Translation
Without going out the door we can know all under heaven.
Without looking out the window we can see Nature’s way.
He goes out farther, he realizes less,
Accordingly, the wise person goes nowhere yet knows.
Sees nothing yet understands.
Refrains from acting yet accomplishes.
1) no (not) go or come out (exceed; put forth) door (household; family; (bank) account) know (realize; tell; knowledge) land under heaven. 不出户知天下。(bù chū hù zhī tiān xià.)
2) no (not) peep (spy) window see (catch sight of) sky (heaven; weather; nature; God) road (way, principle; speak; think). 不窥牖见天道。(bù kuī yŏu jiàn tiān dào.)
3) his (its, he, it, that; such) go or come out (exceed; put forth) full (overflowing; more) far (distant; remote), his (its, he, it, that; such) know (realize; tell; knowledge) full (overflowing; more) few (little; less; be short). 其出弥远，其知弥少。(qí chū mí yuăn, qí zhī mí shăo.)
4) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) sage (holy; sacred) human (man; people) no (not) go (be current; prevail; do) <conj.> and (yet, but) know (realize; tell; knowledge). 是以圣人不行而知。(shì yĭ shèng rén bù xíng ér zhī.)
5) no (not) see (appear, become visible) <conj.> and (yet, but) bright (light; clear; open; honest; understand). 不见而明。(bù jiàn ér míng.)
6) no (not) do (act as; be, mean; support) <conj.> and (yet, but) accomplish (become; result). 不为而成。(bù wéi ér chéng.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/C0wyo3fVB8w is a link to unedited 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
Without going out the door, we can know all under heaven.
Without looking out the window, we can see nature’s way.
I have considered this from various angles for nearly 60 years now. My latest and perhaps ultimately simple and down to earth view is this:
Biology pre-determines how any living thing perceives the all under heaven and nature’s way it witnesses. Take a fly for example. Their “eyes” are thousands of individual visual receptors. Their position and spherical shape give the fly an almost 360-degree view of its surroundings. If we could see the world the way a fly does, we would have quite a different view of existence than we do. So, if we could see all under heaven and nature the way a fly does, would we be any more or less capable of knowing all under heaven or of seeing nature’s way?
The fly and we are in the same boat. Neither can know all under heaven by going out the door and observing, i.e., finding an objective answer outside ourselves. Nor can the fly or we see nature’s way by looking out the window, i.e., empirical observation.
Clearly, the only possible way to know all under heaven and see nature’s way is through an inward looking journey. The more impartially we are able to notice our own biological hoodwinks (see Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink, How the Hoodwink Hooks and He Who Conquers Self) the closer we come to perceiving what is naturally so without affectation, or “self so”, (自然 zìrán) rather than the learned preconception (stories) instilled in us from childhood.
It is important to note that what we can realize through looking inward is that any answer we can name is not the answer. That means what we intuitively realize will always remain a silent secret within us. Pleasantly, this is the same silent secret (profound sameness) that all other living creatures are capable of intuitively sensing. The key is to realize that we can’t cram this true knowing into tidy labels (names and words) and weave them into a coherent story.
Our fundamental disconnection from all under heaven and nature’s way is the disease we have of thinking that we know. As chapter 71 begins, Realizing I don’t know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Alas, this is an incurable disease. The mere act of cognition, of thought, is the de facto experience of thinking we know. I guess you’d call this a Catch-22. The Tao Te Ching, and chapter 71 in particular, offer us a means to mitigate this predicament…
When one admits they have a problem, their journey toward a “solution” gets under way. That’s not to say a “solution” will ever be realized—not while we can think—but that at least we’re headed that way.
Indeed, human awareness, unlike the awareness of other life forms, is dominated by the dipolar illusion of thought (see Yin Yang, Nature’s Hoodwink). The reality we ‘think’ feels generally more real than the reality our lives experience… at least until a bee stings us (or any other visceral experience). This sets up a conflict between how we think things should be and how they actually are. Of course, all animals struggle with the challenges of life at the visceral level. We also get to struggle at the cognitive level. Essentially, we double our suffering.
He goes out farther, he realizes less,
Accordingly, the wise person goes nowhere, yet knows.
Certainly, going out farther really opens your eye. Well… yes and no. Going our father tells you what you don’t know, whereas a deep dive inward tells you what you genuinely know—nature’s way.
The reason we go out farther is that we’re attempting to ‘get it together’, understand, and eliminate our uncertainty, worry, fear. Our whole sense of the world is rooted in the illusion of labels, words, names. We naturally expect that the “answer” to our concerns lies somewhere out there in the “real world”, that is in fact only a confident belief in what we think, never realizing this is but a figment of our imagination.
The irony here is that the drive to go out farther is a symptom of not being able to trust the intuitive knowing we are all born with. We are culturally conditioned to think and believe the answer lies out there, usually by someone who “genuinely” knows. Of course, this hierarchical based illusion serves as a necessary adhesive to hold civilization together. (See The Tradeoff)
Once you realize there is no solution ‘out there’, you become wise enough to know there is nowhere to go for the answer. And, wherever you go, you take yourself there, and what you observes will be mostly just a reflection of who you are. When you go here or there, you are merely going here or there due to pressing circumstances. For example, I need to pee so I go to the toilet. Necessity serves as the mother of all action. (See Necessity, the Mother and Necessity is the Mother) The only realm that remains to scrutinize is within.
Scrutinize within is easier said than done! First, what you’re looking for has no name or shape to define it. I find it works to approach this sideways, so to speak. Noticing fears and needs as impartially as possible makes for a decent beginning. Need and fear are the emotions that drown out knowing all under heaven the most. Only when those waters are calm can I begin seeing nothing. Chapter 14 tells me what I’m looking for…
The last line, The ability to know the ancient beginning; this is called the way’s discipline reveals a little more of what I’m looking for as I face up to my fears and needs. Namely, these emotions are an integral part of the ancient beginning. Considering these emotions as symptoms of deeper issues directs the view inward (see Symptoms Point Of View). It is all part of the bio-hoodwink playing out in our life.
Sees nothing, yet understands.
Consider the fact that all that exists has its root origins in the big bang… or better yet, the nothing that preceded (and gave birth to?) the big bang. Nothing is the seed, the root, of all existence. The deeper I perceive that nothingness within, the deeper my understanding of existence. Again, this is an intuitive beyond words understanding. The same knowing, for example, of which an “ignorant” ant would be capable.
Of course, biology has the perceptions of all creatures skewed toward noticing differences over similarities. A keen awareness of differences serves survival best. For example, a snake and a stick are different yet can look similar. Seeing the difference, I avoid the snake. This serves survival best.
Yet, in the deepest view, the similarities far outweigh the difference. Just think, with shared genes, we share around 99% with rats, and with working DNA we share around 97.5% with rats and mice. Perhaps more telling is how outwardly, fruit flies and humans have little in common. Yet, roughly 60 percent of the fly’s genes can also be found in humans in a similar form. Even bananas share about 60% of the same DNA as humans! And yet, all our senses tell us we are utterly different!
Poking even deeper I feel all creation, from Higgs bosons to a Human beings, have an innate imperative to maintain “self-integrity”. At the same time, all creation has an innate sense (“consciousness”) of its origin… Nothing and the shared oneness-in-nothingness, so to speak. Thus, creation is a “dance” playing out between these two qualities—self-integrity and oneness-in-nothingness. Each dance ends in nothingness… you could say, entropy rules. This dance is especially poignant, particularly the death’s ‘grand finale’, as it plays out in living creatures, from a virus on “up”.
Refrains from acting, yet accomplishes.
This is only possible to grasp after you realize free will is an illusion arising from the more fundamental illusion of self. In this context, refrains from acting will never sound like a proscription from acting. Rather, refrains from acting is a natural result of realizing how letting nature play out is nature’s way. Again, refrains from acting is not to say that one shouldn’t act on issues. Necessity impels us to do what we feel needs doing. In this way, we are no different from any other creature on earth. Note: feels, not thinks! (See also, A final word on need at the end of Postscript)
Video Archive https://youtu.be/C0wyo3fVB8w
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
Again, it all looks just perfect to me. I hope it is not just truth and beauty in the eye of the beholder ;-). I did see a need for a few commas, but that was it.
Commentary:
I find it very helpful to consider we humans as just another species of animal, and leave out the self-promotional baggage. In this case, I think of the “grass is greener” instinct that drives all life to reach beyond where it is. For an big old sea turtle or a giant redwood tree, that ‘reach‘ moves at a slower pace than for a humming bird or a spring weed growing in my garden. Likewise, some people are driven more keenly to reach further, farther and faster than others. For them, this chapter would unlikely resonate, unless, in their heart of hearts, they were looking to the ‘other side of the coin’ for balance. Mostly though, we are drawn to the message that resonates with what we wish to hear… no, what we NEED to hear.
I left home and emigrated to Australia and wandered the planet – North, South, East, West, high and low – for years and years. I finally realized that I was really searching for home. The reason I left in the first place was that I had no pressing reason to stay. I gradually became so comfortable being a ‘foreigner’ that cultural distinctions disappeared. Scratch the skin(1) and people began to look the same everywhere. Although, ironically, I also notice how incredibly unique each individual was, at least on the surface.
Yes, straightforward words seem paradoxical. The point here is that what I came to see, I came to see from within. Others who travel far and wide can just as easily come away without the ‘profound sameness‘ that I eventually realized. In my view, those who continue to see differences do so because they need just that. They were born with a little more of the “grass is greener” drive instinct than I was. In other words, I didn’t choose to focus on the similarities between different ‘skin colors’, just as others don’t choose to focus on the differences. On that bell curve of existence, some lie on the ‘right’ some on the ‘left’ and many somewhere in the middle.
The bottom line here, in my view, is that what we see ‘out there’ in the world is a reflection of who and what we are ‘in here’. Biology determines how our senses react to external stimuli. We see the world in color, not because it is that color, but because our visual neurons ‘interpret’ the frequencies as color. Of course, there is no sound reason why we have any business perceiving biology’s elaborate hoodwink in the first place. The more hoodwinked we are, the more we play life by the rules, as they may be. Yet, we can to some extent see beyond the fog of war—the battle ground of life. I suppose even biology has its limits… the mystery is actually the last ‘bottom line’. Washing away the mystery, can you see life as flawless?
For the record:
| Similarities correlates to: | |||||
| truth | passive | broad | continuous | death | space & time. |
| Differences correlates to: | |||||
| illusion | active | narrow | transient | life | mass & energy. |
Similarities correlates to: truth, passive, broad, continuous, death, space & time.
Differences correlates to: illusion, active, narrow, transient, life, mass & energy.
(1) Scratch the skin pertains to skin color superficially, but ‘scratch the surface’ also pertains to culture, tradition, habit, ideal, religion, politics, … you name it. Indescribable is its true reality.
Suggested Revision:
Without going out the door, we can know all under heaven.
Without looking out the window, we can see Nature’s way.
He goes out farther, he realizes less.
Accordingly, the wise person goes nowhere, yet knows.
Sees nothing, yet understands.
Refrains from acting, yet accomplishes.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
What if the world we see ‘out there’ is simply a reflection of ourselves (who we are ‘in here’). That is my sense of it, and this chapter points that way. Only by knowing yourself, the ‘in here’, can you know the ‘out there’. Put another way, what we see ‘out there’ is merely a reflection of what is ‘in here’. Therefore, through knowing one’s self, one can know all under heaven without going out the door.
Going here and there and everywhere is often a way of distracting yourself, avoiding the uncomfortable unknown (fear and uncertainty) you inevitably face ‘in here’. How can something so straightforward and simple be so ‘invisible’? I can only assume that nature doesn’t want us to look ‘in here’ all that much. And even when we do, we tend to judge what we see ‘in here’ by the apparent reality we believe exists ‘out there’. The irony is overwhelming at times!
The further one goes, the less one knows may parallel my recent Why Do Idiot Savants Run Things? post. Looking farther ‘out there’ narrows one’s view. You see more of less, and less of more. If knowing is about having a sense of the Mystery upon mystery ‘big picture’, then a narrower view means knowing more about less. This is the classic, ‘not seeing the forest for the trees’. Why would one go farther and farther anyway? Going farther is a symptom; we go farther when we don’t know contentment (have enough of what we desire or value). Therefore, rewording this as, “the less one knows, the farther one goes” may be more accurate, from a symptom’s point of view anyway.
More can be accomplished by being patient and letting nature takes its course. Of course, this is very hard to do. A ‘just get it done’ instinct drives us to resolve uncertainty, settle issues and be done with it so we can go on to the next ‘greener pasture’. Haste makes waste is no empty saying. To forgo the ‘greener pastures’ and live ‘in here’ now requires a truer understanding of life.
A truer understanding of life naturally arises from self understanding. Without self understanding what can one really know, how can one interpret experience wisely? The more one tries to go somewhere and do something to gain self understanding, the less chance they will find it, directly anyway (yes, in the end, ‘all roads lead to Rome’). Self understanding is found within; one need go nowhere, do nothing.
Obviously, the next question is: What is self understanding really? I boil that down to self honesty and digging down into my sense of life priorities – what do I truly want out of life over the long term? A motto of mine(1) speaks to this: ‘Short term pleasure attracts long term pain. Short term pain attracts long term pleasure’. The more I know what I truly want of life, the more the later guides my moment.
(1) This motto goes back to my years in Japan; a time of serious self examination. I find it as true today as ever, and helps me not second guess life as much as I might otherwise perhaps.