Translation
True speech isn’t beautiful,
Beautiful speech isn’t true.
Expertise doesn’t debate,
Debate isn’t expertise.
Knowing isn’t wealth,
Wealth doesn’t know.
The holy person doesn’t accumulate.
Already, considers people’s personal healing his own.
Already, so as to support people’s personal healing more.
Nature’s way benefits, and yet doesn’t harm.
The holy person’s way acts, and yet doesn’t contend.
1) true (trust; word) speech (word) no (not) beautiful (pretty; good). 信言不美。(xìn yán bù mĕi.)
2) beautiful (pretty; good) speech (word) no (not) true (trust; word). 美言不信。(mĕi yán bù xìn.)
3) good (kind; be expert in; be adept in) (者) no (not) argue (dispute; debate). 善者不辩。(shàn zhĕ bù biàn.)
4) argue (dispute; debate) (者) no (not) good (kind; be expert in; be adept in). 辩者不善。(biàn zhĕ bù shàn.)
5) know (realize; be aware of) (者) no (not) rich (abundant; plentiful; win; gain). 知者不博。(zhī zhĕ bù bó.)
6) rich (abundant; plentiful; win; gain) (者) no (not) know (realize; be aware of). 博者不知。(bó zhĕ bù zhī.)
7) sage (holy; sacred) human (man; people) (者) no (not) amass (store up; accumulate). 圣人不积。(shèng rén bù jī.)
8) already (<conj.> since; both… and…) think (consider) human (man; people) oneself (personal) heal (recover; become; well; better) have (exist). 既以为人己愈有。(jì yĭ wéi rén jĭ yù yŏu.)
9) already (<conj.> since; both… and…) use (<v> take <p> according to; because of <adj> so as to <conj> and) <conj.> give (get along with; support <conj.> and; together with) human (man; people) oneself (personal) heal (recover; become; well; better) more (excessive). 既以与人己愈多。(jì yĭ yú rén jĭ yù duō.)
10) sky (heaven; weather; nature) of way sharp (benefit, advantage, profit) <conj.> and (yet, but) no (not) evil (harm; destructive). 天之道利而不害。(tiān zhī dào lì ér bù hài.)
11) sage (holy; sacred) human (man; people) of way do (act; serve as; be, mean; support) <conj.> and (yet, but) no (not) contend (argue). 圣人之道为而不争。(shèng rén zhī dào wéi ér bù zhēng.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
Corrections?
I decided to change the periods to commas in lines 2, 4, & 6 as the preceding line for each is closely related. I had actually overlooked a few of the periods so this corrects two issues.
Next, there are a few terms that you might wish to change (i.e., ‘correct’), even though they are terms with which I am perfectly content… so far. Overall, this exemplifies the value of holding more loosely to word meaning in order to see ‘the big picture’ better. Our steadfast cleaving to word meaning is one way we bolster our illusion of self. As Buddha pointed out, our cleaving to things creates and maintains that ego illusion. Cleaving to particular word meaning is one of those “things”. This explains why chapter 71’s Realizing I don’t’ know is better, delivers such a challenge; accepting I don’t know diminishes the illusion of self and so threatens the ego. This is a little like ego suicide.
Line 3 & 4: Expertise doesn’t debate, Debate isn’t expertise. Does expertise actually not debate? The character here is 善 (shàn) — good; satisfactory; make a success of; perfect; kind; friendly; be good at; be expert in; be adept in; properly. “Kind” and “friendly” are the furthest away in meaning from expertise I suppose. Saying, Kindness doesn’t debate, certainly isn’t wrong, but that meaning doesn’t plunge deep enough, for me personally.
Line 5 & 6: Knowing isn’t wealth, Wealth doesn’t know. Why doesn’t wealth know? The character for wealth here is 博 (bó) — rich; abundant; plentiful; win; gain. All of these are rare in nature, at least in realms of the living. Abundant, rich, plentiful circumstances are only possible if whatever is abundant is skimmed off the common ground and amassed. Gains for a few usually, if not always, require losses for many. Naturally, such winning narrows focus. If knowing has anything to do with seeing the ‘big picture’, then catching glimpses of it are less likely as winnings accumulate. Similarly, Knowing isn’t wealth. Wealth is narrow, not the ‘big picture’, not the knowing. (Of course, ‘big picture’ knowing contains within it wealth, just as ‘big picture’ perfection and balance contain within them imperfection and imbalance.)
Line 7 & 11: The holy person… The character here is 圣 (shèng) — sage; saint; holy; sacred; emperor. Sage conveys particular elitist meanings for me, so I chose holy. On Sunday, someone felt that holy conveys an elitist meaning, where as sage doesn’t. This goes to show what a huge impact our personal take on word meaning has upon understanding… or misunderstanding. Therefore, it is important to take word meaning with a grain of salt. Always be alive to the biases your life’s background brings to words if you want to plumb the depths of the Tao Te Ching. This is why considering the various synonym-like meaning for the original Chinese character help illuminate.
Line 8 & 9: Already, considers people’s personal healing his own. Already, so as to support people’s personal healing more. The character here is 愈 (yù) — heal; recover; become; well; better. I’m almost tempted to change healing to well being… maybe next time around. I hope that you see the importance of avoiding hard and fast definitions. Words are like clouds in the sky — more show than substance. Imparting rock-solid meaning to words and names only ends up hoodwinking you, the eye of the beholder.
Reflections:
True speech isn’t beautiful. Beautiful speech isn’t true. Naturally, this immediately evokes chapter two: All under heaven realizing beauty as beauty, wickedness already. All realizing goodness as goodness, no goodness already. Attempting to beautify anything, speech or things, is by its very nature biased. These attempts arise from a focused need to transform what is naturally so into what one imagines being better.
As chapter 25 puts it: And the way follows that which is natural and free from affectation. The Word for Word here is: road (way, principle; speak; think) method (follow; model after) natural (free from affectation). 道法自然。(dào fă zì rán.)
Here it helps to break down the meaning of the duel character zì rán (自然).
Zì (自) = self; one’s own; certainly; of course.
Rán (然) = right; correct; so; like that
Of course, there is no harm in attempting to make things better. It is completely natural, but also completely biased. Truth if nothing else must be impartial and come as close to the ‘big picture’ as possible. The last half of chapter 16 speaks to this nicely:
Chapter 81 also harkens back to humanity’s old way, before the Agricultural Revolution brought about civilization. Considering the differences can shed light on problems we face under civilization. Not that we’re ever going to return to the old way, but having a better grasp of all this may help manage our new way better. One of the most disconcerting things in life is not knowing why ‘bad things happen’, so to speak.
Here are some ways I see this chapter relative to the old way (1)
First, Expertise doesn’t debate. Debate isn’t expertise. Expertise is a very prominent feature of civilization’s hierarchical social system. The experts are at the top of the pyramid, the ignorant at the bottom. Although, Taoist expertise may be a bit different, as it embodies what is called profound sameness. Different and yet profoundly the same? No wonder Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know. Debate from this angle becomes impossible.
Next, Knowing isn’t wealth. Wealth doesn’t know and The holy person doesn’t accumulate. There was no wealth in hunter-gatherer times. There were times of plenty followed by times of scarcity. No one accumulated things, either materially or intellectually. (Note: Hunter-gatherers were illiterate and literacy makes intellectual accumulation much less possible.)
Then, Already, considers people’s personal healing his own. Already, so as to support people’s personal healing more. The hunter-gatherers were interdependent by survival necessity. Another’s well being greatly influenced one’s own well being. That depth of connection is only experience now by people whose life and death survival are intertwined — soldiers in combat and disaster situations in general come to mind (2).
Finally, The holy person’s way acts, and yet doesn’t contend. The hunter-gatherers acted very much in tune with nature. They had to cooperate with nature, unlike modern people who have the where-with-all to contend with Mother Nature and bend her to their desires and expectations.
(1) See my series of posts Who are you? for background. Also, see The !Kung of Nyae Nyae, The Harmless People and The old way: a story of the first people for more specific research on the hunter-gatherer way of life.
(2) The short NPR clip, Sebastian Junger Examines Veteran Life After Leaving ‘Tribe’, offers deeper insight into the disconnection problems we face — a problems that was unheard of in the hunter-gatherer old way. Without exaggeration, I see ALL the social problems we face as being the unintended consequence of civilization. I do mean All, but that doesn’t mean to say hunter-gatherers didn’t experience their own interpersonal discord at times, just as all other animals in nature experience. The problems were interpersonal not societal as is the case now.
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
Nothing much this time; just replacing not with doesn’t to help the flow.
Commentary:
True speech isn’t beautiful can be viewed as saying what ever strikes you as not beautiful in speech, or anything for that matter, is telling you something hidden about yourself. D.C. Lau’s translation of chapter 2 puts this in another context: The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly, or as in the more literal: All under heaven realize beauty as beauty, There is wickedness already. The “wickedness” in the literal doesn’t express it as tight and clear as the antonym “ugly” of D.C. Lau’s does.
Beautiful speech isn’t true because the emotions involved in regarding something beautiful (e.g., “how beautiful!”) skew perception. The reason something feels beautiful is that it conveys what you want to hear. The trapping aspect of that attraction is the bait of the hoodwink. Of course, this is a healthy reaction throughout nature; in the wild, it would for us as well (at least more than in civilized circumstances).
Thought + emotion allow our species to go overboard and we’ve ended up with having ‘splintered’ sense of reality—a spintered sense of the beautiful here, offset by a spintered sense of the ugly there. Thought divides the whole into contrasting piece. We live out our days bouncing between the beautiful and the ugly without any chance of finding the peaceful reconciliation and unity for which we deeply long. In an odd kind of way, we want to have it both ways: we want to hang on to the beautiful, avoid the ugliness, and find peace and unity.
The truth isn’t beautiful or ugly. However, we are ‘attracted to’ regarding the beautiful as closer to the truth than the ugly. That is why we need to say, Beautiful speech isn’t true. It is not that ugly speech is true; it is more that ugly speech challenges our perception of what is true. If you accept the challenge and seek to see the beauty behind / within the ugly, you will come closer to impartiality. Chapter 16 puts it well,
‘Expertise doesn’t debate, Debate isn’t expertise’ helps point out how debate is less about what one knows, and more about what one feels. Debate is emotion—even in the calmest modes of debate. Chapter 56 puts this well,
‘Knowing isn’t wealth, Wealth doesn’t know’ offers insight on the ‘knowledge is power’ maxim. It helps put some daylight between the words knowing and ‘knowledge’. Knowing to me feels like peering into a bottomless well. Seeing the utter bottomless-ness of ‘it’ is the knowing. Knowledge, on the other hand, it that small piece of the pie that has been carved out and identified, named, categorized. Chapter 10 puts this well,
‘The holy person doesn’t accumulate’ begs the question, why does a person accumulate in the first place? Buddha’s 2nd Noble Truth addresses that most succinctly: The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. This illusion building process seems so obvious to me now, and yet, it took me some decades to appreciate fully how deeply it went. I suppose it took me as long as it did because my illusion of self overshadowed its very source. It feels odd, but that is probably a natural result of letting go of what one knows in order to know.
Accumulation then, is really a symptom of the struggle “to be”. Therefore, I don’t think there is any question, “to be or not to be”. “To be” is survival. As thinking, labeling and naming animals, we have an ability to associate external object with our instinctive sense of self (a sense common to all things). We are our stuff, our stuff is us. Not only material stuff, but the stuff of thought, dreams, ideals and ‘learning’. We hang on to all of it, because hanging on allows us to create and maintain an expanded sense of self.
‘The holy person doesn’t accumulate’ because he doesn’t feel a need to “to be” more than he is. That frees up emotion and mind to consider and support other people and things all the more. That frees up emotion to sit loose to life. Most importantly, I don’t see this as something that we can choose. The driving force “to be” is fear of death; something which we have no choice over. This is the ‘engine’ that drives life. As chapter 40 puts it,
We are all traveling the way; we are all on a thousand mile journey [that] begins below our feet.
Suggested Revision:
True speech isn’t beautiful.
Beautiful speech isn’t true.
Expertise doesn’t debate.
Debate isn’t expertise.
Knowing isn’t wealth
Wealth doesn’t know.
The holy person doesn’t accumulate.
Already, considers people’s personal healing his own.
Already, so as to support people’s personal healing more.
Nature’s way benefits, and yet doesn’t harm.
The holy person’s way acts, and yet doesn’t contend.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
I have to wonder what kind of words could qualify as “truthful words”? True speech would be that which presents the whole picture, both sides of the coin, the pros and cons. Words that only voice what we want to hear, and avoid voicing what we fear or dislike would be less true.
Hearing words we want to hear easily persuades us. Skilled politicians and salesmen know and use this hoodwink deftly. This also is what makes truth so illusive. Not that it is rare or hidden; truth is omnipresent. It just isn’t what we want to perceive – it’s not beautiful enough. True truth lacks contrast. Perhaps that is an odd thing to say; let’s take a closer look: Chapter 2 pries into this when it says, The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.
Beautiful and good are only cognitively perceptible in contrast to an awareness of ugliness and bad. Such perceptions are simply reflections of what we like and dislike; of what we want and don’t want; of what we are attracted towards and from which repelled. It is simple neurology, a biological hoodwink—a bio-hoodwink, as I like to call it. The same applies to truth vs. false doesn’t it? True truth must transcend the contrast of opposites. (Herein lies the benefit of the teaching that uses no words.)
So now, ask yourself: is there good or bad in nature? Does nature play favorites; does nature love some things more than other things? In nature’s book, are some things more beautiful than other things? In my view, the answer is a resounding no. Thus, if speech is to reflect that which is naturally so, it can’t be both beautiful and true. I hate to resort to the word transcendent, but here I must… One requirement of true truth, in the transcendent sense of the word, is impartiality. How can any perception that pulls you in (beauty) or push you away (ugly) be transcendently true?
“The sage does not hoard”
In thinking over “The sage does not hoard”, I reflect back upon times I’ve hoarded. Really though, accumulate is a better description; it is less pejorative. Also correlated to accumulate is holding on, clinging, seeking, grasping. While never really hoarding stuff, I sure sought after and clung to what I felt precious at the time. I don’t do this much any more. Also, I now recognize the obvious—seeking after or clinging to things (or ideas) are simply symptoms of that for which I feel or felt deficient. What has changed? I simply feel an approaching enough now. Indeed, why would anyone seek that for which he or she felt enough? They would not. So, what did I feel lacking?
In general, I lacked a deep enough sense of life-meaning. Looking back, I can see how powerfully that drove what I did. I clung to what promised me life-meaning at the time. For example, while living in Singapore, I had an English girlfriend who worked at the Changi Air Base. We’d ride the bus from Singapore to the base on Sunday night. I clung to the last moments we’d share before taking the bus back alone to Singapore. I really was dependent on that relationship for life-meaning, and so I clung to it. Over time, I realized the poverty of this approach… poverty because I felt incomplete. That is why we say, “He who knows contentment is rich“, and similarly, wealth doesn’t know contentment. In fact, wealth can be very problematic as Jesus alluded to when he said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”.
We put many of our happiness eggs in the money basket despite it being very easy to understand that money does not buy happiness. Not only does money not buy happiness, it easily detracts from happiness. On the other hand, money does buy us comfort and security! Then the bio-hoodwink lures us in by equating happiness with more comfort and security. Naturally, this linkage would be largely true in wilderness circumstances. The human ability to circumvent natural boundaries allows technological innovations to increase comfort and security exponentially. Evolution didn’t ‘plan’ on that. Without natural limits, increasing comfort and security leads to physiological and psychological imbalance, and overall happiness actually decreases. We become neurotic and fall into a vicious cycle: decreasing contentment drives us to pursue comfort and security, which creates more imbalances, which makes us even less happy. The bio-hoodwink works in mysterious ways. Well, perhaps not so mysterious once you are willing to see life straightforwardly. In my view, an ongoing awareness of these dynamics can actually help moderate them… if you so desire, and that, as we know, is the hitch!
When is enough, enough?
One of the main errors we make in society is thinking we can change life from the outside in. Meaning for example, we think that we can chose to be less selfish—more giving. A true sense of giving is the natural result of feeling enough. Without that root, any ostensible giving correlates more to rites, rectitude and benevolence. Yes, this can help glue the fabric of society, but unintended consequences always ensue. It is messy, but then that’s life. I suppose this all ties in with the ‘wandering mind is unhappy mind‘. Accumulating, or simply holding on, focuses the mind (emotions actually) and supplies us with a sense of self-meaning. Of course, Buddha pointed that out in his second truth, “the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”.
Healing the Imbalance
Nature’s way benefits, and yet not harms. The holy person’s way acts, and yet not contends. Normally, benefit accrued for one comes at a loss for another. Likewise, life’s actions normally involve contending with opposing forces. To have stopped in time, before harm or contending occurs is a very fine line. Nature has no difficulty maintaining the impartiality this requires. Unlike non-thinking animals, we haul around a personal agenda (too many desires) and often end up crossing that balance line. We seek healing from the difficulties caused by this imbalance. When you begin to feel that this is our common cause, considers people’s personal healing his own begins to happen naturally. This is why the way has none of the prescribed morality found in all other religions. Morality is an ideal easily touted, impossible to practice; the highest virtue is a reality hard to describe, easy to practice—unavoidable even—once you see that of which you would rather otherwise remain ignorant.
Having bestowed all he has on others, he has yet more; Having given all he has to others, he is richer still clearly deviates somewhat from the original, in my view, in order to promote a pseudo virtuous moral ideal. Again, much of civilization relies on such ideals to hold together large populations. The fear is that otherwise society would break apart into a barbaric every-man-for-himself chaos. It just may be that we are far more barbaric (nukes, pollution, famine and war) in our ostentatious morality than if we lived more in tune with our selves as we truly are rather than as we wish we were—honesty is the best policy.