37

37

Over all

The Way never does anything,
and everything gets done.
If those in power could hold to the Way,
the ten thousand things
would look after themselves.
If even so they tried to act, 
I’d quiet them with the nameless,
the natural.

In the unnamed, in the unshapen,
is not wanting.
In not wanting is stillness.
In stillness all under heaven rests.

Thursday at Dragonfly Pond

 

 

This poem by Brecht reads like a Lost chapter of the Tao Te Ching

B.Brecht, Gesammelte Werke 8: Gedichte 1, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1967, S. 387-388.

 

 

This morning's reading by the pond, listening to the frogs as the lilies open.

76: Hardness

76
Hardness

Living people
are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and still.
The ten thousand things,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
Dead, they're dry and brittle.

So hardness and stiffness
go with death,
tenderness, softness,
go with life.

And the hard sword fails,
the stiff tree's felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.

---

In an age when hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength, and even the beauty of women is reduced nearly to the bone, I welcome this reminder that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role models, and that to be alive is to be vulnerable.

7

Dim brightness

Heaven will last,
earth will endure.
How can they last so long?
They don’t exist for themselves
and so can go on and on.

So wise souls
leaving self behind
move forward,
and setting self aside
stay centered.
Why let the self go?
To keep what the soul needs.

8

Easy by nature

True goodness
is like water.
Water's good
for everything,
It doesn't compete.

It goes right
to the low loathsome places,
and so finds the way.

For a house,
the good thing is level ground.
In thinking,
depth is good.
The good of giving is magnanimity;
of speaking, honesty;
of government, order.
The good of work is skill,
and of action, timing.

No competition,
so no blame

13

Shameless

To be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.

What does that mean,
to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favor debases:
We fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.

What does that mean,
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because I'm a body;
If I weren't a body,
how could I suffer?

So people who set their bodily good
before the public good
could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.

65

One power

Once upon a time
those who ruled according to the Way
didn't use it to make people knowing
but to keep them unknowing.

People get hard to manage
when they know too much.
Whoever rules by intellect
is a curse upon the land.
Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it.
To understand these things
is to have a pattern and a model,
and to understand the pattern and the model
is mysterious power.

Mysterious power
goes deep.
It reaches far.
It follows things back,
clear back to the great oneness

48

Trust and power

The wise have no mind of their own,
finding it in the minds
of ordinary people.

They're good to good people
and they're good to bad people.
Power is goodness.
They trust people of good faith
and thy trust people of bad faith.
Power is trust.

They mingle their life with the world,
they mix their mind up with the world.
Ordinary people look after them.
Wise souls are children.

60

Staying put

Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.

If you keep control by following the Way,
troubled spirits won't act up.
They won't lose their immaterial strength,
but they won't harm people with it,
nor will wise souls come to harm.
And so, neither harming the other,
these powers will come together in unity.

54

Some rules

Well planed is not uprooted,
well kept is not lost.
The offerings of the generations
to the ancestors will not cease.

To follow the Way yourself is real power.
To follow it in the family is abundant power.
To follow it in the community is steady power.
To follow it in the whole country is lasting power.
To follow it in the world is universal power.

So in myself I see what self is,
in my household I see what family is,
in my town I see what community is,
in my nation I see what a country is,
in the world I see what is under heaven.

How do I know the world is so?
By this.

69

Using mystery

The expert in warfare says:

Rather than dare make the attack

I’d take the attack;

rather than dare advance an inch

I’d retreat a foot.

It’s called marching without marching,

rolling up your sleeves without flexing  your muscles,

being armed without weapons,

giving the attacker no opponent.

Nothing’s worse than attacking what yields.

To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.

So, when matched armies meet,

the one who comes to grief
is the true victor.

---

A piece of sound tactical advice (practiced by the martial arts, such as Aikido, and by underground resistance and guerrilla forces), which leads to a profound moral warning. The prize thrown away by the aggressor is compassion. The yielder, the griever, the mourner, keeps that prize. The game is loser take all.

42

Children of the Way

The Way bears one.
The one bears two.
The two bear three.
The three bear the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things
carry the yin on their shoulders
and hold in their arms the yang,
whose interplay of energy
makes harmony.

People despise
orphans, widows, outcasts.
Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves.
Whatever you lose, you’ve won.
Whatever you win, you’ve lost.

What others teach, I say too:
violence and aggression
destroy themselves.
My teaching rests on that.

71

The Sick Mind

To know without knowing is best.

Not knowing without knowing it is sick.

To be sick of sickness

is the only cure.

The wise aren’t sick.

They’re sick of sickness,

so they’re well.

---

UKLG: What you know without knowing you know it is the right king of knowledge. Any other kind (conviction, theory, dogmatic belief, opinion) isn’t the right kind, and if you don’t know that, you’ll lose the Way. This chapter is an example of exactly what Lao Tzu was talking about in the last one -- obscure clarity, well-concealed jade.

6

What is complete

The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.

The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.

32

Sacred power

The Way goes on forever nameless.
Uncut wood, nothing important,
yet nobody under heaven
dare try to carve it.
If rulers and leaders could use it,
the ten thousand things
would gather in homage,
heaven and earth would drop sweet dew,
and people, without being worded,
would be fair to one another.

To order, to govern,
is to begin naming;
when names proliferate
it's time to stop.
If you know when to stop
you're in no danger.

The Way in the world
is as a stream to a valley,
a river to the sea.

Wise Souls

So wise souls hold to the one,
and test all things against it.

Not showing themselves,
they shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
they're self-evident.
Not praising there,
they're accomplished.
Not competing,
they have in all world no competitor.

16: Returning to the root

Returning to the root

Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
sink homeward,
returning to the root.

The return to the root
is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be.
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Without it, ruin, disorder.

To know what endures
is to be openhearted,
magnanimous,
regal,
blessed,
following the Tao,
the way that endures forever.
The body comes to its ending,
but there is nothing to fear.

41 - On and Off

On and Off

Thoughtful people hear about the Way
and try hard to follow it.
Ordinary people hear about the Way
and wander onto it and off it.
Thoughtless people hear about the Way
and make jokes about it.
It wouldn't be the Way
if there weren't jokes about it.

So they say:
The Way's brightness looks like darkness;
advancing on the Way feels like retreating;
the plain Way seems hard going.
The height of power seems a valley;
the amplest power seems not enough;
the firmest power seems feeble.
Perfect whiteness looks dirty.
The pure and simple looks chaotic.

The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is never finished.
The great tone is barely heard.
The great thought can't be thought.

The Way is hidden
in it's namelessness.
But only the Way
begins, sustains, fulfills.

60

Staying put

Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.

If you keep control by following the Way,
troubled spirits won't act up.
They won't lose their immaterial strength,
but they won't harm people with it,
nor will wise souls come to harm.
And so, neither harming the other,
these powers will come together in unity.

24

Proportion

You can't keep standing on tiptoe
or walk in leaps and bounds.
You can't shine by showing off
or get ahead by pushing.
Self-satisfied people do no good,
self-promoters never grow up.

Such stuff is to the Tao
as garbage is to food
or a tumor to the body,
hateful.
The follower of the Way
avoids it.