Adept at prevailing without the ruts of an outward sign.
Adept at speech without the flaw of banishment and blame.
Adept at counting without a counting scheme.
Adept at closing without locking, yet cannot be opened.
Adept at conclusion without restraint, yet cannot be undone.
Using this, the wise person is:
Always adept at helping people because he discards no one.
Always adept at helping things because he discards nothing.
This says he follows the pattern honestly.
Thus, those who are adept are models for those not adept.
Those not adept support those who are adept.
Neither value the model nor love the supporter.
This wisdom, although perplexing,
Is called an essential subtlety.
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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
(Trump era)
Archive: Characters and past commentary
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/M8rVYilL1QQ 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:
Adept at prevailing without the ruts of an outward sign.
Adept at speech without the flaw of banishment and blame.
Adept at counting without a counting scheme.
Adept at closing without locking, yet cannot be opened.
Adept at conclusion without restraint, yet cannot be undone.
The first line. Adept at prevailing without the ruts of an outward sign, immediately brought to mind that common saying, “Leave no trace”, which is about leaving a forest or any natural area as you found it. Well, life is essentially a ‘natural area’, so without the ruts of an outward sign would apply to all action. All together, these five lines advise how the wise person approaches life. For me, chapter 3 puts this approach more succinctly, Doing without doing, following without exception rules, i.e., wéi wú wéi or just wú wéi.
Adept at speech without the flaw of banishment and blame parallels Christ admonition “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged”. The idea is easy enough to understand; the great difficulty lies in putting it into practice. The principle barrier to practicing this lies in the belief in free will. If you believe people have free will, then it will logically follow that they can willingly choose the right action, and avoid doing wrong. Believing this, how can you possibly not cast blame on those who “choose” to do wrong, or praise those who “choose” to do right? See Free Will: Fact or Wishful Thinking?
Speaking of how we make our choices in life, there is a simple, albeit hypothetically, bottom-up chain-of-causation that applies to all living things. (Note: > = gives rise to, begets, causes,)
Entropy > fear > need > action (i.e., negentropy) > life meaning > “happiness”
See the bottom of this chapter’s Reflections for more on this chain of causation.
Using this, the wise person is:
Always adept at helping people because he discards no one.
Always adept at helping things because he discards nothing.
This says he follows the pattern honestly.
What pattern is this referring to? I assume it refers to the five Adept at statements above. Accordingly, the helping people and the discards no one or nothing can’t be taken too literally for that would be leaving some noticeable ruts of an outward sign!
Interestingly, the act of helping is essentially a subtle form of control. Therefore, the wise person will be very careful in how he follows the pattern honestly. Again, this is where following the first line, Adept at prevailing without the ruts of an outward sign, makes all the difference. “Leave no trace”. Seeing helping as being a form of control can be difficult since helping others is regarded as a highly desirable moral action. And certainly, helping others furthers social cohesion. Nevertheless—to paraphrase wéi wú wéi—the closer one can help without helping, the more likely one can avoid disrupting natural outcomes.
Thus, those who are adept are models for those not adept.
Those not adept support those who are adept.
Neither value the model nor love the supporter.
This wisdom, although perplexing,
Is called an essential subtlety.
Those who are adept are models for those not adept. Being a model for someone is a very passive non-meddlesome role. Again, it is being adept at prevailing without the ruts of an outward sign.
Neither value the model nor love the supporter would have been more the rule during our ancestral hunter-gatherer era when groups were composed of small closely connected individuals. The norm was egalitarian. The hierarchical social structure of civilization is otherwise. Here, people praise those who are adept and often trouble over those not adept. See The Tradeoff.
This wisdom, although perplexing, Is called an essential subtlety. I assume this wisdom is perplexing due to the fundamental shift in social systems, from egalitarian to hierarchical. It would not be at all perplexing to our distant ancestors! See Who Are You? Series.
This bottom up chain of causation may easily be misconstrued because of the imprecise ways words are often interpreted. The synonym-like parallel meanings below help mitigate this.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/aq7Z1_hLsrg
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
The bottom-up chain-of-causation that applies to all living things.
(Note: > = gives rise to, begets, causes,)
Entropy > fear > need > action (i.e., negentropy) > life meaning > “happiness”
First, consider this process that lies at the heart of living things: Complexity, as seen in living organisms arises because a system is not at equilibrium. Such systems, known as “dissipative structures,” are open systems that are driven far from equilibrium by a constant influx of energy and matter from their environment. They are able to maintain a highly ordered state by continuously dissipating free energy and expelling the produced entropy into their surroundings.
The bottom up chain of causation may easily be misconstrued because of the imprecise ways words are often interpreted. The synonym-like parallel meanings below help mitigate misinterpretation.
Entropy ≈ equilibrium, dead, stable, orderless, information maximally uncertain (knowledge of a system’s microscopic configuration is minimal because all accessible microstates are equally probable),
Fear ≈ insecurity, anxiety, worry, concern, unease,
Need ≈ desire, want, wish, expectation, crave, lust,
Action ≈ movement, hunt & gather, plan, pursue, practice, play, progress, walk & run, think & talk,
Life meaning ≈ significance, importance, purpose, raison d’être,
Happiness ≈ contentment, success, accomplishment, non-equilibrium processes, purposefully utilize information, dissipate free energy and producing entropy which is then expelled into the environment. Information is the mechanism by which systems resist this entropic drive.
This potentially offers a way to look inward, explore, and get a deeper understanding of what makes people (and life in general) tick. For starters, take any action (physical or mental) you experience and determine the need that causes it. Then take that need and see if you can detect the fear (worry, insecurity, unease, etc.) from which that need arises. This last step, discerning how insecurity and the like are the cause of need can be extremely obscure
If that’s the case, try taking a simple action like raising a cup of water to your mouth. Then imagine what it would feel like not being able to do that simple task. That would evoke a certain level of insecurity, regret, frustration, etc. This implies that you feel a need to have the freedom to move—raise the cup to your mouth. Beneath that need is the fear (insecurity) of not being able to have the freedom / ability to do that simple action.