Translation
Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue.
Inferior virtue never deviates from virtue, and so is without virtue.
Superior virtue: without doing, and without believing.
Inferior virtue: without doing, yet believing.
Superior benevolence: doing, yet without believing.
Superior justice: doing and believing.
Superior ritual: doing and when none respond,
Normally roles up sleeves and throws.
Hence, virtue follows loss of way.
Benevolence follows loss of virtue.
Justice follows loss of benevolence.
Ritual follows loss of justice.
Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual.
Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly.
The great man dwells in the thick, not in the thin.
Dwells in the true, not in the magnificent.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
1) upper (higher; superior) virtue (moral character; heart) no (not) virtue (moral character; heart) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) have (exist) virtue (moral character; heart). 上德不德是以有德。(shàng dé bù dé shì yĭ yŏu dé.)
2) below (down; inferior) virtue (moral character; heart) no (not) lose (deviate from the normal) virtue (moral character; heart) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) nothing (without) virtue (moral character; heart). 下德不失德是以无德。(xià dé bù shī dé shì yĭ wú dé.)
3) upper (higher; superior) virtue (moral character; heart) nothing (without; not) do (act as; be, mean; support) <conj.> and (yet, but) nothing (without) think (believe; consider). 上德无为而无以为。(shàng dé wú wéi ér wú yĭ wéi.)
4) below (down; under; inferior; next) virtue (moral character; heart) nothing (without) do (act as; be, mean; support) <conj.> and (yet, but) have (exist) think (believe; consider). 下德无为而有以为。(xià dé wú wéi ér yŏu yĭ wéi.)
5) upper (higher; superior) benevolence (kindheartedness; humanity; sensitive) do (act as; be, mean; support) of <conj.> and (yet, but) nothing (without) think (believe; consider). 上仁为之而无以为。 (shàng rén wéi zhī ér wú yĭ wéi.)
6) upper (higher; superior) justice (righteous; equitable; relationship; meaning) do (act as; be, mean; support) of <conj.> and (yet, but) have (exist) think (believe; consider). 上义为之而有以为。(shàng yì wéi zhī ér yŏu yĭ wéi.)
7) upper (higher; superior) ceremony (rite; courtesy; etiquette) do (act as; be, mean; support) of <conj.> and (yet, but) no one (nothing; none; no) of use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) answer (respond; agree (to do sth.); should), 上礼为之而莫之以应，(shàng lĭ wéi zhī ér mò zhī yĭ yīng,)
8) standard (norm; rule > imitate; follow) push up one’s sleeves and bare one’s arms (in excitement or agitation) <conj.> and (yet, but) throw (toss; cast; throw away; cast aside) of. 则攘臂而扔之。(zé răng bì ér rēng zhī.)
9) hence (therefore; consequently) lose (let slip; deviate from the normal) road (way, principle; speak; think) <conj.> and (yet, but) after that (then) virtue. 故失道而后德。(gù shī dào ér hòu dé.)
10) lose (deviate from the normal) virtue (moral character; heart) <conj.> and (yet, but) after that (then) benevolence (kindheartedness; humanity; sensitive). 失德而后仁。(shī dé ér hòu rén.)
11) lose (deviate from the normal) benevolence (kindheartedness; humanity; sensitive) <conj.> and (yet, but) after that (then) justice (righteous; equitable; relationship; meaning). 失仁而后义。(shī rén ér hòu yì.)
12) lose (deviate from the normal) justice (righteous; equitable; relationship; meaning) <conj.> and (yet, but) after that (then) ceremony (rite; courtesy; etiquette). 失义而后礼。(shī yì ér hòu lĭ.)
13) husband (man) ceremony (rite; courtesy; etiquette) (者) loyal (honest) true (confidence; trust; faith; believe) of thin (weak; infertile; poor) <conj.> and (yet, but) in a mess (disorder; chaos) of road (way, principle; speak; think). 夫礼者忠信之薄而乱之首。(fū lĭ zhĕ zhōng xìn zhī báo ér luàn zhī shŏu.)
14) front (forward; before) know (knowledge) (者), road (way, principle; speak; think) of magnificent (prosperous; flourishing; best part) <conj.> and (yet, but) foolish (stupid; make a fool of; fool) of beginning (start;> only then). 前识者，道之华而愚之始。(qián shí zhĕ, dào zhī huá ér yú zhī shĭ.)
15) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) true man (real man), get along (manage; > dwell; live) his (its, he, it, that; such) thick (deep; kind), no (not) dwell (live; store up) his (its, he, it, that; such) thin (flimsy; weak). 是以大丈夫，处其厚，不居其薄。(shì yĭ dà zhàng fu, chŭ qí hòu, bù jū qí báo.)
16) get along (manage; > dwell; live) his (its, he, it, that; such) true (real; honest; fact), no (not) dwell (live; store up) his (its, he, it, that; such) magnificent (prosperous; flourishing; best part). 处其实，不居其华。(chŭ qí shí, bù jū qí huá.)
17) hence (therefore; consequently) go (remove) that (those; the other; another) take (get; aim at; seek; assume) this. 故去彼取此。(gù qù bĭ qŭ cĭ.)
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
(Trump era)
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/pDJywOWL_s0 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?
This is more an honest accounting of what I’m doing here: I write thousands of words of naming to argue that naming cuts us off from the way—thin abstraction praising the thick present it isn’t in. And yes, I catch myself doing it, constantly. This catching, this awareness, is more thinking; the accounting more naming. The ape that thinks can’t think its way out of thinking. So I don’t offer this as escape—only as the disease describing itself, one layer watching the next, all the way down. Chapter 71 lays it out well: Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Man alone faults this disease; this so as not to be ill. Line 1 diagnoses the disease, and line 2 offers the only treatment possible, which is acknowledging the disease. The faulting is still more thinking, but the kind that loosens the grip rather than tightens it. This doesn’t cure the disease that natural selection “gifted” us with evolutionarily, but it does make it less severe.
Interpretation is everything
The same disease shows up in how the line gets translated. Note my Word for Word translation of lines 3 and 4:
Superior virtue never acts and never believes. 上德无为而无以为
Inferior virtue never acts yet believes. 下德无为而有以为
The line 无以为 splits two ways. One parse—无 + 以为—reads “never believes,” the story-over-the-drive. The other—无以 + 为—reads “nothing by which to act,” which looks like without motive, and at first glance the two seem roughly equal. The second dissolves the moment you press it: no living thing acts without motive. Fear drives need, need drives action; that current runs through every creature, superior grade and inferior, animal and human alike. If 无以为 meant “without motive,” it would describe nothing that lives—so it can’t be what the chapter contrasts.
Yet, a translator can easily choose “motive” over “never believes”. And as it happens, the mainstream lands almost entirely on motive/purpose, not “belief.” The “take-to-be / regard / believe” reading of 以为 that I favor is essentially my own. For example:
Translator — Rendering
D.C. Lau — “from no ulterior motive”
Waley — “no ulterior motive”
Legge — “did nothing (with a purpose)… no need”
Henricks — “no reason for acting this way”
Addiss & Lombardo — “take no action / don’t need to act”
Feng / English — “no need to act”
Stenudd — “without ulterior motive”
Every canonical translator takes motive or need, over believing, although ‘ulterior’ already gestures at the layer I mean. As a lexical reading, “believing” stands essentially alone. So the mainstream half-sees the layer but keeps the vocabulary of motive; their contrast is more about intention-vs-none, not story-vs-drive.
Belief is arguably the sturdier reading. 以为—”take-to-be,” regard, assume—points not at the drive underneath, which is universal, but at the story laid over it: the naming, the “should,” the self watching itself act. The animal has fear, need, action, full stop. The human adds the layer. Both act from motive; only one believes. The chapter never contrasted motive with no-motive—every grade has both. It contrasts unstoried drive with storied drive, and naming, once again, is the culprit. So why do most translators opt for motive over belief? Perhaps they are still in the story, which leans toward an implied freedom to choose our motive, our intention.
Reflections:
Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue.
Inferior virtue never deviates from virtue and so is without virtue.
Superior virtue never acts and never believes.
Inferior virtue never acts yet believes.
Superior benevolence acts yet never believes.
Superior justice acts and believes.
Superior etiquette acts but when none respond,
Normally rolls up its sleeves and throws away.
This begins with Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue which ties right back to chapter 1, The way possible to think, runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name . The seeming paradox of, superior virtue is not virtuous, demolishes the word meaning, and invites the curious mind to enter the wondrous entrance. As chapter 1 concludes: These two are the same coming out, yet differ in name. The same, meaning dark and mysterious. Dark and dark again, the multitude of wondrous entrance.
Setting aside the entwined nature of Superior virtue, the idea that nature abhors a vacuum fits nicely here. When a vacuum—the loss or waning of something—exists, Nature fills the void; here the loss is filled with Inferior virtue and so on down the line.
I note how believes and never believes is a cornerstone of these lines. Belief, of course, is tied directly to chapter 71’s, Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Thus, Superior virtue never acts and never believes is what natural virtue would look like; allowing nature to play out can only occur when there is no belief of a “better” outcome to drive action. Is this not an essence of chapter 3’s Doing without doing, following without exception rules? Of course, allowing nature to play out goes against the grain of biological forces, the needs and fears, that drive all living things. Honestly this is pointing to an idea beyond possibility. Yet the ideal offers hope to at least move in this direction—be more patient, count to 10 before acting, and as chapter 16 suggests, Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness. This is where Inferior virtue never acts yet believes enters. We feel what we feel, and feelings drive our beliefs, and vice versa. But, if we are fortunate enough to have presence of mind, at least we can refrain from acting on our feelings and beliefs.
Superior benevolence acts yet never believes would be the kind of empathetic actions that an animal would take. They have no back-story to prodding them on, simply spontaneous emotion. Of course, that also happens in us, when our actions are arising from Superior benevolence. The chapter doesn’t continue with “inferior benevolence” but we can infer… “Inferior benevolence acts and believes”. I assume this form of benevolence is accompanied by the usual, “should do” and the pressure of guilt and self-identity—complicated layers of fear, need, worry.
And when all else fails, we Normally roll up [our] sleeves and throw away.
Hence, Virtue follows loss of way.
Benevolence follows loss of virtue.
Justice follows loss of benevolence.
Ritual follows loss of justice.
Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual.
A vacuum destabilizes negentropy — the improbable order that is life — so a stabilizer is needed, not merely convenient. I’ve always read this as a layered chain, each layer serving as a stabilizer when the most stable, more foundational, layer loses its ability to stabilize. Virtue wanes, benevolence waxes; as benevolence wanes, justice waxes; as justice wanes, ritual waxes.
Another way to picture this is to see the way as the foundation, and virtue, benevolence, justice, ritual stacked upon the way, each narrower than the last. Not that narrower is “bad”, but rather the necessary layer to stabilize life. Each becoming the dominant stabilizer when the more foundational one’s stabilizing effect diminishes. For example, we only devise the ritual of stop signs and the laws enforcing compliance when the watchful sense of benevolence becomes swamped by our rush to get where we’re going. We post a stop sign only after the accidents, where awareness has already failed and the mind was elsewhere. Ritual is the stop sign of a distracted species. The narrowing simply measures how far we’ve travelled from the wide root.
But to be honest, the “root”—the way—encompasses all, down to the narrowest of narrow, as chapter 34 alludes: The great way flows, such as it may left and right. It is easy to take a hierarchical view of this, where the way is seen as something to seek, as in “seek and ye shall find”. The hardest thing to see is how what we are really doing is attempting to feel the way that is already and always here. It’s not that ritual is outside the way; it is more that, being distracted, we don’t feel the way. Animals use ritual all the time; it is an essential part of life. They too face the danger of distraction—just not via naming. Essentially we are just animals, so the same processes apply to us as to them. In the big picture there may be no difference at all: we are simply blinded by our own story, and that is just something we must work through. What we’ve actually done is give a name, a story, for something we feel behind it all and to which we long to reconnect.
What is really happening is that our dipolar mind, by naming its perceptions, creates a feeling of disconnection within us. By dipolar I mean bipolar in the literal, scientific sense—two-poled: subject and object, knower and known, self and world. Naming splits the single field into these two poles, and in that split we feel cut off. We then make things up, a story to tell us there is a way back. It is all contained in the word religion, which breaks down like this: religion is from the Latin religare—re = again + ligare = to bind, to connect. Similarly, yoga is from the Sanskrit yuj = to join, to unite. Both are primarily about our dire need for connection. The paradox is that we are seeking something already and always within; we just don’t feel it, because our naming disconnects us.
The first three lines here are a more pithy review of the chain of command listed at the beginning of the chapter. The way is the foundation of reality, that is impossible to think or have a name to express… but, we need something to hold onto, and so chapter 25 offers us a few crumbs to clutch onto.
Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual brought to my mind today of the life our hunter-gatherer ancestor lived compared to civilized life. They lived in a maximum loyalty environment, intimately sharing life, birth to death, with each other. Their faith in the way of life, and in each other was largely unquestioned. They had no alternative story; theirs was one of lived maximal homogeneity. With the advent of civilization and its hierarchical social structure, much of that deep lived faith and loyalty was lost… Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual. Ritual, by the way, can be understood to be life habit or way of life, and so faith in ritual would be simply faith in their way of life.
Ritual made personal has a sharp little test built into it. When another’s way of doing a thing irritates me—their order, their method, their habit—that irritation is the tell. It means I’m stuck in my own ritual, my own need to have it my way… justice, benevolence, virtue, the way, all gone for the moment. The more stabilizing layers have waned, and if I’m not careful the last layer will replace even ritual: I’ll roll up my sleeves and throw it away. The irritation was never really about them. It’s a symptom of my own narrow clinging.
Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly.
The great man dwells in the thick, not in the thin.
Dwells in the true, not in the magnificent.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly I’ve always taken to mean predictive thoughts, projection into an imagined future. That’s still part of it I feel, but today I see it the knowledge aspect to be key, whether knowledge of the past, present, of future. This magnificent cognitive ability we have to objectify reality, and store this in memory, in imagination, is what seems to truly separate us from the rest of nature. Yet a beginning of folly is when we don’t realize that we don’t know, as chapter 71 puts it, not knowing this knowing is disease.
The great man dwells in the thick, not in the thin is simply the person described in the next line of chapter 71, Man alone faults this disease; this so as not to be ill. Our true problem is not the emotional certainty we place in our thoughts, so much as our inability to realize that we have this problem. It is like an addict before he realizes he has a disease; only after acknowledging he’s an addict has he any hope of good management of the problem. We are who we have evolved to be. It is foolish to criticize natural evolution for trying out enhanced cognition to further survival in a hominid species.
But there’s a paradox here the chapter keeps circling. We are who we’ve evolved to be, and yet we spend our lives willing ourselves into someone else, some ideal we can picture but never reach. The squirrel cannot will itself into a crow. Neither can we, yet we imagine we can. The struggle to transform our lived reality to our imagined ideal is the upshot of the disease chapter 71 warns of. We are certain in our belief in the ideal; the very fight to change is itself the clinging. Only surrender—accepting who I actually am—settles the dust. When I finally accepted I was a smoker and gave up trying to quit, I stopped within weeks. But you cannot choose this, because the struggle to choose it is the very thing in the way.
I see one aspect of this magnificent yet a beginning of folly is how we are so overly taken with magnificence: Grand Canyons, Olympic champions, and all the other “shiny objects” we are drawn towards. So, dwells in the thick, not in the thin is also pointing towards one who has a more egalitarian view of life; a level playing field of reality as opposed to the mundane on one edge and the magnificent on the other. Of course, some of this bias is a biological necessity for survival. Our strength in the bias I assume to be an aspect of the hierarchical viewpoint we conditioned ourselves into—its collateral damage, so to speak. Dwells in the true, not in the magnificent just describes a mind that has broken free of this conditioning… perhaps. Aging out of life, approaching death, has a sobering effect on one’s outlook, the peaks don’t feel so high, the valleys, not so low. The road to death is paved with equanimity if you’re lucky enough.
And what is left to do along that road is simply the work of life just like every living thing must do. But note the additional work we face that other animals don’t. Other animals live wei wu wei — doing without doing or to paraphrase, working without working— unselfconsciously; they never left it. We push for ideals, act from our certainty, our agenda… and agenda is not wei wu wei. So much of our work is the peculiar human task of struggling to live up to the unrealistic agenda we set for ourselves; that makes life feel like hard work because we expect a reward—success. The more we expect, the harder the work feels. There’s no getting out of life’s work, but we can find peace within it as we trade the harder work of chasing our ideal for the easier… work in the moment at hand, which chapter 3 names doing without doing. Well… to be honest though, either way it’s work!
Perhaps our real difficulty here is an intrinsic wish to work as little as possible. I call it the laziness instinct that drives all life to be as economical as feasible when expending energy. We are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this is literally taking the present moment fully, and leaving behind fantasies of foreknowledge and the magnificent. In the end, this is all there truly is.
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/Ynj04qdM1sQ
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting.
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
Corrections?
None this time.
YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/LuyVIP-0yf0 is the link to the complete video recording of our monthly Sunday meeting. For the nicely edited version, go to Kirk Garber’s YouTube channel. The edited version comes in two parts: The first and shorter Commentary part begins with a chapter reading followed by attendees’ commentary, if any. The second and longer Open Discussion part offers attendees’ observations on how the chapter relates to their personal experience.
Reflections:
Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue.
The last line of chapter 78, Straight and honest words seem inside out, sheds light on the first line of this chapter. I assume this literal wording is a bit obscure as it should be. D.C. Lau’s wording is clearer: Straightforward words seem paradoxical. Saying that Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue challenges the very meaning of virtue… and rightfully so!
Much of our existential difficulty stems from taking the words we use to think about life at face value. We trust that words mean what they mean, and fail at the most fundamental level to challenge such meaning. As chapter 71 bluntly states, Realizing I don’t’ know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. On the surface, “know” applies to the knowledge we think we know, but more fundamentally, it applies to the underlying blind trust we place in the discrete words themselves. After all, we build our structures of belief out of the word ‘bricks’ instilled in us from infancy. To top it off, emotion intimately influences word meaning. That means, ultimate meaning is essentially irrational. Correlations can help turn this around somewhat. See Tools of Taoist Thought: Correlations.
Inferior virtue never deviates from virtue and so is without virtue.
Superior virtue never acts and never believes.
Inferior virtue never acts yet believes.
Superior benevolence acts yet never believes.
Superior justice acts and believes.
Superior etiquette acts but when none respond,
Normally roles up its sleeves and throws away.
I read these lines as all attempting to soften the hard meaning we ascribe to these key words: virtue, benevolence, justice, etiquette. For example, Superior virtue never acts and never believes. This describes the natural behaviors that exist apart from any belief held to back them up, i.e., never believes. All animals, including human, experience this natural, intuitive action. Conversely, Inferior virtue never acts yet believes. This outlines the nature of hypocrisy. We believe in certain virtues, yet our actions never fully conform to those virtues. It is akin to living a lie, I suppose. Without belief there is no lie.
Hence, Virtue follows loss of way.
Benevolence follows loss of virtue.
Justice follows loss of benevolence.
Ritual follows loss of justice.
Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual.
These middle lines (9 to 13) succinctly describe the way nature actually works. Nature abhors a vacuum sums it up. When the way is lost, virtue fills the ensuing vacuum. Simple examples of this are the laws that govern society. Stop signs are set up when drivers become careless. Traffic lights are set up when stop signs lose effectiveness. Police forces are set up when people lose social cohesion and mutual respect.
Instinct tends to make us approach life in a more pro-active way. Our eyes look ahead… literally and figuratively. We look forward to goals and seek to achieve them. Thus, by the same token, we fear loss and failure. We trust and believe in the ‘future’. Not surprisingly, nature works just the opposite of how we assume it does. Chapter 40 gives us a wonderful clue as to what is actually happening.
All living creatures, including us, react to loss. Our actions and behaviors are symptoms of what we deeply feel missing. The simplest form of this is how we react to feeling hunger… we seek food. The emptiness we feel within pushes us to ‘hunt and gather’… Having is born in nothing, as chapter 40 concludes. This is why I strive to view every angle of life from a symptoms point of view. What I observe ‘out there’ is only the tip of the iceberg—a symptom of a much deeper underlying reality. This point of view connects me much closer to life than I would otherwise be. (See Symptoms Point Of View)
Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly.
The great man dwells in the thick, not in the thin.
Dwells in the true, not in the magnificent.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
It can help to think of foreknowledge as any moment beyond the eternal present moment of now. We are innately forward leaning and out to survive, ‘hunt and gather’ so to speak. Thus, we fail to live life totally in the present. While this is probably true of all living things, it is profoundly true for humans because we think and so are capable of foreknowledge. And as chapter 71 observes, our certainty in our knowledge is our disease. We are lured toward our magnificent visions of our life’s next attraction. We look forward, expect, hope, wish, desire… all aimed at future outcomes.
Dwelling in the thick and true is maintaining a deep connection to the eternal present, and whatever sense of the previous ‘presents’ that can inform our life’s direction. I always say, stupid is not the mistakes I make, it is continually repeating those mistakes. The more I Dwell in the thick and true the less stupid I am. That means always keeping one eye on where I’ve been, as it were.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
This is right here, right now. That is over there, later somewhere.
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
Lines 3-8: I saw poetic improvements to make in these lines today. Nothing substantial in the meaning, mind you, only in the reading. Of course, ‘the reading’ is substantial in its own right I suppose; it it doesn’t read well the meaning is lost. On the other hand, with the Tao Te Ching in particular, if it reads a little quirky it can loosen up thinking. That encourages the mind to look a little deeper.
Commentary:
Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue speaks to why Chuang Tzu had such a problem with morality. Morality as an ideal sounds good on the face of it, until we consider chapter two.
All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already.
All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already.
Morality as an ideal sounds good on the face of it, until we consider chapter two, 2. Morality is what we desire, especially in other people and for society in general. The question is, does promoting an ideal influence reality? It may, although not necessarily in the direction we think and wish. That is the irony of morality. The ideal of morality, never deviating from virtue, is more likely to be a clever cognitive curtain to hide behind.
In other words, When intelligence increases, there is great falseness, or as D.C. Lau put it, When cleverness emerges there is great hypocrisy. Ideals are a way we escape facing ourselves honestly. Instead we make up a narrative (story) that suits our needs and fears. The result: we spiral down in the descending order described here.
The urge to act is really a symptom of dwelling in the thin and the magnificent. Of course, urges to act are normal animal instincts. It is thinking that allows dwelling. The promise of the future pulls us away from the thick and true of the present-moment and off we go on the next cognitive wild goose chase. The most ironic part of this natural hoodwink is how we are chasing after the promise of a magnificent present-moment to come. Yet, the present-moment — Now — is simply the present-moment of some past promise. ‘Now’ is the fruit of yesterdays flower… Hence the man of large mind abides in the thick not in the thin, in the fruit not in the flower.
Justice follow loss of benevolence.
Ritual follows loss of justice:
Justice and Rituals (D.C. Lau’s rectitude and rites) appear to me to be symptoms of our loss of intimate long-term ancestral tribal relationships. In the wild, there are no laws other than natural law. Laws are the result (symptom) of the breakdown of natural justice. Ritual is the result of the inconsistency (hypocrisy) laws embody, i.e., our ‘when all else fails just do what you are told’ approach to civilized life.
Now, this human dilemma is certainly not new. I reckon this began when we ‘got kicked out of Eden’, i.e., the dis-ease of thinking that we know. See Are you out of touch with nature? for more on this ‘dis-ease’. (Finding Your Original Self, and Counterbalancing I.Q. also speak to this dilemma.)
Codification of justice and rituals are symptoms of deficit, failure and loss. Indeed, everything you are aware of can be seen as a symptom of some need, which in turn is symptomatic of some shortfall, failure or loss. The advantage of considering the content our perception as a symptom of need and fear (of failure and loss) is that by doing so it becomes much easier to Realize I don’t know… (D.C. Lau’s To know yet to think that one does not know is best). Rather than being a complete puppet on biology’s string, you can at least look up and become more aware of the puppeteer, Mother Nature.
Suggested Revision:
Superior virtue is not virtuous, and so has virtue.
Inferior virtue never deviates from virtue and so is without virtue.
Superior virtue never acts and never believes.
Inferior virtue never acts yet believes.
Superior benevolence acts yet never believes.
Superior justice acts and believes.
Superior etiquette acts but when none respond,
Normally roles up its sleeves and throws away.
Hence, Virtue follows loss of way.
Benevolence follows loss of virtue.
Justice follows loss of benevolence.
Ritual follows loss of justice.
Ways of chaos follow loss of loyalty and thinning faith in ritual.
Foreknowledge of the way, magnificent yet a beginning of folly.
The great man dwells in the thick, not in the thin.
Dwells in the true, not in the magnificent.
Hence, he leaves that and takes this.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
Much of this chapter supports my so-called ‘symptoms’ theory of reality. Briefly stated: What we see and think are real in the world are actually symptoms (effects) of underlying – normally opposite – causes(1). So, for example, the reason a man of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue [is because ] he is without virtue. The whole sequence below shows a descending chain of causation: Virtue follows loss of way; Benevolence follows loss of virtue; Justice follow loss of benevolence; Ritual follows loss of justice. We are biologically ‘hoodwinked’ to deal with external symptoms and overlook underlying causes. Our innate incentive to ponder causation and watch these teaming creatures return to their separate roots is fairly weak. All in all, life is easier to manage when I know (remember) I’m seeing symptoms, and not ‘the real thing’. Whenever I lose sight of this ‘secret’ I am led off onto one wild goose chases after another (i.e., those by-paths people prefer). Needless to say, I treasure being as mindful of this as possible.
‘Abiding in the fruit not in the flower‘ describes one of the more tragic sides of life. We have the greatest difficulty appreciating the fruit of this moment. Instead, we hold out for tomorrow’s fruit promised in the flowers of our dreams. Naturally, instinct drives all life to keep looking ahead in the scramble for survival. The hunter gatherer has to always be searching for his next meal. Our difficulty lies in our ability to move out of ‘now’ into a foreknowledge of tomorrow. Our mind easily dwells in the thin, whereas non-thinking animals have no alternative but to be grounded, dwelling in the thick of the present. Turning back to be in the thick of it all is essential for apes who think.
(1) Confounding our perception are also the projections of our own needs and fears into our thinking. What a messy affair! The best way I’ve found, so far, to untangle this is through correlations.
Note: The term ‘without doing‘ (wu wei) used below is a core Taoist view of human conduct that lets things takes their own natural course, e.g., One does less and less until one does nothing at all, and when one does nothing at all there is nothing that is undone.