It readily yields the elements
That make the harvest possible.
Reflecting nurturance is called
Continual nourishment of the harvest.
Continual nourishment arises from Modesty,
Which is the most bountiful harvest of all.
Modesty in abundance is indomitable-
It is indomitable, so who could know
The limits of its capacity?
And if its limits cannot be known,
Couldn抰 it nurture an entire nation?
Couldn抰 it become the natural Mother
Of its own enduring consciousness?
From a firm inner foundation,
The natural structure flourishes.
When the Cosmic insight guides,
Life is endlessly allowed to endure,
Through the fullness of Form
And its vibrant potential.
Here is Lao Tzu's guide to those involved in what are today called "the helping professions." If you are a therapist, a counselor, a doctor, a financial advisor, or involved in any work that offers help to others in the form of information and supportive services for the furtherance of physical, psychological, or material well-being, then you may have something to learn from this poem.
Lao Tzu's first point is crucial: helping others is not about sacrificing yourself. To "give of yourself" in the sense of sacrifice is the self-indulgent vanity of the hero, and Lao Tzu would like us to have none of this nonsense, for that is of no help to anyone.
Helping in the Cosmic Way is more about "reflecting nurturance"梩hat is, allowing oneself to be a "camera obscura of help," through which the true source of help reflects itself and is made effective. This true source of help comes from nature and the universe in their simple and often unseen energy-flows.
In the I Ching, such supportive currents of nature were known as 揾elpers.?Curiously, and as quaint as it may sound to the modern ear, the term "helpers" has cognate variants in contemporary English, even within the icily objective field of scientific medicine. "Helper T Cells" are essential cellular elements of the body's immune system: when they are not present in the bloodstream, or are killed by a viral attack such as that which causes HIV/AIDS, the results can be disastrous for the organism. In the treatment of cancer, there is a type of therapy known as "adjuvant therapy." The word "adjuvant" is Latin for "helping." Other examples could be given, but the point is that the idea of helping presences, even from within ourselves, is not a strange or esoteric notion. Lao Tzu would like us to keep this in mind wherever we propose to help others, for when we can successfully include these helpers of the Cosmic Consciousness in our daily lives and our professional endeavors, we clear the way for the "continual nourishment of the harvest," which can only come (for humans) in the presence of Te, or Modesty. Modesty, in turn, is present wherever we deny ego, with its intrusive and clumsy interference, any influence in the helping process,. Modesty enables transformation: it can arouse the helpers and thus be "indomitable" because it is pure consciousness, which has the quantum ability to reach past time and space, into the subatomic realm where true healing occurs.
60
In leading others, use care and restraint,
As if you were frying a small fish.
Let the Tao be your guide,
And the demons of power will return
To their original nature.
For their power is a delusion-
An empty, noisy abstraction.
All power is harmless
To one whose true self leads.
Such a leader can protect the people,
For he is protected by the Sage,
And the Sage is protected by the Tao.
When a follower of Modesty leads,
Then all are made safe-
The leader, the people, the nation-
These unite with the Sage
In a continual return
To a deeper understanding.
Lao Tzu, with his characteristic gentle humor, uses a seemingly mundane image to make a point about a matter of immense substance to both his own time and ours. Cooking a fish may seem mundane indeed compared to governing a nation, but it wasn't for a common person living in Lao Tzu's time in ancient China. You had to work to catch a fish and prepare the materials necessary for cooking it, and you weren't likely to get a second chance at dinner if you did it wrong. Aside from the work of catching the fish, a fire had to be built and tended until it was a bed of hot coals appropriate for cooking. The ting, or cooking pot used in those days, had to be properly set over the heat for optimal results, and attention had to be directed toward the entire process. This might have involved shaking the ting regularly, so that the fish cooked itself, as it were, in its own fat, and then recognizing the visual signs of "done-ness."
This kind of care and attention is what Lao Tzu would like leaders among people to apply to their governmental and administrative functions, for it is this non-intrusive and modest attention that allows the Tao and its helpers to complete the work of both cooking (providing outer nourishment) and leadership (providing inner nourishment). Even where the details vary (according to the kind of fish you are cooking, or the population you are leading), there is a common element to the experience: removing power and its trappings from the relationship, and allowing it to be transformed from a demonic display of force and manipulation, into a natural harmony between the leader and the led. At all events, it must be remembered that the nourishment and protection come not from ourselves, but from the hidden consciousness that is aroused by Modesty (Te).
There is a palpable lesson in this poem for modern leaders梕specially those who contemplate the invasion of foreign lands with the most spurious and concocted justification. To thus attack and destroy the land and homes of others, when there exist far more efficient means of resolving a conflict, is to "burn the fish" and rob the people of the nourishment they most need梩heir own individual, inner independence.
61
How does a great nation know its neighbors?
As a river modestly accepts its feeding streams;
As a woman blissfully receives the man she loves.
The way of Nature is attraction:
Pure strength rests below,
And thus absorbs what lies above.
Genuine love receives its complement;
The greatest nation yields.
Small and great are mutually fulfilling:
Set them into opposition,
And you have made your first and final error.
Therefore, let your nation follow Nature抯 way:
If it is big, let its actions be small.
If it is small, it is already complete,
So it need not strive for greatness.
In the service of the Cosmic Teacher,
Borders and boundaries, fences and flags
Have no meaning.
In this there is benefit for all.
Thus among both hearts and nations:
If you would discover the great,
You must look first below.
All sense of territory is the mark of ego, and is repugnant to the cosmic order. Thus the poet declares that "borders and boundaries, fences and flags" are meaningless to one who follows the Sage: this applies to both "hearts and nations"梚ndividuals and entire civilizations.
Here, a personal meditation image may help to illustrate Lao Tzu's point. It is a meditation that I have sometimes wished I could offer to members of the armed forces. It is very simple: you close your eyes and take a space flight, journeying out to an orbiting distance of the earth. Then, as many astronauts have done梠ften in a transformational experience, as was the case with Edgar Mitchell梱ou look back onto the earth and see both what is there, and what is not. Water and clouds, light and shadow, earthen colors of varying hues, from tawny mountain to verdant plain, all appear to the eye. But no borders, walls, fortresses, or other emblems of territory are seen from this distance. In such a setting, the Cosmos is seen to lack a sense of power, and the superficial paradigm of the universe as a mechanical system is annihilated and transformed: things in motion appear to rest in stillness, while the Whole, in this suspension, seems to dance with small, unceasing movement. But perhaps the most significant part of the meditation is the return to earth, where the perspective thus received is brought back into contact with a chair, a room, and light through a window. It is here, rather than in the "space flight" that the transformation is revealed; it is back on earth where the discovery occurs that, as Lao Tzu says, "pure strength rests below, and absorbs what lies above."
62
Tao is the treasure of all being.
Those who accord with it
Are embraced by it.
And for those who wander,
Its arms remain open.
Eloquence may fetch its price,
Heroic deeds may garner glory,
But only at the brutal cost
Of a person抯 deepest self.
Is fame worth such a sacrifice?
What if you were called to command
At the coronation of a king-
If the three imperial generals
Marched in state before you,
Leading out majestic stallions,
To confer on you the jade emblem
Of the highest office?
Could such opulence ever equal
The inner gift of simply sitting
Where the Tao resides?
Does this perhaps explain the truth
Of what the ancients have told me?
That when the Tao is your treasure,
You will always receive what is truly yours,
That every error can be corrected,
And that the treasure of Nature
Is already within you.
This verse contains a life-affirming message: there is no such thing as a point of no return, at or beyond which the treasure of Tao is forever lost. However far ego may have made you wander, into whatever dark dead end it might have brought you, return to the treasure is always possible, as long as you have the inner ability to make a choice. Thus, "every error can be corrected," for it is in that simple moment of decision and commitment that the open embrace of the Cosmos is rediscovered.
63
Act without effort,
Work but don抰 grind,
Savor the tasteless,
See greatness in smallness,
And the multitude in the few.
Answer evil with the firmest Modesty,
Resolve difficulty at the very beginning-
Before it becomes difficult.
For enduring greatness is achieved
In attending to incipient detail.
Nature transforms complexity:
Its greatness depends
On its infinitesimal precision.
Just so, the Cosmic Sage:
It never strives toward greatness,
It simply accomplishes it.
It is not bound by promises,
Nor moved by faith.
In the easy is the difficult surpassed.
The Sage treats the illness
Before the symptoms arise.
Thus is struggle prevented,
And heroes made extinct.
64
Affairs in balance are easily arranged.
Trouble that抯 but faintly manifest
Is resolved through preparation.
Fragile matter is quickly broken;
Small force is easily scattered.
Manage trouble before others see it-
That is, before it becomes troublesome.
The problem that you can barely get your arms around
Grew like a tree from the tenderest sprout.
A tower of trouble rises from a mere hole in the ground.
That march of agony, a thousand miles long,
Began where your feet touch the Earth.
Live by force and you will be destroyed by it.
Take things in your grasp, and they will slip away.
The sage relies on unforced action,
And this upholds the dignity of his effort.
He doesn抰 clutch at success,
Therefore, he never fails.
Others seem to collapse in failure
At the very threshold of success;
Yet he is humble and cautious
Both at the end and the beginning:
Thus are his affairs brought safely to completion.
Therefore, the sage monitors desire,
Retreats from attachment,
And abandons the accumulation of learning.
Through dropping his excess,
He returns to his essence.
And then, insensibly and effortlessly,
He helps others to do the same.
He does it without a breath of bluster,
For he never presumes upon
The living truth of Nature.
This verse is notable for containing what is perhaps the most famous, and therefore the most misinterpreted, expression from the Tao Te Ching (and perhaps from all of Chinese philosophy), which is usually translated as:
The journey of a thousand miles
Begins with a single step.
As I worked with this couplet and the other metaphors from that second stanza, the question arose: "does Lao Tzu really mean to glorify the tree and the tower, and to have us pursue the 搕housand mile journey It seems, from the context of the verse itself and the rest of the Tao Te Ching, that the answer to this question would be, in fact, "no." If trouble is best managed "before it becomes troublesome," then we are clearly being asked to perceive the grown tree, the tower, and the long journey, as the metaphorical consequences of "unmanaged trouble." This tilt in perspective gives the poem a pragmatic message, which is consistent with Lao Tzu's insight from other verses, particularly with regard to the metaphor of the long journey.
In other places, Lao Tzu reminds us that we can know the whole world without leaving our doorway, and that the outer wanderer too easily gets trapped in a net of attachment. Thus, Lao Tzu would consider the "long journey" to be the consequence of having failed to identify and retreat from the many short and early steps of ego. This is why the follower of Tao "monitors desire [and] retreats from attachment": so that his self-awareness prevents the necessity of taking any "long journeys"梡ointless and dangerous odysseys of seeking and yearning. The farther we wander, the more do we become attached to the saga, until we are trapped in a net of seeking. This leads to increasing misdirection and suffering, so that the way of return is made ever more difficult, as Odysseus himself discovers in Homer's epic poem.
There is another crucial point being made in this verse, which is particularly significant to our time and culture, and it is about time and completion. Lao Tzu warns us of the danger of "collapse in failure" at the very brink of success, and he stresses the importance of humility and caution, especially near the end of a project or undertaking. For this is where the ego's urge for completion is most likely to become careless or obsessive.
