Do knowledge, day by day increase.
Do the way, day by day decrease.
Decreasing and decreasing,
Use until without doing.
Without doing, yet not undone.
Take all under heaven ordinary, use without responsibility,
As well as with responsibility,
Not full, so as to adopt all under heaven.
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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.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/XUfsyuTo9ao is the link to the 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
Do knowledge, day by day increase.
Do knowledge is an ultra concise way to describe how the human brain’s mind manages life. The mind is usually curious and always on the lookout for novel information—opportunity and knowledge. In living life, questions or problems arise, soon followed by the pursuit of answers or solutions. It is a ceaseless quest day by day increasing until we die… or perhaps succumb to dementia. Each answer or solution briefly wears its cloak of finality until a new question or problem ensues. I call this process an illusion of success… or failure. It is an illusion because our solid certainty at the moment soon decays into doubt as nature throws the unexpected at us. The only way I know to ease this is to do the way…
Do the way, day by day decrease.
Decreasing and decreasing,
Use until without doing.
Without doing, yet not undone.
Naturally, doing the way by the definition and disclaimer offered in chapter 1 is an amorphous undertaking, i.e., The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name. I think of doing the way as beginning where doing knowledge ends. Doing the way is more of a question than an answer. Indeed, I regard the ‘question’ and the ‘problem’ as reality, which by default designates the ‘answer’ and ‘solution’ as illusionary. These latter two are merely brief stopovers as we circle around the mystery of existence.
One word that best describes doing the way is patience. Patience is stepping back and allowing nature to play out. Patience is one key to success in life overall… and the stock market in particular. Doing the way is retreating from thoughts—worries and desires—lying in the future and dealing fully with the present moment. Ironically, dealing fully with the needs of the moment does more than anything else to manage the future. This ‘stitch in time saves nine’ parallels Chapter 64 …
Although, D.C.Lau’s less literal translation may be easier to relate to…
Without doing, yet not undone approach to life comes much easier to animals other than human. Their primary concern is always focused in their continuous moment. Living in a nameless reality, they have no cognitive ability to Do knowledge, day by day increase. Yet, their awareness is still curious and always on the lookout for opportunity. Their consciousness just lacks the imaginative distractions to sidetrack them from the moment.
Naturally, our cognitive ability gives us a remarkable survival edge. We can imagine and weigh various scenarios and plan ahead. However, this comes at an unsettling cost. It is why we need spiritual strategies and other animals don’t! i.e., animals don’t need to be reminded to ‘be here now’, as it were.
Finally, these aspects of doing or without doing can feel a bit contradictory, or at least puzzling. It may help to examine the process behind doing life, from beginning to end. I’ll attempt to undertake this in The Motivation Behind Doing at the end of this chapter’s reflections.
Take all under heaven ordinary, use without responsibility,
As well as with responsibility,
This asserts we need to both use without responsibility as well as with responsibility. This reminds me of chapter 1’s Hence, normally without desire so as to observe its wonder. Normally having desire so as to observe its boundary. This is similar to that suggested above… Do knowledge and yet Use until without doing. Chapter 3’s Doing without doing, following without exception rules sums it up. How does one do without doing (wéi wú wéi – 为无为)? Again, this is only a puzzle for the human mind that divides reality into a named dichotomy.
Pondering the nature of work and rest, or work and play can help resolve some of this wéi wú wéi riddle. Think of times when you are completely absorbed in the moment of an activity, whether work or play. You may notice that it is difficult to label the experience as either ‘work’ or ‘play’, because in a moment of complete natural involvement, you have transcended names and labels. Life’s so-called paradoxes are a result of the distorted way we perceive life. The Tao Te Ching’s straightforward words are set up to untangle this cognitive distortion. As chapter 78 says, Straight and honest words seem inside out.
Not full, so as to adopt all under heaven.
All belief clogs the mind in a fundamental way. Belief acts as a fortress the mind retreats behind, yet also acts as a prison that closes the mind off from all under heaven. Impartiality opens us to all under heaven. Of course, the hitch here is opening up the heart enough—knowing the constant—to allow the mind to observe life impartially, i.e., emotion (need & fear) determines the mind’s degree of impartiality. As chapter 16 ends,
Full video of this month’s meeting: https://youtu.be/69JVTQ0zeK4
The Motivation Behind Doing
Naturally, this analysis must begin with fear. Fear is the mover and shaker behind all life’s doings. A solid understanding of this primal emotion will help make sense of the rest. Reviewing a few of these observations on fear may help with that: Even a little progress is freedom from fear; Fear is the Bottom Line; Reward, Fear & Need; Fear Rules and Fear & Need Born in Nothing.
I now see that Newton’s third law of motion, For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, effectively applies to fear and need as well. I skirted around this in my post, Science, Religion, Truth. Now, in reviewing this connection to Newton’s third law, I’m convinced that need is the equal and opposite reaction to fear.
And then there was need: A close scrutiny of need, or really needs must, helps reveal how life works, i.e., the process that accounts for how life plays out for us, and all of life really. Briefly, it goes like this:
A need (desire, expectation, urge, wish, want, etc.) for something—anything—creates life meaning when an animal is moving to achieve it. This process unfolds like this: need -> movement -> meaning. Although, from the beginning, it actually evolves from fear, i.e., fear -> need -> movement -> meaning. This sequence reveals the framework biology uses to get its job of survival done. Considered at the most basic animal level, this is how it plays out:
The body ‘fears’ starvation and dehydration. This anxiety evokes primary needs, hunger and thirst. These needs push animals (including us) to movement aimed at resolving the fear. The playing out of this dynamic instills in the animal’s awareness as sense of meaning and indeed, happiness. In humans, our desires and expectations are simply an emergent property of these primary needs (see Tao As Emergent Property). Note: These and offshoot secondary needs (e.g., sex and social connection) receive a boost by the sensory pleasure that satiating them delivers. No wonder pleasure is often mistaken for meaning and happiness.
Happiness? When you think about it, happiness really amounts to living a meaningful life. Lacking a sense of meaning, life feels pointless and depressing, which can make life’s pleasures even more enticing. Thus, we could rewrite the complete progression this way: fear -> need -> movement -> happiness. This shows why ideas, pleasures, objects, or money alone never bring happiness. They only are meaningful when they are an integral part of the flow. For example, if a fear of poverty drives your need to work hard (movement) you will feel life meaningful, and probably end up with money as well. But, it is the need driving the movement that instills meaningful happiness, not any resulting wealth.
In addition, the more focused the need, the more likely it results in concerted movement toward satiating the need, and this instills added life meaning.
And sorrow? The problem for humans occurs when desire (i.e., need + thought) lacks focus and is conflicted, with one need at odds with another. These lines from chapter 48 speak to this problem, Doing knowledge, day by day increase. Doing the way, day by day decrease. Decreasing and decreasing, Use until without doing. Without doing, yet not undone. It is quite easy to see why our species can experience some difficulty achieving life meaning (happiness). This is why we, unlike other animals, need spiritual guidance such as here in chapter 48.
In Doing knowledge, day by day increase, we are all too capable of scattering our sense of primary need in numerous multiplying tangents, many of which divert our awareness out of the present moment and into future wishes or past regrets. Conversely, Doing the way is living this need -> movement -> meaning flow rather than dwelling on the wishes and regrets that can day by day increase.
The problem of conflicting need: At some point, the easier life gets, the harder life becomes. Ironic at first glance, yet not when considering evolution’s underlying principle: Life evolves with an innate incentive (need) to act (movement) to solve life problems and survive (meaning). The instinct remains, even as we eliminate life’s primary need related movements (e.g., hunting & gathering). This allows the instinct driving us to either pursue or dwell on more intangible and diverse matters. Essentially, this becomes Do knowledge, day by day increase. For more, see Core Issues of Human Nature.
Do the way, practically speaking: A genuine sense of personal duty brings the deepest life meaning by continually focusing need in one direction. Such focused need naturally drives movement (action) which instills life meaning (happiness). As Buddha put it, “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”. See Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truths.
Using this progression (fear, need, movement, meaning) as a kind of life mantra helps me manage daily life more smoothly… as long as I’m ‘touching’ it, of course. Awareness of this basic life dynamic helps nip conflicting desires in the bud, or as they say, “A stitch in time saves nine”. The hitch here is maintaining a ongoing awareness of this dynamic process, and especially, adapting as much desire (a.k.a., need / fear) to duty as possible. The beautiful thing here is just knowing the underlying causes for any despair I feel helps. Once I deeply know what’s happening, nature compels me to conform. Chapter 3 hits the nail on the head, Doing without doing, following without exception rules. Chapter 27 and 70 also hint at this approach, This says he follows the pattern honestly and Knowing self is rare, following self is noble. It all comes down to knowing the pattern and honestly knowing self.
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