Drop wisdom, abandon cleverness,
And the people will be benefited a hundredfold.
Drop humanity, abandon justice,
And the people will return to their natural affections.
Drop shrewdness, abandon sharpness,
And robbers and thieves will cease to be.
These three are the criss-cross of the Tao,
And are not sufficient in themselves.
Therefore they should be subordinated
To a Higher principle:
See the Simple and Embrace the Primal,
Diminish the Self and curb the desires!
The first three couplets are very typical of the Tao Te Ching’s ethical teaching, and
have been discussed extensively in the previous eighteen chapters. The fundamental moral is: thinking splits
reality up into pairs of opposites. We
think we can pursue only the most desirable half, and yet as a pair they are
inseparable. The perfect Tao is distorted
by our attempt to chase our erroneous preferences. The sage is the man who cherishes no desires,
he welcomes all, and therefore lives a life of perfect ease.
In this chapter, however, we are reminded that such
practical wisdom is not enough.
These three are the criss-cross of the Tao,
And are not sufficient in themselves.
A mere description of the sage’s way is not enough, and we
must not assume that the way of the Tao can be reduced to patterns of behaviour. When we do this there is always the danger of
empty observance.
See the Simple and Embrace the Primal,
We must go further and feel
the Tao if we are to know it for ourselves.
We are getting the reminder that the spiritual life is ultimately a
personal endeavour. And only when the Tao
is felt and known as a living reality
within is will we be able to implement the ethical recommendations that
feature throughout the text.
We are being urged to live the religious life to its
fullest; to supplement our concern for other people and society with the direct
mystical communion with the Tao itself. ‘Seeing
the Simple and Embracing the Primal’ is how the Taoist describes the sovereign method
of this and all religions: some call it prayer, others meditation.
It is the act of pure, naked concentration on reality
itself, entirely stripped of the mental speculation that brings time and space
in its wake. We see the world in its absolute simplicity, its perfect and irrefutable
isness. And as this vision becomes
steady we embrace reality with our feelings.
Diminish the Self and curb the desires!
The world of time and space disappear through the act of
concentration on present reality. When
time and space disappear so too does the consciousness of all the separate
things that exist in time and space, which indeed need time and space to be
considered separate.
Of all the separate things, the most significant one to lose
consciousness of is ourselves: our own individual egos. When we lose consciousness of our separate
ego we lose consciousness of all the things the ego desires for its survival,
well-being and happiness. Whoever we are
in this state of consciousness, we are free of any sense of need.
This is spiritual liberation. It is what ensues when we have learnt to
concentrate on reality and see things as
they actually are and not as we think they are.
Only when we have gained this liberation we will be in a
position to show true moral judgement and demonstrate truly ethical behaviour.
This is why the practice of meditation is the Higher
Principle that comes before ethics.
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