Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 38

Poem 38

The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,

yet he leaves nothing undone.

The ordinary man is always doing things,

yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,

yet something remains undone.

The just man does something,

and leaves many things to be done.

The moral man does something,

and when no one responds

he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.

When goodness is lost, there is morality.

When morality is lost, there is ritual.

Ritual is the husk of true faith,

the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Commentary

It is sad but true that a certain number of people like to exercise their power over others.  Of course, you can substitute the word "control" for "power."  I have never ceased to be perturbed and amused in turn by these "power-hungry" or "control-obsessed" people. Why does this or that person want to exert their power or control over others?  They must feel very much undermined by others, that is, their own sense of self-confidence must be very low.  They are saying to themselves, in a sense, something like the following: "I will have to exert my power here or I shall be totally undermined.  I am someone, you know!" That is the way, I believe, that they see themselves.  

The school where I teach, founded 1888: Place of Learning & Wisdom

I remember the clinical psychologist and conference speaker Dr.Tony Humphreys saying that "all control is self-control."  In like manner we can say that "all power is power-over-self."  True power, I believe, is actually self-knowledge or at least an openness to learning to grow in self-knowledge.  These two paragraphs, then, are an explication of the first stanza above which I'll repeat for emphasis here:

 The Master doesn't try to be powerful;

thus he is truly powerful.

The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;

thus he never has enough.

The author of the blog waiting on the ferry for Reggio at Messina, Sicilia

One thing no commentator can tire of repeating is that when one reads literary and spiritual texts one is in the realm of image, simile and metaphor.  Therefore, it is at a significant cost to the truth to indulge in literalism and simplistic or surface or superficial interpretation. When a seeker of the truth encounters literalism, in other words, any fundamentalist reading of a text s/he is not a little shaken by the seeming refusal to let go of the easy and superficial interpretation that assaults and insults our native intelligence and our natural and honest scepticism.  Truth is never simple.  There are no easy saccharine answers to help us swallow the pill of the harsh realities of life.  Truth is often a deeper and darker mystery which we are always striving to reach and often striving to be open to its outreach into us, too.

View of Badolato Beach

So, what is our author poet getting at above?  What lies below a literal or literalist reading of the words?  The idea that lies below the surface in the depths of meaning is something like what I attempted to describe in the last paragraph, to which I will add the following comments.  Often, the wise person observes and meditates and contemplates on what s/he observes.  Then, and only them, do they react and do things.  In other words, the wise person does not over-react; does not take things personally; does not try to give what to them appears to be the obvious, though superficial answer or reaction to this or that situation; rather they wait and then respond to the given situation with a wise equanimity. In this, they are seen to be calm and still, almost unperturbed as if they had done nothing. However, really and truly, they have done a lot by not rushing into action with the simple and superficial solution that all too often gets further and further negative reactions and over-reactions down the line.  That is what I believe the poet has in mind when he says of the Master or Mistress that he or she "does nothing." Hence, we can now intuit the meaning of the paradox that in doing nothing the Master leaves nothing undone.

Wild flowers, Calabria, Italia

Once again, our Taoist poet proceeds with similar and parallel paradoxes which we now understand cannot simply be taken at a literal, literalist or superficial level.  The reader or meditator or contemplator has to dig much deeper for the unvarnished truth.  I will leave it to the reader here to interpret the series of paradoxes with which the author continues to confront us in this poem.  I wholeheartedly agree that ritual can be nothing but a husk of faith if it has no implications for the way we behave and act in our day-to-day world. However, as a part-time counsellor and psychotherapist I value the important role of ritual in community life in terms of its helping us cope with birth, marriage and death and other big transitions we have to make in our little brittle lives.  However, on the level of paradox, beyond the literal and literalist level, I intuit the deeper truth at which out Taoist poet points me.

In conclusion, there is no better way of finishing this post than with repeating the final stanza of the above poem which lifts me to the heights of my spirit and brings me down to the depths of my soul as I type these few words:

  Therefore the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 32

Poem 32

The Tao can't be perceived.

Smaller than an electron,

it contains uncountable galaxies.

If powerful men and women

could remain centered in the Tao,

all things would be in harmony.

The world would become a paradise.

All people would be at peace,

and the law would be written in their hearts.

When you have names and forms,

know that they are provisional.

When you have institutions,

know where their functions should end.

Knowing when to stop,

you can avoid any danger.

All things end in the Tao

as rivers flow into the sea.

Commentary

Stock illustation of the universe

Ever since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens, the wondrous and wonderful exspance of the universe has been open to our ever more humbled gaze.  I never tire of reminding the reader of the poet-philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge's comment that ever since a child when his father used bring him out in the dark of the night to view the heavens overhead, his sensitivities had become "habituated to the vast."  This is the macro or large and expanding universe.  On the opposite pole, there also exists the wondrous and wonderful world of the micro-universe opened to our ken by ever more powerful microscopes.  As well as there being a macro-universe out there, there is also a micro-universe down there at cell level and further down still at atomic and subatomic levels.

Our translator, Mr S. Mitchell, is undoubtedly taking liberties with the English language, indeed indulging in wholescale anachronisms in using the terms "electron" and "galaxies" in translating a two and a half thousand year old text.  However, we will forgive him his excesses here due to his passion for his subject.  Obviously, translators do far more than transliterating a text or translating it word for word.  If such were the task of translators we could just pour our text rather carelessly into Google translate and come up with senseless garbage that isn't language at all.  We understand what Mr Mitchell means.  He is attempting to capture the sheer wonder and awe of physical reality.  I am reminded here of the Kantian concept of noumenon or thing-in-itself, which most, if not all, philosophers agree that none of us will ever get to know.  Physics, and especially quantum physics, are in a sense engaged in a sort of quasi-Kantian quest, in attempting to find out what sub-atomic life is in itself.  Of course, the mystery is further complicated by the fact that even our most powerful microscopes disturb so much what they are looking at that essentially there can never been an objective observer at all.  It is here at this epistemological level that scientism runs its ship aground and founders on the jagged rocks of its own weak axioms.  It seems mystery and wonder are at the heart of our awesome universe. In short, I am all for good science and for the exspansion of our human knowlege, but very much against a scientism that allows no further questions beyound its axioms.  Metaphysics will always rear its head, and it is all too easy to rule the asking of such questions out of court so arbitrarily.  Once again, these are questions for a more philosophical blog, and yet they do deepen our spiritual quest here in meditating on the Tao.

The Tao, our poet-author tells us, is simply beyond visual or aural observation.  It is something deeper, something that can only be experienced at a deep level or intuited from the heart, or again "proved" by a process of induction from, what the great Victorian theologian, John Henry Cardinal Newman called "a convergence of evidences."  Such convergences always involve the heart as well as the head and intuitions that go so much deeper than more superficial axioms.  The Tao is elusive and yet the whole universe is shot through with it.  It is the source and summit of all that is "created."

Our poet-philosopher, our Taoist author is more than a little pessimistic about the world's politicians who certainly have their motivations centered anywhere but in the Tao.  More likely still, those motivations will be based in nationalism and national pride and perhaps even in personal greed and petty jealousies. The goal of the disciples of the Taoist way is that the law of the Tao should be written in all hearts.  Indeed, let me strike a pluralist note here. We could simply substitute God, Allah, Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Buddha, Elohim, Jahweh and so on and get exactly the same message of peace and compassion and care for all sentient and non-sentient things we encounter in the world. Indeed, a true pluralist would be able to substitute "agnostic or atheistic humanist" into the about statement just as easily. How harmonious and peaceful our world would be then!!  Possible or impossible?  Most definitely possible, I believe, but very definitely most improbable.

There is no better way to conclude these few thoughts then with repeating the final two lines of our Taoist poem and letting them accompany us as a mantra on a short interval of meditation.

All things end in the Tao

as rivers flow into the sea.

Namaste, friends.