Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (5 page)

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

Thomas Jefferson would
have liked the first stanza.

“Troubled spirits” are
kwei
,
ghosts, not bad in themselves but dangerous if they possess you.
Waley
reads the second stanza as a warning to believers in
Realpolitik:
a ruler “possessed” by power harms both the
people and his own soul. Taking it as counsel to the individual, it might mean
that wise souls neither indulge nor repress the troubled spirits that may haunt
them; rather, they let those spiritual energies be part of the power they find
along the way.

The polity of greatness
runs downhill like a river to the sea
,
joining with everything,
woman to everything.

By stillness the woman
may always dominate the man
,
lying quiet underneath him.

So a great country
submitting to small ones, dominates them
;
so small countries,
submitting to a great one, dominate it.

Lie low to be on top
,
be on top by lying low.

The way is the hearth and home
of the ten thousand things.
Good souls treasure it
,
lost souls find shelter in it.

Fine words are for sale
,
fine deeds go cheap;
even worthless people can get them.

So, at the coronation of the Son of Heaven
when the Three Ministers take office
,
you might race out in a four-horse chariot
to offer a jade screen;
but wouldn’t it be better to sit still
and let the Way be your offering?

Why was the Way honored
in the old days?
Wasn’t it said
:
Seek, you’ll find it.
Hide, it will shelter you.
So it was honored under heaven.

I think the line of
thought throughout the poem has to do with true reward as opposed to
dishonorable gain, true giving as opposed to fake goods.

Do without doing.
Act without action.
Savor the flavorless.
Treat the small as large
,
the few as many.

Meet injury
with the power of goodness.

Study the hard while it’s easy.
Do big things while they’re small.
The hardest jobs in the world start out easy
,
the great affairs of the world start small.

So the wise soul
,
by never dealing with great things,
gets great things done.

Now, since taking things too lightly makes them worthless
,
and taking things too easy makes them hard,
the wise soul,
by treating the easy as hard,
doesn’t find anything hard.

Waley
says that this charmingly complex chapter
plays with two proverbs. “Requite injuries with good deeds” is the first. The
word
te
,
here meaning goodness or good deeds, is the
same word Lao Tzu uses for the Power of the Way. (“Power is goodness,” he says
in chapter 49.) So, having neatly annexed the Golden Rule, he goes on to the
proverb about “taking things too lightly” and plays paradox with it.

It’s easy to keep hold of what hasn’t stirred
,
easy to plan what hasn’t occurred.
It’s easy to shatter delicate things
,
easy to scatter little things.
Do things before they happen.
Get them straight before they get mixed up.

The tree you can’t reach your arms around
grew from a tiny seedling.
The nine-story tower rises
from a heap of clay.
The ten-thousand-mile journey
begins beneath your foot.

Do, and do wrong
;
Hold on, and lose.
Not doing, the wise soul
doesn’t do it wrong
,
and not holding on,
doesn’t lose it.
(In all their undertakings
,
it’s just as they’re almost finished
that people go wrong.
Mind the end as the beginning
,
then it won’t go wrong.)

That’s why the wise
want not to want
,
care nothing for hard-won treasures,
learn not to be learned,
turn back to what people overlooked.
They go along with things as they are
,
but don’t presume to act.

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

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

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

Where shall we find a
ruler wise enough to know what to teach and what to withhold?
“Once upon a time,” maybe, in the days of myth and legend, as a
pattern, a model, an ideal?

The knowledge and the
ignorance or unknowing Lao Tzu speaks of
may
or may
not refer to what we think of as education. In the last stanza, by power he
evidently does not mean political power at all, but something vastly different,
a unity with the power of the Tao itself.

This is a mystical
statement about government-and in our minds those two realms are worlds apart.
I cannot make the leap between them. I can only ponder it.

Lakes and rivers are lords of the hundred valleys.
Why?
Because they’ll go lower.
So they’re the lords of the hundred valleys.

Just so, a wise soul
,
wanting to be above other people,
talks to them from below
and to guide them
follows them.

And so the wise soul
predominates without dominating
,
and leads without misleading.
And people don’t get tired
of enjoying and praising
one who, not competing
,
has in all the world
no competitor.

One of the things I
love in Lao Tzu is his good cheer, as in this poem, which while giving good
counsel is itself a praise and enjoyment of the spirit of yin, the water-soul
that yields, follows, eludes, and leads on, dancing in the hundred valleys.

Everybody says my way is great
but improbable.

All greatness
is improbable.
What’s probable
is tedious and petty.

I have three treasures.
I keep and treasure them.
The first, mercy
,
the second, moderation,
the third, modesty.
If you’re merciful you can be brave
,
if you’re moderate you can be generous,
and if you don’t presume to lead
you can lead the high and mighty.

But to be brave without compassion
,
or generous without self-restraint,
or to take the lead,
is fatal.

Compassion wins the battle
and holds the fort
;
it is the bulwark set
around those heaven helps.

The first two verses
of this chapter are a joy to me.

The three final verses
are closely connected in thought to the next two chapters, which may be read as
a single meditation on mercy, moderation, and modesty, on the use of strength,
on victory and defeat.

The best captain doesn’t rush in front.
The fiercest fighter doesn’t bluster.
The big winner isn’t competing.
The best boss takes a low footing.
This is the power of noncompetition.
This is the right use of ability.
To follow heaven’s lead
has always been the best way.

The expert in warfare says
:
Rather than dare make the attack
I’d take the attack;
rather than dare advance an inch
I’d retreat a foot.

It’s called marching without marching
,
rolling up your sleeves without flexing your muscles,
being armed without weapons,
giving the attacker no opponent.
Nothing’s worse than attacking what yields.
To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.

So, when matched armies meet
,
the one who comes to grief
is the true victor.

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

My words are so easy to understand
,
so easy to follow,

and
yet nobody in the world
understands or follows them.

Words come from an ancestry
,
deeds from a mastery:
when these are unknown, so am I.

In my obscurity
is my value.
That’s why the wise
wear their jade under common clothes.

To know without knowing is best.
Not knowing without knowing it is sick.

To be sick of sickness
is the only cure.

The wise aren’t sick.
They’re sick of sickness
,
so they’re well.

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

When we don’t fear what we should fear
we are in fearful danger.
We ought not to live in narrow houses
,
we ought not to do stupid work.

If we don’t accept stupidity
we won’t act stupidly.
So, wise souls know but don’t show themselves
,
look after but don’t prize themselves,
letting the one go, keeping the other.

Brave daring leads to death.
Brave caution leads to life.
The choice can be the right one
or the wrong one.

Who will interpret
the judgment of heaven?
Even the wise soul
finds it hard.

The way of heaven
doesn’t compete
yet wins handily
,
doesn’t speak
yet answers fully,
doesn’t summon
yet attracts.
It acts
perfectly easily.

The net of heaven
is vast, vast
,
wide-meshed,
yet misses nothing.

When normal, decent people don’t fear death
,
how can you use death to frighten them?
Even when they have a normal fear of death
,
who of us dare take and kill the one who doesn’t?
When people are normal and decent and death-fearing
,
there’s always an executioner.
To take the place of that executioner
is to take the place of the great carpenter.
People who cut the great carpenter’s wood
seldom get off with their hands unhurt.

To Lao Tzu, not to
fear dying and not to fear killing are equally unnatural and antisocial. Who
are we to forestall the judgment of heaven or nature, to usurp the role of “the
executioner”? “The Lord of Slaughter” is
Waley’s
grand translation.

People are starving.
The rich gobble taxes
,
that’s why people are starving.

People rebel.
The rich oppress them
,
that’s why people rebel.

People hold life cheap.
The rich make it too costly
,
that’s why people hold it cheap.

But those who don’t live for the sake of living
are worth more than the wealth-seekers.

How many hundreds of
years ago
was
this book written? And yet still this
chapter must be written in the present tense.

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

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

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

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

The Way of heaven
is like a bow bent to shoot
:
its top end brought down,
its lower end raised up.
It brings the high down
,
lifts the low,
takes from those who have,
gives to those who have not.

Such is the Way of heaven
,
taking from people who have,
giving to people who have not.
Not so the human way
:
it takes from those who have not
to fill up those who have.
Who has enough to fill up everybody?
Only those who have the Way.

So the wise
do without claiming
,
achieve without asserting,
wishing not to show their worth.