Chapter 71 – I Know Nothing

To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
Only when one recognizes this disease as a disease can one be free from the disease.
The sage is free from the disease.
Because he recognizes this disease to be disease, he is free from it. 

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)

I would like to propose three of the possible ways in which this chapter might be understood.

First:

This can be seen as a continuation of the ideas presented in the previous chapter.  There, Lao Tzu said that although his doctrines are easy to understand and practice, there is no one who can do that; and that since he is known and understood by only a few, he is highly valued.  He concluded by saying that the precious treasure which is the essence of the sage is obscured by what seems to be a covering of coarse cloth.

Wang Yang-Ming

In this chapter he is telling us that since we may not be able to understand and practice his doctrines and because we are often unable to see the hidden values of what may seem common or unappealing, we should just accept that.  There is no reason to pretend that we know or understand the concepts.  As we discussed in looking at the last chapter, they are not even concepts which are amenable to understanding through reason or human “knowledge.”  It is a disease – a disease of the Ego – that makes the non-sages among us think (and thinking is a problem) that an understanding of the ineffable in human terms is something that should be sought.

The true sages have developed immunity to that disease.

Second: Continue reading →

Chapter 70 – The Jade Is Within

 My doctrines are easy to understand and very easy to practice,
But none in the world can understand or practice them.
My doctrines have a source (Nature); my deeds have a master (Tao).
It is because people do not understand this that they do not understand me.
Few people know me, and therefore I am highly valued.
Therefore the sage wears a coarse cloth on top and carries jade within his bosom. 

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)

 I would like to begin this essay with two quotes from Confucius or his later followers.  The translation for each is taken from Hellmut Wilhelm’s Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, which was translated from German into English by Cary F. Baynes (1960):

First:

 “The Master said:  Writing cannot express words completely.  Words cannot express thoughts completely. 

“Are we then unable to see the thoughts of the holy sages? “
(Wilhelm, Page 36).

The other:

 “First take up the words,
Ponder their meaning,
Then the fixed rules reveal themselves.
But if you are not the right man,
The meaning will not manifest itself to you”.
(Wilhelm, Page 65)

I am tempted to stop right here and say that Confucius has just explained to us what Lao Tzu wrote in this chapter – both because he has and because while the doctrines may be easy to understand and to practice, they are not easy to explain.

In the first lines of Chapter 1, Lao Tzu warned us that the Tao that can be told of or named is not the eternal Tao.  Now here we are, several thousand Chinese characters and English words into the telling of Tao and Te, and the Old Master is reminding us of the limitations on what we have read.

In many ways, Lao Tzu’s words and their translations seem reasonably easy to understand, and even reasonably easy to apply and follow.  Therein perhaps lies the problem.  Reason is a human construct.  Nature and Tao, which are here said to be the source of Lao Tzu’s doctrines and the master of his deeds, do not reason.  They simply are.

Yet not even that last three-word sentence is simple or true.  If Tao is the master of the sage’s deeds, the servant would be doing very little, for wu wei, the course of non-action, would direct those deeds.   Most people will not understand this.

The words of the Tao Te Ching are simple, humble even, like coarse cloth.  We have been told of their limitations.  The real treasure of this life lies within the soul or spirit of mankind; and very few look beneath the poor clothing in which the treasure is presented.*

But if you are the right man or woman, the meaning will manifest itself to you.  It is your treasure, after all.

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*  Sort of like Bilbo’s riddle to Gollum in The Hobbit – “What is in my pocket?”

Chapter 69 – To Make Light of the Enemy

The strategists say: “I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive;
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot.”
This means: To march without formation,
To stretch one’s arm without showing it,
To confront enemies without seeming to meet them,
To hold weapons without seeming to have them.
There is no greater disaster than to make light the enemy.
Making light of the enemy will destroy my treasures.
Therefore when armies are mobilized and issues joined,
The man who is sorry over the fact will win. 

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)

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Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18 (King James Bible)

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This is another chapter in which Lao Tzu writes about war.  Most of what is said here is not new.  The Old Master counsels – by quoting “strategists” – that if war is necessary, there should be sufficient preparation, strength comes from yielding, and the side that enters the battle with compassion will be victorious.

Each of those points is discussed elsewhere in the Tao Te Ching, so I would like to keep my focus here very limited.  I want to look at the line that says, “Making light of the enemy will destroy my treasures.”

After the discussion of the strategists’ approach, the emphasis changes in the quoted line.  Lao Tzu does not speak of losing a kingdom or the lives of the combatants or the property of the conquered.  Instead, he says that making light of the enemy will destroy my (that is, the narrator’s, presumably Lao Tzu’s) treasures.  From the placement of that

C. S. Lewis

wording after the discussion in Chapter 67 and then the look at warfare in Chapters 68 and 69, it seems Lao Tzu is referring back to the three treasures of Chapter 67 – compassion, frugality and humility.

In the comments following the post discussing Chapter 67, Bob G argued that the first in importance of those treasures is humility.  The other two can be seen as arising from the practice of humility.  Bob is not the only one who has felt that way.  Another is the late British author, C. S. Lewis; and I would like to present a rather lengthy quote from Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity, which is available as a free ebook.  The presentations in that book were originally a series of radio broadcasts delivered during the bombing of London in World War II.  He says: Continue reading →

Chapter 68 – What Would Arjuna Do?

 One who excels as a warrior does not appear formidable;
One who excels in fighting is never roused in anger;
One who excels in defeating his enemy does not join issue;
One who excels in employing others humbles himself before them. 

This is known as the virtue of non-contention;
This is known as making use of the efforts of others;
This is known as matching the sublimity of heaven.

Translation by D. C. Lau (1963)

The earliest versions of the Tao Te Ching were not divided into chapters.  The “modern” division of the work into 81 chapters probably did not occur for several hundred years after it was written, probably in the 1^st Century B.C.  (See Chan, Two Visions of the Way (1991) at 41-44).  The number of chapters is probably more symbolic than anything, as the number “9” is considered lucky in China, and 81 is 9×9.

Sometimes the way in which the text is divided can make a difference in how it is interpreted.  This chapter and the previous one may serve as an example.  Some translations, such Wing-Tsit Chan’s (1963) end Chapter 67 this way:  “When Heaven is to save a person, heaven will protect him through deep love.”  That seems to imply that the external world is not important when one may bask in the love of God and the eternal Tao.  Further, there is a sense that such divine love can be a shield against the perceived dangers of that external world, just as the three Hebrew children were protected as they passed through the fiery furnace in the Bible’s Book of Daniel.

However, there are different interpretations that are equally plausible.  Let us assume that the end of Chapter 67 was not really the end of a thought, and combine the last two lines of that chapter with the first four lines of this chapter.  Then we have:

Through compassion, one will triumph in attack and be impregnable in defence.
What heaven succours it protects with the gift of compassion.
One who excels as a warrior does not appear formidable;
One who excels in fighting is never roused in anger;
One who excels in defeating his enemy does not join issue;
One who excels in employing others humbles himself before them.

Reading the parts of the two chapters together presents a somewhat different meaning.  Rather than the individual being blessed and protected by the divine love and compassion, it is the individual’s own compassion that protects and guides him.  No matter how accomplished a warrior may be, his success depends not on his own ego, but on his compassion for others.  He does not fight because he is angry or to show his formidable skill.  Instead, he does what is necessary, understanding the human foibles and emotions of his adversaries and his companions.  Consider in this context a quotation from martial arts legend Bruce Lee:  “The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition”

As we saw back in Chapters 30 and 31, and elsewhere, Lao Tzu appeared to feel that war is sometimes inevitable.  When the war must be fought, he says it should be done with compassion and respect – an extension of the life the sage would counsel in peaceful times.

There are, of course, questions about whether there could ever be a “just war”; and, if that was once possible, whether it remains so in this age of potential mass-annihilation.  I will defer those issues, though, to launch into an all-too-frequent ”Tao Te Ching Tuesday” digression.

Whenever I read this chapter, I think of the Bhagavad Gita.  Continue reading →