Not to value worthy people, enables people to avoid contending.
Not to value rare goods, enables people to avoid stealing.
Not to catch sight of what suits desire, enables people’s heart to avoid confusion.
This is because of how the wise person governs;
Empties their hearts, fills their bellies,
Weakens their aspirations, strengthens their bones,
Always enables the people to be unlearned and without desire,
And enables resourceful men to never dare to act also.
Doing without doing, following without exception rules.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Word for Word
Limits: Translations, even the nearly literal one above, lose some of the original meaning due to the cultural context of contemporary words. Studying the numerous synonym-like meanings of the Chinese characters in the Word-for-Word translation mitigates this. (Click graphic at right for on-line Word-for-Word.)
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/edFhmh8vQnM is a link to unedited Zoom video of this month’s Sunday meeting. The shorter first part of the meeting begins with a chapter reading followed by attendees’ commentary, if any. A little later on begins the longer open discussion part of the meeting when those who wish to discuss how the chapter relates to their personal experience.
Corrections?
None this time
Reflections
Not to value worthy people, enables people to avoid contending.
Not to value rare goods, enables people to avoid stealing.
Not to catch sight of what suits desire, enables people’s heart to avoid confusion.
These three lines succinctly point out the unavoidable and unintended consequences of civilization. Civilization requires a hierarchical organization to operate, unlike the more egalitarian social structure of our hunter-gatherer ancestors that died out some 10,000 years ago. Hierarchy provides a means of pseudo social connection for what in reality is a large collection of near strangers. I call it a pseudo connection for it lacks the intimate classless connection our ancestors experienced. This dynamic has become particularly robust, growing exponentially during the last few centuries due to the ever-increasing social niches modern culture generates.
Just consider how ubiquitous media has become in delivering a culture’s worthy people, rare goods, and sight of what suits desire. Most interesting to me is how back when this was written, there was none of the daily flood of influences washing over humanity’s mental landscape. Literacy was minimal, travel was on foot or horse, and the ‘consumer age’ was several millennia away in a future we now inhabit. It is not surprising that there is much confusion the world over currently! In fact, it is a wonder that present circumstances are not even more perplexing than they are. The unintended festering boil that civilization has created must be nearly ready to pop. Of course, ‘nearly’ in real time may still lie many hundreds (or thousands) of years into the future. See The Tradeoff for a deeper look at this fascinating issue.
This is because of how the wise person governs;
Empties their hearts, fills their bellies,
When I read this chapter this morning, these lines came across as utterly unrealistic. I thought, how in the world is the wise person supposed to weaken the aspirations of other people? Then I realized I was interpreting this chapter as some kind of prescription for a wise governor to manage the people. That is a little odd because I have always interpreted the Tao Te Ching as speaking primarily about how one might personally go about managing their approach to life. Interpreting this as a prescription to carry out is an unworthy and unworkable fantasy.
When I view this as an internal self-management suggestion, these lines feel more reasonable. Yet, are they? Take Empties their hearts for starters. The character for hearts is xīn (心 = mind; feeling; intention; center; core). I suspect that at least some people back then realized how connected ‘mind’ and ‘feeling’ were. Indeed, emotion is the foundation of the mind and its thoughts. Other animals have emotions… fear, need, pain, pleasure, envy, competition, etc…. just like us. The difference is that their emotions don’t end up driving a dipolar mind to create stories that reflect those emotions, i.e., a narrative depicting a self-centered simulated reality. When a squirrel feels fear, it reacts immediately—fight or flight. It can’t carry this fear day after day, year after year even, and dwell in a remembered narrative as we can and do. As chapter 2 observes, The simple man alone does not dwell, Because of this he never leaves. I take this to mean, “…he never leaves” the existential moment to dwell in an imagined past and future.
Here is a way to ponder how emotion, fear and need, drive thought:
Need + thinking = Desire
Fear + thinking = Worry
Merely maintaining some peripheral sense of this internal process can serve as a kind of ‘canary in the mind’ to alert you of the true source of your desire and worry. Certainly, it is a biological necessity that animals feel both need and fear. All the same, how these become transformed in our mind’s thought can be useful to contemplate.
Personally, for example, my fear is not particularly directed towards personal safety, as my personal history shows. However, in pondering this, I’ve come to realize how my fear centers on efficiency. Fear of inefficiency drives my need to have life’s actions as efficient as possible. The important thing here is we all inherit fear (a sense of entropy, loss, failure, death, etc.). The exact manner it manifests itself varies with the individual, but it is always there behind the curtain of awareness. Emotion (fear/need) is the engine of life itself.
Weakens their aspirations, strengthens their bones,
Always enables the people to be unlearned and without desire,
And enables resourceful men to never dare to act also.
Thus, as emotion drives our actions and our thoughts, how are we supposed to manage all this? Here is where the illusion of self and its attendant illusion of free will comes into play. We embrace a narrative that constantly tells us we, unlike other animals, have the rational ability to make free choices, independent of instinctive needs and fears that drive other animals. Thus, we can imagine ourselves, indeed expect ourselves, to flip the free will switch and be unlearned and without desire, never dare to act also, weaken our aspirations, strengthen our bones. And if we can’t, surely others can and should. At least, perhaps the wise person who governs…?
This is similar to an addict who tells himself he can quit anytime. No! Nothing will change until he hits rock bottom and realizes he is an addict. Deep self-honesty is the starting point. Only then does one have any hope of managing, even slightly, his life. It is a personal journey, and why my initial interpretation of a wise person carrying all this out struck me as ludicrous.
Personally, I find my survival instinct (emotion) to be the most effective, and truly the only effective, way to begin to get a handle on these aspects: Empties my heart, weaken my aspirations, strengthen my bones, enable to be unlearned and without desire, enables resourceful to never dare to act. The main point to keep in mind here is that there is no actual way to succeed at this. Again, emotion (heart, xīn 心) is completely in charge. Biology rules! And yet, there is the opening… survival lies at the very core of heart.
Honestly feeling my survival (mental, physical, or whatever) is at stake generates the emotional grit I need to manage what otherwise would pass as being to trivial to bother with. The devil in life lies in the details, which are all too easy to overlook as desire looks forward to the “important” future. The more serious it feels, the simpler it becomes to reverse this and, as the last line puts it, follow without exception.
Doing without doing, following without exception rules.
Buddha’s Fourth Truth puts it well, There is salvation for him whose self disappears before truth, whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty. As long as I believe I am in control of my life, I’ll be unable to have self disappear before truth. Only when my sense of survival aligns with what he ought to do duty, do I have a chance that the inner wise person governs. All this is utterly straightforward, simple, and really quite easy when that alignment exists. Maintaining this alignment is the hitch.
This is where the first two steps on Buddha’s path come into play. The first is Right Comprehension and the second is Right Resolution. The resolution to maintain and constantly return to what I comprehend is vital. As soon as I forget, emotions of the moment drown out wisdom.
Certainly, the difficulty here is the fact that emotion drives thought. Right Comprehension can only occur when emotions are quiescent. In that peaceful moment we can see truth best. However, as soon as emotions rise, deeper comprehension fades into the mind’s background. It is still there; it just is unable to manage anything. Only when the essence of our comprehension connects directly to survival’s emotion is it able to have a continuous voice in our life.
Well, I covered some of this same territory in depth in the reflections on the last chapter, (Monthly Chapter 2 – pandemic era) so there’s no point to beat this to death… more than I have already anyway.
Video Archive https://youtu.be/edFhmh8vQnM
Leave a Reply