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Each week we address one chapter of the Tao Te Ching. Chapter 60 was originally featured on the 1st week in March.
Note: The Tao Te Ching can be obscure, especially if you think you're supposed to understand what it's saying! We find it easier and more instructive to simply contemplate how the chapter resonates with your personal experience. Becoming more aware at this fundamental level simplifies life. This approach conforms to the view that true knowing lies within ourselves. Thus, when a passage in the scripture resonates, you've found your inner truth. The same applies for when it evokes a question; questions are the grist for self realization.
Chapter 60
Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.
When the empire is ruled in accordance with the way,
The spirits lose their potencies.
Or rather, it is not that they lose their potencies,
But that, though they have their potencies, do not harm the people,
It is not only they who, having their potencies, do not harm the people,
The sage, also, does not harm the people.
As neither does any harm, each attributes the merit to the other.
When I am living in accordance with the way, I am much more likely to stop in time, rather than fill 'life' to the brim. How easy it is to overdo things! Just because I have
'potencies', i.e., power, strength, potential, does not mean I have to blow it all at once, but I often have, especially in youth. It took me quite awhile to see the advantage of 'cooking on low heat', and even longer to begin to put it into practice.
The art of knowing when to stop is the deepest art... the art of living. This is what the Tao Te Ching is really all about, for me, and is why I treasure it so. The trick rests in living it, for I am faced with the ironic condition that when my potencies drive the momentum of my life, it is impossible to see the harm I am doing. And even if I see the harm, it is usually impossible to stop.
Governing life wisely requires a large degree of impartiality. There is no way around it. Impartiality requires giving up favouritism, but we are so instinctively set up to favor 'this' over 'that', or 'that' over 'this'. Favouritism serves survival.
So, it all comes down to survival in the end. Survival urges my 'potencies' to run wild. Only when I deeply perceive, moment to moment, what serves my long term 'survival' interest, am I able to life in accordance with the way. In a sense, I must completely accept who I am to reach who I'm not. It is in the realm of who I'm not that I am able to know immortality.
For me this relates to the chapter about the sage doing nothing, and yet nothing is left undone. The sage doesn?t just absolutely do nothing, but does things in a mindful, harmonious way. Within this way, whatever ?potencies? there are in action are done with restraint, like boiling a small fish.
When Carl talked about giving up favoritism for impartiality, I thought of the chapter that speaks of ?flavor-less taste?, of neutrality, in doing things without value judgments.
Also, I see potencies as desires ? in Buddhism the idea isn?t to get rid of desires or potencies. But rather, to observe them ?passing through?, without them grabbing hold of us and taking us on a wild ride. They don?t take us over, so they don?t harm us.
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