The river and sea can serve as king for a hundred valleys,
Using their adeptness in being below.
Hence, they can support a hundred valleys as king.
Accordingly, a wise person,
Desiring to be above the people, must using speech, be below.
Desiring to be ahead of the people, must using life, be behind.
Accordingly, a wise person,
Dwells above, yet the people are not weighed down,
Dwells ahead, yet the people are not impaired.
Accordingly, all under heaven cheerfully push forward, yet never tire.
Using such non-contention,
Is the reason, under heaven, nothing can contend with it.
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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.
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/Gu-1AG0ZhIA 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?
Nothing this time.
Reflections:
The river and sea can serve as king for a hundred valleys,
Using their adeptness in being below.
Hence, they can support a hundred valleys as king.
Looking closely at nature’s workings helps clue me in to reality… the truth, as it were. I’ve never had much faith in human understandings of reality. There always seems to be some agenda being pushed forward, although I admit science is probably less guilty of this than politics or religion. Certainly, such agendas usually sound good on the surface. “Peace on Earth and good will to mankind” sounds great. But is it Nature’s way, or is it actually only what people wish for? The Tao Te Ching seems to avoid much of that by turning to nature as its model, which tends to be the opposite of much of the ‘common sense’ view of life. As chapter 40 puts it In the opposite direction, of the way moves.
For example, don’t people tend to see the leaders of society—kings, presidents, CEO’s, rock stars—as the elite forces above the common folk… the hundred valleys? Here we see that a real leader, using their adeptness in being below, they can support a hundred valleys as king. Simply put, any leader of the masses must actually follow the will and wishes of the masses to be successful. Leaders don’t actually lead! And yet, who gets the blame when things don’t work out, or the credit when things do? … The leaders! There’s a lot of hypocrisy all around. Fittingly, chapter 18 reveals the downside of our superior intelligence… When intelligence increases, there exists great falseness.
This leader / follower dynamic is more unusual for a genuinely virtuous leader. If the masses lean toward harmful ways, the wise person can’t just “lead” them away from that. So, how does one remain adept in being below and yet turn the tide? Chapter 65 reveals the secret, Of ancients adept in the way, none ever use it to enlighten people, They will use it in order to fool them. In effect, one can’t lead people where they don’t want to go… directly anyway. Offering a more benign alternative that still matches their visceral need is essential, and that is a very tricky balance. The reason it is essential to fool them is that no one can understand what they don’t already intuitively know. (See We only understand what we already know)
Accordingly, a wise person,
Desiring to be above the people, must using speech, be below.
Desiring to be ahead of the people, must using life, be behind.
It is important to view this as neither proscriptive nor prescriptive. To me, the Tao Te Ching is more descriptive of how nature works than anything else. Of course, if a person is seeking guidance in life, they can easily interpret the message as a prescription or a proscription to follow for their life.
Accordingly, a wise person must be below, be behind is saying that a wise person has no choice in the matter. The preceding first three lines show the deep intuitive level that a wise person’s actions must arise from, i.e., meaning, beyond intention, beyond any personal agenda.
Now, at first you may have some trouble with these lines, Desiring to be above and Desiring to be ahead of the people. On the surface, it suggests the wise person harbors an agenda they wish to accomplish. In contrast, there are many examples of how desire is something not to be desired. Here is a selection…
Always enables the people to be unlearned and without desire, #3
See simply, embrace the plain, and have few personal desires. #19
With desire choosing anything, of doing I see no satisfied end. #29
Always without desire, befits the name small. #34
I am without desire and the people simplify themselves. #57
Taking this, the wise person desires non desire, #64
Such absence of desire appears able and virtuous – how odd! #77
Buddha’s Fourth Nobel Truth helps shed deeper light on desire… 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. He who is wise will enter this path and make an end to suffering. When desire equals duty, desire transforms into a primal intuitive need, so to speak. Here, there is no agenda. (See Buddha’s Truths Pertain To All Life)
Accordingly, a wise person,
Dwells above, yet the people are not weighed down,
Dwells ahead, yet the people are not impaired.
Accordingly, a wise person, dwells above and dwells ahead and yet doesn’t hinder the people in any way. This brings me back to the river and sea. Neither exerts any influence over the streams and water falls up river. The wise person, like the river and the sea are void of any intention for whatever happens ‘up stream’. In being below and behind, all one can do is, as chapter 3 puts it, Do without doing, follow without exception rules.
Yet as good as this sounds, survival instincts ultimately and naturally drive life’s interactions. Thus, one can only be a wise person to a degree. The wise person is still human, unlike the river and the sea, and so at some level survival instincts will always kick in… as they naturally must. This is why it is wiser to interpret this chapter as a description rather than as guidance for how to behave in life.
Accordingly, all under heaven cheerfully push forward, yet never tire.
Using such non-contention,
Is the reason, under heaven, nothing can contend with it.
Just imagine if nature took the lead over all under heaven, ‘telling’ it what to do and how best to do it! The pressure would be unbearable. As it happens, nature allows all under heaven to make ‘mistakes’ and live out their days. Nature has no intention, and thus uses such non-contention in its dealing with all under heaven.
When I observe nature, I notice that contention—the battle for survival—is operating on every level of life… from bacteria and viruses on up. Without contention (and cooperation, of course) life would be impossible. So what is the problem here really? Not surprisingly, chapter 71 suggests the key difference… Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Thinking that we know spawns many of our intentions to act. This leads to contention with how things are—reality—driven by a pre-planned, pre-thought agenda, not the spontaneous processes of contention that play out in nature overall. Simply put, contention spawned by intention causes otherwise avoidable problems in life. As chapter 16 warns, Not knowing the constant, rash actions lead to ominous results.
One aspect of this may be a little puzzling initially. Meaning, if a person acts completely spontaneously without any intention (i.e., thoughts regarding the pluses or minuses of the action) is this not actually the using life, be behind kind of action? I don’t see why not. This is the way of all life on earth… action without intelligence-based intention. In this sense, we are all wise persons when our action is deeply spontaneous… again, as chapter 3 puts it, Do without doing, follow without exception rules.
This nature based contention is contending without intending. Of course, animals with larger brains do have some degree of intention driving at least certain actions, e.g., a clever raccoon opening a latch to get food. However, nothing comes close to intention driven by human imagination, and our disease only amplifies this.
Note: It is safer and more helpful to adopt this Using such non-contention as your model for life guidance instead of the Accordingly, a wise person, dwells above and dwells ahead. Actively attempting to change your behavior will always become a battle—self contention. Conversely, Using such non-contention will always become a surrender of ego, i.e, non-contention is the opposite of pushing to change anything. I’d say surrendering ego is a little like falling asleep. Trying to only keeps you awake. I suppose this is all a Catch-22 of sorts.
On a personal note:
Now, I feel I’ve laid out how life plays out. Of course, this view will not go over well with most people! Why? I suspect that we innately can’t take seriously any view that doesn’t offer a solution. Seeing how nature works doesn’t really provide any solutions for mastering nature, as it were. Seeing how nature works can only help one, as chapter 3 puts it, Do without doing, follow without exception rules. The difficulty for living things (us included) is that we innately feel a need to act and solve the “problem”… the “problem” essentially is entropy which has no solution. Hey, you might even say, it is the solution!
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/QQbmn20LdVY
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
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