Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (4 page)

All you grasp will be thrown away.
All you hoard will be utterly lost.

Contentment keeps disgrace away.
Restraint keeps you out of danger
so you can go on for a long, long time.

What’s perfectly whole seems flawed
,
but you can use it forever.
What’s perfectly full seems empty
,
but you can’t use it up.

True straightness looks crooked.
Great skill looks clumsy.
Real eloquence seems to stammer.

To be comfortable in the cold, keep moving
;
to be comfortable in the heat, hold still;
to be comfortable in the world, stay calm and clear.

When the world’s on the Way
,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way
,
they breed warhorses on the common.

The greatest evil: wanting more.
The worst luck: discontent.
Greed’s the curse of life.

To know
enough’s
enough
is enough to know.

You don’t have to go out the door
to know what goes on in the world.
You don’t have to look out the window
to see the way of heaven.
The farther you go
,
the less you know.

So the wise soul
doesn’t go, but knows
;
doesn’t look, but sees;
doesn’t do, but gets it done.

We tend to expect great things from “seeing the world” and “getting
experience.” A Roman poet remarked that travelers change their sky but not
their soul. Other poets, untraveled and inexperienced, Emily
Bront
ë
and Emily Dickinson, prove Lao Tzu’s point: it’s
the inner eye that really sees the world.

Studying and learning daily you grow larger.
Following the Way daily you shrink.
You get smaller and smaller.
So you arrive at not doing.
You do nothing and
nothing’s not done
.

To run things
,
don’t fuss with them.
Nobody who fusses
is fit to run things.

The word
shi
in the second stanza, my “fuss,”
is troublesome to the translators.
Carus’s
quite
legitimate translation of it is “diplomacy,” which would give a stanza I like
very much:

To run things
,
be undiplomatic.
No diplomat
is fit to run things.

The wise have no mind of their own
,
finding it in the minds
of ordinary people.

They’re good to good people
and they’re good to bad people.
Power is goodness.
They trust people of good faith
and they trust people of bad faith.
Power is trust.

They mingle their life with the world
,
they mix their mind up with the world.
Ordinary people look after them.
Wise souls are children.

The next to last line is usually read as saying that ordinary
people watch and listen to wise people. But Lao Tzu has already told us that
most of us wander on and off the Way and don’t know a sage from a
sandpile
. And surely the quiet Taoist is not a media
pundit.

Similarly, the last
line is taken to mean that the wise treat ordinary people like children. This
is patronizing, and makes hash out of the first verse. I read it to mean that
the truly wise are looked after (or looked upon) like children because they’re
trusting
, unprejudiced, and don’t hold themselves above or
apart from ordinary life.

To look for life
is to find death.
The thirteen organs of our living
are the thirteen organs of our dying.
Why are the organs of our life
where death enters us?
Because we hold too hard to living.

So I’ve heard
if you live in the right way
,
when you cross country
you needn’t fear to meet a mad bull or a tiger;
when you’re in a battle
you needn’t fear the weapons.
The bull would find nowhere to jab its horns
,
the tier nowhere to stick its claws,
the sword nowhere for its point to go.
Why?
Because there’s nowhere in you
for death to enter.

The Way bears them
;
power nurtures them;
their own being shapes them;
their own energy completes them.
And not one of the ten thousand things
fails to hold the Way sacred
or to obey its power.

Their reverence for the Way
and obedience to its power
are unforced and always natural.
For the Way gives them life
;
its power nourishes them,
mothers and feeds them,
completes and matures them,
looks after them, protects them.

To have without possessing
,
do without claiming,
lead without controlling:
this is mysterious power.

The beginning of everything
is the mother of everything.
Truly to know the mother
is to know her children
,
and truly to know the children
is to turn back to the mother.
The body comes to its ending
but there is nothing to fear.

Close the openings
,
shut the doors,
and to the end of life
nothing will trouble you.
Open the openings
,
be busy with business,
and to the end of life
nothing can help you.

Insight sees the insignificant.
Strength knows how to yield.
Use the way’s light, return to its insight
,
and so keep from going too far.
That’s how to practice what’s forever.

This chapter on the themes of return and centering makes
circles within itself and throughout the book, returning to phrases from other
poems, turning them round the center. A center which is everywhere, a circle
whose circumference is infinite….

If my mind’s modest
,
I walk the great way.
Arrogance
is all I fear.

The great way is low and plain
,
but people like shortcuts over the mountains.

The palace is full of splendor
and the fields are full of weeds
and the granaries are full of nothing.

People wearing ornaments and fancy clothes,
carrying weapons,
drinking a lot and eating a lot,
having a lot of things, a lot of money:
shameless thieves.
Surely their way
isn’t the way.

So much for capitalism.

Well planted is not uprooted
,
well kept
is not lost.
The offerings of the generations
to the ancestors will not cease.

To follow the way yourself is real power.
To follow it in the family is abundant power.
To follow it in the community is steady power.
To follow it in the whole country is lasting power.
To follow it in the world is universal power.

So in myself I see what self is,
in my household I see what family is,
in my town I see what community is,
in my nation I see what a country is,
in the world I see what is under heaven.

How do I know the world is so?
By this.

I follow
Waley’s
interpretation of
this chapter. It is Tao that plants and keeps; the various kinds of power
belong to Tao; and finally in myself I see the Tao of self, and so on.

Being full of power
is like being a baby.
Scorpions don’t sting
,
tigers don’t attack,
eagles don’t strike.
Soft bones, weak muscles
,
but a firm grasp.
Ignorant of the intercourse
of man and woman
,
yet the baby penis is erect.
True and perfect energy!
All day long screaming and crying
,
but never getting hoarse.
True and perfect harmony!

To know harmony
is to know what’s eternal.
To know what’s eternal
is enlightenment.
Increase of life is full of portent
:
the strong heart exhausts the vital breath.
The full-grown is on the edge of age.
Not the Way.
What’s not the Way soon dies.

As a model for the Taoist, the baby is in many ways ideal:
totally
unaltruistic
, not interested in politics,
business, or the properties, weak, soft, and able to scream placidly for hours
without wearing itself out (its parents are another matter). The baby’s
unawareness of poisonous insects and carnivorous beasts means that such dangers
simply do not exist for it. (Again, its parents are a different case.)

As a metaphor of the
Tao, the baby embodies the eternal beginning, the ever-springing source. “We
come, trailing clouds of glory,” Wordsworth says; and Hopkins, “
There
lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” No
Peter Pan-
ish
refusal to grow up is involved, no hunt
for the fountain of youth. What is eternal
is
forever young, never grows old. But we are not eternal.

It is in this sense
that I understand how the natural, inevitable cycle of youth, growth, mature
vigor, age, and decay can be “not the Way.” The Way is more than the cycle of
any individual life. We rise, flourish, fail. The Way never fails. We are
waves. It is the sea.

Who knows
doesn’t talk.
Who talks
doesn’t know.
Closing the openings
,
shutting doors,

blunting
edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
be one with the dust of the way.
So you come to the deep sameness.

Then you can’t be controlled by love
or by rejection.
You can’t be controlled by profit
or by loss.
You can’t be controlled by praise
or by humiliation.
Then you have honor under heaven.

Run the country by doing what’s expected.
Win the war by doing the unexpected.
Control the world by doing nothing.
How do I know that?
By this.

The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world
,
the poorer people get.
The more experts the country has
the more of a mess it’s in.
The more ingenious the skillful are
,
the more monstrous their inventions.
The louder the call for law and order
,
the more the thieves and con men multiply.

So a wise leader might say
:
I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.
I love to be quiet, and the people themselves find justice.
I don’t do business, and the people prosper
on their own
.
I don’t have wants, and the people themselves are uncut wood.

A strong political
statement of the central idea of
wu
wei
,
not doing, inaction.

My “monstrous” is
literally “new.” New is strange, and strange is uncanny. New is bad. Lao Tzu is
deeply and firmly against changing things, particularly in the name of
progress. He would make an Iowa farmer look flighty. I don’t think he is
exactly anti-intellectual, but he considers most uses of the intellect to be
pernicious, and all plans for improving things to be disastrous. Yet he’s not a
pessimist. No pessimist would say that people are able to look after
themselves, be just, and prosper on their own. No anarchist can be a pessimist.

Uncut wood—here
likened to the human soul—the uncut,
uncarved
,
unshaped, unpolished, native, natural stuff is better than anything that can be
made out of it. Anything done to it deforms and lessens it. Its potentiality is
infinite. Its uses are trivial.

When the government’s dull and confused
,
the people are placid.
When the government’s sharp and keen
,
the people are discontented.
Alas!
misery
lies under happiness,
and happiness sits on misery, alas!
Who knows where it will end?
Nothing is certain.

The normal changes into the monstrous
,
the fortunate into the unfortunate,
and our bewilderment
goes on and on.

And so the wise
shape without cutting
,
square without sawing,
true without forcing.
They are the light that does not shine.

In the first verse,
the words “dull and confused” and “sharp and keen” are, as
Waley
points out, the words used in chapter 20 to describe the Taoist and the
non-Taoists.

In the last verse most
translators say the Taoist is square but doesn’t
cut,
shines but doesn’t dazzle.
Waley
says that this
misses the point. The point is that Taoists gain their ends
without the use
of means.
That is indeed a light that does
not shine—an idea that must be pondered and brooded over.
A
small dark light.

In looking after your life and following the way
,
gather spirit.
Gather spirit early
,
and so redouble power,
and so become invulnerable.

Invulnerable, unlimited
,
you can do what you like with material things.
But only if you hold to the Mother of things
will you do it for long.
Have deep roots, a strong trunk.
Live long by looking long.

Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.