire but the desire.  Flavor and dancing emerge from flavorlessness, invisibility, silence, and stillness; hospitality and seduction are reflective moons around the great voided sun.  Void reflects voids which reflect void … safety and soundness rest on an empty infinite foundation.  The soul, like the universe, is a replete emptiness.

Tao Te Ching XXXIV

The way is broad, reaching left as well as right.

The myriad creatures depend on it for life, yet it claims no authority.

It accomplishes its task, yet lays claim to no merit.

It clothes and feeds the myriad creatures, yet lays no claim to being their master.

Forever free of desire, it can be called small.  Yet as it lays no claim to being master when the myriad creatures turn to it, it can be called great.

It is because it never attempts itself to be great that it succeeds in becoming great.

The way gently comforts, as a parent might his child; the way sorrowfully slaughters, as a noble warrior might the enemy.  Despite the way’s ability to move into any thoroughfare or corner of the soul—without judgment, attachment, or unfamiliarity—it does not establish itself above anything.  How can it establish itself above anything when there is no above?  Or, when every above is also below and beside?  How can it claim when all around it claims and claimants obviate the need for claiming?  The Tao is great because it allows the myriad creatures to proclaim what it does not need to proclaim.  The Tao is a rolling sphere, in which everything jostles and has its time at the bottom and top.

If the Tao could be said to be intentional about creating the myriad creatures, it might be said that it created them so that they could proclaim what it does not.  But this cannot be said.

Small, it can fit into the crevices of freedom; great, it can fit onto the canopies of meaning and desire without attempting to become them.

Volition is the mind telling the body that it’s in control.  It’s history telling humanity that it matters more that it does.  Volition creates beauty, peace, and devastation; this is its ambiguity.  But what it does not do is create what it says it’s going to create; this is its eternal deception.

The Tao moves where it wills according to whatever flow seems right, without regard for itself.  It never cares about promoting itself or constructing systems that explain anything.  How rare this is.  How unqualifiedly beautiful and minimally devastating.  How great.