Chapter 22 – Socrates

If you want to become whole,
first let yourself become broken.
If you want to become straight,
first let yourself become twisted.
If you want to become full,
first let yourself become empty.
If you want to become new,
first let yourself become old.
Those whose desires are few get them,
those whose desires are great go astray. 

For this reason the Master embraces the Tao,
as an example for the world to follow.
Because she isn’t self centered,
people can see the light in her.
Because she does not boast of herself,
she becomes a shining example.
Because she does not glorify herself,
she becomes a person of merit.
Because she wants nothing from the world,
the world can not overcome her.

When the ancient Masters said,
“If you want to become whole,
then first let yourself be broken,”
they weren’t using empty words.
All who do this will be made complete

 Translation by J. H. McDonald (1996)

To begin our Tao Te Ching Tuesday consideration of Chapter 22, we should recall that last week I mentioned that while Taoist thought and the philosophy of the I Ching are different, they have many similarities.  The first few lines of this chapter are obviously similar to the philosophy of change.

The I Ching teaches that change is eternal and universal.  Its status as an oracle stems from the belief that understanding the nature of change allows for predictions of the future (though Yogi Berra has told us that predictions are difficult to make, especially about the future).  The first few lines of this chapter recognize the same principle – that change is inevitable:  the broken will become whole, the twisted will become straight, the empty will become full, the old will become new.  And, of course, vice versa.

Moving on to the next lines, I am reminded of some ideas attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates.  This great thinker lived one or two centuries after Lao Tzu and he left no writings whatsoever to pass on his ideas.  Almost all that we know of him comes from writings of his students, primarily Plato and Xenophon.

Socrates could not be confused with a Taoist, but some of his thoughts are very similar to those of Lao Tzu.  Since both were concerned universal truths, the similarities are not surprising. Continue reading →

Chapter 21 – The Most Important Chapter?

The all-embracing quality of the great virtue (te) follows alone from the Tao.
The thing that is called Tao is eluding and vague.
Vague and eluding, there is in it the form.
Eluding and vague, in it are things.
Deep and obscure, in it is the essence.
The essence is very real; in it are evidences.
From the time of old until now, its name (manifestations) ever remains.
By which we may see the beginning of all things.
How do I know that the beginning of all things are so?
Through this (Tao). 

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)

The note following the translation of Chapter 21 in Wing-Tsit Chan’s A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy says that philosophically this is the most important chapter in the entire Tao Te Ching.  While it would be interesting to consider the virtue (te – after all we are talking about the Tao Te Ching) following from the Tao, I will defer that discussion to our look at Chapter 38.  For this Tao Te Ching Tuesday let us consider why such an accomplished scholar thinks this chapter is so important.

Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the t’ai chi or yin/yang symbol.  Supposedly, that symbol was either created by the 11^th Century philosopher Chou Tun-I or was given to him by a Taoist priest.  It is probable that a version of the symbol had been developed over the centuries by Taoists, but refined and explained by Chou.

His explanation is very interesting and reasonably concise, so it seems appropriate to include an extensive quote, again using Wing-Tsit Chan’s translation:  Continue reading →

Chapter 20 – I Alone

A life without cultivation
has no center.

All the people
 are happily busying themselves
 with celebration and feasting on life,
taking in the sights like its springtime.

I, alone, stay calm and centered
with no desires like a newborn
who has not yet learned to smile.
 Lazy, as if I have nowhere to go.

All the people
possess more than enough,
while I appear
 to be left behind.

My mind remains foolish,
indeed very blank.

 Most people shine bright.
I, alone, am dark and dim.

People of the world
are sharp and alert.
I, alone,
am withdrawn and quiet,
drifting like the ocean –
blowing free
like a breeze with no place to go.  

Most people have purpose,
While I, alone,
seem playful and unrefined.

I am different from most people
in that I draw my sustenance
from the Great Mother.

 This Chapter 20 is a strange one.  Various commentators have suggested that it was not part of the original text but was added later by some long forgotten “editor.”  I do not read ancient Chinese, so I can’t comment on stylistic differences that may appear in this chapter, but it certainly has a different tone from other chapters in translations I have read.

 The translation here is taken from Amy Putkonen’s Tao Te Ching Daily website, and is very much in the mainstream of how this chapter is seen by modern readers.  Actually, I was tempted to refer to Dwight Goddard’s 1919 translation, which renders the chapter as follows:

Avoid learning if you would have no anxiety. The “yes” and the “yea” differ very little, but the contrast between good and evil is very great. That which is not feared by the people is not worth fearing. But, oh, the difference, the desolation, the vastness, between ignorance and the limitless expression of the Tao.  

(The balance of this sonnet is devoted to showing the difference between the careless state of the common people and his own vision of the Tao. It is one of the most pathetic expressions of human loneliness, from lack of appreciation, ever written. It is omitted here that it might serve for the closing sonnet and valedictory.)

 It is easy to see how one might view Chapter 20 as a “pathetic expression of human loneliness,”  Continue reading →

Chapter 19 – Go with the Flow

Banish wisdom, discard knowledge,
And the people shall profit a hundredfold;
Banish “humanity,” discard “justice,”
And the people shall recover love of their kin;
Banish cunning, discard “utility,”
And the thieves and brigands shall disappear.
As these three touch the externals and are inadequate,
The people have need of what they can depend upon: 

   Reveal thy simple self,
Embrace thy original nature,
Check thy selfishness,
Curtail thy desires. 

(Translated by Lin Yutang, 1955)

For several years now, I have been practicing what is called Taoist Tai Chi, which is a more or less traditional “long” form that was introduced to North America by Master Moy Lin-Shin in 1970.  It is said to consist of 108 postures or moves.  That is an interesting number -108 is the product of 3x3x3x2x2x1 (3³x2²x1¹).

The first style of Tai Chi I learned many years ago was the “short” form developed by Cheng Man-Ching, which is said to have 37 moves.  For a short time I also studied a short form that is said to have 24 moves and was developed by the Chinese Sports Committee in 1956 through a collaboration of four recognized masters.

Almost all of the postures in any of the forms require more than one movement to complete, however.  For instance, each has at least one posture called “grasp bird’s tail” – sometimes referred to as the “three pushes” – which takes at least four distinct movements to complete.

The actual number of moves performed during a set of any of these forms thus seems arbitrary.  However, if you sit down with an experienced practitioner of any of them and demand to know how many moves comprise a set, all will give the same answer:  ONE.  From beginning to end, the tai chi set should flow without interruption.

The Tao Te Ching is similar. Continue reading →

Chapter 18 – Good and Evil

When the Great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality appear.  

When intellect and knowledge are emphasized,
There is great hypocrisy in the heart.

Family is no longer in harmony
When there is preaching of duty and affection.

 The nation is in disorder
When patriotic loyalty is admired.

The translation above is from http://taotechingdaily.com/tao-te-ching-chapter-18-essay/.  I don’t feel this chapter is very difficult to understand.  Lao Tzu is simply telling us that judgments of what is good or bad, kind or unkind, moral or immoral, etc. arise as humanity moves away from the natural flow of the Tao.  Bob Dylan sort of summed it up when he wrote, “To live outside the law [we will call it the Tao], you must be honest.”

 It is perhaps dishonest, or lazy, on my part; but I would like to comment on Chapter 18 through a fairly long quote from another author.  I recently became aware of a very interesting book entitled Novice to Master:  An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity.  I feel that most days are like that.  This book, though, is an autobiography of Soko Morinaga Roshi.  The author was a Japanese Zen monk who was a young man during World War II and who adopted the monastic lifestyle after surviving the war.  He wrote:

Among human beings there are those who exploit and those who are exploited.  The same holds true for relations among nations and among races.  Throughout history, the economically developed countries have held dominion over the undeveloped nations.  Now, at last, Japan was rising to liberate herself from the chains of exploitation!  This was a righteous fight, a meaningful fight!  How could we begrudge our country [our] one small life, even if that life be smashed to bits?  Such reckless rationalization allowed us to shut off our minds. . .

Then on August 15, 1945, came Japan’s unconditional surrender.  The war that everyone had been led to believe was so right, so just, the war for which we might gladly lay down our own life, was instead revealed overnight as a war of aggression, a war of evil – and those responsible for it were to be executed.

Continue reading →

Chapter 17 – Presidential Leadership

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!” 

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988)

Welcome to Tao Te Ching  Tuesday.  This week I am writing shortly after listening to President Obama’s talk on the tragic use of chemical weapons in Syria and the atrocities of dictator Bashir “Basher Al” al Assad.  That, combined with Lao Tzu’s observations in Chapter 17 led me to consider what kind of presidential leadership we have and have had in this country.

My first thought was that we can never have the best leader, we can never be governed by a Master, because our political system is one in which the president and other elected officials feel they must always stay in the public eye in order to be re-elected.  We are all too aware of their existence.  Therefore, we must settle for second, third or fourth best.  Is our chief executive/commander in chief loved or feared or despised?

More important, I think, is Lao Tzu’s observation that “if you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.”  The corollary is that when the people don’t trust their leader, that leader becomes untrustworthy.  President Obama’s difficulty in convincing the American people that some military action against Syria is necessary or justified is that his predecessors have shown they  could not be trusted. Continue reading →

Chapter 16 – Like a Song

Attain the utmost in Passivity,
Hold firm to the basis of Quietude.

The myriad things take shape and rise to activity,
But I watch them fall back to their repose.
Like vegetation that luxuriantly grows
But returns to the root (soil) from which it springs.

To return to the root is Repose;
It is called going back to one’s Destiny.
Going back to one’s Destiny is to find the Eternal Law.
To know the Eternal Law is Enlightenment.
And not to know the Eternal Law Is to court disaster.

He who knows the Eternal Law is tolerant;
Being tolerant, he is impartial;
Being impartial, he is kingly;
Being kingly, he is in accord with Nature;
Being in accord with Nature, he is in accord with Tao;
Being in accord with Tao, he is eternal,
And his whole life is preserved from harm. 

(Lin Yutang’s translation, 1955)

I have just returned from a week of hiking in the South Lake Tahoe area, with one day on the lake in a boat.  Since that experience is fresh in my mind, I would like to work it into this post.  I will start with the name.

The Washoe people took this area as their summer home for hundreds of years before the first Americans – Fremont and Carson and their expedition – passed through in 1844.  Tahoe seems to be a mispronunciation of the Washoe words “Da ao,” which look and sounds a lot like “Tao” but mean something like “deep water”; or “Da ao a ga,” which means the “edge of the lake.”  Beginning from that tie to Taoism, I am going to indulge in a couple of metaphors.

The lake was formed thousands of years ago when a mountain range was essentially split in two.  Fault lines, which still exist, thrust upwards on the West, creating the Sierra Nevada, and on the East, creating the Carson Range; while down dropped blocks created the Tahoe Basin in between.  In the millennia since that movement, more than 190 square miles have filled with water – to an average depth of more than 1000 feet – creating what we know as Lake Tahoe.  The lake is the home of various fish, like trout and the kokanee salmon that leave the lake and run up Taylor Creek during spawning season in late September and early October.  Around the lake are fir and aspen and pine trees, including the majestic sugar pine, the world’s largest species of pine, with its huge cones.  Those forests are home to bears and bald eagles, beaver and osprey, squirrels, chipmunks, mink and many other animals.

Thus, like the Tao itself, we see the one (the original geologic uplift) giving rise to the two (the mountains to the East and West) creating the three (the mountains and the lake basin) which bring about the 10,000 things (all the flora and fauna). Continue reading →

Chapter 15 – Bodhisattva

The true masters of ancient times cultivated the art of the deep understanding of the subtle essence.  

So deep as to be unrecognizable, we can only describe their demeanor.  

Deliberate, as if crossing a frozen stream in winter.  

Alert, as if faced on all sides by enemies.  

Dignified, as if an honored guest in someone’s home.  

Dissolving, as ice when melted.  

As solid and simple as an uncarved block of wood.  

Open, like a valley. Obscured, like a muddy pool when you cannot see the bottom.  

Who has enough stillness to let muddy water settle?  

Who is able to stay at rest while generating the movement of everyday life?  

On this path of Tao, one avoids the fullness of things in order to be truly empty.  

Therefore, one is able to continually be refreshed.

The above translation of this week’s Wednesday edition of TaoTe Ching Tuesday is that used by Amy Putkonen (who initiated Tao Te Ching Tuesdays) on her web site,  http://taotechingdaily.com/15-the-true-masters/.  Like my comments on Chapter 14, I intend to share a few brief thoughts about this verse rather than writing a more formal  essay.

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It seems that we should be able to recognize the true masters among us by the way they communicate and the way they act.  Lao Tzu tells us that is not the case.  Rather, the masters are not easily recognized.  They do not seek publicity.  Their actions are based on the circumstances presented to them.

Continue reading →

Chapter 14 – Bullwinkle’s Magic Hat – and More

Looked at, but cannot be seen –
That is called the Invisible (yi).
Listened to, but cannot be heard –
That is called the Inaudible (hsi).
Grasped at, but cannot be touched –
That is called the Intangible (wei).
These three elude our inquiries
And hence blend and become One. 

Not by its rising, is there light,
Nor by its sinking, is there darkness.
Unceasing, continuous,
It cannot be defined,
And reverts again to the realm of nothingness.  

That is why it is called the Form of the Formless,
The Image of Nothingness.
That is why it is called the Elusive:
Meet it and you do not see its face;
Follow it and you do not see its back. 

[Hold on to the Tao of old in order to master things of the present
From this one may know the primeval beginning.
This is called the bond of Tao.]

 I know I am late with this week’s Tao Te Ching Tuesday.  I am going to say it counts as long as this reflection on Chapter 14 gets posted no later than a day that has a “y” in it.

The quotation above is mostly from the 1955 translation of Lin Yutang.  The last three lines, in square brackets, are not included in that translation, but are found in many others.  The wording here is taken from Wing-Tsit Chan’s translation.

This verse is particularly poetic, and, as good poetry, it is concise and susceptible to multiple interpretations, requiring many words for explication.  I am not going to attempt that.  Instead, let me share a few thoughts that came while thinking about Chapter 14.

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 As Lin Yutang indicates in his translation, the Chinese words rendered here as “Invisible,” “Inaudible” and “Intangible” may be transliterated yi, hsi and wei.  Saying them together would sound something line “yeesheway.”

Many of the earliest European translators of Chinese literature were Christian missionaries to whom the sound was quite similar to “Yahweh” or “Jeshua.”  Continue reading →

Chapter 13 – Hall of Fame

 Be apprehensive when receiving favor or disgrace.
Regard great trouble as seriously as you regard your body.
What is meant by being apprehensive when receiving favor or disgrace?
Favor is considered inferior.
Be apprehensive when you receive them and also be
apprehensive when you lose them.
This is what is meant by being apprehensive when receiving favor or disgrace.
What does it mean to regard great trouble as seriously as you regard the body?
The reason I have great trouble is that I have a body (and am attached to it),
If I have no body, what trouble could I have?
Therefore he who values the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.
He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.

 For Week 13 of Tao Te Ching Tuesdays, I have quoted the translation by Wing-Tsit Chan.

The problem with favor and disgrace is that they must be bestowed on a person by others. If I accept either, I accept someone else’s judgment of the value to be placed on my actions.  I am certain that it is better to believe that what others think of me is really none of my business. Continue reading →