THE TAO OF BEING Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted f(jr a New Age
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THE TAO
OF BEING
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
Adapted f(jr a New Age
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THE TAO
OF BEING
by the same author
'The Tao of Relationships"
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
Adapted f(jr a New Age
Ray Grigg
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Shaftesbury, Dorset • Rockport • Massachusetts • Brisbane • Queensland
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The Tao of Being
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Ray Grigg has two degrees from the University of British
Columbia and has taught English literary history, fine arts,
cultural history and world religions in British Columbia for
over 20 years. He has travelled extensively and is a Taoist
scholar and author of The Tao of Relationships. He is mar
ried and lives on Quandra Island, British Columbia.
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To my mother andfather
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© Element Books Limited, 1997
The Tao of Being
Copyright © 1989 Humanics Limited
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
First published by Humanics New Age 1989
This edition published in Great Britain in 1997 by
Element Books Limited
Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 8BP
All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by an7 means, electronic or mechanical,
without prior permission in writing from the Publisher.
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Cover design by Max Fairbrother
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings s Lynn
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication
data available
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication
data available
ISBN 1-85230-948-2
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The Titles of the Chapters
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Introduction
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Some Chinese Words and Concepts
1. First Knowing 1
2. Avoiding Extremes 3
xxix
3. Inner Peace and Outer Harmony
4. Ever Present 7 ;
5. Deep Think 9 !
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6. Woman Wisdom 11
7. Undoing Answers i 13
8. The Downward Course
9. Abide Peacefully | 17
15
10. Deepest Virtue 19
11. Using What Is Not 21
12. Inner Depth 23
13. Uncertainty 25 i
14. With Full Mind Empty 27
15. Be The Hidden Source 29
16. The Unchanging In The Changing
17. Nothing Is Done 33
18. Primal Virtue
35
19. Between The Opposites 37
20. The Pretense Of Certainty 39
21. Call It The Tho 41
22. Soften Tb Know 43
23. Inner Quiet 45
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24. Fhlling With Perfect Balance
25. Everything’s Way 49
26. Empty And Alert 51
27. Going Unnoticed 53
47
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28. The Easy Downward Course
29. The Heart Of Doing 57
30. Understanding By Following
59
31. Sharp Mind 61
32. Think Downward i 63
33. When Thinking, Think For Everything
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34. Great Doing 67
35. Keep Nothing And Everything
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36. An Auspicious Beginning
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59. Whole Caring, Wiaic Allowing 117
60. Deep In Fullness aid Emptiness
119
61. Empty Into Undestanding 121
62. Boundless ConfiiEnent 123
63. The Simple Is Na.Easy 125
64. Before Thinking 127
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65. Breathing Easy .29
66. Above The Humred Rivers 131
67. Three Treasures 133
68. The Seeking In Eeryone 135
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37. Each Thing’s Way 73
38. Before Differences 75
39. The Humility Of Wonder 77
40. Selflessly Thinking The World
79
41. Entering The Fool’s Laughter
81
69. A Mystery Within, a Mystery 137
70. With Mind Wide Ipen 139
71. Thinking Crocket 141
72. With Thinking 'Jiuone 143
73. By Doing Nothing 145
74. The Fool Unknowingly Ibachcs The Sage
75. Just One Quesuni 149
76. The Beginning Winder 151
42. Everything’s Thinking 83
43. Soft Thinking...Soft Doing 85
44. Ease And Play 87
45. Knower And Known and Unknown
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89
46. Their Natural Way 91
47. The Beginning Within 93
48. Empty Of Questions
49. The Sage 97
50. Death Tbaches
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78. Closest lb All Tonights
79. Best Masters IT
80. Primal Simplicity 159
95
81. Nothing Special
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51. First Belonging 101
52. Easy Harmony 103
53. The Simple Source 105
54. Be In The World 107
55. The Constancy In Thinking 109
56. Soften Tb The Way Of Things 111
57. Great Learning 113
58. Simple Greatness 115
77. Filling The Empr And Emptying The Full
About the Artist
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Acknowledgments
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Introduction
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I offer particular gratitude to the following authors whose published
works I have used as reference sources: Gia-Fu Feng and Jane
English (Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters),
R.L. Wing (The Tao of Power), Arthur Waley (The Way'and Its
Power), Lin Yutang (The Wisdom of Laotze), Dr. John C.H. Wu
(Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching), Alan Watts with the collaboration of Al
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THE TAO OF BEING: A Think and Do Workbook is
for everyone who knows they don’t know. It is a work
book that cannot be completed. Unlike the Think and
Do of primary school years, this book has questions that
cannot be answered and answers that cannot be given.
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Chung-liang Huang (Tao: The Watercourse Way), Thomas Merton
(The ^ay of Chuang Tzu), Holmes Welch (Taoism: The Parting of
the Way), Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh). 1
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We must each correct it ourselves.
It was inspired by Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, written in
China about.the Sixth Century B.C. Several translations
have been used to provide a large range of interpretation!
from which to respond with a maximum of creative
freedom. The number of chapters, eighty-one, is th<
same as the Tao Te Ching to maintain a parallel. THE
TAO OF BEING: A Think and Do Workbook, how
ever, is not a translation of the lao Ic Ching but a
application of its spirit to thinking and doing.
This workbook is offered with a humility that is ev<
mindful of the masterfulness of Lao Tzu. The original
Tao Te Ching, as all translations attest, is an incredib!
rich and subtle creation that keeps escaping a definitir.
interpretation. The mark of a masterpiece is its essential
quality of expansion; for twenty-five hundred years ti
Tao Te Ching has continued to manifest itself widely m
the arts, in philosophy, and as a guide in the comm<
challenge of everyday living. It continues to elude t...
confinement of definitive word and understanding.
The enigmatic nature ’of the Tao Te Ching is d :
fundamentally to Lao Tzu’s realization that we make
sense of living by entering it directly, not by trying to
understand it as detached observers. We cannot escape
ourselves. To use a Zen metaphor, the sword cannot cut
itself. Neither can we make sense of living through a
haze of intellectual constructs; living is larger and more
elusive than the systems we invent to explain it. So we
never quite understand ourselves and the universe in
which we live. The Tao is the freedom that comes with
not-understanding.
The task of this workbook is to move into this free
dom by untangling the restraints that prevent the Taoist
thinking and doing from happening. We are, after all,
that freedom. The Tao cannot be understood because we
arc it. This same principle later becomes an essential part
of Zen.
The historical and evolutionary connection between
Taoism and Zen is close and important. Although the
style of this workbook is primarily Taoist, the two
“ways” can be used interchangeably just as they were in
Ch’an, Zen’s early form in China.
Although Zen is presently identified with Japan and
Buddhism, its early existence in China as Ch’an adopted
three of the essential ingredients of Taoism: the intuitive,
nonverbal and antidogmatic qualities of Taoism; the Tao
ists’s deep regard for nature as a teacher and as the
primary process by which things can be understood; the
principle of non-doing (wu-wei) or doing without doing
(wei-wu-wei) of which Chuang Tzu writes in laoism.
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When Ch’an Buddhism came to Japan in the late
twelfth century, it was well mixed with essential Taoist
principles. To become Zen in Japan, Ch’an blended with
the native Shinto tradition, acquiring a sharpened sense
of nature from Shinto’s spirit in things (kami) and an
encouragement for direct sensory contact with nature.
Shinto also reinforced in Zen Lao Tzu’s original admoni
tion that our way of thinking and doing not be confined
by conceptualizations and words.
We are not to understand thinking and doing, as the
form of spoken and written language suggests we
should, as a one-thing-at-a-time string of awarenesses
but as a multi-dimensional experience that is not writing
about apples but walking in an orchard and eating them.
Anyone who thoughtfully uses language should real
ize that words are not a replication of experience but a
representation. Language does not replicate experience
although it may replicate what is thought to have been
experience, which is quite another thing. Words always
create vicariousness. The task in this workbook is to
empty of words rather than to fill with them, to move
out of a clarity of apparent certainty into a profound
uncertainty and receptivity. We approach the Tao by
untying the concepts imposed by language, by finding
the direction of direct experience, by getting the joke
rather than the explanation of the joke. Explanations arc
never funny until they themselves become the joke.
It slowly becomes obvious when reading Lao Tzu that
his essential subject lies between words, in the empty
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spaces that separate one thought from another. Some
passages of the Tao Te Ching clearly follow a line of
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thought and make logical sense but often the arrange
ment and interplay of these comprehensible thoughts
create leaps of insight that escape explanation. Appar
ently simple ideas, when juxtaposed, recreate the contra
dictions that are an inherent part of living. Paradoxes are
natural. Lao Tzu is not so much explaining how things
work as he is recreating for us a sense of them by
confounding our habits of understanding and then emp
tying us of the intellectual constructs that prevent us
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from seeing the way things are.
The English equivalents represented by the Chinese
ideograms Tao, Te and Ching literally mean the way the
universe works, virtue/power and classic/book. The
writing style is telegraphic and the problems of inter
preting and transposing the thoughts into English are
considerable. This difficulty pervades the approximately
five thousand ideograms that constitute the Tao Te
Ching and so translations vary greatly. In THE TAO OF
BEING: A Think and Do Workbook, the telegraphic
style is deliberately replicated in order that leaps of con
nection be left to the reader. Learning to make these
leaps is crucial to the thinking style to be engendered by
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this workbook.
The eighty-one chapters are numbered and titled only
for the convenience of finding them. They follow no
particular order. Within any one chapter the association
from one thought to another docs not always fiow in a j
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simple linear way. The particular style of Lao Tzt
writing has been replicated to recreate the special effect
of this way of thinking. Thoughts that are apparent
unrelated leap to the next very much like the images m
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haiku. In many cases the significance of a chapter is n~*
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in the thoughts themselves but in
spaces between them. Thinking connections rather that
thoughts is crucial in this workbook.
In the magic of written words, in the “speaking to the
eyes”, it is the reader who is the crucial and creati
ingredient, who reconstitutes and interconnects ti
words and thoughts on these pages. Until then the
words are empty and meaningless.
Between every word and then every thought, the
reader meets a space and emptiness to be bridged. The :
spaces are both here and not here. They arc the cxclusi
and private domain of the reader, filled by the thinking
of each thinker. With insights the reader leaps the emH
tiness between each thought. The connecting leaps are
the dynamics of understanding but not understand! ;
itself. The leaping is a no-thing/no-place that interco
nects and deepens awareness without confining under
standing. What has been defined as apart comes togetf •
yet is not put together. It might be called “returning to
the beginning.”
This leaping interconnects the apparent parts of thin •
ing; the separateness of things meld into a whole. Thines
are responded to holistically rather than individual
The effect is a sensitivity of direction and meaning that
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rl We think and do while believing that the con-)
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wc have this large sense is confirmed by human history.
The precedent of history is both discouraging and
encouraging. Twenty-five hundred years ago Lao Tzu
was dismayed with the warring states of China. The Tao
Te Ching was written, tradition says, as his parting
advice to a desperate situation. It is discouraging to
know that twenty-five hundred years later people are
still warring with each other and the situation is still
desperate. It is encouraging to know that it is twentyfive hundred years later. If Lao Tzu’s advice had not been
followed, undoubtedly something has.
This something lies at the root of Taoist thinking and
doing. Practicing this something, using it to guide think
ing and doing, has always been important. With or
without Lao Tzu, even before Lao Izu, it was there.
And it is here. This workbook is about using it. Its
effects are not dramatic, but deep and sure and harmoniz|ng—“just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.” In
the middle of this critical time is each one of us; no one is
any more or less responsible that anyone else, but we
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can each bend and incline the tree.
This Think and Do is not a collection of precepts as
were the teachings of Lao Tzu’s contemporary, Kung Futzu (Confucius). It is a workbook about the spirit of
thinking and doing. Precepts do not fit the situations
because each situation falls outside the construct of every
precept. But the spirit of things pervades things. The
formless precedes form and endures long after form. We
survive collectively and individually not by precepts but
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world in balance together.
Keening in balance is difficult in a world that rs com
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e The Tao is large enough to contarn contra-
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senseTaTis large enough to hold contradrcuons. lhat
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ultimately leads to the mystic’s awareness. All experi
ence, all learning, all thinking, all doing, moves toward
this awareness. Putting together is implicit in taking
apart. The uni-verse is reached only by putting back
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together the multi-verse.
In Taoism, this interconnecting takes place by the
process of simultaneous emptying and filling. Learning
is filling and the making of the parts that come together;
unlearning is emptying and the removal of obstacles that
prevent the parts from coming together. Parts and who e
unite into the mystical sense just as the polar opposites
of yin and yang finally join together in a dynamic bal
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ance to make the Tao. Tne result is not an omniscience
or omnipotence but an intuitive sense for moving harmoniously in the world.
In China there seems to be little interest in attaining
mystical insight without its practical application to the
solid world of people and things. In the original Taoist
literature of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, their insights do
not seem to be a special view that is detached and outside
but a special behaviour that is intimately within. The
sage does not understand, the sage does; the sage does
without understanding. Moving with the Tao is impor
tant; understanding the Tao is impossible. The purpose
of moving with the Tao is to harmonize in dynamic
balance everything that is inside and outside oneself, an
to become a process that facilitates a larger balance ol
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harmony.
broad balance and harmony inherent in the
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fundamental nature of things. Taoists rely on this funda
mental nature. It is neither mysterious nor metaphysical.
We breathe, we love, wc play and work and die. We have
our seasons, and the flowers and the years have theirs.
Things move in an inexorable way. -Our actions have
fairly predictable consequences. We have inner attributes
that confine our outer behaviors and outer limits that
define our inner selves. Things happen of themselves
because they are ourselves; we happen with other things
because we are other things. Ultimately, nothing is irreg
ular; everything is a process consistent with itself. Even
discord and disorder.
Discord is the necessary counterpart of harmony, just
as disorder compliments order. Taoists arc not simplistic
optimists. They understand that the broad balance and
harmony is complex and dynamic. Everything is always
dynamically balancing with itself. Thus we are always in
a condition of dynamic balancing with ourselves and the
world. To be balanced is to be balancing. In every mo
ment there is the opportunity for the balance and har
mony to maintain or restore itself if we have enough skill
to move appropriately with the dynamics of the process.
Balance restores itself from instant to instant when the
sage discovers moment by moment how to let the inher
ent condition return in its own way.
In this respect, all thinking and doing is Taoist. Un
derlying all purposive thought and action is the belief
that balance and harmony can cither be maintained or
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by formless wisdom. The content of this workbook is
formless. It docs not contain advice to apply but sen
sitivity to use.
Cultivating a fluid sensitivity is a difficult task because
of the common inclination to codify and concretize. The
more subtle the master’s teaching, the more easily it is
adulterated by the disciples. In China, the elusive teach
ings of Lao Tzu that are presently in the West called
Contemplative Taoism, gave way in popular Chinese
culture to Hsien Taoism, a hocus-pocus conglomeration
of esoteric and pseudo-magical rituals by which practi
tioners attempted to attain immortality and develop su
perhuman powers by processes and purification. Defin
ing solutions is a nearly irresistible temptation. But the Contemplative Taoist tradition, and the Ch’an and Zen
traditions that followed, remind us that “the Tao that can
be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.” The Tao falls
outside the categories of knowing and not-knowing. Or
as Ch’an master Nan Ch’uan put it, “Knowing isjalse
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understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. He
admonished us to stay free of concepts and certainties
because they confine and limit; the rest of his admoni
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tion is the subject of this workbook.
The word “knowing” has been used only in certain
instances and then with Nan Ch’uan’s admonition in
mind. “Knowing” has a connotation of boundless cer
tainty, somewhat like “overstanding.” The universe is
never “overstood.” “Know” at least suggests temporal
limitations. “Understanding” has a softer, more yielding
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' and feminine quality, less of an overbearing sense. But in
its past tense, “understood” has an impossibility about
i it; if “understanding” is process, then there is no appro
priate past tense that can apply in this workbook. We
move with the Tao only in the present.
The Tao does not exist in the past or future. In the
present, it is elusive. When we think we have it, we
don’t; and when we completely forget about it, we may
well have it. But who then knows? In a mirror we can
never see ourselves not looking at ourselves. Following
the Tao is a heuristic process of thinking and doing in a
state of flowing and openness that is true to the nature of
things but, paradoxically, cannot be conscious of itself.
Every concept creates a definition that the Tao slips
beyond, very much like infinity keeps shifting outside
every measured edge. In the same way, it is mythologi
cally impossible to be in the Garden of Eden and have
knowledge at the same time. Primal simplicity and selfawareness are mutually exclusive.
Anyone who teaches concepts is the fatal Eve; anyone
who learns them is the vulnerable Adam. Teachers de
stroy primal simplicity. But they also teach, whether
they realize it or not, a sensitivity for thinking and doing
that is beyond concepts. What they teach, or at least
inadvertently teach toward, is an undifferentiated whole
ness or awareness through which people, themselves
included, may learn to balance in the universe with a
kind of intuitive sense.
Anyone who learns to recognize this sense is fascixxi
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nated by it. It is this sense that gets us as individuals
from birth to death, and got us as humankind from
twenty-five hundred years ago to now. It is doing what
must be done, or as Kung Fu-tse said when he was
sounding like a Taoist, “To serve one’s own mind, un
moved by sadness or joy. accepting whatever happens, is
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the true virtue.”
Equating the serving of “one’s own mind” with “true
virtue” deserves an explanation lest there be some mis' understanding that Kung Fu-tse is merely advocating
self-indulgent anarchy. The root of the misunderstand
ing lies in the difference between the Taoist meaning of
“virtue” and our own, in the translation problems of
Chinese to English across very large linguistic and
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cultural distances.
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"Virtue” in Taoist China also has the connotation of
“power.” It is not power that wrestles from the universe
what the self demands, but the power that is given by the
universe to those who are selfless because they move
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with the way of the universe. It is the consequence or
.being in a state of oneness with the undifferentiatea
wholeness of things, of a profound synchronicity in
which the distinction between inner and outer disap
pears. This virtue is not the result of righting something
wrong or resisting something evil; it is a letting go of
control in order to move with the inherent beneficence
of things. Power accrues by being in accord with the j
fundamental virtue that is omnipresent. In such a state ot |
virtue/power (te), a person does not behave as a willful ;
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and individual agent. To have virtue/powcr is to be
selfless and, therefore, with neither virtue nor power.
In the sage a beneficent universe expresses itself. One
of the purposes of this workbook is to point in the
direction of this gracious partnership.
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Virtue/power literally cannot be used but it nonethe| less adjusts and reforms, not by imposing virtue where
■ virtue is absent but by permitting the balancing that is
inherently present. In the deepest sense, power is not
, used, does not impose balance; it permits balance to ‘
restore itself. Balance is the natural inclination of things,
not a static or cntropic balance but a dynamic and
! charged balancing. The ingredients for harmony are al
ways present. The critical element is balance. Virtue/
power, however, is not an active process that imposes
i but a passive one that permits. ,
The way of things is virtuous. Virtue guides power;
power fulfills virtue. Power that does not move in the
direction of balance is not virtuous; virtue that does not
move in the direction of balance is not virtue/power.
Winter moves itself through spring to balance itself with
summer; birth moves itself through life to balance itself
with death. Each thing moves through its own rhythms
toward a larger balance and harmony.
Balance is not a state but a process. In human rela
tionships, for example, each partner moves and changes
but stays balanced, is charged with power but stays
virtuous. Sometimes jher.c is leading and sometimes
there is following; sometimes agreement and sometimes
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unbalances to create a larger balance, creates a mo
mentary imbalance that re-balances as a greater balance.
This leads to a more profound harmony. When each
person is the balanced centre, harmony naturally returns
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balanced by the stone.
Mere information about thei stone is not enough. We
must live its significance. What it is, is more than we can
know. What we are is more that we know. By becoming
more than thinking, power becomes virtue. When virtue
acts upon other things, power disappears and there is no
longer the separation of one and other. Each leads other;
each becomes other. When questions lead to answers and
answers lead to questions, is it the questioner or the
answerer who leads? Every student knows how to lead
teachers with questions; every teacher knows how to
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and deepens.
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The stone is also the balanced centre. So is the tree,
the river, the moon and frog. People are in relationship
not only with themselves but with everything. Honour
the frog. Keep in balance with the tree and river. Be
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disagreement. What is crucially important is the harmo
nious balancing between them, that each possesses a
deep respect for the other. All the elements of male and
female are honoured because all are necessary for t e
dynamics of balance. Each vicissitude challenges and
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lead students with answers.
The Taoist experience occurs when both are doing as i
being led by something else, something that it seems
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they are both within, an invisible force of fulfilling reci
procity. For each thing, each other thing is access to that
awareness and is therefore a vehicle of virtue/power.
Even the stone teaches.
We cannot learn from what we fear. To go beyond
ordinary thinking and doing to virtue/power, we accept
ourselves as we are. Indeed, we accept everything as it is.
Power that struggles against who we arc and even against
who we are not, denies ourselves and urges a fundamentai disquietude with even frog and river, tree and stone.
With denial there cannot be virtue. Without virtue,
power unbalances and disharmonizes. To become vir
tue/power, we accept and honour our belonging with
everything and so move in accord with the Tao and its
moving.
We become virtue/power by selfless acceptance. When
the moving that we say is outside ourselves becomes
inside ourselves, then without is within.
Within and without are not the same as inside and
outside. Inside and outside suggest be-side and along
side, parallel but different. Within and without are with,
intimately connected. Without is close; it is “with” that
which is “out” as if there is no distance of difference
between inner and outer. Within is closer than close;
integrated and belonging, it is both “with” and “in”.
Such is the nature of selfless acceptance.
We open to the Tao until we move with the Tao.
Unseen, unheard, unmeasured, it is manifest every-
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where. What then is the Way? The way from which there
cannot be straying. The way from which there can be
straying is not the Way. Ha! Words cannot get outside it
to explain it. So confusing yet so simple! When we move
with the very centre, there will not be straying; when
there is straying, we have not moved with the yery
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centre.
The Taoists’ way is a deep centering with things, a
deep harmonizing, a, balancing of both mind and body,
and environmental ecology. It is
It is a personal, solcictal
—
not an idealized view, one that ascribes "goodness” to
the universe. Things are beneficent not because, they are
“good” but just because they arc. Death is not “bad”; it
is the end of life that gives meaning and substance to
living, that makes way for regeneration. Ignorance de
fines knowledge, foolishness defines wisdom. We begin
with such insights and then we stop struggling. We
selflessly sense the dynamics of the way of things and
then we move in accord with them. Moving in sympathy
with the nature of things is the root of ecology.
Between everything there is an inherent and pervasive
sympathy. It is the life’s work of thinkers to recognize
and doers to cultivate this deep, sympathetic rela
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state of balance, a sense of oneness amid differences.
Where is here? Where is there? Who is doing? Who is
thinking? No one answers because there is no distinctive
self to respond. There is oneness, one collective person
ality engaged in thinking/doing. Where is virtuc/power?
It is everywhere, possessing everything and everyone,
used by no one and nothing because we are all within it.
The deep balance and broad harmony that is found by
Taoists is the same that is experienced from time to time
by all who reconcile thinking and doing, all who make
themselves whole and by virtuc/power consummate a
oneness with the vast and living Great Mother. By losing
the sense of difference, that which is happening becomes
that which is thought and done.
We live freely only when not living willfully. Our
abandoning becomes our finding. Herein lies the fas
cination with Taoism that has lasted for twenty-five hun
dred years. In the endless workbook, it is a profoundly
aesthetic and spiritual way of thinking and doing, and
thus being.
r'1
tionship. We recognize it when, in spite of joy or sorrow
we feel an inexplicable accord between ourselves and
everything else. This is the time when greatest under
standing occurs, when there is a profound and selfless
sense of well-being. The subject-object dichotomy is ,
transcended and in its place is a primal accord, a rare
xxvii
w-|p Some Chinese Words and Concepts
hi’'*’
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The words of our culture confine our thinking and
thus our doing. Beyond the edge or penetration of our
awareness are insights that exist for people elsewhere
who live in another language. Indeed, one of the best
reasons for acquainting ourselves with other words is the
’ opportunity they provide for freeing us from the limitations imposed upon us by our own words.
I1
By exploring some Chinese words, perhaps wc can
move outward and inward toward a wider and deeper
consciousness. The Chinese words that follow are offered to assist the finding and filling of spaces in our
selves that are absent or too subtle to otherwise locate.
Consider these words as definitions that enlarge our
own language and refine our awareness until words are
no longer necessary. Words are not everything.
Language is a way of thinking but it is not all of
thinking. In every culture there seems to be something
deep and wordless that escapes language, escapes con
finement by concept. For everyone everywhere who
escapes words, this deep wordlessness is the place be
yond language of their common meeting.
Like all words, these Chinese words attempt to define
the undefinable. They are more of the system we lay
upon the deep mystery of everything to give definition
to what is beyond definition. Who knows if there is
really yin or yang, hsiang^heng or wu-wei? They are
concepts of what may be, what might be, what seems to
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be just because they arc defined. They arc intended to
expand us, not confine us. Do not keep them beyond
their usefulness.
If these words can be used and are useful then use
them. Keep them but do not be kept by them. Move
toward the mystery that underlies them. When fhey are
II
no longer needed, be free of them.
CHING: Ching literally means classical literary
work, something very special, a book of exceptional
quality or importance. It is a book that is more that just
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a book.
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HSIANG SHENG: Nothing functions in isolation;
everything functions in relationship with everything
else. Hsiang sheng means mutual arising, the principle
. by which each thing connects with every other thing. It
is the Chinese equivalent of Indra’s Necklace in the
Hindu tradition and the notion of complementarity in
quantum physics. Anticipating the outcome of anything
we think and do requires a holistic sensing of its rela
tionships with everything else.
Because of hsiangsheng, it is not possible to do any
thing to anything; anything that is done is ultimately
done with everything else. 7b is an expression created by
the illusion of the independence of things. We should
more properly say that everything functions with every
thing else. This with is the essence of hsiang sheng and is
the key to thinking and doing in accord with the Tao.
HSUAN: All sources and explanations are traceable
to hsuan, the dark and empty chaos that preceded dis-
Kt?'1 ' tinctions and order. Hsuan was before the beginning.
The beginning is knowable because it is discernable. It
is understandable because it has form and substance.
Hsuan was: the source of the beginning, formless and
without substance. It was a potential energy, analogous
to a first qwiff or master quantum wave function that
had not yet popped into reality. It was the silence before
the so-called “Big Bang”. All questions try to reach for
answers into the dark emptiness of hsuan.
T’AI CHI: Tfai chi is the art of attuning to the way of
things, of using with instead of agaqist. Timing is cru
cial. Instead of struggling against things, Vai chi finds the
opportune opening into the within of them. As a con! sequence of being at one with things, energy moves
‘unforced. Thus thinking and doing seem to occur
i effortlessly and harmoniously.
[ As well as the traditional Vai chiy we can find a Vai chi
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! adroitly through everyday
life, the when and how r\(
of the
’ simplest things. Each step is entered until all steps move
' surely, freely and unattended. When the timing is cor
rect, openings occur and great things happen with sim
ple case. Even the greatest journey can then be com
pleted.
There is also a t’aichi of. thinking. The energy of
curiosity is as useful to the thinker as the energy of body
is to the dancer. Thinking creates questions that lead to
answers which thereby teach the movements of the
dance of asking and discovering, of seeking and finding,
xxxi
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of meeting and then entering.
People who arc not skilled in the dancing art of learn
ing, who experience seeking as frustration, asking as
humiliation and yielding as defeat, battle endlessly with
the ordinary. They are victims of themselves. Overcome
by common obstacles, they are unable to find the elusive
balance and freedom with which to move easily in the
world.
The t’aichi of thinking and doing is learned better
from ourselves than from others. It is finally mastered
when we arc released from the confinement of ourselves.
TAO: The Tao is often referred to as the Way and
suggests the way things arc, the way of things, the way
the universe works. Every definition is unsatisfactory
because we cannot get outside the Tao to define it.
Some sense of the Tao comes from Lao Tzu and
Chuang Tzu. But the first line of the Tho Te Ching
reminds us that, “The Tao that can be spoken of is not
the eternal Tao.” The Tao is enigmatic, elusive, paradox
ical; it is something, though neither some nor thing, that
lies outside the confinement of definition simply because
nothing can be outside it.
The situation cannot be otherwise. We cannot detach
ourselves from it to explain it; quantum physics makes
this clear. We cannot hope to be objective about the same
experience we are intimately involved with. There is no
detachment. The Tao is us. The intellectual and academic
use of “one” to mean “I” shouldn’t fool anyone. Re
gardless of any professed detachment, we arc bound to
xxxii
ourselves by the presence of our own thinking. The way
out is in:
tWtp By living with awareness and attentiveness, by 1 earnsk: •ing to understand
1
....
..............
easily from within
rather than trying
from without, it is possible to get a sense of how the Tao
iworks. The Tao is not a thing but a way. Finding it is like
.finding playing. It is not a thing discovered but a process
ggKjfep ientered. Our awareness of it occurs as we move with it.
'Awareness of it is synonymous with entering it; the
finding is the Way.
I The game of subjcctivity/objcctivity keeps> us divided
and out of the inside of things. When divided, there is no
way in. The way in has never been from the outside. As
I
long
as we are outside, there is no way in. The moment
jwe are outside, there is no inside and no Tao. The way in
pVi’-(happens by itself with the dissolution of the outside. The
moment there is only inside, there is the Tao— but with
nothing separate to define it. Our task in this workbook
is to cultivate the art of being within this inside.
! TE: The Chinese concept of te means simultaneously
both virtue and power. It means virtue/power. Virtue
alone has the connotation of goodness or moral judge
ment by which the Tao is not confined. Power alone
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suggests willfulness or assertion, or deliberate influence.
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By moving in accord with the Tho wc find ourselves in
a certain synchronicity with things which may be con
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strued as power from a selfish viewpoint. However, this
synchronicity can only be acquired selflessly; it is not
power in the traditional Western sense and has nothing
Eg-l'.................... .........
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to do with bending the universe to our will. Since te
functions without willful intervention, it stays true to ;
the essential and broad virtue of things. Again, this is !
not the virtue of narrow self or specific interest but the
general virtue of nature’s wisdom.
;
TZU-JAN: 'Tzu-Jan is what happens of itself,^what !
things individually and collectively do when they act in ’
accord with their own natures. Things cannot not act in
accord with their own natures so there is in tzu-jan a '
connotation of spontaneity, of naturalness, very much ■:
like that intended in the expression, “naturally”. Left to ?
themselves things find their own balance as a result of ‘
their own natures acting In relationship with everything |
else’s own natures. Practicing tzu-jan means recognizing
what is our business and what is not.
Tiu-jan pervades our thinking and doing with an
easiness, as if we are moving unknowingly where we
want to go. There is a feeling of intrinsic belonging, of
undefined fulfillment. With tzu-jan we realize the inher- '
ent appropriateness of what is immediately present. It is
what lovers recognize in each other, what they do be
cause of each other. With tzu-jan, thinking and doing are
together. 'Tzu-jan recognizes that each thing has its own
way and its own wisdom. It is a happening-of-itself that
arises from within.
■
WU-WEI AND WEI-WU-WEI: In the Taoist tradi
tion, the balancing of the apparent opposites of things is
crucial to moving with the Tao. Action, therefore, re
quires its counterpart of non-action, a not-forcing of
things, a patient waiting. Wu-wei or not-doing
not-doing and
and weiweiwu-weii oor doing -without-doing are actively passive prot cesses, the female and waiting principl
principle.
er ■, Wu-wei is a subtle and inconspicuous kind of doing
^because
/. because it is a standing out of the way to let things do
J themselves.
It is a doing that does .............
not struggle against
..
-------------- -moves with; ir follows rather than leads,, waits rather
' than initiates. Some occasions require dccisr
decisive action but
others require decisive in-action, a kind of alert passivity
or a dynamic yielding like a tree bending under a heavy
: weight ofr' snow.
The closer we come to the Tao, the more we seem to
function with wu-wei, moving easily and effortlessly as
KWi if pulled along by circumstances that fill and fulfill us.
Everything in the universe moves in accord with the
way of the universe. Everything that we do and do not
do happens in accord with the nature of the Tao. The Tao
cannot be avoided. By attuning to its way, we seem to
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move less and less with a disturbing willfulness; we
1^-' ■ move with rather than against the nature of things. Our
attitude broadens and deepens until we meet adversity
by softly enclosing and absorbing it. Self interest gets in
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the way of the Way.
When we move selflessly, we move with grace, ease
and harmony amid even apparent opposition. The sage,
therefore, seems to go nearly unnoticed in the world. In
this way hsiangsheng works in conjunction with wuwei .
YIN AND YANG: These two terms represent the
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1. First Knowing
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irst knowing, like deepest knowing, cannot be
thought. The sounds and markings of words only
point. All the turnings of thought cannot follow
to the beginning of the beginning. It is dark chaos, the
undivided nameless. First knowing is lost in the
darkness of first beginning. It was before thinking, be
fore distinctions.
The beginning is called the Great Mother, the first
named and the first formed. The Great Mother is every
thing and everything is the Great Mother. Her nature is
called the Tao but any name would do.
The Tao is beyond words and cannot be thought.
Study and learn and think. Fill with everything. Then let
go of everything. Learn and then unlearn to discern the
Tao. Seek even though it is ever hidden.
Know the outer forms even though they are ever
manifest. They are given the different names of know
able and unknowable but they arise from the one source
and are the same.
The beginning is darkness, The beginning of the be
ginning is darkness within darkness. Find things and
thoughts in light; find the beginning of things and
thoughts in darkness. Begin with the light but move
toward darkness. All knowing begins in the mystery in
darkness.
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■ traditional principle of polarity in Taoism. Although Lao
Tzu and Chuang Tzu rarely ever use them, they arc
implicitly in laoist philosophy. In modern terms they
are the right-brain/left-brain paradigm. Yin and yang are
not in competition or conflict with each other but are
complements of each other. They are the opposite halves
of one mind. The balancing of one yin and one ya'ng
might be said to be the Tao.
But the word is balancing, not balance. The Tao is
process, a dynamic condition of balanced moving. The
implication Is, therefore, that the process is rhythmical
and not linear, cyclical and not progressive. We do not
arrive anywhere other than where we arc. Thinking and
doing do not have, as they do in the West, a sense of
destiny, of eschatology. The emphasis in Taoism is upon
the maintenance of a dynamic and harmonious balancing
in the present. Since the present moves in the Tao's way,
moving with the present is the requirement for moving
with the Tao y a moment to moment balancing in the
shifting and flowing present. As the present moves, so
we move in balance with it and thereby balance the
present. Thus the sage Is perfectly balanced but not
necessarily perfect.
xxxvi
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hcncvcr there is beauty, there is ugliness to
define beauty. Whenever there is good, there
is evil to define good. From the instant a
winner is declared, a loser is created. Low arises from
high, work from play, difficult from easy, uncertainty
from confidence, not enough from too much.
Trapped by mutual arising, all our thinking and doing
is caught within one or other. If there is need then there
will be neglect. Success will bring failure. Ignorance will
follow knowledge.
There is a path between one and other that is found by
moving with the Tao. Go softly and patiently. When
there is resistance there has been pushing and that is not
the Way. Be moved in the direction of mystery. Yield and
learn until there is an easing between. Do too much and
there will be trouble; think too much and there will be
confusion. Let the natural order arise of itself.
Therefore, the sage attends equally to doing and notdoing, to thinking and not-thinking. When there is silent
filling and emptying, everything arises and subsides in
its harmonious way and the natural unfolding is not
disturbed. Though nothing is given, nothing is denied.
There is nurturing but not forcing, balancing but not
dividing. Work is done but no credit is taken. When a
task is finished, it is forgotten. Not-doing receives as
much care as doing. Emptiness fills with thoughts.
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V V thieves. With temptations, hearts are uneasy.
Fill everyone with desire and there will be trouble.
Thus the sage inspires but everyone is at ease.
Thoughts and ambitions are turned inward for growth,
not outward for conflict. Minds are opened. Character is
strengthened. Self-reliance is discovered. In this way,
knowledge and desire do not interfere with others. Inner
strength replaces outer show.
Competition and co-operation arc opposites, each
created by the other. From the first comes dissention,
from the second comes dependence. The sage encour
ages neither.
Between the opposites of everything is an inner vir
tuous power. It occurs when nothing extraordinary hap
pens: when people are not devious, when the intelligent
are not cunning, when the unfortunate are not neglected.
There is inner peace and outer harmony.
When there is inner peace, the common is profound.
When there is outer harmony, everything seems ordi
nary.
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he lao has always been, so no one can say when
it began. It is ever hidden because it is ever
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present. Who can say it is not present when it
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It untangles the tangled, raises the low, lowers the
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high. Those who are brilliant are humbled before what
they do not know and those who are dull are proud of
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what they do know; so the full arc emptied and the
empty arc filled.
The Tao is emptiness that is used but never consumed.
It is ever present but no one knows how to use it. Same
or different, together or alone, the same Tao is here for
everyone.
What then is the difference between one person and
another if neither uses the Tao? The learner struggles to
learn; the teacher struggles to teach. What is the dif
ference between teacher and learner when both struggle
between birth and death trying to find the Way? Doesn’t
anyone see that everyone struggles together with the
same common seeking?
Teach and learn, learn and teach. No one is full and no
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one is empty. As teacher, teach as if emptying; as learner,
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learn as if filling. Fill and empty at the same time, always
mindful of the complexity and simplicity of it all.
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he forces of the universe are ruthless. They treat
everything impartially. The sage is ruthless,
treating everyone impartially.
Wanting and dreaming obscures the way things are.
Decide to struggle against the universe or decide to move
with it.
Between everything is a space that changes shape but
not form. It is an emptiness that charges everything with
an inexhaustable breathing. The more it breathes, the
more things happen.
Try to explain it and it just becomes more confusing.
But beyond words, deep within, something understands
the breathing emptiness.
As effortlessly as deep breathing . . . deep think.
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he mystery in the valley is subtle, endless. It is
the Way of the Great Mother.
Learning is entering the valley gateway and
being overcome by the mystery of everything. The
gateway can be shown but the path must be found alone.
Seek until overcome by the woman wisdom of every
thing. It holds and nourishes. Trust it. It will not fail.
Learning is seeking and being overcome. Wisdom is
yielding and being found. No one can explain how being
found happens.
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By undoing answers, undo questions. When there are
no longer answers, the teacher can be honest with those
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does not pass away. Have a beginning and an end
arises. Give an idea form and therein lies its un; doing. •
Do not bind thinking with form or understanding
with self. Do not bind self with thoughts. Do not con
fine questions with answers. By staying behind, remain
ahead. In uncertainty, be secure. Without self, be real
ized.
Here is the dilemma. All doing is undoing. Every
thought is incomplete, every truth untrue. Speak it and
it is wrong. Silence is not enough. The name is not the
thing. The thought is not the understanding.
Teaching eases the burden of ignorance with the illu
sion of understanding. The blind students follow the
blind teacher, listening to the wisdom of the cane’s tap
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he highest good, like water, effortlessly nourishes
everything. Like the Tao, it flows to the lowest
places.
Live close to the land, keep close to the ground. In
thinking, explore the depths. With others, be kind and
gentle. Be careful with words. In business be efficient. If
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Struggle with others and there will be blame. Have
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S’ the river and there will be failure.
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Move with the flowing downward course to humility.
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From birth to death the direction is clear. Yield and
change like water. Everything follows the downward
course so there is no difference between one thing and
another.
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much and the edge will not hold. Amass great
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wealth and it cannot be protected. Say too much
and there will be confusion. Pretending to know is a
provocation. Certainties will be attacked. Reputation is
source of disrepute.
It is better not to straighten the crooked, mend the
broken, fill the empty. Shape confusion into answers and
there will just be more questions. Trouble arises from
meddling. Solutions create problems. Try to improve the
world and it will just get worse.
Abide peacefully. Be sincere and caring. Giving direc
tions will obscure the Way. Teach without attempting to
reform. Rest when the day’s work is done.
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new born child. See clearly into self. Love but
It-' expect nothing in return. Influence without controlling.
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Be alert but not clever. Be both yielding and firm.
While being attentive and understanding, be able to
refrain from action.
Inspire and nourish without possessing. Teach but do
not take credit for learning. Lead as if following. Deep
est virtue is hidden.
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vessel is shaped from clay but its usefulness comes
L from the empty space within. The empty space
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a hub permits the wheel to turn. Windows
and doors are the empty spaces in walls. A room can be
used only because it is emptiness.
What is valuable comes from what is; what is useful
comes from what is not.
Therefore, attend to the unknown as well as the
known. While it is valuable to know, it is useful to notknow. Not-knowing is a beginning but knowing is an
ending. Not-knowing is the uncertainty that permits
movement. If there was only known, no one could move
in the certainty. Proceed from unknown to unknown.
Certainty binds, uncertainty frees.
Attend to the uncertain as well as the certain. Move in
questions and beware of answers. Take hold of certainty
and be lost. Find the answer and be wrong. Answers
close, questions open. Find the space between thoughts,
the uncertainty between certainties.
Seek what is but also seek what is not. Fill but also
empty. Beginnings occur only in emptiness. Cultivate
the emptiness that receives, the uncertainty that under
stands. Search the empty; embrace the changing. With
out emptiness, nothing more can be received so nothing
more can be learned. Thus the sage fills everyone but
their emptiness remains.
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21
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r Io see is to be blinded by colours; to hear is to be
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Therefore, quietly attend to what is inside but not
what is outside, to what is subtle but not what is con
spicuous. Be guided by the inner but not the outer, by
inner sense but not outer form. Attend only to form and
the inner depth is undiscovered.
Teach without expecting praise, without fear of cen
sure. Be guided by neither approval nor disapproval.
Learn without expecting benefit. Temper desire.
Look for the simple in the complicated, the ordinary
in the extraordinary, the serene in the hectic, the empty
in the full, the greatest in the least.
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uncertainty willingly. Be confused. Choose
-X-right or wrong, yes or no, true or false and
trouble begins. The fool is disguised in certainty.
Be certain, become confident, and the whole world
sets out to teach otherwise. Without certainty, the whole
world softens and accommodates. Uncertainty is the
softening by which a way is found in everything’s chang-
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1 Give up certainty and learning begins. Soften and
open and be taught by the Tao.
; To understand the world, give up the world. Chase it
and it escapes; wait in peaceful emptiness and it reveals
itself.
Do not be certain about uncertainty.
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14. With Full Mind Empty
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cannot be grasped. These three are one indefinable.
The Tao is an unbroken thread stretching from
nothing to nothing. Try to find where it reaches and
there is no beginning and no end. Try to find where it is
and it is beyond form, beyond definition, beyond imag
ination. Mind trying to find it exhausts itself with itself.
Whatever is learned deepens the mystery of the Tao.
Who can find the whole in the parts? Somehow each
understanding makes the Tao deeper and more elusive.
With full mind empty and aware, stay close to the
ordinary. Without beginning or end, fill full of the
empty.
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15. Be the Hidden Source
xamine the obvious. Search the subtle. Penetrate
the depths of everything. Be the mystery that is
called self.
When not even the depths of self can be understood,
how can anything else be understood? The greatest in
sights describe but cannot explain.
What is the way to be in this unexplained everything?
Watchful like being in turbulent water. Alert like being in
danger. Courteous like being a guest. Yielding as melting
ice. Primal as the uncarvcd block. Receptive as the valley.
With stillness within, wait until the mud of. mind
settles. Peacefully change from still to moving. Calmly
seek without finding. Wait until the timing is right. Be
contentedly empty.
Be full and everything is excluded. Be certain and
everything stops.
Be the hidden source, hidden even from self.
Take time to be everything’s time. Ripen in due time.
Be the flowing river, the hurried and slow pacing of
everything.
29
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16. The Unchanging In The
Changing
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V Y / is something constant that does not change
V V with the changing. It is a constancy in in
constancy, not the changing but the way of the changing.
The outside world seems to rise and fall in turmoil but
within everyone there is an inner something that is
empty of everything, that is still and silent and peaceful.
Within everything there is something empty and full,
something silent and still. Who knows what it is? It
belongs and yet it docs not belong.
How can thoughts, when they arc so busy and full of
everything, seem so empty and still? The empty stillness
of thoughts is like the empty stillness of the Tao.
Find the unchanging in the changing, the stillness in
the moving, the empty in the full. Find the source from
which everything comes.
Without the inner stillness, there would be disaster.
With it, there is a softness that pervades everything, a
belonging within everything, a harmony of unfolding
that lets chaos understand itself.
31
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17. Nothing Is Done
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to lead forcefully and there will be resistance
and then rebellion. Be kindly and just and there
will be respect and then trust.
But high er still is an invisible virtue, undefined and
unrecognized. When it is practiced, everything remains
whole. There is no separation of one from other, effort
from case, work from play. No one leads and no one
follows. Nothing is tended to and yet there is busyness
and harmony.
The sage, self-effacing and of few words, goes un
noticed. Yet somehow, everyone benefits. There is
growth and fruition, pride and contentment. Instead of
saying, "This was done for us,” everyone says, “We did
this.” Instead of saying, “We were taught this,” everyone
says, "We learned this.” When taken as one’s own there
cannot be rejection. Without rejection there cannot be
rebellion. Without rebellion there is peace and deep
nurturing.
Even from the very beginning there was never a mo
ment when everything was not busily fulfilling itself.
The sage docs not obstruct what has always been. Thus
nothing is done and people arc fulfilled.
33
18. Primal Virtue
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A bandon the Tao and morality and propriety apZ-Jk pear. Pretense and hypocrisy come from learnJL -B-ing and sophistication. When there is discord,
righteousness and virtue are declared.
Morality, propriety, learning, sophistication, righ
teousness—these give birth to the world’s problems.
Preach virtue, insist upon good and nothing but bad will
come of it.
In the tradition of the ancients it is said that thought is
born of failure, that learning is the weapon of struggle.
Beneath thinking and understanding,, beneath the
struggle of right and wrong, is a primal virtue from
which simple harmony arises.There is something easy
and unknowable that pulses the heart of all vitality.
Deviate from the Tao and the artificial begins. Deviate
from the simple and the Tao is lost. Without seeking,
find the primal virtue.
35
19. Between the Opposites
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top looking for perfection. Stop trying to improve
people and everyone will benefit a hundredfold.
Give up ideals. Forget morality. Prohibiting any
thing just makes it more interesting. Stop teaching pro
priety and let natural affections arise of themselves.
Actions create reactions. It is as if the universe is
perverse. Find a beginning and an end will be declared.
Express an opinion and someone will disagree. Do any
thing and suddenly, as if by magic, there is opposition.
There is a way between the opposites of things. Fol
low these principles: return to simplicity; moderate de
sires; diminish the importance of self; look to the heart
of things.
The way between is a delicate balancing of doing and
not-doing, learning and unlearning, finding and losing,
filling and emptying.
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20. The Pretense of Certainty
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o the sage nothing is known for certain. When
the pretense of certainty is abandoned, the world
is undivided and lonely, a place for being lost in
wonder. How can the sage believe what others believe,
revere the apparent, pursue blindly what others pursue?
But people flourish in their illusions. The world teems
around the sage who, to the very centre, does not know.
Others seem to know but the sage knows nothing.
Others arc clear and certain and confident but the sage is
confused and directionless, a fool lost in thought and the
world.
Others vigorously perform the duties of life, fulfilling
their own and the common need. But the sage is dark
and remote, detached and independent, different.
Others are fed by the apparent but the sage is nourished
by the Tao.
Without the pretense of certainty, it is easy to be
compassionate. So the sage teaches with double edge.
Those who learn think they are learning the ordinary
that can be understood, while deep within they arc
learning the extraordinary that is beyond understanding.
39
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21. Call It The Tao
he Tao is elusive and intangible, dim and shad
owy. Thoughts looking for words to name it call
it force, essence, vitality. Who can trust words
that are only the gropings of thinking’s thoughts? Yet
from the very beginning something obscure has per
sisted, a nameless and unthinkable thought.
Call it the Tao. It was when the beginning arose from
the dark chaos. It is the something within the heart of
everything that sets moving each thing in its own way.
Elusive and unfathomable, it is the thoughtless thought
that just escapes each thought, the source of deepest
trust and understanding.
The Tao is everywhere but nowhere can it be found.
Search for it and it is forever lost. Not the explained, it is
the explaining; not the answer, it is the question. It is
effortless and everywhere because it is within every
thing, hidden because it cannot be avoided.
Find it as stoncness in stone, trecness in tree, thinking
in thought. In the thoughts of thinkers, it knows itself
Just by thinking.
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41
22. Soften to Know
often to know. Bend to understand. Empty to fill.
Ideals create confusion. The greater the certainty,
the less the understanding.
When those who think they know are overcome by
the urge to teach, they break the fullness of silence,
confine the formless with shape and begin the long hard
ening that takes so long to soften. Lost in right and
wrong, yes and no, ideal and real, the Tao is missed. A
divided mind fights with itself; those with divided minds
fight with each other.
By softening, the sage becomes one with all; by flow
ing out there is taking in, by emptying there is filling, by
losing there is finding.
Without pride, honour comes freely. Without show,
respect is given. Without boasting, ability is recognized.
Without struggle, the Way is easy. No quarreling so no
one quarrels in return. No competing so no competi
tion.
Go softly in this world so that things are left as them
selves. Be gentle with everyone to not disturb their
growing into themselves.
When the sage bends to everything, everything bends
to the sage. Thus there is deep meeting and wholeness.
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torms do not last forever; the unusual only inter^^rupts the usual, extremes only disturb the comk-X monplace of everything. The exhaustibfe is not the
primal source of growth. Deep nurturing and fruition
take place in the ordinary and harmonious.
The profound and enduring arrives without display.
Therefore, become common and nourishing, gentle and
nurturing. Enter the heart of things. Inner quiet is
greater than outer force. Rely on inner wholeness, not
outer appearance. Speak quietly and simply. Trust and
be trusted. Those who find primal simplicity, selflessly
fulfill the whole world.
Come to self then empty of self. Once there is emp
tiness—no wishes, no expectations, no desires, no at
tachments—filling will come of itself. Trust the filling. It
is infallible. It is very ordinary. From the very beginning
everything has relied upon it. Move with the Tao and
become one with the Tao. Be virtuous by becoming one
with the primal virtue.
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24. Falling With Perfect Balance
"1" earning is like standing; beyond tiptoe there is no
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balance, beyond reaching there is no grasping.
B- V Alert, with both feet grounded and body ready,
take hold with both halves of mind and open to the inner
centre. Hurry and there will be confusion.
Those who profess understanding, do not have it.
Those who arc uncertain, boast. Those who arc inse
cure, brag.
When a thought is heavy, think until it lightens. To
move with the Tao, carry nothing heavy. Pare to essen
tials. Trust the finding but not the found. Be humble
before everything known and everything not yet known.
To learn and teach, be light and open and balanced.
There is nothing to know but the already known. All
that can be known is here. What is next to know, comes
of itself.
Be patient with what is known; do not expect what is
next to know. Search without anticipating; receive what
arrives. Attend without interfering. Always be on the
edge of this known, falling with perfect balance into the
silence of the next known.
47
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it confronts, silence and emptiness. Perplexed, it stops. *
Thinking cannot know what is not itself.
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Silence and emptiness haunt all thinking with a com
forting rest. Every thought that is thought hangs in
empty silence. The beginning of the beginning gives
relief to searching.
Those who don’t say they don’t know arc closer to the .
beginning of the beginning than those who say they do ,
know. Who can know what was before thinking except
those who are full of emptiness and empty thoughts?
Every name is wrong for naming what was before
names; every thought is wrong for thinking what was
before thoughts.
Beyond all names and thoughts is the echoing silence
and formless emptiness that does not need naming or
thinking or doing. It does nothing at all, it seems like
nothing at all, yet, because of it, everything is just so. It
is called the Tao. Each thing going its own way is.everything’s-way.
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26. Empty and Alert
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"l ust as dark is the source of light and still is the origin
I of moving, so serenity is the beginning of restI lessness. In spite of the known, therefore, keep to
the unknown; in spite of certainty, be keen and attentive,
empty and receptive.
Search only in the light and the dark source is over
looked. Be only moving and the still origin is missed. Be
only full and the empty centre is lost. Know and be
separated from the deep mystery.
When thinking is too full for understanding, think
with emptiness. First empty of thoughts. Return to
empty and alert. In the beginning, everything arose from
awaiting emptiness. Like the Taos arising from emp
tiness, be there in the beginning. Just as everything arose
together in its proper way, so knower and known arise
together as understanding.
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27. Going Unnoticed
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here is a way of going unnoticed in this world: no
footprints and no mistakes, everything fitting
and everything belonging. When moving with
the Tao, nothing is done and things fulfill themselves.
Thus the sage makes no effort, neglects nothing and
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abandons no one.
There is a special thinking and doing that moves with
the way things happen of themselves. The deep and
subtle and inner of everything knows the lao. T.hc inner
Tao is the outer Tao. Find inner accord and outer accord
arises of itself.
Begin with self. Discipline self before attempting to
discipline others; master self before attempting to master
others. Know the inner centre. Instead of changing the
outer, first change the inner and then everything will be
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changed.
Thus the sage teaches without teaching and people
learn without learning. Things change effortlessly. Car
ing nurtures itself. Intelligence and discretion nourish
themselves. Then, quite unnoticed, respect and honour
arc practiced and harmony arises of itself.
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28. The Easy Downward Course
now the strength of the masculine but keep to
the care of the feminine. Be the free and
bounded stream of the valley, true to water’s
easy downward course toward the primal source.
Cultivate the light of the known but keep to the dark
of the unknown. Without one mistake, while remaining
hidden, be an example to the whole world.
Respect the high but keep to the humility of the low.
Honour thinking but keep to the thoughtless beginning.
Hold tight while letting go. Fill while emptying. Be
proud and humble, resolute and yielding.. Be certain
while remaining uncertain.
Flow from the known toward the unknown. With
mind filling and emptying, become the dark mystery.
With empty mind, embrace fullness. Rest full of empty,
empty of full.
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29. The Heart of Doing
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houghts cannot order the universe. Every
thought belongs but knowing does not conform
to thoughts. The whole cannot be simplified.
The Tao escapes explanation. Try to contain it by divid
ing it and it is lost. Answers arc always wrong because
the heart of anything is everything.
The heart of knowing is knowing the heart of things.
The heart of doing is complying with the heart of things.
The heart of things has its own wisdom. This the sage
honours by avoiding extremes and complacency.
What is the heart of things? Sometimes it is fast and
sometimes it is slow. Sometimes it leads and sometimes it
follows. Sometimes it is firm and sometimes it yields.
Sometimes it is up and sometimes down. Sometimes it
grows and sometimes it decays. The heart of doing is
everything’s doing.
When the selfless self enters the heart of things, this is
the heart of doing.
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30. Understanding By Following
“T" n the kingdom of thinking, nothing can be attained
I by force. Push and thoughts stumble over themJL selves. Try and there is confusion. Search and strug
gle and all that is found is searching and struggling. Like
moving with the Tao, understanding comes of itself.
The preparation for what comes of itself is called
learning. Concentrate on learning and there will be suc
cess. Work at understanding and there will be failure.
All learning is learning-by-following. Learn gently
and carefully so the following is not disturbed. Learn
with anger and the following leads to fear; learn with fear
and the following leads to anger.
To understand, learn and then forget learning. Let go
and trust. Understanding comes effortlessly. It is not
acquired but happens.
Wonder and soften and open. Let understanding lead.
Trust the letting go and follow its leading. This is called
undcrstanding-by-following. Let go gently and carefully
so the following is not disturbed.
Understanding cannot be controlled by self. Learn to
understand by learning to be selfless.
Understanding is thinking free^of self, moving unclut
tered in the empty fullness of the Tao.
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"T" ike a fine sword, a sharp mind is an instrument of
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wonder and fear. Do not use it as a weapon.
■B- Vhfarmony and tranquility are more important
than cunning and victory. A victory requires a defeat. A
defeat is not cause for rejoicing.
A sword cannot cut itself so what is the value of even
the sharpest mind when it cannot know itself? What is
the victory of sharp mind when all its slicing only reveals
thin mind?
Mind cannot be object to mind because thinking can
not be object to thinking. In an effort to. cut itself,
thinking calls itself mind. But words only fool them
selves. Thoughts seeking the beginning of thoughts find
only thoughts seeking thoughts.
In the womb, the conception of a child commits it to
death. Tn the mind, the arising of a thought assures its
passing; the forming of an idea declares that it is wrong.
This is sharp mind defeating sharp mind.
Hold sharp mind stiff and it is forever lost in battle
with itself. Supple mind, bending and yielding, cuts
itself free of itself and mindlessly knows itself.
61
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32. Think Downward
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hough called the Tao, it is always nameless.
Thoughts name only with words, mind thinks
only with thoughts. But the Tao is something
else, something primal that is neither words nor
thoughts. Who knows what it is? It is in the smallest part
of things, in the greatest whole of things.
When the whole has been divided and lost, names are
given to the parts. When the names and parts arc lost,
the whole returns again.
It is as if all the parts of whole are rivers flowing to the
sea. Think downward. Move with the river beyond
words and thoughts to the great commingling source.
Neither parts nor whole, the Tao is the downward
course of things. Become everything’s way and move.
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33. When Thinking, Think For
Everything
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nowing others is called understanding. Know
ing self is called wisdom. Perhaps force can
master others but only strength can master self.
Selflessly search self and all the secrets of others will
be found. The deepest of self 'js the deepest of others.
Knowing self is knowing others. The inner way is the
outer way.
When the inner way becomes everything’s way, this is
the way of the Tao. Be separate and there is separation;
be one and there is the Tao.
Think in wholeness, sense in wholeness, move in
wholeness. When thinking, think for everything; when
doing, do for everything. When at one with everything,
everything moves toward harmony and accord.
First have the strength to meet self; then have the
strength to let go of self.
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34. Great Doing
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he Tao is everywhere. Everything depends on it.
It denies nothing yet it claims nothing. It is
aimless and small and powerless. It demands
nothing and yet is so great that everything is nurtured by
it. It is even greater because it is not great. Because of it,
everything changes and nothing changes.
Small thinking struggles to change the world with
small doing and so the world struggles in return. Small
thinking tries and plans, insists and denies. For all its
efforts, nothing is improved; for all its good intentions,
things arc made worse.
I
Great doing lets the world do itself. Like the Tao, it 1
interferes with nothing. When nothing tries to be right,
there cannot be wrong; when nothing is asked, every
thing is granted.
Great doing goes unnoticed. It is humble and without
purpose so everything conforms to it. It does not try to
be wise so everything is guided by it, does not interfere
so everything follows it.
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35. Keep Nothing and
Everything
at and listen and enjoy. Love and celebrate amid
everything’s passing.
Amid everything’s passing, why docs it seem
that there is something that does not pass? Because of
everything’s passing. Why does it seem that something is
unchanging? Because of everything’s changing. Amid all
the passing and changing, something seems to stay un
changed. Amid everything’s changing, how is the un-
changing found?
Because there arc many, there seems to be one. Be
cause there is everything, there seems to be nothing.
From many and one, how can nothing be found?
Who knows if there is the Tao or there isn’t the Tao?
Who knows if it is something or nothing? Even without
substance it seems to be something called something.
Who knows what it is or even if it is? Even though
people behave as if it is something, who can know for
sure? As something, it is elusive; as nothing, it is inex
haustible. Amid the changing everything, people rely on
it for peace and rest. Docs only profound confusion
make deep certainty?
Honoured is the person who finds the unchanging in
the changing, the one in the many, the nothing in the
everything.
Be within the passing. Abide within the changing. Be
certain of questioning. Embrace all and one. Keep
nothing and everything.
.
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36. An Auspicious Beginning
he principle is simple: from one thing comes
another. So it is that before there can be mastery,
there must be errors; before there can be knowl
edge, there must be ignorance; before there can be un
derstanding, there must be confusion; before there can
be wisdom; there must be foolishness.
Therefore, the sage uses errors to attain mastery, em
braces ignorance to acquire knowledge, cultivates con
fusion to reach understanding, courts foolishness to find
wisdom.
For the sage, losing is seen as acquiring, emptying as
filling. Confusion and foolishness arc welcomed. Igno
rance and errors make an auspicious beginning.
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37. Each Thing’s Way
rouble is caused by people who think they are
smart enough to improve things. First they try.
When there is resistance, they push. Then they
push harder until their intentions arc lost in struggle and
discord. Cunning and ingenuity make things worse.
Go softly in the world. Place the smallness of what is
known beside the greatness of what is not known. Un
derstand with humility. Honour what is known. Hon
our even more what is not known.
Trust the natural way of things. Ordinary simplicity is
infallible.
Let everyone find their own way. Teach reluctantly.
The same secret is different for everyone. Tell no one but
keep no secrets.
There is a limit to a lifetime but not to the mystery in a
lifetime. What foolishness then trying to catch the un
limited in the limited. How presumptuous to under
stand! Understanding, therefore, should not get in the
way of each thing’s way.
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38. Before Differences
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V V and deep learning is lost.
Best learning seems effortless yet everything is
learned.’ Teacher and learner and subject are one. In
worst learning, both teacher and learner struggle but
nothing is taught, nothing is learned.
When a great teacher speaks, everyone is changed by a
silent oneness. When a foolish teacher speaks, the words
are far away. Force and discipline are used to bring the
words closer.
Thought begins because of failure. Learning is born of
struggle. When the Tao is lost, teachers and learners
appear, knowledge and ignorance arise, right and wrong
are taught, morality is preached, good is distinguished
from bad and the world is separated into differences.
The sage returns to the primal origin, the beginning
before differences. Without differences, the Tao is prac
ticed unnoticed.
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ccausc of oneness, air is clear, earth is firm, val
leys receive, rivers flow and everything is whole
and alive.
Clear and firm, receiving and flowing, living and
whole . . . these are the virtues of oneness.
Everything comes from the primal; the highest comes
from the lowest. Begin, therefore, with the mystery of
the obvious, with the profoundly ordinary and the inex
plicability of the simple.
Understanding does not become wonder until the
simplest and the lowest are amazing. Without wonder,
understanding is not alive. Until it is alive, it docs not
reach the deepest centre; it is thought but not under
stood.
To understand is to be lost, confused and overcome.
Understanding is the humility of wonder.
Thus the simple, the ordinary, the obvious are hon
oured and revered. And the pride and vanity and
vainglory of people is seen as a foolishness that obscures
the Tao and prevents the return to wonder.
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40. Selflessly Thinking the World
*T"X T Therc is the Tao? It is before thinking, before
\ Y / virtue, before distinctions, before birth and
V V death. It is unattainable and yet ever present.
All understanding is a gradual yielding to the Tao.
Questions and answers are the first yielding. The answer
is that there are no answers. All questions are wrong.
Struggling with wrong questions will never give right
answers. Finding right answers misses the Tao.
With full awareness, think without thoughts, expect
without expectations. Be amazed but not surprised. Be
come everything’s shape. This is the way of selflessly
thinking the world.
But, if the hard struggle of self is chosen, keep bal
anced on both the foot that advances and the foot that
retreats. Understand that retreat does not go backwards
and advance does not go forwards. The Way will be
closer as self and struggle soften.
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41. Entering the Fool’s Laughter
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hen the wise hear of the Tao, they recognize
it. When the ordinary hear of the Tao, they
ponder it. When the foolish hear of the Tao,
they laugh at it. Without the laughter, the Tao would not
be the Tao.
Like the Tao, knowing seems like a contradiction; its
light resides in darkness,« its easiness is attained with
difficulty, its purity is without ideals, its clarity is invis
ible. It cannot know itself. Even when found it is for
mless, hidden and nameless. Getting it seems like losing
it. Still, it nourishes and fulfills.
Knowing is never quite knowing. It keeps escaping
itself. Knowing seems like ignorance. Finding it is like
losing it, like entering the fool’s laughter.
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| In the beginning, nothing became one. Then one
_1_ became two, and two became three, and three be
came everything. The Tao has been from the beginning.
From the beginning of thinking, thinking has created
distinctions. Now whose thinking can unthink them?
What is to be done with the parts and opposites of
everything: right and wrong, up and down, now and
then, good and bad, here and there? Unmake the di
lemma that has been made. Abandon distinctions. Re
turn to the Tao. Fill by losing, gain by emptying.
Try to understand from the end to the beginning what
has happened from the beginning to the end and there
will be confusion. Only the Tao is the beginning and the
end. Empty and return to the Tao. Begin with nothing.
Then become one and two and three.
Return to the beginning and move with the Tao. In it
is everything’s thinking.
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43. Soft Thinking . . . Soft Doing
oft thinking overcomes the most difficult question.
^^^Only that which takes the shape of everything can
embrace everything. Only the formless contains
every form.
Speak and there is confusion; try and there is struggle.
When thinking is confined by words, think without
words. Speak with words but think with silence; do
without trying, act without intent.
Meet everything’s changing with changing. This is
called soft meeting. Thus the timing is easy; inner and
outer arise out of each other, the surprising is familiar.
In soft meeting there is no difference between this and
that, here and there, self and other, effort and ease. No
trying so no failure. No trouble so no struggle. This is
called soft doing.
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44. Ease and Play
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is morc reliable, appearance or subV V stance? Choose between certainty or uncer
tainty, between consistency or understanding.
Rely on certainty, reputation and consistency, and the
cost will be dear. Hold firmly to truths and there will be
breaking. Invest in ideals, invent the high and sacred,
and there will be no end of trouble.
The Tao is wide enough for contradictions, satisfying
enough for discomforts, deep enough for the lowest.
Open to everything, hold to nothing. Without prepa
ration, be ready for everything. Let go and change amid
everything’s changing. Deep accord arises by releasing.
In all changing there is something unchanging. How
do changing and unchanging reside together? Ease and
play show the way.
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45. Knower and Known and
Unknown
~T“ n perfection is the imperfection that makes it end| lessly useful. Straightest thinking wanders. Sharpest
1 intelligence seems foolish. Finest words make no
sense. Knowing in an inexhaustible emptiness.
The unknown overcomes the known. Simplicity over
comes confusion. Silence and stillness order the restless
changing of everything.
Trust the changing in change. Trust the imperfect to
enliven the perfect. Trust the fullness in emptiness, the
wandering in directness, the wisdom in foolishness, the
sense in nonsense.
Trust the unknown. Without trusting the unknown,
the known and the knower cannot be trusted.
Knower and known and unknown arc the same. Each
person is the living known unable to find itself because
of its separation from the unknown. Knower and un
known are the same mystery. So be easy with all that is
known and all that is unknown.
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'C'V T Then the Tao is practiced, people arc nurtured
\ V / and thinking goes unnoticed. The ordinary is
▼ Y revered, the commonplace is enriched and
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the simple becomes profound.
When the Tao is not practiced, thinkers are revered
and people are suspicious. Simplicity is lost and thinking
is used to suppress and manipulate. Then the extraordi
nary is honoured, extremes are applauded and extrava
gance is expected.
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Stray from the Tao and thinkers become the instru
ments and victims of others. Excitement is cultivated.
The world becomes serious and severe. What people
think becomes more important than the changing of the
seasons.
Ignorance is a misfortune. Foolishness is a curse. But
the greatest disaster is thinking used as power. Learn a
little and be influenced. Learn a little more and be influ
ential. Then learn enough to let things go their natural
way.
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47. The Beginning Within
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carch distant places for the Tao but from the very
beginning it has been within. It is the searching in
the searcher. Think with all thoughts, feel with all
feelings. Open deeply; gently find the selfless. Empty
self into self for understanding, then empty self of self
for the Tao. Thus will there be seeing without looking,
understanding without thinking, doing without effort.
To understand, selflessly become the ordinary. It has
enough to teach. Learn softly from the simple. Fancy
learning will only confuse. Proceed no further than the
commonplace. Learn from the soil and grass, the trees
and air, the way of water.
Live in the commonplace, the simple, the ordinary.
Master these by letting them be master. Leave the high
learning to those intent upon losing their way. The best
that high learning can do is get lost.
When lost, return to the beginning. Getting lost is one
way of finding the beginning within.
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48. Empty of Questions
"W" earning consists ol filling, binding the Tao consists
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of emptying. Each day that something is found,
^the Tao is further away; each day that something
is lost, the Tao is closer.
Instead of filling with answers, empty of questions.
Continue to empty. Questions confine answers. When
there are no longer questions, answers are no longer
bound by them.
To control everything, let everything take its own
course; things cannot be controlled by interfering. One
selfish urge and there is confusion; one private thought
and there is ignorance. To understand everything, be
empty ol everything.
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49. The Sage
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Jl. without answers, teaches without truths,
thoughtlessly attunes to the thoughts of others.
Without judging, the ignorant arc filled, the learners
arc taught, the seekers arc encouraged, the lost arc di
rected, the foolish are helped.
The sage trusts the inner virtue of everything, trusts
wisdom’s, flow from full to empty. For those who arc
filling, the sage fills them full so emptying is prepared;
for those who are full, the sage opens them wide so
emptying begins.
To the world, the sage is humble and shy, confusing
and unnoticed. Even though people receive no answers,
they are fulfilled.
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1 claws of the tiger because there was no place for
death to enter.
Not even the sage of ancient days was immortal.
Dying always follows living. But between birth and
death there is a way of easy moving that is guided by the
Tao.
If the Tao could fit the form of words, it would be
understood only by the few who listen to words. Since it
cannot be said, it is found only by the few who listen to
silence. Silence is heard by unlearning everything
learned.
There cannot be unlearning when there is fear of mis
takes; there cannot be emptying when there is fear of
losing; there cannot be releasing when there is fear of
dying. When free from mistakes and losing and dying,
there comes of itself a special understanding.
Birth teaches that only the body is allowed into the
world; death teaches that not even the body is allowed
out of the world. Dying before death is a special balanc
ing of beginning and end. Ihus it is said: empty to fill,
lose to gain, die to live.
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51. First Belonging
rom the earliest moment of the beginning, from
the earliest arising of everything, everything was
filled with belonging.
Each thing arises as itself from all other things so
there is belonging in everything.
But people, in their willfulness, forget that a place is
made for them by their beginning.
Belonging is remembering. Remember belonging.
Knowing first belonging is deepest remembering of the
Great Mother.
Everything remembers the Great Mother. Each thing
arises from her body, is formed and nourished by her,
and then is shaped into itself by every other thing. Deep
in each things beginning is an honouring of first nourisliing and a rcmcnibcring of first belonging.
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52. Easy Harmony
vcrything has a common beginning. ’This begin
ning is called the Great Mother. Remember her to
understand her children. Then return to the
Great Mother.
Travelling forever will not get outside her body; think
ing forever will not get outside her thoughts. There is no
need to struggle. With body, trust her body; with
thoughts, trust her thoughts. There is no need to fear
death.
Instead et stttigglmg. tttisi; instead et speaking* listen.
Allow luhillment to arise ol itsell. Allow thinking and
doing to be timely. Misfortune is easily cultivated.
The greatest is known by the least, the ending by the
beginning. Trust and remember. Live in easy harmony
within the Great Mother.
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nary it is difficult to find. It is the simple source
from which thinkers create complicated think-
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Most people are so fascinated with complicated think
ing, so dazzled by the difficulty of things, they can’t find
the simplicity of things. Most people think too much
and struggle too much.
Who knows whether thinking or struggling came first
but the result is the same. People become cunning and
ingenious. Thinkers are so honoured that everyone
thinks that anyone who knows anything about anything
knows something about something. Problem after prob
lem is discovered. Solutions arc piled upon solutions
until everyone is afflicted with solutions and is lost in the
complexity of them.
All that people remember is the cunning of the argu
ments, the ingenuity of the devices, the splendour of it
all. Everyone follows the experts who have lost their
way. The coffers arc empty, the common charge is for
gotten, and the venerable sky and water and earth arc
abused.
There is room enough in the Tao for thinkers and
doers. But the Way is broad and narrow, obvious and
hidden, yielding and unforgiving. The Tao’s way is not
any way. Remember and honour the Great Mother.
Temper all thinking with humility.
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54. Be In the World
F I the deeply rooted will be long lived. Inner under| standing will be long remembered. The long reJL membered will influence the world.
Grasp the heart of things. Take hold of the inner depth
until it is understood deeply within. Open and receive
the inner and empty centre. Move in the deep with the
deep. Be led by the Way of the Great Mother. Be pos
sessed to possess.
Teach only what is understood in the heart. Then
teach from heart to heart and the world is changed.
Be separate from the world and the world is separated
into parts. Enter into the world, be in the world, be the
world binding together the world. Belong in the heart of
the Great Mother.
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ind the constancy in thinking that gives thinking
its constancy. Find the constancy in thinking that
gives thinking the Tao.
In harmony, differences belong; in constancy, contra
dictions belong. Thus the sage finds ease in effort,
firmness in yielding, wisdom in foolishness, wholeness
in parts, opportunity in adversity.
The traveller believes in the destination, the seeker
believes in the quest, the wanderer believes in the wan
dering. Even with nowhere to go, the walker believes in
the steps.
Thus the sage believes in the the Great Mother and the
Tao that is her way. The Great Mother cannot be es
caped, the dao cannot be avoided.
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56. Soften to the Way of Things
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I it is missed but be silent and there is confusion.
JL How can the unsayable be taught? By creating
the emptiness into which the wordless fills.
There arc no right answers; there arc no wrong ques
tions. All teaching is asking. Only questions arc justi
fied. Not even certainty is certain.
Certainty guarantees error. Cleverness invites undo
ing. Knowing is an affectation. Arrogance is a demean
ing of others, a foolishness that breaks the oneness of
everyone in the common mystery.
There is no certainty. Therefore, empty of certainty
and be filled with humility. Temper ingenuity. Restrain
brilliance. Simplify the complicated. Bring the lowest
together with the highest. Cultivate oneness so under
standing arises of itself. Say it without speaking it. Re
veal it without showing it.
Understand these.things and there will be no distinc
tion between teacher and learner, between understand
ing and ignorance, between serious and playful, between
effort and ease, between wisdom and foolishness. Soften
to the way of things and be found by the mystery.
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57. Great Learning
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trength will subdue, power will silence, force will
conquor, but people can only be overcome by
letting them find themselves.
The more regulations, the greater the resistance. The
more stringent the rules, the more ingenious the de
fiance. The more control, the stranger arc the things that
happen. When the unnecessary is imposed, people learn
what is foolish; what is important is lost in all the struggling.
The sage’s way is not lost in the unnecessary. What has
always been is nourished. There is peace because people
arc fulfilled byattending to themselves. What they learn,
they call important. There is harmony because they arc
not diverted from their duties. Without struggling, there
is great learning.
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58. Simple Greatness
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cspecl the '1’ao anti people will just be ordinary.
Greatness arises from the ordinary. Wisdom is
rooted in the ordinary. The Tao is practiced in
the ordinary.
The unusual creates problems. Be ingenious and peo
ple become cunning. At first restraint is lost, then pro
priety and balance. Then discretion is lost and then
control itself. Finally deception is honoured and misfor
tune is assured.
Since the kindly cannot be known without the cruel,
the good without the bad, the honest without the de
ceiving, the sage cultivates the primal beginning and
returns to the origin before opposites.
it seems that the sage is firm but gentle, yielding but
strong, incisive but restrained. But the sage is something
else, something deeply ordinary.
With sharp and clear mind, selflessly see the way of
things. Return to the ordinary.
Walk the balance and people will follow in balance.
Simple greatness ensues.
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59. Whole Caring, Whole
Allowing
an the intricate workings of heaven and earth be
known? How does everything arise and sub
side? To know the unlimited, be free of the
limited. Humility is a wise beginning. To be fit to under
stand, be free of certainty.
Begin by giving up ideals. In caring for others, use
restraint. Pretending to know what is correct and incor
rect, right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, is
merely attending to self. Virtue is not virtue until it is
free of the virtuous.
From restraint comes selflessness, brom selflessness
comes balance. From balance comes wholeness, brom
wholeness comes deep caring.
Become the Great Mother, holding and honouring all.
Embrace the halves of greatest and least, of one and
other. Then be embraced by wholeness and be found by
whole caring, whole allowing.
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60. Deep in Fullness and Emptiness
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world. When the demon is thought to be igno- •
rance, everyone fills everyone else with ideas.
Everyone thinks. Foolishness is condemned and every
one trusts there will be wisdom.
Filling people with ideas docs not make understand
ing; encouraging thinking does not make wisdom.
Thinking is the source of unthinking. It is a mistake to
expect that learning will always be beneficial. Some peo
ple learn more and just create more trouble; by being
less ignorant, their foolishness is more serious. Thus the
sage teaches discreetly.
Because one thing defines another, the sage teaches
with both wisdom and foolishness. Knowledge and ig
norance are both instructive. Ignorance encourages
learning; foolishness encourages wisdom. Thus the sage
is an example of what to be and what not to be. How
then can the sage be recognized from the fool?
It is difficult enough to understand by thinking but
how can there be understanding by not-thinking? Un
derstanding by not-thinking comes from the emptiness
of the Tao; coming from emptiness, it is infallible.
Wisdom without contrivance comes from the fullness of
the Tao; coming from fullness, it is infallible. Some
where deep in emptiness and fullness, is unerring under
standing and wisdom.
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I mountains but sinks to the great and receiving
sea. Downward is the course that all the rivers
of understanding follow. It is the way of the Great
Mother’s wisdom.
With her stillness, the feminine overcomes the mas
culine. Searching is futile without the receiving stillness
of learning; thinking is futile without the receiving still
ness of understanding. Search and think as male but
learn and understand as female. Just as searching empties
to become learning, thinking empties to become under
standing.
Searching and thinkingj arc the male’s trying; learning
and understanding arc the
L._ female’s receiving. Fill with
thinking but empty into understanding. Cultivate the
male but honour the female.
Search in the mountains but learn in the valleys; think
in the rivers but understand in the sea.
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f | ^hc *lao is the way of everything. It is the treasure
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of the wise and the refuge of the fool.
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When there is celebrating and giftgiving, offer
not the riches of wealth but the stillness of the Tao.
Why is the Tao prized above all else? Because thinking
leads to emptying, emptying leads to filling, filling leads
to finding. Because there is compassion for the foolish,
caring for the ignorant, guidance for the seeker, honour
for the wise. Because there is freedom in the Taos
boundless confinement.
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63. The Simple Is Not Easy
hink without mindfulness. Understand without
effort. Search out beginnings. Honour the sim
ple. Discover the just-so-ness of things. Respond
to the hardness of the world with caring and kindness
and compassion.
Find the simple in the com plicated. From little insights, attain great wisdom.
Understand the difficult by beginning with the easy.
Solve big problems while they arc still small. Ihus the
sage masters the big by attending to the little, under
stands the complicated by dealing with the simple.
But the simple is not easy and the easy is not simple.
Think that everything is easy and everything will be
difficult; think that everything is difficult and everything
will be easy.
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64. Before Thinking
j ust when an end is reached, a beginning begins.
| Confusion will follow certainty. Answers will lead
I to questions.
A first question cannot have a last answer. Give an
answer and it will be wrong. An end is always a begin
ning. Find the answer that was before the first question;
find the understanding that was before the first thought.
Thoughts are only about thinking. Thinking will lead
to confusion. Understand before thinking confuses un
derstanding. Use thoughts to recognize understanding.
Think carefully before thinking, then think without
disturbing thinking. Understand before thinking, then
think without disturbing understanding.
Empty thinking of thoughts and return to the begin
ning before the first thought. Because empty comes from
full and full comes from empty, fill with emptying.
The sage does not collect truths, does not hold ideas,
does not desire to understand. The sage thinks nothing
but is ever mindful, knows nothing but is ever under
standing, judges nothing but is ever discerning.
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65. Breathing Easily
"T- n the beginning when people were simple and close
I to the Great Mother, they did not know about the
Jk.Tao because they were at one with the Tao. Without
cleverness they were virtuous, without knowledge they
were wise. But simplicity and virtue arc not easily kept.
Knowledge is easier to find than wisdom; cleverness is
easier to find than virtue. Knowledge without wisdom
and cleverness without virtue is the beginning of misfor
tune.
Searching for what has been lost is dangerous; clever
ness teaches cleverness, knowledge breeds knowledge.
Without the humility of the Tao’s way, cleverness and
knowledge upset the simple balance. People disregard
the inner virtue of things, they quarrel with themselves
and wage war with the Great Mother’s wisdom.
Balance is virtue, a return to the primal harmony.
How can it be known? When farmers tend healthy soil
and the earth is generous; when the air and water is clean
for birds and fishes, when woodcutters plan for genera
tions and carpenters have straight wood; when people
are born and age into death; when nothing extraordinary
happens and people are contented, i here is virtue when
the lowest and the highest arc respected; when the natu
ral way of things is honoured and everything is ordinary;
when it seems as if the Great Mother is breathing easily.
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66. Above the Hundred Rivers
he sea is above the hundred rivers because it is
below them. Therefore, the sage serves from be
low, guides from beneath, leads from behind.
Because the sage is humble, the people are not op
pressed. Because they are not oppressed, they trust.
Because they are not led, they follow.
When the sage struggles with no one, no one can
struggle in return.
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I the Tao is different. If it had not been different, it
I could not have been from the very beginning. It
-JL. is inconceivable, thus it is great and enduring.
There are three treasures to keep: compassion, moder
ation, humility. From compassion comes strength, from
moderation comes generosity, from humility comes
leadership.
To be strong, first know yielding; without yielding,
strength is unattainable. To be giving, first find plenty;
without inner resources there is nothing to give. To lead,
first understand following; without following there is no
way to know leading.
Without the three treasures, there cannot be others.
Return to the beginning, embrace the three and receive
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c violent and balance is lost. Be angry and intel
ligence is forgotten. Be forceful and oneness is
broken.
Be with people like being at one with the Great
Mother. Do not strive or be proud.
The best way of leading is following; the best way of
teaching is serving. This is the virtue of not-striving, the
way of going softly with others, of guiding from within.
People cannot be brought to thoughts so thoughts arc
brought to people. Do not be forceful with thoughts but
bring and offer them gently so that the seeking in every
one is not disturbed.
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69. A Mystery Within a Mystery
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very step leads to nowhere. Advancing does not
go forward.Retreating is impossible. Everything
learned seems useless. Thinking hangs waiting in
emptiness.
Everything is a surprise that comes from nowhere. It
is useless to anticipate. Even with caution, every hap
pening is unexpected. Even with full mind sharp and
clear, the Way cannot be found.
Somehow every thought is a preparing; an under
standing without certainty, a movement without change.
Who can say how the Tao works? It is a mystery
within a mystery.
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70. With Mind Wide Open
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here is a principle in these words; there is a
system in the affairs of people. But no one seems
to understand.
Who can know the Way of the Tao? Perhaps its begin
ning is too ancient, its way too disciplined. Who can
explain what it is or how it works? Why should it be so
difficult when the Tao is just the way things are? Perhaps
the obvious is too difficult.
Because of the Tao there is accord between the one and
the many, the same and the different. Each accord is a
sign and a teacher of the Way.
But also be taught by each discord. The blind, with
eyes dark but minds bright, arc guided at first by
obstructions.
There is a way of moving in this world unaided by
certainty. Losing a little helps in finding a little. With
mind wide open and closed to answers, feel for the Way.
139
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71. Thinking Crooked
he ancient sages said that it is wise to think that
knowledge is ignorance but foolish to think that
ignorance is knowledge.
For those who are tired of foolishness, the way is open
to wisdom. Wisdom begins by treating knowledge with
indifference. So it seems that the crooked thoughts of the
sage are like the confused thoughts of the fool.
Straight thinking is useful but the Tao itself is not
straight and cannot be straightened. Contradictions in
here. Paradoxes belong. So words arc bent crooked and
the sage cannot give straight answers.
People like to pretend that things are straight so they
can think straight. They like to get things straight, be
straightforward, straighten their affairs. Going straight is
only a short illusion. Just as the long road and the
measuring stick must finally bend, so everything must
bend. Even these crooked words are bent to take the
shape of crookedness.
So the sage wanders a crooked way. And people who
think things arc straight, think the sage is aimless or
confused. But the sage just laughs a crooked laugh and
lets them think straight.
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72. With Thinking Undone
< void awe conics respect. From respect conies rel-4 straint. Without restraint there will be misfor-
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tune.
Awe is the acknowledgement of humility. Who under
stands the thinking of the tree, the wisdom of the grass,
the patience of the stone?
What thinkers understand their own thinking? How
can thoughts understand thinking when every thought
can be undone by the thoughts of thinking’s own think
ing?
Be in awe of thinking’s own doing and undoing. Then
with thinking undone . . . just think.
143
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74. The Fool Unknowingly
Teaches the Sage
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I dangers of ignorance. If they do not think, it is
JL useless to caution them. If they are fools, they can
not be warned of foolishness.
But the world needs those who think and those who
do not think; it needs the concerned and the uncon
cerned, the wise and the foolish. If there were only
concerned thinking people, they would worry enough
to do something foolish. If there were only unconcerned
unthinking people, they would stumble into disaster. As
it is, the thoughtful are occupied teaching the
thoughtless, and the thoughtless arc occupied learning
from the thoughtful. And only the sage is lost.
Who knows what anyone will become? And who
knows what anyone is? So the sage teaches everyone and
learns from everyone.
Except for the fool, everyone knows that they don’t
know. But who knows when they do know? So it is that
the fool unknowingly teaches the sage.
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73. By Doing Nothing
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c fearless and passionate and there will be con
fusion and then disaster. Be fearless and calm and
there will be clarity and then accord. One way is
favoured, the other way is not. But no one knows why.
Because the Tao docs not struggle, those who move
with the Tao do not struggle. For them, there is happen
ing but things are not made to happen; there is possess
ing but things are not possessed; there is finding but
things are not found.
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Struggle and it is missed; remember and it is lost. This
is why the Tao is so elusive. It teaches by doing nothing.
It evades questions and escapes answers, It controls
nothing yet nothing is free from it. Mindlessly ... it
behaves flawlessly.
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75. Just One Question
‘V'VT'TThy are people ignorant? Because their ques\ V / tions arc not answered. Because those who
V V know hoard knowledge like wealth and use it
like power.
When those who know are so concerned about
knowledge, those who don’t know become concerned
about ignorance. How can ignorance be taken lightly
when knowledge is taken seriously?
Why are people restless? Because someone has some
thing they know they don’t have. Because they know
they don’t know.
Fools are easily controlled but the ignorant are not
fools. If they have just one question, trouble begins.
Then those who know spend all their time trying to fool
those who want to know and everyone does strange
things. Just as streams must flow downward, questions
must be answered.
People who are searching for answers arc following
what they don’t know so they are lost and restless,
People who arc finding answers arc following what they
do know so they arc fulfilled and contented. Thus the
sage guides by opening, not by closing, and trusts the
downward course of things.
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76. The Beginning Wonder
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coplc arc born soft and supple but when they arc
old they get hard and stiff. A vital plant is flexible
and yielding but a dying one is withered and
brittle.
The young and vital learn because they are always
yielding, always beginning.
Great old scholars, stuffed with information and bur
dened with knowledge, are old and dry trees ready for
the ax. The unbending will break; the heavy and stiff arc
dying.
Lighten the heavy and soften the hard; make supple
the stiff. Return to the beginning wonder.
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77. Filling the Empty and
Emptying the Full
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hen a bow is pulled, the top is lowered and
the bottom is raised. The Tao’s way is to raise
the low and lower the high; to take away
when there is too much and to give when there is too
little.
A foolish teacher belittles the ignorant until they are
silent and defeated, and praises the learned until they arc
vain and complacent.
When the sage teaches, those who know little arc
proud of what they do know and those who know much
arc humbled by what they do know. The ignorant grow
by what they have and the learned grow by what they do
not have. So the sage nourishes by filling the empty and
emptying the full, by providing certainty for the uncer
tain and uncertainty for the certain. Because of what the
ignorant know, they respect the learned; because of what
the learned do not know, they respect the ignorant.
With neither pride nor humility, the sage works un
recognized and unnoticed. People grow and fulfill them
selves. They say that things are going well and don’t
even notice they arc moving with the Tao.
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78. Closest To All Thoughts
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he softness and yielding of water overcomes the
hardness and strength of stone. Changing over
comes unchanging.
Shapeless water takes the shape of everything. Un
changing thinking cannot understand everything’s
changing; struggling thinking cannot understand every
thing’s yielding.
The sage knows less than anyone so is most qualified
to teach everyone; knows nothing so is most suited to
teach everything. Confused by everything, the sage is
closest to everything; unable to hold on to one thought,
the sage is closest to all thoughts.
At first, right seems right. After careful thought, right
seems wrong. Finally, everything seems both right and
wrong, good and bad, true and false, yes and no.
In the full middle, the sage teaches what needs to be
taught, not what aught to be taught.
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79. Best Masters
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ise above differences so differences may settle.
Rise above baseness and sink below aloofness.
Even out excesses. In conflicts do not provoke
the aggrieved.
The Tao is impartial. Therefore, the sage does not take
things personally. In all matters be attentive but impar
tial.
Impartiality keeps going from going too far, keeps not
enough from becoming too much, keeps doing from
becoming undoing, keeps giving from becoming taking.
Those who flaunt themselves will be challenged and
engaged; the first will become last.
Force causes resistance. Too much is followed by too
little. The victorious will be defeated. Do only what is
required and then let things manage themselves. Control
without controlling.
Deepest virtue goes unnoticed because it is attuned to
the Tao. To be most useful, do nothing and go un
noticed. Try to control and there will be trouble. Force
ultimately fails. Confrontation creates only winners and
losers; concede and there will be no end of concessions,
struggle and there will be no end of struggling.
So the sage attends to the Tao and serves the inner
virtue of things. The best masters arc servants.
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80. Primal Simplicity
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ven people are rooted in primal simplicity. Hon
our that simplicity and everyone benefits. Forget
it and people get lost.
The sage is guided by primal simplicity. Each different
person is respected and honoured as a separate part of
wholeness. Each different person is the Tao’s one think
ing and the Tao’s one doing.
When people arc influenced by the sage, they stay
rooted in their differences and say they are fulfilling
themselves. When changed by the sage, they return to
their primal simplicity and say they arc finding them
selves.
The primal simplicity that is deep in people is compli
cated enough. When people become more complicated,
they are less able to find themselves. The less* they are
able to find themselves, the less power they have. The
less power they have, the more threatened they feel and
the more they struggle with others.
Deviating from primal simplicity is the beginning of
trouble.
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81. Nothing Special
ancy words arc not substantial; the substantial is
not fancy.
Those who arc defensive do not understand;
those who understand have nothing to defend. The sage,
by emptying of convictions, moves in accord with the
way of things. Instead of filling with complications, the
sage empties of them; instead of remembering, the sage
forgets; instead of finding, the sage loses.
There is a way of filling that empties. All the parts of
everything balance to nothing. The sage who teaches
only seems to be giving; the learner who understands
only seems to be filling. Thus people who finally learn
themselves full, find themselves empty. When empty,
they find themselves in the fullness and simplicity of the
ordinary.
Though the Tao is found on the thin edge of the
ordinary, it is wide and sure; though soft and yielding, it
is firm and secure.
It is the ordinary that is extraordinary. To move with
the Tao, nothing special is done. To understand the Tao
nothing special is thought.
161
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About the Artist
William Gaetz was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on
September 23, 1934. An accomplished vocalist and concert
pianist, Mr. Gaetz has long been a student of philosophy and
religion, concentrating his intellectual energies on Zen and
metaphysics. After years of expressing his creativity profes
sionally through photography, he embarked on the path of
Chinese brush painting under the tutelage of Master Profes
sor Peng Kung Yi. It is a medium that Mr. Gaetz feels best
fulfills his artistic needs.
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Books about Taoism
and Related Matters
i;
Brand, Stuart, ed. The Next Whole Earth Catalog. New York: Point
Jil
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Random House, 1980.
Bynncr, Witter. The Way of Life According to Laolzu. New York:
Capricorn Books,1962.
Capra, Friliof. The Tao of Physics. Berkeley, CA: Shambala, 19 .
Feng , Gai-fu, and Jane English. Tao Te Ching. New York: Alfred A.
f
Knopf, 1972.
Grigg, Ray. The Tao of Relationships. Atlanta, GA. Humamcs
New Age, 1986.
Heidcr, John. Ute Tao of Leadership. Atlanta, GA. Humamcs
New Age, 1988.
Medhurst, Spurgeon. The Tao-Tch-King. Wheaton IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1972.
Messing, Robert. The Tao of Management. Atlanta, GA. Humamcs
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New Age, 1988.
Schimdt, K.O. TaoTe Ching (Lao-Tse’s Book of Life). Lakemont, GA:
CSA Press, 1975.
Schwenk, Theodore. SensUive Chaos. New York: Schocken Boo ,
1965.
Vanden Brock, Goldian, ed. Less is More; The Art of Voluntary
Poverty. Harper Colophon Books. New York: Harper & Row,
1978-
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Waley, Arthur. The Way and Ils Power. New York: Grove I rcss, 1J5J.
Watts, Alan, and Al Chung-liang Huang. Tao the Watercourse Hhy.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
Wilhelm, Richard, and Cary Baynes, trans. I Ching or The Book of
Changes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
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