The universe is not benevolent,
and all things serve as grass dogs (‘sacrificial lambs’).
The wise person is not benevolent,
and the people serve as grass dogs.
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bag?
Empty yet doesn’t submit,
moves yet recovers from all its coming and going.
More speech counts as exceptionally limited;
not in accord with keeping to the middle.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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/sCljBEkXsTw 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
The universe is not benevolent,
and all things serve as grass dogs (‘sacrificial lambs’).
Benevolence is essentially a social urge expressed between members of a group. The more closely a group member identifies with their group, the stronger the urge to be benevolent toward others of the group. This enhances the sense of connection and mutual trust, and thus we regard benevolence as a social ideal—a virtue. Simply put, benevolence serves a group-survival purpose. Indeed, we deem human characteristics virtuous precisely because they generally serve survival.
On the other hand, the universe has no such purpose, no ‘need to survive’. The universe has no group insiders or outsiders. Everything in existence serves a vital purpose for its particular moment, and then passes away to nothing. I think of it this way. Each of us are like a Christmas tree before Christmas. We are ‘special’; we are adorned with capacity of all sorts… until Christmas is over. Then we are compost.
This ruthless side of the universe, seemingly without purpose, frustrates and terrifies us. Our social instinct sets us up to feel a sense of fairness, of benevolence, of purpose, and we project this sense out into the universe. Indeed, what is a belief in ‘God’ other than our attempt to make the universe conform to our image of it? It is ironic that part of this belief has it that God created us in His image. Surely He is benevolent, we feel. When the reality of what is impinges on what we desire, desire usually wins the battle, although, not the war naturally. Note: Need + Thought = Desire… see Fear & Need Born in Nothing.
The wise person is not benevolent,
and the people serve as grass dogs.
One of the more challenging aspects of human life is deciding how to satisfy the social urge to be benevolent and kind in a balance way. We seem to swing between the extremes, too much or too little, and spend only fleeting moments in the happy middle ground. As the last line of this chapter hints, we have difficulty keeping to the middle. One key I’ve found to improve my chances at this is what chapter 3 calls, Doing without doing, following without exception rules. Granted, this is not easy to understand. How does this relate to being not benevolent?
To sort out obscurity like this, it often helps to substitute key words for a process the Tao Te Ching portrays. For example, chapter 1 says, The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name. Here, when we substitute benevolence for name, we get: The [benevolence] possible to express runs counter to the constant [benevolence]. This pulls me deeper into the reality surrounding the word benevolence, and helps broaden its meaning beyond words.
Even better in the case with benevolent is to make a similar substitution in that last line from chapter 3, Doing without doing, following without exception rules. This should help deepen the meaning of Doing without doing as well. Simply substitute the word caring for doing. Note, this is a double substitution, as we will be switching out benevolent and doing for caring, i.e., caring is the active aspect of benevolence. This gives us Caring without caring, following without exception rules.
It is easy to see how going overboard on caring can lead to stress. Caring too much about anything beyond your direct control is asking for trouble. Yet, our abundance of empathy pulls us into caring deeply for much that is beyond our control. Caring without caring is perhaps our only gateway to deeper sanity and serenity. It comes down to allowing yourself to feel, but without these feelings driving your desire to act. Doesn’t this parallel chapter 1’s, Hence, normally without desire so as to observe its wonder. Normally having desire so as to observe its boundary?
The last phrase, Normally having desire so as to observe its boundary, suggest taking some action while keeping to the middle as best we can. The serenity prayer seems somewhat similar: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”. The only hitch lies in the last part about wisdom. This line, Doing without doing, following without exception rules, shines light on the nature of wisdom.
Also note, The wise person is not benevolent is not saying the wise person is malevolent either. Benevolence and malevolence are polar opposites, which any wise person avoids. The wise person keeps to the middle, as the last line puts it. Above all isn’t that what makes a person wise? As noted above, benevolence has an agenda. The more universal your self-identity, the less influence any agenda can have upon you. You are giving up the small for the large, mortality for immortality. (See You are Immortal!)
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bag?
Empty yet doesn’t submit,
moves yet recovers from all its coming and going.
Empty parallels chapter 4’s virtue of less. To reiterate, The way flushes and employs the virtue of ‘less’. Deep like the ancestor of every-thing. One tangible example of the mysterious coming and going is the behavior of particle physics with subatomic particles popping in and out of empty space. It’s a mysterious example of coming and going indeed! It indicates a far more profound side of nature, which our nervous system never evolved to perceive directly… and yet, we always sense the mystery at hand. And always rush to label it, to control it through naming.
On a more practical level, Empty yet doesn’t submit, moves yet recovers from all its coming and going tells us of nature’s infinite resilience. Fear drives in our human mind an instinctive need to be definitive, to have certainty; our impatient imagination then easily fosters an overly pessimistic view of life. As a result, we are constantly surprised by how ‘things bounce back’.
More speech counts as exceptionally limited;
not in accord with keeping to the middle.
I’ve long realized that when I was speaking, I couldn’t truly be present. The noise of speaking, and its precursor thoughts, drowns out much of the subtler perceptions of which I’m capable. What I’m really doing when I speak, think or write, is drawing on memory to tell my story, with a future aim of arriving at some endpoint. The first line of chapter 1 says it all, The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way.
Past and future dominate thought and speech, dimming awareness of the eternal flow of the middle. Keeping to the middle means devoting as much awareness as possible to the flow of time, not its so-called moments. Doesn’t this reveal the absurdity of ‘being in the moment’? What moment? There really is no such thing outside of our imagination’s need to pin down time in tick-tock moments.
Keeping to the middle comes more readily when ‘objective’ differences begin to blend, losing their grip on awareness. This allows a subjective sense of profound sameness to begin taking over awareness. Chapter 56 ends by offering us a somewhat inscrutable taste of this. Inscrutable? Certainly, for how else can we describe the indescribable?
Video Archive https://youtu.be/sCljBEkXsTw
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