Lao Tzu
In looking to the Tao Teh Ching, which for the sake of brevity I will refer to as the Tao, for guidance on the ways to teach, especially in the Asian context, we may feel uneasy about its authorship or date. Such unease in a scholar of history or philosophy may be understandable, but understanding lacunae such as these may be part of what we can learn about teaching from the book.
The sage or sages referred to in it are nameless. We are told in it that the sage "does his work, but sets no store by it" (2). That the sage mentioned is usually referred to in the present tense, not as a person from the distant past or future, but in the here and now, also suggests a timeless quality. The actual here and now of the text is not specified or concretized, thus leaving the sage free. Being concretely specific and egocentric seems to run against the spirit or flow of the poems.
point is that he is and is not all of these things at any one time. In each instance of the present, what we can say is that the sage is "the Sage". While these issues may create problems for the impatient reader who wants to have fac-tual answers to such questions, such a reading misses the whole point about the unassuming qualities of the Sage which guarantee his success and power.
In a way, our carping after solutions to these problems confirms Lao Tzu's point that by moving away from self-assertion, we actually move more into the public gaze. This paradoxical movement works for the book as well. While it does not try to locate itself in any specific culture, what we can be in no doubt about is that this book is at the heart of Chinese and Japanese cultures, and by extension, many other Asian cultures. In this lecture, I only want to try to find new ways to think and talk about teaching in the Asian context and to see if there are any flows between Lao Tzu and the other teachers I look at in these lectures. And, in what I understand as the spirit of the Tao, this should be done as simply as possible.
Claims that Lao Tzu's book blends Buddhist and Confucian ideas, while ulti-mately conjectural, suggest at least that the book may be trying to blend In-dian and Chinese ideas in new ways, and that it does not worry about telling the reader specifically what it is trying to do. It just gets on with what it has to do: "He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it" (2). Taking this advice, to see how it works, so will I. Because I want to experience the Way as I read, and communicate this experience, I will follow the flow of the po-ems' order. This seems to be the way Lao Tzu teaches as he writes or speaks.
The Tao is a collection of eighty one poems that seem to be loosely ordered, if "ordered" is the right word. This allows the ideas to flow free of restrictive overt explanations of how this flow works. If it works, it works. There is so little explicit guidance to the reader on how to read the book because the reader is expected to adopt a Taoist way of reading and so accept the flows. If the reader is not already Taoist before reading the poems, the reader will either have to learn how to think in Taoist ways or miss the experience offered by the book.
oppo-sites met with in experience need each other, and that by accepting the order inherent in these paradoxes, he does not waste time trying to sort them out:
Therefore, the Sage manages his affairs without ado, And spreads his teaching without talking.
He denies nothing to the teeming things. He rears them, but lays no claim to them. He does his work, but sets no store by it.
He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it (2).
In this teaching without talking, there is a modesty that recognizes the paradox in trying to gain acceptance for one's own way as the only right way:
When all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness. When all the world recognizes good as good, this in itself is evil (2).
Such a paradox is created by an imbalance which is produced by everyone trying to see or think the same way. Imbalance, or the loss of a paradoxical opposite, actually creates another paradox. Whatever we try to do, there will always be this force of paradox. Domination, understood as trying to create a totality of oneness or agreement, is shunned. The sage governs by preventing such a desire to achieve agreement at the expense of the paradox:
Therefore, the Sage's way of governing begins by Emptying the heart of desires,
Filling the belly with food, Weakening the ambitions, Toughening the bones (3).
No amount of words can fathom it: Better look for it within you (5).
It cannot be explained in words that impose meaning on others. Each person needs to find this Way for himself or herself. Truth is not out there and ex-pressible in words, but within waiting to be recognized. By not trying to make this Way fit into one linguistic formula or not trying to define it as a thing that exists out there, we can only find the Way to see it for ourselves. How to find it, not what it looks like when we find is, is all we can say. This suggests that truth is not a manifest thing that everyone can or should try to fix or tie down by agreeing as to what it is. The more we try to nail it down or fix it as the truth, the less true we are to the Way. By trying to explain what we know rationally or why what we know is an ordered thing, we are not being rational or or-derly. Instead, we are creating disorder (which would be an irrational thing to do).
In trying to assert ourselves as sages in order to gain recognition, security, and power, we will fail, as our actions always produce a paradoxical state as a way of balancing the forces we over-use:
Therefore, the Sage wants to remain behind, But finds himself at the head of others; Reckons himself out,
But finds himself safe and secure. Is it not because he is selfless That his self is realized? (7).
Modesty, selflessness, and self-criticism are the only attributes that bring about leadership, security and safety. By always doubting ourselves, we can para-doxically find certainty. If we want one thing, we should try to realize its oppo-site. This may explain why the Sage should not exalt talented students. The rivalry produced by such attempts to rank order others is a force for disorder, not order (3). Chaos, contention and disagreement are the results of trying to force order and agreement on others. There is no direct path or method that will create what we want.
The highest form of goodness is like water.
Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them (8).
Non-resistance is the only way to ensure order. By trying to force others to do things, we only make them resist and thus undermine our effectiveness. Wa-ter-teaching invites those we teach to flow with us for their own benefit. As the Way lies in each of us for us to discover ourselves, we cannot expect others to find the Way by telling them to do things our way. To seek such conformity through force, we only create dissension. We teachers, as water, need to be flexible, to change our shapes for each situation to maximize this flow. To prepare ourselves for this Non-Ado, we need to look into ourselves first. This introspection is a form of diving in the water of who we are. To make things or ourselves grow, we cannot try to grow by asserting what we are. Instead, we must be critical of ourselves and introspective: "In cultivating your mind, know how to dive in the hidden deeps" (8). To be seen, we must hide ourselves; to grow we must first swim in our own thoughts; to be seen, we must first find what is hidden in our own deeps. This skill or attribute does not come about as a result of our assertions, but from our self-criticisms and our awareness that we cannot say for certain that we are already growing: "In speaking, know how to keep your words" (8). By being aware of our own hidden depths, we know that we do not know, and so guard ourselves against assert-ing that we do know. Such self-criticism is a constant activity that prevents us from trying to dominate others by forcing our views on them as the only way. In these watery deeps, marked by our modesty and self-criticism, is "hidden Virtue" (10).
We cultivate this virtue by always asking ourselves questions. These questions are to remind us of our doubts and inadequacies:
In washing and clearing your inner vision, Have you purified it of all dross?
In governing your people and governing your state, Are you able to dispense with cleverness? (10).
We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful (11).
While we focus on the tangible things we use, we miss the simple fact that the emptiness or spaces in that tangible thing are what we actually use to learn by:
Thus, while the tangible has advantages, It is the intangible that makes it useful (11).
The Sage sees that we must learn to recognize virtue, and that this is within ourselves as an intangible, not a tangible, thing: "He prefers what is within to what is without" (12). Putting this virtue into words is only to lose the empti-ness by trying to make the thought tangible, as something shaped by language. While our words create the shape, they are not the value or the virtue. What is within or unexpressed are the hidden depths which can be understood be-yond our shaping words. This may be the mysterious power of the force of the Tao. The ethical point seems to flow into the next poem, where we are com-forted in our emptiness and in our willingness to risk losing what we have. Only if we take such risks will we find ourselves and be understood. To have real power, we must be willing not to have it, and to lose this power out of love for the world we sacrifice ourselves for: "Only he who can do it with love is worthy of being the steward of the world" (13). Here, Lao Tzu stresses the ethical power of love as the one condition necessary for successful teaching. Our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for others flows from our willingness to sacrifice our views of ourselves to our honest self-criticism. The Tao is form-less, soundform-less, and incorporeal. As such, it exists as a paradoxical expression or an unnamable name, as "the formless Form, the imageless Image./ We call it the indefinable and the unimaginable" (14). Our words are only powerful paradoxically as we recognize their powerlessness to be tangible. When we try to make this force tangible in words, we try to explain the paradox away, and so we fail to say anything.
What qualities do we need to follow the Tao? The answer lies with the "an-cient adepts". We must turn to them to see things as they are:
The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and compre-hensive.
Again, there is the water imagery. The subtle and flexible qualities of water, its profundity and comprehensiveness, make it too "deep" to be "fathomed", measured, or understood in words. Unless we too can practice these quali-ties, we will remain shallow, limited, fixed, and blunt. Such bluntness has al-ready been hinted at in the image of a person who by continually trying to sharpen or preserve a sword actually blunts and destroys it:
Keep on beating and sharpening a sword, And the edge cannot be preserved for long (9).
The qualities exhibited or possessed by the ancients -which we have lost in our attempts to improve or shape what we already are - are offered as a way for us to act now, if only we can find these things within ourselves:
Hesitant like one wading in a stream in winter; Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides; Cautious and courteous like a guest;
Yielding like ice on the point of melting; Simple like an uncarved block;
Hollow like a cave;
Confused like a muddy pool (15).
Many of these images are of water. That not all of them are only seems to reinforce the poet's distrust of totalities and universalities. Such qualities may not be attractive to those who only want the tangible and the certain. But for those who look within and see beyond their dross and problems, such quali-ties seem natural. Only when we accept our limitations and behave accord-ingly will we be able to achieve anything. Without these modest qualities, we will fail to see the Way or Tao. Because we doubt that we can see it, we may see it. To embrace such qualities requires sacrifice on our part. Only by losing ourselves can we gain self-knowledge and our soul. Instead of surrendering to the desire to "rush to early ripening" (15), we should always try to control ourselves by self-criticism. Out of our limitations will come our potentialities. Out of our failure and inadequacy will come our success and skill.
of trying to speak volumes which will only ensure our failure at the moment we may think we succeed, we need to control our language and hide ourselves:
The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, All the people say, "We ourselves have achieved it!" (17).
This quality has been absorbed into Chinese poetics and language sensitivity in The Mustard Seed Manual: "The end of all method is to seem to have no method". The Way comes or arises from within others, not as an imposition from the teacher. When we have taught well, the students think they have taught themselves. To seek recognition or reward means that we are not lost within ourselves, but are seeking the tangible again. Such a refusal to accept defeat and failure is unethical and therefore doomed to failure. Our expecta-tions of recognition are not based on love and self-sacrifice, but only on worldly ambitions that paradoxically destroy any chances we may have for success as teachers. By putting ourselves in the way, we have paradoxically moved our-selves out of the way and of the Way.
When we try to be clever, wise, shrewd and sharp, and when we discriminate between men through ideas of justice and humanity, we promote division and power relations which actually impede our assistance to others. In place of such qualities, and over our dropping of them, we should recognize "a Higher principle":
See the Simple and embrace the Primal, Diminish the self and curb the desires! (19)
Learning, understood as an analytical fragmentation of things, is not part of the Simple or the Primal, but the cause of disagreement and division:
Have done with learning,
And you will have no more vexation.
How great is the difference between "eh" and "o"? What is the distinction between "good" and "evil"? Must I fear what others fear?
Paradoxically, this abandonment of learning is what is to be learned. Without understanding this, we talk only nonsense, and harmful nonsense at that be-cause it promotes fragmentation of our selves and leads to a lack of under-standing by taking us away from the Way or Tao.
Such assertions of apparent contradictions or impossible propositions are meant to shock the reader or listener. They draw attention to the writer who now for the first time in the poems talks about himself in the first person. He draws attention to himself by criticizing himself as a fool. His praise of folly paradoxi-cally flows in what sounds like his most poetiparadoxi-cally self-conscious writing up to this point. He draws attention to himself by denying his relevance and value:
What a fool I am!
What a muddled mind I have! All men are bright, bright: I alone am dim, dim. All men are sharp, sharp: I alone am mum, mum! Bland like the ocean,
Aimless like the wafting gale (20).
Seen through the eyes of others, he knows he is regarded as a fool and a failure. But what reassures him is that his "disgrace" and "calamities" are signs of self-sacrifice and that he is following the Tao (13). When all men are one thing and agree that that thing is beautiful or good, that is ugliness and evil (2). His wisdom is to recognize he is a fool and different to all men. By being a contrarian to others, he is able to keep away from their "nonsense". His folly is wise, their wisdom is nonsense. His self-images are of the ocean and the wind: things that flow and do not have fixed shapes. He cannot be put into other men's boxes and so remains in touch with the Tao:
All men settle down in their grooves: I alone am stubborn and remain outside. But wherein I am most different from others is In knowing to take sustenance from my Mother! (20)
which seem to have been created by men following the nonsense of other men before them. The grooves suggest a cart, which in turn suggests a beast of burden or an ox as the creator of those grooves. The sustenance the "I" takes is the milk from the mother's breast. As a child, he is yet to be shaped; he is foolish, mum, dim. His folly protects him.
At this point in the poems' flow, we have been returned to the beginning or first poem by the image of the Tao as the Mother. We realize with the next poem that we have been moving around like the gale or the ocean, not in a straight line. Since the first poem, Lao Tzu has not offered a definition of the Tao. He has only given us a name for it: "the Mother". In the succeeding nineteen po-ems, we have experienced the shapeless shape of one who writes with the Tao. Only after we have experienced this are we ready for a definition of it, which is more than knowing its name:
Now what is the Tao?
It is something elusive and evasive… It contains within Itself an unfailing Sincerity. Throughout the ages Its Name has been preserved In order to recall the Beginning of all things.
How do I know the ways of all things at the Beginning? By what is within me (21).
We are reminded of the beginning of the Tao. We sense a pattern, "elusive and evasive" though it may be. If we try to fit this pattern into the grooves of the ox, we will destroy it, not preserve it. Knowledge of the Tao comes from contact with the "Beginning", and this beginning is to be looked for within ourselves, not in the grooves of other men's thoughts. If we can look with sincerity, we can find it.
The self-effacement of the writer up to this poem is shifted to the foreground by his sudden emergence in the first person voice now. His absence paradoxi-cally makes possible the effect of his sudden presence. But no sooner do we hear this voice than it disappears again into the wind and water of the Way in the next poem which summarizes the way of the Sage as it has been described and followed up to this point. The recurrence of the points is the point. We are being taken back into what has been said since the poems began.
experiencing the wholeness of Lao Tzu's Tao:
Indeed, the ancient saying: "Bend and you will remain whole" is no idle word. Nay, if you have really attained wholeness, everything will flock to you (22).
While recognizing that the image of the verb "flock" may be an accident of translation, such happy accidents seem to be in keeping with the flow of the Tao. The flocking of everything so far said of the Way of the Sage flocks to us again. The nature image of sheep coming together without a shepherd, in their own unordered order prepares us for the opening image of the next poem: "Only simple and quiet words will ripen of themselves" (23). The words ripen within us. They are not violently imposed on us as part of the grooves of accepted or conventional wisdom, "the rash endeavours of men" (23). Such impositions cannot last long because they are violent. As more of what has already been said recurs in the succeeding poems we are experiencing the gentle flow of the Tao as it seems to expand while it is being reformulated.
Occasionally, we hear new things that flow out of the repetitions:
Man follows the ways of the Earth. The Earth follows the ways of Heaven, Heaven follows the ways of the Tao, Tao follows its own ways (25).
The ways of the earth - the water, the wind, the sheep, the ripening seeds or plants, the poems themselves - are now seen as the point of the images that have been flowing in the poems. We follow these images as the ways of the Earth. It is what man does. The pastoral qualities of the imagery strengthen their simplicity and quietness. In the flow from man to the Tao we can feel the ways of the Tao by following the ways of the Earth. The flows are not singular, but plural - many and various, not the groove, but the wind and water, the flocking of animals:
Good walking leaves no track behind it;
Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at (27).
linear or fixed in the words or the Way. The Sage finds his way by "'following the guidance of the Inner Light'" (27). This inner light is ethical teaching, as is made clear as the poem directly flows into:
Hence, good men are teachers of bad men, While bad men are the charge of good men. Not to revere one's teacher,
Not to cherish one's charge,
Is to be on the wrong road, however intelligent one may be (27).
This is the first time the Sage is referred to explicitly as a teacher. While there are many ways, there is "the wrong road", the grooves of what others think and do insincerely, unthinkingly and impositionally. Much has been made of this master/pupil relationship by Western educationalists who see it as foreign to their modern sense. But this relationship can be found in Jesus' and Socrates', as well as Confucius', relationships with their charges. The Inner Light of the Tao creates a bond without ropes: "Good tying makes no use of rope and knot/ And yet nobody can untie it" (27). The Tao is this bond between teacher and student. Both are following the Way. The ethical force of the relationship comes from the Inner Light, that which is within us, not without us. Strength comes from simplicity, by our not trying to do too much.
Now that we have gained a sense of the paths we are on, Lao Tzu's imagery seems to form its own patterns or ways:
To be the Brook of the World is
To move constantly in the path of Virtue Without swerving from it,
And to return again to infancy… To be the Pattern of the World is To move constantly in the path of Virtue Without erring a single step,
And to return again to the Infinite… To be the Fountain of the World is To live the abundant life of Virtue,
And to return again to Primal Simplicity (28).
on, we go back through our virtue which comes from our following the Way. What we go back to is our simplicity and the infinite and our infancy where we can find the mother, the eternal Tao. In our Primal Simplicity, we diversify by becoming "useful vessels" (28). As vessels, we remember from poem 11, it is our emptiness that is important, not the material which shapes this emptiness. From poem 4, we also recall that the Tao itself is an empty vessel.
In Poem 29, the Sage is described as avoiding "all extremes, excesses and extravagances" because he knows that there is a time for all things, as the Preacher also sings in Ecclesiastes. Knowing this, we should not expect to "take the world" and do what we want with it. As a vessel, the world is only the shape of the emptiness we need to have. To look for extremes is to de-stroy this emptiness and not succeed. Poem 30 seems to develop this point when in it Lao Tzu refers to the Sage as a ruler who does not try to conquer the world or use force. To succeed in order to develop too much is only to decay. Such a path is against the Tao and will fail. For this reason, Lao Tzu addresses the reader directly in order to stress the reader must practice mod-esty, not pride or boastfulness. In all things are the makings of their undoing: "even a victory is a funeral" (31). The paradox is Lao Tzu's way of expressing the idea of all things turning to their opposites that may also be found in Ecclesiastes. Moderation comes from understanding the irony and paradox of this cyclical path we follow in our lives. To resist this way is to go against the Tao. So we must learn when to stop and suppress our pride:
To know when to stop is to preserve ourselves from danger.
The Toa is to the world what a great river or an ocean is to the streams and brooks (32).
The world flows into the Tao, it contributes to the Way. The Tao does not fit into the world. We cannot change this flow. Instead we must go with it by recognizing our limitations, not by trying to always add to our successes. When we focus on our power over others we are missing the Tao. What we achieve by this over-ambition is less than we achieve by following the Way:
He who knows men is clever; He who knows himself has insight. He who conquers men has force;
We become strong when we know our limitations and act according to them. By controlling ourselves, we have the strength to keep what we achieve. By looking within, we find true knowledge and power to follow the Tao. In this modesty, we are practicing the Tao:
It is just because it does not wish to be great That its greatness is fully realized (34).
Against this greatness, our hubris or pride can have little effect:
The Great Tao is universal like a flood.
How can it be turned to the right or to the left? (34)
Again the image of water is evoked to show just how the Tao works, and the futility of resisting the power of this water. As a flood, it is not controlled by man and has no specific shape. When we try to put ourselves above it or show off we do not achieve anything permanent. Our achievements decay or are swept away. By not trying to be clever or to impress others, we can achieve lasting power:
Music and dainty dishes can only make a passing guest pause. But the words of the Tao possess lasting effects,
Though they are mild and flavourless,
Though they appeal neither to the eye nor to the ear (35).
accidentally dropping his water images into his poems, the effect on the reader is more like a tidal wave or a flood which slowly moves on and carries the reader with them. By not calling attention to them, Lao Tzu invites us to see or hear for ourselves. In this way, the images have "lasting effects". How the flood or river or brook appears to the eye or ear is not stated; nor is the coloring of the bowl or the sword. Such sparse images seem plain and simple, "mild and flavourless". To concretize the images with superfluous details would be to make "music and dainty dishes" which would not last. Only the passing guest or superficial reader would be attracted by such over-stylized or fancy effects. Lao Tzu wants to keep his reader with him, not have him pass on. He knows this will happen because "The soft and weak overcomes the hard and strong" (36). Water, not swords or other man-made things will overcome and last.
The flow of words in the Tao which do not try to impress the reader or listener through being clever or artificial is the water of the Tao as Lao Tzu wants us to understand and experience it. The primal simplicity of the words seems to echo or flow from the Tao. We order things by keeping them simple and in their place: "It is time to keep them [all things] in their place by the aid of the nameless Primal Simplicity" (37). By not trying to re-arrange them into our own way of thinking which by definition is not following the Tao, we move things around and bring them together in over-stylized fancy dishes or words. By repeating or changing his words seemingly with every sentence, the poet creates the impression that his images are natural in so far as they occur and recur from time to time, and are not assembled into long passages or poems where they are expanded or over-extended. The brevity and changes in the drift of the language is meant to resist this temptation to re-organize the words into other shapes. The implication seems to be that the words in the Tao are themselves part of the Tao and take their shape from it. While they may seem haphazard or not organized along the lines of highly stylized poetry, they nev-ertheless are paradoxically shaped and ordered.
as yet another way of calling the reader's or listener's attention back to the start of the book as part of the experience of going back before going for-ward: one of the teachings of the Tao.
But the poet's reference to his own words in poem 35 signals another flow that becomes more apparent from this point. The words start to fold in on themselves:
High Virtue is non-virtuous; Therefore it has Virtue.
Low Virtue never frees itself from virtuousness; Therefore it has no Virtue (38).
The words seem plain enough in their repetitiveness, but the sense is striking more because of this rather than despite it. By trying to appear virtuous or force virtue on others for "private ends" and with "rolled-up sleeves" (38), we lose our virtue. Such actions indicate a flow; only this time it seems a flow away from the Way: "It is the beginning of all confusion and disorder" (38). What is confused and disordered comes from our loss of the Way. By impos-ing order on our outer world and on others by way of ceremony, we only create the opposite, disorder. The attempt to know what will happen in future, as a way of controlling it, is "the beginning of folly" (38). Here, folly seems to be caused by our attempts to impose order which is no order from the Tao. The poem ends with a description of the "full-grown man" preferring "what is within to what is without" (38). Part of the way Lao Tzu teaches us to see what is within is by showing us what is within the words we like to use - the paradoxes and ironies which actually order us and ensure disorder when they are not understood, or not used simply.
The next two poems are respectively the longest and the shortest in the Tao. Together they seem to encapsulate the main ideas of the book up to this point. The long poem 39 returns to the themes of humility and of being one with the Tao, while poem 40 reiterates what the Tao is:
The movement of the Tao consists in Returning. The use of the Tao consists in softness (40).
before in the Tao and by the ancients, we are meant to feel this: it is one of the recurrences that Lao Tzu sees as the way of the Way. Much in the following poems seems to be such repetitions. But some things are new to the poems.
Poem 42 makes the first explicit reference to the Yin and the Yang. The "myriad things" derive "harmony from the proper blending of the two vital Breaths" (42). The truly great princes and sages modestly or humbly call themselves helpless, little and worthless, and so are great. We gain by losing and lose by gaining: the paradoxes are the harmony of the Yin and Yang breaths. These breaths are in Lao Tzu's words -which embody the spirit of the two breaths. But of the two sides of things, the soft controls the hard, the weak control the strong, the practices of Non-Ado produce results (43). Poem 47 explicitly describes the Sage's paradoxical power of knowing, seeing and achieving:
Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, Sees without looking,
And achieves without Ado (47).
In poem 48, Lao Tzu makes a claim which causes us to pause:
Learning consists in daily accumulating;
The practice of Tao consists in daily diminishing (48).
How this can be learned and practiced by us teachers is really what these lectures are all about. We need to unlearn how to learn. In this, we learn the Tao. Instead of trying to control and order what is not meant to be controlled and ordered, we need to learn how to follow the Way of Non-Ado by making things simple and returning the Primal Simplicity we have lost. "To win the world, one must renounce all" (48), or else we will, as Saint Paul says, gain the world and lose our souls. In his Non-Ado, "The Sage only smiles like an amused child" (49). What this means for teaching I will address tomorrow in my final lecture when I try to bring together the teachings of all the great souls I have been trying to understand over the past week.
recurrence to "a common Beginning" (52). That the end is the beginning is yet another of the paradoxes of the Tao. After this death poem comes one that may sound a note of discouragement regarding those in power now: "As for Tao, what do they know about it". But if the Tao is "All-under-Heaven", then the thoughts of death and failure are part of it, and so cannot be rejected. In the midst of the changing fortunes of the court, the Tao with its repetitions and recurrences offers a way of "cultivating the Changeless" (52). Without being distracted into a consideration of flux or mutability, we may simply say that for our purposes in these lectures Lao Tzu recognizes the paradox of unchanging change, and that the continuities of the Tao offer him a way of relating to the past as something close in the words of the sages and the Tao they practiced before those who have power lost the Way by trying to control it rather than letting it shape them.
In place of what those at court do, Lao Tzu reiterates his advice to the reader or listener: "Cultivate Virtue in your own person" (54); "Virtue is akin to the new-born babe" (55). It all comes back to this virtue or ethical force which must come from within and not be imposed on the world and others without. After the poem on death, when Lao Tzu reiterates that when we overgrow we "decay" and that "whatever is against the Tao soon ceases to be" (55), he is amplifying his warning about Death. Such a fate is not for the follower of the Tao who cannot decay or cease to be.
To "win the world by letting alone" (57), the Sage must learn not to speak or order others to do things. As the Tao is within, we need to see "what is within" (57), and not concern ourselves with what others do. The result for the poet is: "I do not make any fuss, and the people transform themselves" (57). When we do not try to impose order on others or anything of the world, we avoid complicating things: "I have no desires and the people return to Simplicity" (57). For these reasons:
He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know (56).
This seems to raise the question of how the Sage is to communicate with others in order to enlighten them. That this is another paradox means that within it there is the inner meaning. We have to find it for ourselves. Lao Tzu is both saying and not saying what to do. In emphasizing his own Inner Light, he recounts what he knows about himself and has observed about others. By presenting himself as a fool or a simple person, he is not trying to impose himself on his reader or listener. By seeming not to teach, he is teaching; by seeming not to be clear in his paradoxes he is clear. He produces effects without doing anything himself because he knows the others will do it them-selves:
Therefore, the Sage squares without cutting, carves without disfiguring,
straightens without straining, enlightens without dazzling (58).
He does things by not doing other things. By not doing them, the Tao works within them to change them or shape them. What Lao Tzu advises his readers and listeners on is what not to do. All that he tells them to do is to look within themselves. They are the ones who must see what is there. This avoidance of interference is remarked on again: "the Sage does no harm to his people" (60). "If only the ruler and his people would refrain from harming each other, all the benefits of life would accumulate" (60). He does not force others to do any-thing as this would be pointless and counterproductive. The results would be "strange" (57). He knows that if what he says has virtue, it will be heard: "A good word will find its own market" (62). He lets others come to him instead of reaching out to them:
A great country is like the lowland toward which all streams flow. It is the reservoir of all under heaven, the Feminine of the world (61).
The Tao is the hidden Reservoir of all things (62).
come by itself:
Difficult things of the world
Can only be tackled when they are easy. Big things of the world
Can only be achieved by attending to their beginnings.
When we complicate what we do and try to build it into imposing knowledge, we only make things more difficult to do. We need to go back to the source every time we begin to do things.
To save others from being overcomplicated is one of the tasks of the Sage. Part of this comes from the Sage's power when he: "Learns to unlearn his learning,/And induces the masses to return from where they have overpassed" (64). Forcing them to do things is the easy or quick solution, but it doesn't work. It requires much Ado from the misguided ruler or teacher. In contrast, the Sage leaves them to find their own way by helping them to look within themselves:
He only helps all creatures to find their own nature, He does not venture to lead them by the nose (64).
Only in "the state of simplicity" (65) will the people be able to enlighten them-selves. Those who practice the Tao do not "try to enlighten" others, but show them how to find enlightenment within themselves. Within us, as Socrates, Jesus, Buddha and Confucius also knew, we have the keys to our own knowl-edge. By humbling himself and his words, the Sage places himself beneath others so that they will flow to him:
How does the sea become the king of all streams? Because it lies lower than they! (66)
Again, learning and order are shaped in water imagery. The relationship be-tween the teacher and the student is a flow from the student to the teacher, not from the teacher to the student as a torrent of imposed knowledge and obliga-tory thoughts. The Tao and the water must flow freely, and so it cannot be forced on others.
does this through another paradox:
My words are very easy to understand, and very easy to practice: But the world cannot understand them, nor practice them (70).
He returns to the outer trappings of his apparent failure to teach. But para-doxically, this means that he is successful. His lowness and humility are neces-sary if he is to teach anyone. The world, overcomplicated and caught up in trying to impose order, cannot recognize the simple when it sees it. The world seems to be sick, while Lao Tzu has insight:
To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, This is a noble insight.
To regard our ignorance as knowledge, This is mental sickness (71).
Knowledge, understood as the imposed order we place on the world and ourselves, is ignorance as it ignores the Tao. This is the insight that frees the Sage from worrying about such knowledge. When we confuse what we think we know about how to order others and things with knowledge, we fail to see our ignorance. All we can know is the Tao within us and how to flow with it. Striving, ambition, and worldly power create ignorance under the guise of creating knowledge. Non-Ado, humility and weakness allow us to find knowl-edge which seems to be ignorance to those who do not know:
The mighty and great will be laid low; The humble and the weak will be exalted (76).
This is the flux of the Tao.
As the Tao draws to a close, or better, flows to the sea, Lao Tzu starts to repeat almost verbatim what he has said at the beginning of the poems:
Therefore, the Sage does his work without setting any store by it, accom-plishes his task without dwelling upon it. He does not want his merits to be seen (77).
Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water:
But, for attacking the hard and the strong, there is nothing like it! (78)
This appears to be the point his paradoxes have been flowing to: "Truth sounds like its opposite!" (78). As more and more of what has already been said in the Tao is repeated in these closing poems, we sense the lapping power of water to move or destroy impediments to its flow. With each repetition, a small part of the reader's or listener's ignorance and resistance is silently washed away by the healing power of Lao Tzu's sincere words. The transformation is occurring in the student as the student starts to recognize what is what, to detour a Buddhist phrase, about the Tao and the Tao being practiced silently in it.
Just how the Tao is intended as a teaching tool which operates through the reader's and listener's sensitivity to the ways language is used in it as a simple flow is indirectly raised by Lao Tzu in the last poem, as the Tao is about to flow into the sea or back to its beginning:
Sincere words are not sweet, Sweet words are not sincere. Good men are not argumentative, The argumentative are not good. The erudite are not wise (81).
Sincerity is the mark of a good and wise person. These qualities are exhibited in the words they use. To teach without arguing or displaying one's erudition is the ethical responsibility of the poet and the teacher: "The more he gives, the more he abounds" (81). Lao Tzu has repeatedly been giving his simple, sin-cere, and good words throughout the Tao. The Tao's final line introduces a new word into the poems:
The Way of the Sage is to do his duty, not to strive with anyone (81).
