Heaven lasts long, and Earth abides.
What is the secret of their durability?
Is it not because they do not live for themselves
That they can live so long?
Therefore, the Sage wants to remain behind,
But finds himself at the head of others;
Reckons himself out,
But finds himself safe and secure.
Is it not because he is selfless
That is Self is realized?
Heaven and earth, of course, are the only things that we imagine aren’t individuated: the only things that aren’t pursuing their own individual welfare and survival. Even the animals, so often used as models of innocence and spontaneity, are classed alongside human beings in this respect.
This chapter introduces a common Taoist theme: the notion that our constant search for safety and survival is the very neurotic mindset that invites calamity. As soon as we allow the Tao to care for us, we shall remove the stresses and strains that exhaust our organisms, and thus fulfil our intended allocation of years.
As we saw in Chapter 3, the moment we start to imagine that certain things are necessary for our well-being we immediately find ourselves in the company of those seeking out the very same things. Our eager desperation announces loud and clear the importance of the desired object, which only encourages our competitors. If you are known to keep diamonds and jewels in your bedroom –and the expensive car in the driveway is a reasonable indication of the jewels – people will break in to your house to steal them. And these people are insane, will stop at nothing; you may well lose your life if you try to defend them.
This is an extreme and somewhat facetious example. The reality is less dramatic…a slower more insidious process. The truth is, so many of us die of tiredness. It is such hard work having to maintain it all, make all the effort. We have no other source of energy except our own desires, and there are so many things to desire in this life that most of are out of gas at 70, maybe run on fumes for a few years more.
Actually we all have strength enough; but from a pretty early age – I would say by ten years of age it is well established – we are beginning to devote our energies to the pursuit of things that are not necessary to our physical well-being. We desire those objects that we imagine will make our reality more enjoyable. Or we seek out things that other people will envy in order to gain their love and respect.
It is hard to imagine that sage who has found all that pleasure, love and respect on the inside. That saint who is able to live each moment as if it were a brand new smart phone waiting to be set up and played with. But such people do exist, not in large numbers, but have appeared sufficiently regularly in all times and civilisations. To those who have found the Tao, their life does not exhaust nor tire them out. They are not seeking anything, not competing with anyone for anything, not vulnerable to the deleterious effects that success and failure have on our organism. The scientists tell us that stress and anxiety produce in our bodies heart disease and corrosively toxic hormones; tell us also that happiness and religious faith lengthen our years, and make those around us more contented. These are only some of the material benefits that come with the spiritual life.
Therefore, the Sage wants to remain behind,
But finds himself at the head of others;
If we imagine that the spiritual seeker is a kind of pioneer, cutting a road for the rest of us to one day follow, then the Sage always was at the head of others. But I don’t think the verse means this…
The sage has no desire to play the game that so absorbs his fellows. He has no psychological need for fame and love; power over others would give him no greater pleasure than he already has. This why he is always more than happy to take a back seat in the affairs of the world. The urgency, for him, has gone; and he sees that there are others who need it far more than he. The game of life is not even worth rejecting. He will continue to play his part because, after all, even this does not disturb his peace and tranquillity within.
What a strange one he is! Nothing seems to bother him; whatever happens is all right with him.
The others, though, all have their direction to go – each one their own, sometimes they find colleagues to tread the same path, so often they meet adversaries whose direction is in conflict with their own. Each has their ideas, and leaders will rise to prominence, but whatever vision we hear will be contradicted by someone or other in the marketplace.
The people, though they don’t always realise it, are crying out for someone, anyone, who is not always taking a self-.centred perspective and actually sees things as they are. A person, who through the hubbub of conflicting desires, can discern aims and goals common to each of us and lead us in that direction.
The sage does not seek to be at the head of others, but his wisdom seems to place him there whether he likes it or not.
Reckons himself out,
But finds himself safe and secure.
The sage has achieved a distance from his own body. He, himself, is the consciousness that sustains all the universe. His body is just another of the beings that Nature nourishes and needs no more particular attention from him than the pine in his back garden. This verse is very reminiscent of Jesus’ words in the sixth chapter of Matthew: ‘and why are you worried about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. And they don’t toil, neither do they spin.’
Naïve interpreters will take this to mean that the Sage no longer needs to feed himself! Of course this isn’t the truth: the verse is a comment on the Sage’s trust in the order of things. He does not need to struggle and strain for extraneous desires; he therefore knows that all the needs will be granted to him as and when he needs them. Of course such a lifestyle is only available to those who have agreed to a hugely simplified lifestyle. But as every spiritual seeker will eventually discover, simplifying ourselves of worldly possessions is no sacrifice at all. We are recompensed by the perpetual joy of the divine life, and the assurance that our body will be taken care of as the universal intelligence sees fit.
Is it not because he is selfless
That is Self is realized?
The capitalisation of the word ‘self’ gives all the clues here. It is only when we achieve the distance from the individual self that exists in time and space that we will realise our true Self. The aim of this book the Tao Te Ching is to show people that such a true self exists, that there are people who have realised it, and that it is a potential in all of us to do the same.
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