All that came before fulfills the One.
Heaven fulfills the One and is clear.
Earth fulfills the One and is tranquil.
Mind fulfills the One and is effective.
Valley fulfills the One and is full.
Existence fulfills the One and grows.
Rulers fulfill the One and support the empire faithfully.
The One causes.
Heaven without clarity brings dreadful splitting.
Earth without tranquility brings dreadful waste.
Mind without effectiveness brings dreadful stoppage.
Valley without fullness brings dreadful exhaustion.
Existence without growth brings dreadful extinction.
Rulers without faithfulness bring dreadful setbacks.
Hence, the precious take the lowly as the origin.
The high take low as the base.
This, and so rulers call themselves solitary, scant, pathetic
Is this not taking the lowly as a foundation of heresy?
No.
Extreme reputation is without reputation
Not to desire jewelry is comparable to beauty.
Jewelry is comparable to stone.
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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/-kiIOMONIRI 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:
All that came before fulfills the One.
Heaven fulfills the One and is clear.
Earth fulfills the One and is tranquil.
Mind fulfills the One and is effective.
Valley fulfills the One and is full.
Existence fulfills the One and grows.
Rulers fulfill the One and support the empire faithfully.
The One causes.
This chapter brings to my mind entropy and its opposite negentropy, or to put it in nonscientific terms, Yin and Yang, death and life, growth and decay. These are the fundamental poles of nature, or rather how the nervous system, the brain and mind have evolved to perceive nature. The curious thing here is that we have no way of knowing what reality really looks like, because we have an innate polar way to perceive it… as I expect do all other life forms, one way or another. Perceiving difference is fundamental to survival; without that ability nothing could actually live.
Now, the real puzzler: how is it that the human mind is able to catch a glimpse, have an inkling, that this dual nature of existence is not the whole, or even true, story? I imagine the One described here is pointing to this. But there is a twist, an ironic, paradoxical twist: one is offset by zero, 1 and 0. So, even saying One to cover the whole fails, because it is only half the picture. I’d say One lies on the yang side, and Zero lies on the yin side of the coin. So, as I see it, The One causes points toward entropy, which is the main driver of life, i.e., life balances out the entropic “pressure”, the void, the nothingness—death. This really ties my mind in a conundrum of wonderment, or as Chapter 1 concludes, Dark and dark again, the multitude of wondrous entrance. Chapter 1 tells me why that’s never going to change, at least for my thinking mind.
The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way.
The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name.
The message here for me is the vital necessity for balance. Valley fulfills the One and is full points at this, unlike the surrounding lines. Some lean more on the negentropy, growth, yang side of the coin, like Existence fulfills the One and grows perhaps. On the other hand, Mind fulfills the One and is effective hints at the importance of balance; mental balance necessary for an effective life. Of course, that is still on the negentropy side of the coin.
I’ve come to notice how maintaining balance is perhaps the main survival skill of life. Leaning too much for too long in either direction has negative consequences… which ironically is the lean toward loss, failure, death, entropy. Thus, the natural drive to maintain balance, homeostasis.
At bottom, life seems to me to boil down to two pulls, fight or flight. Lean back or go forward. Give up control and go with the flow, or push, endure, press on. It shows up in everything: when to be silent, when to speak up, when to go forward, when to reverse. And when things feel a little off here or there, I usually find it’s because I’m leaning too far one way or the other, which I always do.
Heaven without clarity brings dreadful splitting.
Earth without tranquility brings dreadful waste.
Mind without effectiveness brings dreadful stoppage.
Valley without fullness brings dreadful exhaustion.
Existence without growth brings dreadful extinction.
Rulers without faithfulness bring dreadful setbacks.
Hence, the precious take the lowly as the origin.
The high take low as the base.
This, and so rulers call themselves solitary, scant, pathetic
These lines point to the necessity for balance. Without balance dreadful splitting, waste, stoppage, exhaustion, extinction, etc. all result. Clearly without balance entropy takes over the wheel of existence.
Hence, the precious take the lowly as the origin is a call, a reminder, of the need for balance. Only by the high taking the low as base can balance be maintained. And maintaining such exquisite balance as part of taking agency, conscious “control” of our life, stewards of our destiny, is incredibly challenging. Indeed, I see it as impossible. Constant vigilance is demanded, which no living thing can perfect. Ironically, perfect balance would be the ultimate zero, the ultimate state of entropy.
Balance is not something you can set and forget. Think of the high-wire walker; every millisecond demands adjustment, all the way across. Long ago, when I was first working through Iyengar’s book, I was rotating into the other postures from a headstand, which takes a keen sense of balance. For one split second my attention wandered. I cricked my neck, and it took at least ten years to get over it. One second of not being tuned in, ten years of consequences. Driving fast is the same; one second of wandering and you’re in a head-on collision. Much of what we live with, I suspect, comes down the road from lapses of attention like that.
Chapter 15 describes the attitude this takes: He prepares as if fording a river in winter; as if in fear of neighbors. Lose that caution and it’s easy to step ahead of yourself. The imbalance of that one moment has consequences.
It is a somewhat different story down at the biological level. Just standing without toppling over requires exquisite monitoring of position, gravity and such. And we don’t need to give that level of balance a second thought… unless we suffer neuropathy or something, which as I’ve slid into old age, I notice exquisitely well.
This, and so rulers call themselves solitary, scant, pathetic. Solitary, scant, pathetic evoke lonely. Lonely evokes empty. Empty evokes entropy. Follow the cosmic ‘chain of command’ down to its deepest level, I see everything, yes every thing, is solitary. That is what makes the world go round. The electron without its counterpart the proton is solitary. The yin without its yang is solitary. The man without his mate is solitary. That provides the pull nature uses to make the universe work… yes work, struggle, toil, act! If the universe is working so hard, why add to that? Let its work be done, and you just be the ‘tool’ of its goings on. Such an impersonal view is as comforting as it is challenging to maintain. At least seeing that point of view on the horizon of one’s mind offers relief, I find.
Is this not taking the lowly as a foundation of heresy?
No.
Extreme reputation is without reputation
Not to desire jewelry is comparable to beauty.
Jewelry is comparable to stone.
Is this not taking the lowly as a foundation of heresy? No. Just the opposite. Taking the lowly as a foundation is in other words, taking the pull of entropy, loss, death, failure as the driving force of life itself. Chapter 40 makes this profoundly clear:
In the opposite direction, of the way moves.
Loss through death, of the way uses.
All under heaven is born in having
Having is born in nothing.
Extreme reputation is without reputation points to how useless words are to account for or describe that which is beyond the yin and yang. Here Extreme reputation is the yang half, the gain; without reputation is the yin half, the loss.
Think of pride. Losing one’s reputation feels like a kind of death; we are such a social species that it is one of the most painful experiences humans suffer. Good standing, on the other hand, is what people seek, and that’s life. So here again is life on one side and death on the other. Holding both is the balance that life aims for, and when successful, life can feel content for a time. As Chapter 46 hints:
Of misfortunes, none are greater than not being content with one’s lot.
Of faults, none are greater than longing for gain.
Therefore, in being contented with one’s lot, enough is usually enough indeed
Not to desire jewelry is comparable to beauty. Jewelry is comparable to stone both point to balance as key. Seeking beauty is the yang push, filling; not to desire is the yin pull, emptying. The closer you can hold both movements at each moment of life, the more balanced your life, the more content. That is the challenge for us all, eh? Oddly, we all intuitively feel that I imagine, yet perhaps because it is so challenging and so universal, we let it sit in the background of our lives, and focus on the fears and needs driving us, as any other animal does. Adding in the extra work our imagination, our virtual reality, makes us do often pushes us too far off balance.
I see how this works in the garden these days. With neuropathy, balance is hard, so I’m all the more careful not to fall over and hurt myself. I don’t need to know it intellectually; I feel that I have a balance problem, and that alone makes me cautious. Thinking works much the same way. Viscerally knowing I have this disease makes me doubt every thought, and that lack of trust keeps a thought from snowballing down the hill of imagination. Knowing you have the problem seems to be the best way of dealing with it. Our problem as humanity is that we don’t admit it. Just the opposite, we glorify our intellect. Hence, we need to keep reminding ourselves through stories like the Tao Te Ching of the other side.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/-FtVSC2gOFo
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting.