Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    ----
    I follow Waley’s interpretation of
this chapter. It is Tao that plants and keeps; the various kinds of power
belong to Tao; and finally in myself I see the Tao of self, and so on.

 
55 - The sign of the mysterious
    Being full of power
is like being a baby.
Scorpions don’t sting ,
tigers don’t attack,
eagles don’t strike.
Soft bones, weak muscles ,
but a firm grasp.
Ignorant of the intercourse
of man and woman ,
yet the baby penis is erect.
True and perfect energy!
All day long screaming and crying ,
but never getting hoarse.
True and perfect harmony!
    To know harmony
is to know what’s eternal.
To know what’s eternal
is enlightenment.
Increase of life is full of portent :
the strong heart exhausts the vital breath.
The full-grown is on the edge of age.
Not the Way.
What’s not the Way soon dies.
    ----
    As a model for the Taoist, the baby is in many ways ideal:
totally unaltruistic , not interested in politics,
business, or the properties, weak, soft, and able to scream placidly for hours
without wearing itself out (its parents are another matter). The baby’s
unawareness of poisonous insects and carnivorous beasts means that such dangers
simply do not exist for it. (Again, its parents are a different case.)
    As a metaphor of the
Tao, the baby embodies the eternal beginning, the ever-springing source. “We
come, trailing clouds of glory,” Wordsworth says; and Hopkins, “ There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” No
Peter Pan- ish refusal to grow up is involved, no hunt
for the fountain of youth. What is eternal is forever young, never grows old. But we are not eternal.
    It is in this sense
that I understand how the natural, inevitable cycle of youth, growth, mature
vigor, age, and decay can be “not the Way.” The Way is more than the cycle of
any individual life. We rise, flourish, fail. The Way never fails. We are
waves. It is the sea.

 
56 - Mysteries of power
    Who knows
doesn’t talk.
Who talks
doesn’t know.
Closing the openings ,
shutting doors,
    blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
be one with the dust of the way.
So you come to the deep sameness.
    Then you can’t be controlled by love
or by rejection.
You can’t be controlled by profit
or by loss.
You can’t be controlled by praise
or by humiliation.
Then you have honor under heaven.

57 - Being simple
    Run the country by doing what’s expected.
Win the war by doing the unexpected.
Control the world by doing nothing.
How do I know that?
By this.
    The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world ,
the poorer people get.
The more experts the country has
the more of a mess it’s in.
The more ingenious the skillful are ,
the more monstrous their inventions.
The louder the call for law and order ,
the more the thieves and con men multiply.
    So a wise leader might say :
I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.
I love to be quiet, and the people themselves find justice.
I don’t do business, and the people prosper on their own .
I don’t have wants, and the people themselves are uncut wood.
    ----
    A strong political
statement of the central idea of wu wei , not doing, inaction.
    My “monstrous” is
literally “new.” New is strange, and strange is uncanny. New is bad. Lao Tzu is
deeply and firmly against changing things, particularly in the name of
progress. He would make an Iowa farmer look flighty. I don’t think he is
exactly anti-intellectual, but he considers most uses of the intellect to be
pernicious, and all plans for improving things to be disastrous. Yet he’s not a
pessimist. No pessimist would say that people are able to look after
themselves, be just, and prosper on their own. No anarchist can be a pessimist.
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