Tao Te Ching LXII

The way is the refuge for the myriad creatures.

It is that by which the good man protects

and that by which the bad is protected.

Beautiful words when offered will win high rank in return,

beautiful deeds can raise a man above others.

Even if a man is not good, why should he be abandoned?

Hence when the emperor is set up and the three ducal ministers are appointed, he who makes a present of the way without stirring from his seat is preferable to one who offers presents of jade disks followed by a team of four horses.  Why was this way valued of old?  Was it not said that by means of it one got what one wanted and escaped the consequences when one transgressed?

Therefore it is valued by the empire.

One of the astonishing aspects of the Tao to a traditional Westerner is how little it cares about whether a person is good or bad.  The Tao acknowledges the distinctions:  some people are oriented to behavior we typically call good, others to behavior we typically call bad; whether these interpretations and naming are socially constructed, whether genetically defined, whether rooted in some objective reality is largely beside the point:  the roots of the causes of our naming, as is typically with the Tao, aren’t particularly relevant.

Unlike the Christian god, who supposedly rewards good and punishes evil—though we see little evidence of this on earth—the Tao (perhaps because it tends to being the this-worldly spirit of nature rather than the other-worldly spirit of spirits) neither rewards nor punishes, but quietly accepts.  So the sage quietly accepts, but does not do so stupidly—as the naïve and inexperienced might—but as one who has sojourned through the cold-hot expanses of the human soul and says without despair or exuberance, Well, this is it, this is existence … oh well.

But this subversion of the traditional western polarities—good and evil, of course, only being one—is not done to be subversive, not performed from some theoretical tour de force, not arrived at through nihilism or amorality … but is maintained as the best possible way to survive.  If you stroke the good for being good, they begin to behave well to be rewarded (then, naturally, they are no longer good); if you punish the bad for being bad, they naturally feel alienated and vengeful and one way or another, from time to time at least, the punishment will return to confront the punisher.  So the sage doesn’t flash and bribe, doesn’t scorn and destroy, but walks alongside the seemingly eternal struggles of society and accepts them the way she accepts water.

Tao Te Ching LXI

A large state is the lower reaches of a river—

the place where all the streams of the world unite.

In the union of the world,

the female always gets the better of the male by stillness;

being still, she takes the lower position.

Hence the large state, by taking the lower position, annexes the small state.

The small state, by taking the lower position, affiliates itself to the large state.

Thus the one, by taking the lower position, annexes;

the other, by taking the lower position, is annexed.

All that the large state wants is to take the other under its wing;

all that the small state wants is to have its services accepted by the other.

If each of the two wants to find its proper place

it is meet that the large should take the lower position.

When one falls into the boggy depths of consciousness, one finds mud.  There are those who say that, upon emerging (should one emerge), one wears the cloak of light—spun from detachment and freedom from desire.  Hippies, New Agers, the Buddha, and an eclectic mix of charlatans and earnest well-intentioned fools.  Others, far more rare, such as the Judge in Blood Meridian, emerge in puissant darkness.

But in mud there is neither light nor darkness, morality nor immorality, male nor female, life nor death.  So the sage, having visited the muddy way and never really feeling inclined to leave, promotes nothing in particular—not war, not peace, not good, not evil.  The sage knows the enlightened one is bound to the unenlightened, the redeemer to the unredeemed.  The sage, though, being bound only to mud and its murkiness, sidesteps allegiances and the common opposites of the human spirit.

So the Tao recognizes that in the world there are pieces—large and small, annexing and annexed—which need each other.  Without the small, the large is excessive, imbalanced; without the large, the small is insecure, imbalanced:  finding each other, they temporarily unite that which is irreconcilable in the world and so find balance for a time.  Of course, the rule of the world is such that they rarely find each other, the one too obsessed with its excess, the other too insecure to act.  So the sage, finding the irreconcilable reconciled in mud, stays in mud and lets the world do what it is inclined to do.

Tao Te Ching LX

Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.

When the empire is ruled in accordance with the way, the spirits lose their potencies.

Or rather, it is not that they lose their potencies but that, though they have their potencies, they do not harm the people.

It is not only they who, having their potencies, do not harm the people.  The sage also does not harm the people.

As neither does any harm, each attributes the merit to the other.

The soul is a many-headed many-faced many-tongued beast.  Each head is a god, each face a spirit, each tongue a demon.  The processes of education and enculturation typically are processes of numbing—of building internal and external barriers between individuals and their souls, between selves and the divine; this numbing is for good reason:  the soul easily devours the faint-hearted, the serious, the glib, the naïve, and the coddled.  The primary function of society—its processes and structures—is to offer this protection.

Yet those who do not wish to be numbed, to be protected, against the soul’s vastness, its dark empty spaces, its potencies and surprises, must themselves develop strategies to avoid destruction, for the soul is always larger than anything that inhabits it.  We have a sufficient number of great explorers of the soul—from Baudelaire to Nietzsche, from Kierkegaard to Simone Weil—to know how it treats those who neither numb themselves nor appeal to the method as large as the soul—the way that accepts and walks but does itself become any aspect it sees.  Thus the soul’s potent spirits—whether they’re named Apollo or lust, Yahweh or pride, Aphrodite or despair—are not ossified, succumbed to, worshipped, or ignored … but simply acknowledged.  The sage knows the words and methods of each spirit, each god, each demon; she knows them but does not feel inclined to identify with them.  She walks, and in walking she passes from voice to voice, spirit to spirit, potency to potency … and in passing does not harm.

Tao Te Ching LIX

In ruling the people and in serving heaven it is best for a ruler to be sparing.

It is because he is sparing that he may be said to follow the way from the start.

Following the way from the start he may be said to accumulate an abundance of virtue.

Accumulating an abundance of virtue there is nothing he cannot overcome.

When there is nothing he cannot overcome no one knows his limit.

When no knows his limit he can possess a state.

When he possesses the mother of a state he can then endure.

This is called the way of deep roots and firm stems by which one lives to see many days.

Western causation—scientific, measurable, reproducible, abstract—differs from the way’s causation, which is mysterious, elusive, and embodied.  The Tao begins in restraint and ends in life, passing through an overcoming which is no transcendence but an immanence, no acquisitiveness but an abundance, no leadership but a following.

Physical survival at the writing of the Tao Te Ching was far more dubious than it is now for those living behind the increasingly precarious fortress of the First World.  Yet look at what many of the world’s privileged are focused on—extending life, maintaining and increasing health.  But this is presently done not by being sparing but by being excessive, not through virtue but through extravagance, not through serving but through arrogance.  Individual physical survival may no longer seem like an issue for the world’s entitled, but our species’ survival is—and so each individual is bound.  Thus in ruling ourselves and in serving the earth, it is best for us to be sparing; we might then endure and live to see many days.  But, first, we have to know that it is not better to be a human than a butterfly, to be a ruler than a bum.

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.