Robbed of the union with Nature.
Should earth divorce its elastic firmness,
It would be crushed beneath its lifeless weight.
Were mind divorced from consciousness,
It would wither toward insanity and death.
Should the valley ever divorce abundance,
Then every form of being would perish.
These, indeed, are my greatest fears.
And if dukes and diplomats renounced
Their inner treasure to exalt superiority,
They would fall amid their own corruption.
Soft and small, the deepest roots
By which the greatest tree is nourished:
Humility within completes greatness without.
Indeed, there is nothing between them.
Thus did kings of old proclaim themselves
The small, the solitary, the impoverished:
For how can you fight against
Such an outspoken humility?
Could a carriage ever realize its design
If it were loaded down with fame and praise?
Do not presume to gleam like jade
When you live among the humble stones.
40
Tao in motion is returning.
Tao in action is accepting.
The vast array of Nature抯 forms
Evolves within the realm of body,
And the bodily arises from the Formless.
41
The sincere student hears of Tao,
Then sees if he can steadfastly follow it.
A casual student hears of Tao
And follows it sporadically-
Trusting here, and skeptical there.
When the self-centered hear of Tao
Their laughter fills the air:
How could it be Tao
If it didn抰 make them laugh?
Therefore is it said:
The one with the lantern shines the least.
The one making progress seems behind.
The easiest path seems tortuous.
Natural strength appears weak and hollow.
And the greatest virtue seems too small.
Beneficence seems to lack foundation.
The most enduring truths are mutable.
Perfect squares have no sharp corners.
The most useful tool seems inefficient.
The loveliest music is hardly heard.
The Subliminal Form cannot be touched.
The One is silent and concealed-
This indeed is its practical virtue:
Thus it freely gives its help
To all who would experience
Their original perfection.
This is a wonderful and playful meditation on seeing beyond the realm of appearances. We can approach the Tao and its teaching function, the Sage, from many different perspectives, three of which Lao Tzu mentions in this poem. The "sincere student," it must be noted, is not said to be devout, reverent, or even especially serious (to judge by the poem's overall tone). He sees whether he can "steadfastly follow it," without any mention of devotion or sacrifice to an ideal: he just puts in his effort and asks for help, thus dispersing fear and awe in his approach.
Many of us have been through a similar experience to that of the "casual student," in which old belief systems (or certain precious shards thereof) are inwardly hoarded even as we begin to perceive how insanely they obstruct growth. Thus, we experience both trust and skepticism in our learning梥ometimes simultaneously.
Finally, there are those who encounter the Tao and its teachings with ego mechanisms firmly in place, whose derisive laughter fills the air. Perhaps you have found yourself (either directly or implicitly) referred to as a 搉ew age freak?or a 搕ree-hugging lunatic? People who don抰 know what true self-development is about will inevitably make fun of those who attempt it. But as Lao Tzu would remind us, "how could it be the Tao if it didn't make them laugh?"
The list of curious epigrams making up the second half of the poem is another example of the seemingly odd deportment of one following the Cosmic Way. The lantern light, which is also mentioned in Chapter 58, is a metaphorical image for understanding that is not garish or overbearing: it faintly glows, but never shines.
This points up another natural beauty of Lao Tzu's paradoxical approach: because it reaches into the bypaths and recesses of consciousness, the Cosmic Way is actually more efficient, since it is more thorough. This is why Lao Tzu can later say, in Chapter 53, that "the Cosmic Way is straight and easy." Similarly, natural strength may seem weak to the superficial view, because it departs from displays of power and persuasion; natural virtue may seem unimpressive to a cursory perspective, because it retreats from ideas of stiff morality and egocentric shows of compassion (what is called "idiot compassion" in the writings of Chogyam Trungpa).
In fact, there always seems to be something lacking in the action, speech, and behavior of one involved in following the Sage, because what is lacking is ego! Ego, and its linear rigidities and angularities of belief, certainty, and power.
Nestled among these observations of the poet is another and related insight, that "the most enduring truths are mutable." How can truth be enduring and mutable at the same time? Because, Lao Tzu points out, that is its nature: truth is a personal matter, an organic, growing form of living consciousness that never reaches a point of fixed certainty. Anything that is hard, fixed, and sealed in certainty is already dead and inert梩his is an observation that Lao Tzu repeats throughout the book, as in, for example, Chapter 76. Fixed insight loses vision; absolute and unchanging truth is no longer true, because it is no longer alive.
This is exactly why it is such an advantage (a "practical virtue") that the Tao, and its teaching consciousness, the Sage, are "silent and concealed." Its silence gives it mutability梩he capacity to take a natural shape within each individual personality; its concealment gives it an amorphous flexibility, which again makes it the unique and private inner experience appropriate to each person who approaches it in sincere steadfastness.
42
From out of the Cosmic Consciousness
Arose the One.
Then from the One came Two.
And from Two came Three.
From the great Three came
The endless compressions of Being.
Each compressed form bears yin behind
And holds yang before it.
At the still point in the center
These complementary energies merge,
And harmony is thus realized.
Why does hatred fill the hearts of men
At the sight of poverty and solitude,
When the greatest leaders make these their name?
Perhaps increase and loss
Are not always what they seem.
Perhaps life and death
Are not truly opposed.
Here is a teaching that others before me have known:
To conceive death as against Nature-
As a cold termination of Life-
Is the distorted perspective
Of a violent inner tyranny.
A correct knowledge of death
Is itself the father of all understanding.
This is all I have to teach.
Here is one of Lao Tzu's paradoxical and oft-misunderstood verses. Of particular interest is the apparent reference to royalty's time-honored habit of making a pretence of orphan birth or poverty: how does this justify a neutral attitude toward impoverishment and loneliness?
When he writes about "poverty and solitude," Lao Tzu is making a metaphorical statement about the inner meaning, and sometimes the outer perception, of the way of diminishment, which he refers to throughout the book. Poverty, in this context, is about making ego poor, and isolating its false ideas and ideological rigidities: this creates the understanding that makes the leadership of the true self possible. It is then that the bipolar lies of ideology are revealed, and the natural principle of complementarity awakens to awareness. Life and death are not enemies梟o more so than are winter and summer, or the two sides of your brain.
In this context, it is also worth noting the appearance of the terms "yin" and "yang" in the text梩his is their only moment on Lao Tzu's poetic stage. It is worth considering that these terms may well have been added into this verse by subsequent editors or commentators, long after Lao Tzu's death. These words, yin and yang, have become so well known that they hardly need translation except in the way of clarifying the mistaken associations that have been laden onto them. You have probably encountered this: yang is light, male, strong, creative, active, solar, etc., and yin is dark, female, weak, passive, lunar, etc. The common relationship that is established between these two is of diametric opposition, or, at best, of a rather intransigent or reluctant complementarity.
This, clearly, is not Lao Tzu's meaning in using these terms (if Lao Tzu actually wrote them); nor is he establishing some sort of cosmic hierarchy in the discussion of the relationships between the Cosmic Whole, the One, the Two, and the Three. Lao Tzu has no interest in hierarchies: this entire book is dedicated to the inner demolition of hierarchical thought and belief. Ask either a mathematician or a poet whether one number is better than or superior to another, and you will be met with laughter.
In order to understand Lao Tzu, we will have to disperse some of our notions about what is meant in the relationship between one that gives birth and the one that is born, and about the "top down" ordering of numerical relationship (i.e., number one is "above" number two, and so on). The poet speaks of the Cosmic Consciousness as being beyond form and number; he adds that from this Presence came the One. What could this One be?
It seems we need to recall that this is a poem about death梟ot about death as the termination of life, but as transformation between form and non-form. In that context, it appears appropriate to consider that the One is the transformative action of Tao梚ts ability to continue the flow of life in energy-consciousness that is transformed from one state to another, and perhaps back again. In this light, we can also think of the Two as light and dark, the Cosmic energies of form and non-form. The Three must then be a mediating Presence, a set of Cosmic Principles that choreograph the dance between the light and dark energies and their manifestations in the "endless compressions of being."
These three dancers have been identified by Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog, in their book, I Ching: The Oracle of the Cosmic Way as the principles of Modesty, Equality, and Uniqueness (see Part I of that text, p. 39). These are the "great Three" that pervade the Cosmic Harmonic and each of the "endless compressions of being." Each compression is qualitatively equal to all the others, and each is unique in its autonomy. This is why the principle of Modesty is natural and necessary: Modesty is the principle discussed in Hexagram 15 of the I Ching, and here in Lao Tzu, wherever he speaks of Te (see, for example, Chapters 38 and 39). The principles are no more hierarchical than are the two ventricles of your heart (which one do you prefer?).
Thus, the Cosmic Consciousness, in its spontaneous expression as the One, the Two, and the Three, along with the numberless forms that arise from it, dances to its own pure and primordial music. Lao Tzu called that music Tao; it can also be named Love.
43
Within the realm of Nature,
The gentle horse runs free,
While more intransigent forms stay fixed.
Non-being is able to infiltrate
Where there isn抰 any room.
Thus I see that unforced action
Is the only path to success,
And that the greatest eloquence is silence.
Action free of noise and expectation:
This is Nature抯 teaching,
Which but few have truly learned.
Listen to your own true nature,
And learn.
A horse runs without inhibition through a meadow梚t doesn't plan its run, plot its course, calculate its own speed, wonder why it runs, or critically compare its gallop with that of others. It doesn't even ask whether running is allowed, or whether it even "feels like" running: there is no self-consciousness in the act. It just runs, because that is its nature, or at least an aspect of it.
This is Lao Tzu's illustration of wu-wei, the principle of unforced action. It is a hackneyed concept, and was particularly disfigured a generation ago (one might say it was "beaten to death") by the "beat generation." Wu-wei is not "non-action" in the sense of passivity, nor is it action that is carelessly or wantonly initiated, and it is certainly not a self-indulgent, "feel-good" type of energy. Wu-wei is action that proceeds from true nature, "without noise or expectation," as the poet observes; it works neither for nor against anything, and it has no fixed cause or goal. It is the energy of the total being in motion, and this is why it seems to penetrate or infiltrate the most dense and obdurate situations and circumstances. Its motion and its liquid ability to penetrate come from its lightness, for it is free of the heavy and rigid accretions of ego.
For people, this is a difficult concept to assimilate into experience, and Lao Tzu understands that: it's one reason that he wrote these 81 poems. He spends much of the Tao Te Ching encouraging us, reminding us that it is possible to learn how to let our formless inner senses and energies activate and transform life on the outer plane of being. It is possible because we already know how; we already are wu-wei. It is merely a matter of unloading the baggage of belief, expectation, display, and all the concretized trappings of ego.
This is the process of growth through diminishment described throughout the book: it is a progressive course of learning that is self-fulfilling because it is, in fact, a process of self-teaching in partnership with the teaching energy of the universe, the Sage. Indeed, there is nothing to learn except the way of diminishment: once we understand that to relieve oneself of ego is to automatically liberate the true self, then we can realize that there is nothing to attain or to cultivate. From this point of understanding, our inner horse is free to run.
44
A great name or self-knowledge:
To which of these does your heart respond?
Material goods or your natural virtues:
Which do you treasure more?
Profit or loss: which is more apt
To lead you toward destruction?
The love of excess lays Nature waste:
It spends the self and buys remorse.
Accumulation is the greatest loss.
Meet your needs and go no further,
And you will be a stranger to disgrace.
Recognize the limits of every situation,
And you'll be free from danger.
Thus can you fulfill the enduring harmony.
