Tao Te Ching XLVIII

In the pursuit of learning one knows more every day; in the pursuit of the way one does less every day.  One does less and less until one does nothing at all and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone.  It is always through not meddling that the empire is won; should you meddle, then you are not equal to the task of winning the empire.

When the people think of doing nothing, they think of it in opposition to doing something—lounging on the beach in Cuba as opposed to meeting with marketing managers in Tucson;  collapsing in front of the TV after work, dinner, and kids; stepping outside the productive workforce through internal or external misfortune or external fortune.  But nothing is not something that happens in response to or escape from something but rather something is a function of nothing.  To give one’s body, heart, mind, and soul over to the world—which is to say, the Tao—is to do nothing other than as a function of the world.  This giving over is the pursuit that does not feel like a pursuit but a return, a falling, or the most natural and easy thing in the world.  To do nothing other than as a function of the world is truly what everyone does, but the people do not think this is what they do and this not-thinking is what distinguishes the people from the sage.

The sage is not some dimwit, some unconscientious objector to reason’s rigors—one who pits the body’s brutish indolence against mind’s ceaseless strivings and finds the latter wanting.  She is more a Socratic flâneur, not doing anything in particular other than not knowing more than the body permits one to know.

The soul is lost through the tyrannies of volition, analysis, knowledge, and cognition.  In the Middle Ages, God was lost through priestly intervention, sacerdotal rites, cheap fire and vision; in modernity, the soul is lost through therapeutic intervention, domestication of that which is feral and divine in humanity, expensive commonplaces and concrete ideas.  Meddlers, by virtue of meddling, assert themselves over the soul and in so doing lose it.  This does not mean that one must be a quietist—when the wind is active, the sage is active; when calm, calm.  The people think the sage acts as they do—asserting herself to obtain more, retiring when exhausted—but the sage acts for no reason other than she acts.

The soul has one organ—the eye:  the eye untainted by mind’s rabid systematizing and the body’s voracious hungers.  It is the eye the sage crawls within and why her own death is no different to her than a leaf falling or the sun performing its routine descent into that which seems to be night.

Tao Te Ching XLVII

Without stirring broad

one can know the whole world;

without looking out of the window

one can see the way of heaven;

the further one goes

the less one knows.

Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,

identifies without having to see,

accomplishes without having to act.

There are those who are middle-aged and older who joke, The older I get the less I know.  While the commonplace can produce smirks and nods, the speaker rarely believes it and the rare one who demonstrates it—that is, believes it in her body—would not likely say it.  The common trajectory is for the mind and soul to narrow—to become more brittle, less nimble—as they age in the body’s aging.  The individual’s words and opinions tend to peak at a certain point, plateau, and gradually decline.  We retreat against the onslaught of life’s cumulative randomness and pain, carving a niche of security for ourselves—an apparent solid certainty against existence’s terrifying indifferent gaseous swirl.

When one is young, one’s experience is the world; if one typically ages, this doesn’t substantially change, although one can accumulate new expressions, many of them simply required by one’s phase of life and the culture and society one moves in—such as The older I get the less I know.  But the world gives us the opportunity to make the world one’s experience.  If this reversal occurs—through the active polishing of one’s mirror—one’s particular experience does not disappear but is subject to the world in its entirety:  including all the experiences one has not had and never will have.  As even the most worldly person’s experience is only an infinitesimal part of the world’s experience, one gradually realizes that ego-knowledge is nothing compared to soul-knowledge:  that is, a trans-cognitive, trans-emotional experience and intuition of the vast reaches of life.  This does not mean that the sage knows nothing but that she knows differently.  And this different knowledge—which is nothing esoteric but passionately embodied and deeply earthy—feels like so little knowledge from the perspective of ego and mind that one can say very little from those spaces.

So with travel—modernity’s prosthetic eye and cheap cosmopolitan badge.  But as with aging, while there is opportunity, there is no necessary correlation between the amount one moves and sees, the amount one climbs and accumulates, and any knowledge.

Thus we have the human moving in time and space—from birth to death and across the globe—and we have various trajectories.  At one extreme the person who lives a long life and has travelled extensively who is small and trite; at the other, the sage who lives long enough and barely moves from her hometown but is as large and silent as the world.  Naturally, degrees exist in between and while the spectrum may be a bell curve, the pressures of ego and soul are such that few if any can give adequate attention to both.

Is the Tao advocating the one who subjects her ego to the world—not primarily through abnegation but in caprice and wonder—or to some severely rare or imaginary figure who develops both in tandem?  Is this knowledge that can be gained?

Tao Te Ching XLVI

When the way prevails in the empire, fleet-footed horses are relegated to ploughing the fields; when the way does not prevail in the empire, war-horses breed on the border.

There is no crime greater than having too many desires.

There is no disaster greater than not being content.

There is no misfortune greater than being covetous.

Hence in being content, one will always have enough.

Who is greater—the one who stretches his ambition to human limits or the one who lies content on the spherical meadow of time?  Who is greater—Caesar or Lao Tse?  We cannot say Caesar or Christ, for they are simply differently ambitious, reflecting the West’s schizophrenia regarding politics and spirit.  Caesar tries to encircle the earth, Christ tries to reach God, Lao Tse tries to do nothing.  Or rather, places himself in whatever current sweeps him along and so feels as if he is trying to do nothing.

Caesar reflects the common political ambition—Nietzsche’s lion.  Christ reflects the common spiritual ambition—the camel.  Lao Tse reflects the child.  They are popular in that order:  the majority want more money, comfort, security, pleasure and power and are envious of the few, like Caesar, who are hanged on history’s vast meat hooks; a significant minority—whether through common disgruntlement or much rarer inclination—seek self-abnegation.  The rarest of these is the mystic—Simone Weil is a classic modern case—who so successfully achieves it (physically, anyway) that she starves herself to death in her 30s.  But rarer than all these is the non-seeker, the contented one, who doesn’t particularly object to the rich and powerful any more than she objects to the anchorite, who ebbs and flows, enlarges and shrinks, not through any particular volition but through the natural ebbs and flows, enlargements and shrinkings, which are life’s.

By placing herself in life as opposed to her individual will, feelings, and thoughts, the sage conforms to the only possibly real notions of god.  Notions that are grounded, earthly, and realistic, yet also include certain traditional Western notions of god.  This grounded god is not something separate from life or earth; not something specific, nameable, or definable; not something subtractable but the sum of all things existing, possible, and imaginary; not something in itself graspable but the sum of all things graspable and ungraspable; not something benevolent or malicious though sometimes benevolent or malicious and frequently neither; not something ever static unless its constant is flux; not something abstract and beyond us by virtue of being beyond the senses but abstract and beyond us by virtue of including all senses, all memories, all things that have been and might have been and might be; not something of specific attributes and words but all attributes and words; something that feels as if it is boundless because we cannot see its bounds but something that could quite easily be bounded if something existed to bind it; not something which discounts the individual and specific but affirms all individuals and specificities; not something of particular hierarchy, ambition, scope, telos, or linear trajectory, but all hierarchies, ambitions, scopes, teloi, and linear trajectories; not something clear, though sometimes clear, but murky.

So she does not dissolve on the water, but is carried by it, and dissolves in it upon death.

Tao Te Ching XLV

Great perfection seems chipped,

yet use will not wear it out.

Great fullness seems empty,

yet use will not drain it.

Great straightness seems bent,

great skill seems awkward,

great eloquence seems tongue-tied.

Restlessness overcomes cold, stillness overcomes heat.

Limpid and still,

one can be a leader in the empire.

The Tao does not have ideals, for ideals exist outside of life—in the mind’s imagining of what life never is—and all the Tao cares for is life.  In life, even sunsets get tedious after 15 minutes.  What the people are impressed by—what they call great skill or eloquence—is usually that which affirms their vanities.  True eloquence, perfection, skill—they stumble like water over the rough rocks of ideals.

So greatness never comes from a straightforward walk in the sunshine, but through circuitous routes in manifold terrains and conditions.  And if one is truly great, one doubts whether one has arrived anywhere.  One probably doesn’t care.

And should greatness be achieved, emptiness is the reward.  Greatness’ chief attribute is emptiness—whether the greatness is achieved through art, war, love, money, or sacrifice.  And when emptiness comes, what then?

Tao Te Ching XLIV

Your name or your person—

which is dearer?

Your person or your goods—

which is worth more?

Gain or loss—

which is a greater bane?

That is why excessive meanness

is sure to lead to great expense;

too much store

is sure to end in immense loss.

Know contentment

and you will suffer no disgrace;

know when to stop

and you will meet with no danger.

You can then endure.

Does the Tao ask questions and frequently not answer?  The Tao doesn’t care to choose, so questions for it are simply different ways to articulate statements of itself.

Is the Tao so naïve as to believe in earthly justice, particularly of such a guaranteed causal kind that states meanness and greed will lead to retribution?  Does it seem to think that it will provide the retribution?  The Tao doesn’t particularly care about individual things—whether lords or dogs, this particular river, that particular prince.  Does this mean the sage freely cuts individuals down?  Why would she do this?  Is not the one who cares about individual things—and cares about his own individuality above all—the one who freely cuts things down?  All things call out their destruction—stockpiling calls out depletion, exuberance calls out despair.  A hoarding grasping merchant may look at his stockpile grow throughout his life and on his deathbed say to himself, I have been mean but I have died a rich man.  But someone meaner comes along and the merchant’s grandson is set aside.  The Tao looks at the life of a stockpile, of meanness, of love and lust—without blinding itself to any related aspect in time or space—and then speaks the way it does.

The Tao lacks the twins, romance and tragedy.  The Tao points to life but no particular kind of life other than all—continuous repetitive contradictory themed stretching-but-limited life.   There might be comic life but romantic and tragic life is a debunking of life, a preference of death over life, and the Tao doesn’t prefer.  For the Tao, there is simply life, simply enduring life; there is no concept of life as something to be sweetened, embittered, soured, or salinated … no concept of human life, tree life, baby seal life, machine or aesthetic life as superior to any other …  no sweet and sunny life, though this is included … no cold and brutal life, though this is included … no fiscal or impoverished life, though these are acknowledged.  Only life.  Water endlessly pouring over awards and monuments, titles and company cars.

Tao Te Ching XLIII

The most submissive thing in the world can ride roughshod over the hardest in the world—that which is without substance entering that which has no crevices.  That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action.  The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action:  these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.

Esoteric knowledge.  Those with the distinctive and elite guardianship of truth’s murky core.  Artists or warmongers.  Spiritualists or madmen.  Scientists or martyrs.  Certain perspectives, arcane theses, obscure formulae and phrases.

Yet the collectivity of sages crawls only into the perspective of all perspectives, thereby reaching an emptiness that is not a nihilism but an empty fullness, in the manner of mystics and children.  Words collapse, not from any despair but from their own emptiness.  Action dissolves, not from any futility but from its own weightlessness.  Words are used, action happens; but it is not more important than the silence and stillness that precedes and follows.  They are equal in volume and effectiveness and while the sage knows both, she teaches from the side of the murky myriad one.  This is what makes her a sage.

Tao Te Ching XLII

The way begets one, one begets two, two begets three, three begets the myriad creatures.

The myriad creatures carry on their backs the yin and embrace in their arms the yang and are the blending of the generative forces of the two.

There are no words which people detest more than solitary, desolate, and hapless.  Yet lords and princes use these to refer to themselves.

Thus a thing is sometimes added to by being diminished and diminished by being added to.

What others teach I also teach:  the violent will not come to a natural end.  I shall take this as my precept.

A mathematics exists apart from that found in ledgers and calculators.  It begins with 0, moves to 1, then to 2, to 3, and finally to countlessness.

0 is the way and the object of fear for the Greeks and Christians—a secret the East let loose in the Middle Ages, causing ecstasy, chaos, discovery, and desperation in the West.  The West’s modern structures are largely built from a blending of the older firm structures of 1 and the recent chaotic responses to 0.  0 is the limits of knowledge; the ineluctable fact of death; the insignificance and dissolution of all things; our fundamental inability to grasp anything.  0 is the circle and yin and female.

1 is the monolithic Judeo-Christian God; the subjection of life and flesh to idea and metal and system; the structures of the furthest reaches of desire before it breaks and returns.  1 is the line and yang and male.

2 is mind’s perception and naming of humanity’s fundamental tensions:  good and evil, male and female, order and chaos, time and eternity.  2 is the endpoints of the line.

3 is the lords and princes and kings that bind the myriad creatures.  3 is the triangle—the borders of government and law that delineate the people in their swirling pool of flesh.

The myriad creatures bear the weight of humanity’s ever-increasing tensions and hungrily clasp their desire for what doesn’t tangibly exist.

There is a mathematics of a different order.  The operators of this mathematics—the additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions—do not function in the manner of spreadsheets:  sometimes you add and subtraction occurs, sometimes you subtract and the sum is greater.  Thus the sage knows all the numbers and so avoids violent means.

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.