The wise person is without ordinary intention.
Takes the common people’s intention as his intention.
With kindness, I am also kind.
Without kindness, I am also kind, of integrity kind.
With trust, I also trust.
Without trust, I also trust, of integrity trust.
How does the wise person exist, all under heaven, breathing in?
Becoming all under heaven, simple and natural his intention.
The multitude all explain with their knowledge;
The wise person, each and every child.
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/-a_V8gOe6r4 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
The wise person is without ordinary intention.
Takes the common people’s intention as his intention.
There is an ordinary intention behind every action in life, driving every living being on the planet to achieve a successful outcome, to turn intention into reality. Naturally, this is a characteristic of the bio-hoodwink, (see How the hookwink hooks). Human desire — need + thought — severely complicates this straightforward biological process.
I am reasonably capable of being without ordinary intention to a decent degree as long as I distrust thought enough to reduce its influence on my emotion, i.e., thought amplifies emotion, revving up need and fear, which then feed back into thought. Chapter 71’s Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease, bluntly points a way out of this vicious circle. Naturally, the difficulty here is that emotion drives thought and that trust itself originates in emotion. No wonder distrusting thought is most difficult. I suppose any true and deep distrust must originate in emotion.
Sincerely embracing the fact that one’s belief in free will is an illusion can help further divorce thought from emotion. Without this belief biasing perception, it becomes much easier to remove the narrow ‘personal’ (ego) aspect and realize the underlying universality of intention. From this bottom line vantage point, I see your intention is also my intention; need and fear are the common denominators. At this lowest level, ‘I can walk in other people’s shoes’, so to speak. Again, the difficulty here lies in how social animals overall have an instinctive sense of self-agency, which for humans causes our myopic belief in free will. (See Free Willers Anonymous)
In other words, if you know yourself deeply enough, you can’t help but notice the common ground your intention shares with everyone—indeed, with all living things. As chapter 56 reminds, This is called profound sameness. This is the shared constant truth of life so broad and deep that it can’t be named. As chapter 1 observes, The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name.
With kindness, I am also kind.
Without kindness, I am also kind, of integrity kind.
With trust, I also trust.
Without trust, I also trust, of integrity trust.
On the face of it, this makes a similar point that Christ made, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” The problem with Christ’s advice is that it’s not biologically achievable. Aspiring to an unreachable ideal is not effective in the long run… as history demonstrates!
It is important to note how these lines here link kind and trust with integrity. That forces me to look deeper into my own nature… my integrity. Just how is integrity connected to trust and kindness? I do know that when I lack kindness and trust, I don’t feel my own integrity. I can only feel trust and kindness when I’m emotionally in balance—at peace. It may help to deepen the meaning of integrity by returning to the Chinese: dé (德) virtue (moral character; integrity; heart).
I feel the greatest sense of ‘moral character; integrity; heart’ when I feel trust and kindness. The better I can take the common people’s intention as [my] intention, the more likely I can… without trust, I also trust, of integrity trust. You see, it is not a simple matter of trusting even when facing an untrustworthy situation. One problem with a Christ-like interpretation is that it feels proscriptive… a kind of “Just do it!” admonition. That invokes the free will myth, much to the detriment of a deeper appreciation of nature’s way. (See Free Will: Fact or Wishful Thinking?) Only when I feel ‘the other’ as myself am I able to Without trust, I also trust, of integrity trust.
How does the wise person exist, all under heaven, breathing in?
Becoming all under heaven, simple and natural his intention.
This begs the question, how does a presumably wise person exist amid the trials and tribulations all around him or her? Frankly, the more common ground I feel between all creation and myself, the more integral to all creation I am able to feel. One of the main traumas in life comes from feeling apart, separate from ‘the other’. This disconnect appears to result in either loneliness (yin) or aggression (yang). Conversely, feeling one with ‘the other’, even to a point where there is no ‘other’ is love… plain and simple. (See Tat tvam asi.)
Becoming all under heaven, simple and natural his intention is simply realizing the universality of your life experience. The illusion of self, or a separate self (ego), is driven by powerful emotional attachments, as Buddha pointed out (i.e., The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things). This chapter, and the rest of the Tao Te Ching, is plainly trying to return us to our ancestral self—our original self—and free us to some degree from civilization’s hierarchical mind set instilled in us from infancy.
Now some say that we are naturally hierarchical and of course, they are correct. Importantly, the degree makes all the difference. Research of hunter-gatherer people demonstrates that ancestral humanity was predominately egalitarian, with only minor hierarchical characteristics. In the shift away from that way of life to a settled and civilized one, culture weaponized that minor hierarchical instinct into an effective method of domesticating and organizing mass populations. (See The Tradeoff for a deep dive into this matter.)
The multitude all explain with their knowledge;
The wise person, each and every child.
When I stand back from life’s daily ebb and flow, I notice the constant commotion playing out at all levels of society. I realize all knowledge at its most basic level is simply “gossip”. Moreover, I know it has always been this way… for all animals, including us. It only became a problem for us when humanity shifted from its ancestral way of life to a civilized one some 10,000 years ago. The knowledge problem has only increased over this time, and thanks to the Internet perhaps to a point now where less is truly more.
The strongest illusion of knowledge is that it permits us to believe we are superior, that we are getting somewhere; that true progress is reachable. This is a unique cognitive outcome only we humans suffer, and which only an impartial eye can neutralize. Indeed, only an impartial eye can perceive the whole of humanity as each and every child. When I see all being as the children they are, I am wise… yet also one among the rest, children all. In other words, as the first line of this chapter says, Takes the common people’s intention as his intention.
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