Translation
Use honesty to govern the country,
Use surprise when using weapons,
Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven.
How do I know so? Because of this.
The wider spread the taboos, the poorer the people.
The sharper their tools, the more a country’s confusion grows.
The more clever they are, the more strange things appear.
The more laws multiply, the more conspicuous the robbers.
For this reason, the holy person says,
I do nothing and the people change themselves.
I love stillness and the people straighten themselves.
I am without responsibility and the people thrive themselves.
I am without desire and the people simplify themselves.
1) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) straight (upright; main; honest) rule (govern; manage; peace) country (state; of our country), 以正治国，(yĭ zhēng zhì guó.)
2) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) strange (rare; surprise; wonder) use (apply <frml> hence) weapons (private; army), 以奇用兵，(yĭ jī yòng bīng,)
3) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) nothing (without; not) matter (affair; thing; responsibility) take (get; seek; adopt) land under heaven. 以无事取天下。(yĭ wú shì qŭ tiān xià.)
4) I (we) who (why) know (realize; tell) his (its; their; they; that) correct (so; like that <formal conj> but; nevertheless) zāi (exclamatory or interrog. part.)? use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) this. 吾何以知其然哉？以此。(wú hé yĭ zhī qí rán zāi? yĭ cĭ.)
5) land under heaven much (more; too many; excessive) taboo (avoid as taboo; avoid as harmful) <conj.> and (yet, but) the people (civilian) full (overflowing; more) poor (deficient; garrulous; loquacious). 天下多忌讳而民弥贫。(tiān xià duō jì huì ér mín mí pín.)
6) the people (civilian) much (more; too many; excessive) sharp weapon (good tool) country (state; nation) grow (multiply; more> spurt; burst) dim (confused; muddled; lose consciousness; faint). 民多利器国家滋昏。(mín duō lì qì guó jiā zī hūn.)
7) human (man; people) much (more; excessive) ability (trick) clever (deceitful; artful) strange (rare; surprise) thing (matter; the outside world as distinct from oneself) drip (trickle) get up (remove; pull; appear). 人多伎巧奇物泫起。(rén duō jì qiăo jī wù xuàn qĭ.)
8) method (law; follow; model after) command (decree; make; cause) grow (multiply; more> spurt; burst) clear (evident; conspicuous) robbers (bandits) much (more; too many; excessive) have (exist). 法令滋彰盗贼多有。(fă lìng zī zhāng dào zéi duō yŏu.)
9) reason (cause; on purpose; hence) sage (holy; sacred) human (man; people) say (cloud). 故圣人云 (gù shèng rén yún)
10) I (we) nothing (without; not) do (act; act as; serve as; be; mean; support) <conj.> and (yet, but) the people (civilian) self (oneself; certainly) change (turn; transform; convert; influence). 我无为而民自化。(wŏ wú wéi ér mín zì huā.)
11) I (we) good (be easy_like; be fond of) still (quiet; calm) <conj.> and (yet, but) the people (civilian) self (oneself; certainly) straight (upright; main; honest). 我好静而民自正。(wŏ hăo jìng ér mín zì zhēng.)
12) I (we) nothing (without; not) matter (affair; thing; involvement) <conj.> and (yet, but) the people (civilian) self (oneself; certainly) rich (wealthy; abundant). 我无事而民自富。(wŏ wú shì ér mín zì fù.)
13) I (we) nothing (without; not) desire (wish; want; about to) <conj.> and (yet, but) the people (civilian) self (oneself; certainly) simple (plain). 我无欲而民自朴。(wŏ wú yù ér mín zì pò.)
Fourth Pass: Chapter of the Month
(pandemic era)
Zoom on YouTube Recordings:
https://youtu.be/WenGVfRYJfA 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
Use honesty to govern the country,
Use surprise when using weapons,
Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven.
How do I know so? Because of this.
I suppose the only approach here that seems obvious is Use surprise when using weapons. At least it is obvious to warriors. On the other hand, Use honesty to govern the country fall far outside the way life usually unfolds. Those who govern are fearfully compelled to hide the embarrassing sides of their activities. Seen at a personal level, fear induces us to lie not only to others but also to ourselves. Indeed, self-honesty is the final stage of maturity.
The notion to Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven falls even further outside the norm. It goes directly opposite to the cultural belief that one should be responsible. Of course, we feel it’s particularly imperative for others to be responsible. Our own lack of self-honesty often allows us to let ourselves off the hook. Certainly, the cultural myth of free will helps us pull this hypocritical self-deception off smoothly (see Free Will: Fact or Wishful Thinking?).
However, once one sees through the illusion of free will, all that is left for one to do is simply Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven. The only way forward is the natural path suggested in the last line of chapter 3 and followed by all other animals on this planet… Doing without doing, following without exception rules.
We each feel the powerful urge to be responsible in regards to that which we personally hold important. Moreover, we need others to feel likewise. This entire responsibility urge is driven by fear. Fear drives our need and our agenda to make reality conform to our imagined ideal. All the conflict we see in the world arises out of this ‘I want it my way’ approach to life. Honestly, this fear driven urge drives all life on the planet; although, only in human thinking does it become a serious handicap (see the disease reference in chapter 71). Simply put, the urge to act is the ‘puppet master’ behind the never-ending ebb and flow of creation. Note how the third ‘treasure’ in chapter 67 counterbalanced this urge
Somewhat ironically, the only way to “escape” this battle of life is to Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven. Naturally, complete escape is not possible for any living being. However, escaping many of the ways human cognition aggravates this battle is possible. Escape from our mind induced chaos hinges on how well we can see the world as it is rather than how we want it to be. This chapter’s concluding four lines point the way.
Use non responsibility when seeking all under heaven certainly sounds great on paper. However, it’s vital to know that this ideal is impossible to maintain. Biology sets all animals up to respond. Responding to the fear and need we viscerally feel is baked into life’s survival process. Even so, merely accepting the ideal of non responsibility offers some freedom from the tyranny of your expectations, and from that can blossom a deeper peace of mind.
The next four lines of this chapter reveal a few of the natural consequences of playing the “game of life”.
The wider spread the taboos, the poorer the people.
The sharper their tools, the more a country’s confusion grows.
The more clever they are, the more strange things appear.
The more laws multiply, the more conspicuous the robbers.
Intuitively grasping some, or all, of these views is extremely difficult impossible because we are indoctrinated from birth—by dint of natural instinct and cultural narrative—to spread taboos, sharpen tools, be clever, abide laws. To see life as it is requires resisting the cultural tide pushing everyone to see life as the cultural story imagines it. Moreover, it takes decades of living before life experience can deeply confirm this cause and effect relationship. Indeed, we only graduate ‘The school of life’ at our death, and not a moment before.
For this reason, the holy person says,
I do nothing and the people change themselves.
I love stillness and the people straighten themselves.
I am without responsibility and the people thrive themselves.
I am without desire and the people simplify themselves.
Some may view these lines as advising us to be passive and merely ‘stare at our navel’, as people sometime say. This view is actually a symptom of the fear (see Symptoms Point Of View) that people can feel when they imagine people being passive and doing nothing. Let’s face it, we innately want everyone to take responsibility rather than think about seeking all under heaven. The social contract stipulates that people ‘should’ be responsible. Doing otherwise is unfair and abnormal. As chapter 39 observes at the end,
Perhaps chapter 40 is even more to the point …
On the other hand, these last lines can sound like a call to ‘just accept’. ‘Just accept’ is a call to a kind of passive action akin to I do nothing (wú wéi). Here, free will is raising its idealistic head again. (see Free Will: Fact or Wishful Thinking?)
In fact, one can’t actually ‘just accept’ anything that one does not already intuitively know to be so. Only that deep knowing is capable of driving action. This parallels my observation that we can only truly understand what we already know intuitively (see We only understand what we already know). Of course, that is a heretical notion as it threatens the very foundations of cultural education and progress.
Importantly, in my experience, when I intuitively know, it becomes impossible for me to do anything other than conform to that deep knowing. Life is really quite simple and straightforward. It is our conflicting fears and expectations that make it feel so complex and bewildering at times. Chapter 23 may offer insight into how life truly plays out. Note the emphasis on following.
In biological terms, we are merely following the natural commands arising from our biology. What we think is so is more often than not a reflection of what we imagine to be or want to be, not what is. As chapter 71 reminds,
Chapter Archive https://youtu.be/mbztNWaOj6w
This is the complete video. It begins with blowing Zen followed by the meeting
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
Reflections:
This chapter’s English still works for me. The notion of non responsibility is one of the more radical in this chapter. We are taught from childhood onward to be Responsible. Of course, this traces right back to the notion of free will, which pushes the ideal that we can have control over our lives. We desperately want control over life… to master our fate. Certainly, at first glance, we seem to have a lot of control. Heck, at the push of a button we can do all sorts of powerful things, up to even launching a nuclear war.
Looking deeper however, it is simply a need (or a fear) to either do or not do, that drives our action or inaction. We just don’t discern the process that carefully. The ego, “I”, thinks it is in control. This is abundantly clear when there is something we imagine we ‘should’ do or not do, which is not supported by a true visceral need. We dwell on it, but never act. Thinking we have free will, we beat ourselves up for not being ‘strong enough’ to be responsible.
Judging our lives this way doesn’t stop at the edge of our skin either. We expect other people to have this power of free will, to be responsible even as we continue to fail to live up to our highest ideals of perfection and personal responsibility. This chapter reveals how nature actually works, which is often very different from how we wished it worked. Ironically, the only folks who can fully appreciate this chapter’s revelation are those who already know it… at least at some intuitive level (i.e., we only understand what we already know).
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
(1) Spelling Heven on line 3. How did the spell checker miss that? (2) Switching between adding a ‘the’ and leaving it more literal, i.e., Chinese doesn’t use ‘the’, but sometimes it feels so necessary to include in the translation. Son Luke said I should at least be consistent within a chapter, which seems to make sense, at yet…
Commentary:
I do nothing and the people change themselves. Someone wondered in the meeting how people could change themselves simply by one doing nothing. In a purely objective sense that won’t happen all that much. However, the old saying, “it takes two to fight” suggest the effect of simply ceasing to act. Much of life is a reaction to what we perceive. If you perceive me as disengaging, that will influence your behavior. All the same, I prefer to consider this in a more subjective sense…
When I am sufficiently still within, the whole world ‘out there’ changes accordingly. It is only when I need the world to be a certain way, that I start imagining how the world could change for the better. I first became aware of ‘how I am determines how the world appears’ by noticing what the external world looked and felt after I awoke each morning.
When I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I would notice a world of angry people out and about throughout the day. When I woke up with a more cheerful upbeat mood, I would coincidently come across a world of cheery upbeat people. Sure, some of that was due to my behavior, i.e., treat people nice, they treat you nice. However, I’m also talking about strangers I saw across the street, for example. The moral of this experience: how I was determined, to a large extent, how the rest of the world appears to me to be. So much of what we object to ‘out there’ originates ‘in here’.
The more clever they are, the more strange things appear account for the widespread confusion that now appears to exist on the planet. It is not that anyone in particular is more clever now than in previous eras, it is just that exponential increases in technology create an effect that mimics increased cleverness. We live in fascinating times.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
Not being meddlesome is another way to consider the notion of using non responsibility. Both meddling and taking responsibility come from a desire on the part of the “responsible” meddling person to control the situation in order to have an outcome that agrees with their ideal objective. The desire to have things go your way is the fly in the ointment of life.
But what about the desire for “good”? The problem with good and bad is that one person’s “good” (pleasure) is another’s “bad” (poison). Being without desire, means being without responsibility for either good or bad. That may feel shocking at first, but consider Nature for a moment. Looking at the natural world, I see no good or bad – impartiality rules the day. Good and bad are obviously projections of what personally brings us pleasure and pain. Simply said, if it’s pleasurable and I like it, it’s good. If it’s painful and I dislike it, it’s bad. If animals could talk, they’d formulate a similar set of words for their emotional experience of pleasure and pain.
Of what are taboos, sharp tools, and laws symptomatic? Our instinctive, boundless need for comfort and security. Taboos are restrictions that evolve in cultures to preserve the security of the status quo. This stability is useful to an extent, but eventually serves to undermine the people’s ability to adapt to the changing conditions nature throws their way. The poorer the people is the end result. Sharp tools enable people to circumvent nature in order to maximize comfort and security. Tools allow us to get life done quicker; confusion grows as we get ahead of ourselves in our rush to “progress”.
Finally, laws multiply as group cohesion and mutual trust wanes. Most members of prehistoric, hunter gatherer groups lived their entire lives together from birth to death. That connection fostered intuitive trust and mutual obligation. As that sense of intimate connection wanes, it becomes easier for people to rob, cheat and lie. As we transitioned from hunter-gatherer tribal existence to civilization, everyone beyond one’s family became a stranger to some degree. Indeed, today even member of nuclear families have become strangers somewhat as they share less and less of the activities that previous generations did (work, music, food, etc.). (See Ethics, Do They Work Any More?) It is a “lonely brave new world” in ways we’ve yet to fully realize.
The world I experience is largely a reflection of how I feel. Thus, when I hold firmly to stillness, the whole world feels more tranquil than otherwise. “I love stillness”, is the heart and sole of what we call meditation and prayer. It is one sure way for people to straighten themselves. Stillness is more than meditation and prayer though: a sigh, a cigarette break, a tea break, a nap,… many are the ways of stillness.
On the other hand, rushing around taking responsibility and getting things done is symptomatic of what we feel deficient in life (i.e., Nature abhors a vacuum). The imperfection we see in the world is simply a reflection of what we feel missing, and so hunger for. Saying I do nothing and the people transform themselves can be very misleading if it comes across as implying that doing nothing results in their objective transformation. Although, that is the first impression many have.
It may be more accurate to see both as happening in concert together; one doesn’t cause the other. Rather, when I feel a need to change something, I will act. When I feel contentment with how things are, I do nothing (much). When I feel contentment, everything is perfect; I am free from desire and the people of themselves become simple like the uncarved block. (I suppose a more accurate way to put this would be: I am free from desire and thus my perception is transformed and I see the people simple like the uncarved block. (Alas, what we gain in accuracy, we lose in the poetry).