In this poetical meditation on language and its relation to the Cosmic Reality, Lao Tzu is suggesting another movement of understanding, which has to do with facing the apparent contradictions and logical impossibilities that he is presenting. Lao Tzu invites us into the cycle of logical tail-chasing (words can't properly describe Tao, but let's talk about it anyway), because he wants us to feel beyond the boundaries of reason. He would like us to step into that "living, teeming darkness," for this is the space in which we can truly feel the Tao, through our every bodily cell. The words that we use can point us toward this "shimmering darkness" of understanding, especially when we ask the teaching aspect of the Cosmic Consciousness, which Lao Tzu calls the Sage, to help us. But the words are not themselves the immanence; thus there is no such thing as "holy writ."
2
Ego is the mud thrown into Nature抯 water:
It lusts for beauty and reviles ugliness.
It projects a stain that was never there.
It grasps after the Good,
And thus affirms Evil.
Yet in the eye of the universe,
The formed and the formless
Create and support each other.
The light and the dark dance and mingle
Like the breath of lovers.
Erase the division: act but don抰 strive.
Teach but do not peddle pedantry.
The Sage guides without speaking,
Works through us in innocence,
Free of demand or expectation.
Thus is its work made great-
Enduring.
In this poem, Lao Tzu asks us to step out of the realms of division and opposition, by examining ourselves through the projections that we may have accepted from the forces of collective acculturation. Here the poet asks a question that will appear several more times in different metaphorical guises throughout the Tao Te Ching: "is it necessary to live on a treadmill of fortune, sliding from one polar opposite to another, and struggling to be on the right side at the right time?" Is this how the Cosmos truly works?
Then, as he always does in his poems, Lao Tzu offers us an alternative inner model: one of complementarity, represented in the images of dance and love. Lao Tzu discards the notion of some inherent cosmological conflict of polar opposites and presents instead a picture of Nature as the commingling and transformation of complementary principles, each of which honors its natural complement while retaining its individuality. There is no need to attach to beauty and reject ugliness, to elevate virtue and repress evil, for these divisions do not adhere to the Cosmic Whole.
Lao Tzu saw beauty and truth as so deeply connected as to be identical梒omplementary principles in mutual embrace. Two thousand years later, the great English poet John Keats felt the same reality, and sang of it in another timeless verse.
3
If you create the great, and elevate it,
You will lose your self.
Become attached to your belongings
And you open the inner door to thieves.
Let the Sage guide you:
Clear out your inner space,
And your own truth will arise.
Wear down attachment and division
And you strengthen your will.
Be led to shed the crust of knowledge;
Cut through the cycle of want
And reject all that you have been told to know.
Follow the way of inner action:
In the course of disburdenment,
There is healing.
When you clutch something, you have already lost it. A thief can "read" attachment: he doesn't have to see what it is you are carrying to know it is valuable, because he can sense your anxiety about keeping it in your grasp. The irony that Lao Tzu is pointing out here is that attachment actually creates and perpetuates separation, because it attempts to override the natural synergy of attraction that exists between us and what is truly ours. Of course, Lao Tzu is not an ascetic or a minimalist: the disburdenment that he describes in the final stanza is the very inner act that brings us the gifts and possessions that truly belong to us, without the need for forced protection or urgent attachment. The inner cleansing he proposes to us is the process that prepares the ground for natural possession. This theme is also explored in the I Ching, in Hexagram 14, Possession in Great Measure.
4
Empty, like a well, is the Cosmic Whole:
Empty, and forever inexhaustible.
Endless as the limitless
Forms of creation, drawn through Time-
Before its birth, beyond its reach-
Softening the jagged edges,
Untangling complexity,
Dimming the garishness of excess
With the soil of its simplicity.
So dark, so empty-who could have made it?
It is the child of nothing,
The parent of us all.
Here is the first of many watery metaphorical expressions found throughout the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu likens the Tao to a well梔ark, empty, yet containing the generational spark and the nourishment of all being. Water, even when it appears still to our eyes, is always in motion梬earing down the sharp and jagged, dissolving what is obdurate, softening glare梞oving freely through its permutations between earth and sky, light and dark. Following the guideline that he established in Chapter 1, Lao Tzu describes the Cosmic Whole through what it does. But as for what it is, only stepping beyond the limits of reason can point the way: it is the emptiness that contains everything. It flows and it freezes; it evaporates and condenses; it merges into every element and state of being. It is the quantum darkness from which light freely flows梩ry to move it, and it is still; try to stop it, and it will always be moving.
5
Equality is the Cosmic Way:
Good and evil are born of fantasy.
The Sage is neither partisan nor punishing:
No one is special, no one excluded.
Consciousness breathes,
Expands and contracts.
It never varies, and each moment is unique.
Work with this and understand;
Talk about it, and you lose your center.
6
The valley is ever open and alive;
It is the mother of consciousness.
In night-flower darkness
The bounty of Nature is concealed
Until, looking within, we see
The mystery extinguished, the curtain drawn
From the heart of the Mother of the Cosmos.
7
Consciousness is eternal-but why?
Because time does not adhere to its nature.
Time and desire, abstraction and attachment
Cannot touch it.
It transforms, completes, and teaches
All of its aspects,
Within life and beyond death.
The Sage remains behind
And thus it stays ahead.
The student drops his ego
And thus his true self arises.
Separation and division of being are overcome,
Each need is fulfilled
As each excess is abandoned.
8
Like water is the Cosmic Consciousness:
It nourishes the depths of everything that lives.
It flows, it settles, it abides in low places.
Keep your home close to the earth,
Keep your thoughts direct and simple,
Keep judgment fair, and fluid in conflict,
Keep your government free of power,
And your personal affairs in harmony
With the life of Nature.
Drop the struggle, silence the demons,
And your natural self will be free.
Following Tao is not about adopting an attitude of passivity, but nurturing inner strength instead. The superficial or populist interpretation of the so-called Taoist philosophy often invokes the phrase "go with the flow," in the sense of passive acceptance of injustice or encroachment. But with the phrase, "silence the demons," Lao Tzu reminds us that we are not meant to "go with the flow," for that is the stuff of inner weakness. He would encourage us to act with inner determination in this respect: to silence demons, both our own and those of others, through the fluid, invisible work of inner action. Water does its work with persistent strength but no effort; and thus it is effective. Even where it appears turbid, it nourishes, settles, flows, and acts. The same is true of the person in harmony with Cosmic Principles: he can speak simply and briefly, yet make his point clear; he can live "close to the earth" in wonderful abundance; he can remain poised amid conflict, but without bowing to power or resorting to manipulation. Water doesn't try to carve canyons or wear down mountains; it just does it. Its action occurs at an invisible and quantum plane of being. This is how transformation happens, and it is how it can happen through us as well: when we "nourish our depths" and "silence our demons," the natural self that arises is the same kind of quantum actor as the water that shapes and sustains ourselves and our planet. It has the unique ability to transform conflict into understanding, and bring us fulfillment and completion in every aspect of our lives. This is because its unforced action engages the helping presences of the Tao梩he force of Nature that make things happen, and endure. These presences are what the I Ching calls "Helpers."
9
Overstuff your life with thought,
And it will stiffen and suffer.
Keep an eye out for trouble,
And you invite it in.
Make wealth your sole objective
And your heart will grow rigid as ice.
Let fame define you
And you become a stranger to yourself.
Stop the treadmill and renounce expectation:
This is entering the Cosmic rhythm.
We have a phrase in vernacular English for what Lao Tzu is describing here: it is called "paralysis by analysis." Nothing so stiffens feeling, foreshortens influence, or limits understanding, as intellectual reductionism. What follows from this saturation of thought is a kind of hypervigilance and obsessive doubt known in both medical and popular pathology as paranoia. We run the same destructive course when we allow institutional or dogmatic criteria of outer success to define our life's destiny. The correction to all of this is direct and immediately available: we can step off the treadmill and renounce the expectations that have been burned into us by a superficial and self-referential culture.
Guilt and doubt are the engines that drive paranoia, this constant, fearful referencing of experience and phenomena to the bizarre self-interest of a solipsistic world-view. The foundation of this world-view is unstable because it is simply an inaccurate, mistaken vision of the Cosmos and its operations; therefore, it needs to be propped and reinforced by manipulation and the pursuit of power. We push others around and manipulate Nature not because we are designed that way, but because we have been so stuffed with fear that we can no longer feel ourselves.
10
Nourish every sense,
Embrace your undivided nature.
Let your chi course fresh and fluid
With the iridescence of a newborn body.
Cleanse guilt and shame-the mud of culture-
From all your being,
And feel your natural form.
Let yourself be led by the fearless love
Of a caring Cosmos.
Close the gates of Heaven,
Abandon manipulation,
Open yourself to the perfect nature
That has always been there.
Release the Sage within you
And let your clarity extend
To every corner of the universe.
Then may your words and actions
Nourish, develop, and sustain
Others as well as yourself.
When you realize that there is nothing to claim,
Nothing to assert,
Nothing to control,
Nothing to dominate;
This is called the actualization of Modesty.
11
Thirty spokes unite around a single hub:
Thus a wheel is made.
Yet it is the formless core
That makes the wagon roll.
Clay is formed and baked:
Thus a cup is made.
Yet it is the invisible interior
From which we drink.
Framed walls and brick are joined
To make a house.
Yet it is the open space within
That makes it livable,
That gives doors and windows
Their unique functions.
Therefore, make being your element,
But non-being, your life.
What you see is barely the beginning of what is really there. In a culture such as ours, with its unceasing obsession with the exploitation of the marketplace and the accumulation of object-attachments, there is an urgent practicality to this message. If your inner house is so cluttered with form and outer convenience that there is no more space to support that form, then the invisible realm is ignored, and the inner space of freedom and autonomy is repressed, buried amid accumulation.
Some may recognize this as a principle of the now popular Chinese environmental art known as Feng i. Lao Tzu would probably remind us that "good Feng i" begins from within one's own being, and that this in turn depends on our own continuing inner sensation of that deep space from which our outer life is shaped. If the space within is muddled amid the repressive influence of acculturation and attachment, then our surroundings will appear concomitantly muddled, and what others perceive and experience of our personality will be similarly blurred and superficial. But if we honor the "open space within," then we will be led to clarity, and life can then become an effortless dance of Te. This, indeed, is the kind of Feng i that Lao Tzu would have us become familiar with, before we turn to the arrangement of the forms and objects of our environmental life.
12
Rampant color impairs vision;
A profusion of sound obstructs the ear;
Gluttonous tastes poison the mouth;
Attachment to belief warps the self;
Predatory impulse reviles the treasure.
The Sage uses the outer to point to the inner;
By exposing the image, it shows us ourselves.
Self-display corrupts your ability to see within; making noise about yourself closes off your inner ear; the Tao itself cannot be tasted when one is obsessed with outer sensation. Lao Tzu never asks us to abandon the delights available to our outer senses; he simply asks us to place them in a more holistic context, one that allows equality to our inner senses. Indeed, once these inner senses are activated and trusted, they are discovered to deepen and enrich the experience of the outer senses. The same is true of belief and action: when we can consistently feel and sense beyond the level of the superficial, then our understanding becomes deeper and wider, and our action becomes naturally measured and penetrating. When the cursory images of attachment and gross sensation are exposed for what they are梐 vain and ephemeral veneer of experience梩hen the true self, in all its depth and strength, arises without display, without vanity, without effort.
