Tao Te Ching LVIII

When the government is muddled the people are simple,

when the government is alert the people are cunning.

It is on disaster that good fortune perches,

it is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches.

Who knows the limit?  Does not the straightforward exist?  The straightforward changes again into the crafty, and the good changes again into the monstrous.  Indeed it is long since the people were perplexed.

Therefore the sage is square-edged but does not scrape,

has corners but does not jab,

extends himself but not at the expense of others,

shines but does not dazzle.

Clarity, truth, honesty, precision … aren’t these the values of the evolved and noble?  Murkiness, confusion, slipperiness … aren’t language and love—aren’t society, technology, and culture—designed to eliminate these undesirable traits?  But the Tao in its very roots and eyes uses language but trusts it no more than anything else, including itself; accepts the world’s cornucopia but does not give it more credence than death.

The sage is not particularly surprised when an enemy becomes a friend, when his highest love betrays him.  The soul is a hydra and humans, should they ever be able to achieve emptiness, might then realize that emptiness is what is said about it and no conclusions, proofs, or assurances live there, but only the very experience of emptiness itself.  The sage knows that love is often draped over a thousand fences and that which society celebrates is often born in that which society despises, that time is just a function of geometry, and science a symbolization of what we already know in our vision.  But the light of our vision is not enough and so we try to stuff the light into our minds and there it becomes imprisoned and dies.

And if it was long since the people were perplexed, it may be even longer now, in an age when doubt—not as intellectual inquiry but as the ground of experience—is derided and one’s volition has become the one true indicator that one exists.

The sage possesses the necessary tools to damage others and things but rarely uses these tools and if she does so does so sadly.  She knows that emptiness leads in itself to the monstrous as easily as to the good and that the causes we tell ourselves, whether moral or otherwise, often simply serve ourselves.

Why does the sage, then, not use the tools at her disposal, when it seems patently obvious that such equipment exists to further herself and that the normal path is, as one advances in years, to ensure one is protected and to transfer the naïve exuberance of youth into systems of control and oppression for all and comfort for oneself?   Why does she not?  If you were to find a sage and ask her, she would not give you any clear answer, for no clear answer exists; rather, she might smile and offer you an orange.

Tao Te Ching LVII

Govern the state by being straightforward; wage war by being crafty; but win the empire by not being meddlesome.  How do I know that it is like that?  By means of this.

The more taboos there are in the empire the poorer the people.

The more sharpened tools the people have the more benighted the state.

The more skills the people have the further novelties multiply.

The better known the laws and edicts the more thieves and robbers there are.

Hence the sage says,

I take no action and the people are transformed of themselves.

I prefer stillness and the people are rectified of themselves.

I am not meddlesome and the people prosper of themselves.

I am free from desire and the people of themselves become simple like the uncarved block.

There are the techniques of the specialties in the world—techniques of being this way or that way, of being taciturn or assertive, of being restrained or abandoned, of being an academic, rock star, lawyer or bum.  These are all prescribed and to deviate from the respective prescriptions is to diminish or remove one’s impact in one’s specialty.  But there is the non-technique of the whole, of seeing rather than action.  This is the sage’s means and she moves in murky ways.

The Tao, while hardly being anarchist, is neither inclined to regulation.  So the sage knows that in attempting to regulate herself, she lessens herself; in condemning and praising, she subverts herself; in willfully expanding her skills and knowledge, she warps herself.  The sage is constantly doubtful about more and better, about almost all morality and causation.

The management techniques of the sage are similar to and different from the management techniques of Machiavelli.  Both are ruthless, distant, and devoted wholly to their path without regard for consequence.  But the prince is ruthless for her own ends, distant to enhance the fear of the people and the perception of her superiority, devoted to carving his name on stone; the sage is perceived as ruthless because she doesn’t pamper the people, distant because that is what she is for that is what is, devoted to turning names into air—which involves no effort, for that is what names are.  So the prince constantly strives and struggles and the sage does not; they may look at each other as somewhat foolish across the odd void between them, which is natural—the people may or may not view them similarly and the prince and sage, if they are truly princes and sages, have looked into the darkness that forms all things and not flinched; but after having looked the prince returns to the world and must dominate it, the sage may return to the world but must do no particular thing.

Tao Te Ching LVI

One who knows does not speak, one who speaks does not know.

Block the openings.

Shut the doors.

Blunt the sharpness.

Untangle the knots.

Soften the glare.

Let your wheels move only along old ruts.

This is known as mysterious sameness.

Hence you cannot get close to it nor can you keep it at arm’s length; you cannot bestow benefit on it nor can you do it harm; you cannot ennoble it nor can you debase it.  Therefore it is valued by the empire.

The Tao uses words but isn’t particularly impressed with them; knowledge may exist somewhere but if language is its tool, it’s only one of them.  So the Tao has slippery causation and dubious antecedents.  Its therefores, hences, and thuses defy the firm relationships modern thought demands and in their place places bridges with spans of water at both ends.  Its its seem to point but the object of their pointing seems to be far below the water’s surface, if at all.  With the Tao, there are no ends, guarantees, or origins; there is movement.

As it is with the Tao, so it is with love, art, self, god.  Those who attempt to get too close or keep too distant, to benefit or harm, to ennoble or debase are unacquainted with the soul; those who do not attempt have been too close, too distant; received benefit and done harm; been ennobled and debased; been to every aspect of the soul and no longer have any need to fulfill any particular aspect again but only the soul in its glorious horrible indifferent entirety.

Tao Te Ching LV

One who possesses virtue in abundance is comparable to a newborn babe.

Poisonous insects will not sting it.

Ferocious animals will not pounce on it.

Predatory birds will not swoop down on it.

Its bones are weak and its sinews supple yet its hold is firm.

It does not know of the union of male and female yet its male member will stir.

This is because its virility is at its height.

It howls all day yet does not become hoarse.

This is because its harmony is at its height.

To know harmony is called the constant.

To know the constant is called discernment.

To try to add to one’s vitality is called ill-omened.

For the mind to egg on the breath is called violent.

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.

Virtue is not a mental concept, but a physical orientation; not a code but a state; not a judgment but a celebration; not an institution but a laugh; not morality but mysterious caprice; not stone but water.  To attempt otherwise is to stand existence on its head.  Yet such inversion is now the order of existence; ill omens and violence are the norm and while talk of harmony abounds what is meant by it is often adding and egging:  truth is something which can be obtained through communication and goodness isn’t goodness unless it’s named, photographed, copied, and broadly disseminated.

The virtuous are flexible—emotionally, intellectually, practically, structurally, ontologically, fiscally, geographically, culturally, aesthetically, erotically—not because they believe in flexibility as a goal or idea but because their bodies are rooted in the way.  The falsely virtuous know and thus prescribe, the virtuous do not know and thus exist.

The soul—that possibly threatened murky repository of the human:  contradictory, shifting, impossibly one, desirous and still—is not dissimilar to the Tao in its once and future proclivities.  Nor is it dissimilar to the historic Yahweh—calm, like a high wind that never ceases.  East and West poles staked early in the ground of time.

With the poles now magnetized and fibre optics strung between them, with Yahweh in a test tube and the Tao a freeway, the soul—like almost everything—has become subject to the clinicians’ incessant analysis:  the forced stuffing of that-which-cannot-be-stuffed into mind’s metallic ordering—an ordering that overturns existence’s dark vibrancy for those who don’t walk increasingly large and rocky detours around it.

This analysis and ordering include diagnoses like bipolar, manic-depressive, mentally unstable, schizophrenic.  If these false laboratory priests’ labeling, induced by fear, is listened to, those listening will view themselves as something to be fixed, take pills and therapies—and so seal themselves more thickly from the source of life.

The Tao is a turning back, a stripping away.  It does not add names, prosthetics, and theories, but subtracts them.  In subtracting it finds not mental illness, but murky life.  It does not damn the river or deny it, but becomes it.  So the sage is diseased according to those who would name the way.  So she is unconscious, fulminating, and silent in Yahweh’s masculine bush.  But in the Tao the river flows and every thought and feeling passes through her and they are not her but the world, so she is not disturbed.  As the world is not there to be healed but to exist.

Tao Te Ching LIV

What is firmly rooted cannot be pulled out,

what is tightly held in the arms will not slip loose.

Through this the offering of sacrifice by descendants will never come to an end.

Cultivate it in your person and its virtue will be genuine.

Cultivate it in the family and its virtue will be more than sufficient.

Cultivate it in the hamlet and its virtue will endure.

Cultivate it in the state and its virtue will abound.

Cultivate it in the empire and its virtue will be pervasive.

Hence look at the person through the person, look at the family through the family, look at the hamlet through the hamlet, look at the state through the state, look at the empire through the empire.

How do I know that the empire is like that? By means of this.

The incessant alteration of fashion, the subtle perpetual morphing of language, the orgy of novelty, the sags and slings of our outrageous bodies—these lead the common mind to the conclusions that life is in constant flux, that the only constant is change, and that the wise or at least pragmatic person (and these too, to such a one, seem as one) thus accepts change as good.  And these conclusions are not wrong.

But the sage passes on the embodied elusive knowledge of that which is deeply rooted—not by negating flux but by seeing it as the other face of that which does not change.  For despite our attempts to control, despite our narratives of freedom, despite our fear that we may have already articulated the essential and be largely unable to incarnate it, we remain humans and the soul remains the soul.  It is this knowledge—held silently and deep within the sage, even as it is within rocks and words—that makes the sage the sage.  So everything reveals itself as itself and it is this revealing that will never come to an end.

Tao Te Ching LIII

The court is corrupt,

the fields are overgrown with weeds,

the granaries are empty.

Yet there are those dressed in fineries

with swords at their sides,

filled with food and drink

and possessed of too much wealth.

This is known as taking the lead in robbery.

Far indeed is this from the way.

The broad way is decried in the West, celebrated in the East; the narrow way celebrated in the West, decried in the East.  The multitude walk the broad way in the West, the narrow ways in the East.  The ease of the broad way is what makes it anathema in the West and appealing in the East.  How confusing!  Is the truth one or the other?  Is it in some mysterious sense both?  Or is all this, as the academics would have it, a matter of semantics?  What might the Tao say if it could speak?  Might it uphold the broad way, as in this odd vignette?  Or might it uphold the mysterious union of secret and manifestation, as it seems to in other odd vignettes?  The Tao is slippery; who knows?

The Tao hesitates to say that wealth, pleasure, and society are wrong—only that too much of these are wrong.  Is the Tao thus communist?  If it is, it is a communism which grows from the soul rather than government, that naturally emerges from within rather than something that is imposed from without.

If the empire was once the actual systems which are now known as the government, it is no longer but is rather the soul and the sage dares not tamper not with the government—though she frequently cares little for this—but with her soul.  For she knows her soul is stronger than she; her soul is like water and the one thing that must be submitted to.  Her soul mirrors the way.

Tao Te Ching LII

The world had a beginning

and this beginning could be the mother of the world.

When you know the mother

go on to know the child.

After you have known the child

go back to holding fast to the mother

and to the end of your days you will not meet with danger.

Block the openings,

shut the doors,

and all your life you will not run dry.

Unblock the openings,

add to your troubles,

and to the end of your days you will be beyond salvation.

To see the small is called discernment.

To hold fast to the submissive is called strength.

Use the light

but give up the discernment.

Bring not misfortune upon yourself.

This is known as following the constant.

The Taoist sage can seem surprisingly and perhaps disturbingly like a bourgeoisie:  doing all to avoid misfortune, never excessive or exuberant, balanced, boring, vacantly content.  If this is so, the key difference between the sage and the bourgeoisie can be seen by randomly changing their circumstances.  Rip away the savings, house, car, career, and spouse—the bourgeoisie breaks down and possibly jumps from a window, the sage sings a little tune and moseys on.

The difference, then, is not be in outward circumstances, but inward ground.  The bourgeoisie’s ground, in fact, is not within him, but in his prosthetics; thus when his prosthetics disappear, he falls.  The sage’s ground, however, is the way, and should her prosthetics disappear (if indeed she has any, for she doesn’t particularly care), she does not fall for there is nowhere to fall.

The bourgeoisie knew the mother—the void of creation—as an infant, then moved on to know the child of society and culture.  But he gets stuck there and thus returns to acting like an infant when his things are taken away from him.  The sage, however, after knowing the child, returns to the mother—not as a grasping infant, but as an adult whose mother is the world.  This is why she blocks and shuts, sees and holds fast, uses but gives up, believes in light but not distinction—she has no need to build worlds around her; she has the world.

However, in modern times, with so much data and so many artifacts having been erected between the individual mother of our physical infantility and the collective mother of spiritual maturity, who can claw her way through and back?  Who can negotiate the mass seduction of sensual and intellectual knowledge in such a way as to say no, instead following a distant way?

Tao Te Ching LI

The way gives them life.

Virtue rears them.

Things give them shape.

Circumstances bring them to maturity.

Therefore the myriad creatures all revere the way and honor virtue.  Yet the way is revered and virtue honored not because this is decreed by any authority but because it is natural for them to be treated so.

Thus the way gives them life and rears them,

brings them up and nurses them,

brings them to fruition and maturity,

feeds and shelters them.

It gives them life yet claims no possession;

it benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;

it is the steward yet exercises no authority.

Such is called the mysterious virtue.

Has the old man gone mad?  After convincing us that the people have separated themselves from the way and scorn virtue, clinging instead to rituals as a sorry substitute for what is natural and institutionalized paths as concrete encasements for dancing air, he now claims that everyone reveres the way!  And that they do this naturally!

Listen to what the people love!—  They love to possess no one or thing.  They expect no gratitude when they help others.  They take care of the earth, things, and people without establishing themselves as superior to the earth, things, and people.  This is what the people love!

Yet the people are not natural.  Scared of nature’s perpetual indifference, peculiar order, and ecstatic randomness, they surround themselves with artifice then become artifice themselves by absorbing what they have surrounded themselves with; they become their fear and, having become it, do not see it.

Yet surely the old man is mad; he dreams of that mythical golden age in which the people are perfectly aligned with an idealized nature; consciousness is not a breach but an integration; the illusions, catastrophes, petty victories, and follies of ambition are seen by all and laughed aside.  He lies in a field of poppies, outrageously fantasizing about a world far removed from the one we know.

Yet the people are awed by the way and honor virtue—though often posthumously, distantly, and incomprehensibly.  The way and virtue, these forces beyond the people’s gods and grasping, are aloof, mysterious, numinous, and strange.

The sage, naturally, knows that the way encompasses all things yet still is only the way and virtue’s just virtue and so continues bumbling along her path, avoiding arrogance and humility, reverence and shame, honor and disgrace.  Everything that can be named is beautiful, transient, and forgettable; nothing that can be named is honored or revered.

Tao Te Ching L

When going one way means life and going the other means death, three in ten will be comrades of life, three in ten will be comrades of death, and there are those who value life and as a result move into the realm of death and these also number three in ten.  Why is this so?  Because they set too much store by life.

I have heard it said that one who excels in safeguarding his own life does not meet with rhinoceros or tiger when travelling on land nor is he touched by weapons when charging into an army.  There is nowhere for the rhinoceros to pitch its horn; there is nowhere for the tiger to place its claws; there is nowhere for the weapon to lodge its blade.  Why is this so?  Because for him there is no realm of death.

Life is just life and not something more than life.  While human life includes fantasies about how life might be—and occasionally a few of these fantasies are partially enacted—fantasy is ultimately subject to life’s necessities, thus ensuring it is always actualized according to life’s proclivities, not fantasy’s.  As life both feeds and devours, those who cling to it will not live; they will die in any of the realms in which it is possible to die.

Modernity is a culture given to setting too much store by life; modernity devours and prolongs; hence our apocalyptic obsessions which arise from our collective intuitive sense that while talking life, we’re living death.  That, too desperate for life, we try too hard to shove death aside, fatally ignoring the inescapable reality that death is eternally the wind and we eternally leaves.

He has heard it said but never observed it as there is no one who solely excels in safeguarding her life.  Life is always stronger than any safeguard, than any individual excelling.  The one who is above accident, chance, harm, fate, the wiles of freedom, is a fantastical creation, not a product of life.  Nevertheless, one who gives herself over to life and not the way she wishes life to be—a process we might call love—can be said to live apart from death … for there is only one death that can and will affect her and this will not affect her until it does; until then, it plays no more role in her life than a flower.  So she is never harmed.