The highest form of goodness is like water.
Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them.
It stays in places loathed by all men.
Therefore, it comes near the Tao.
In choosing your dwelling, know how to keep to the ground.
In cultivating your mind, know how to dive in the hidden deeps.
In dealing with others, know how to be gentle and kind.
In speaking, know how to keep your words.
In governing, know how to maintain order.
In transacting business, know how to be efficient.
In making a move, know how to choose the right moment.
If you do not strive with others,
You will be free from blame.
Again we are taught that best conduct requires us to be passive and yielding, like water. If we imagine a rushing stream, the water appears to have purpose. Day and night the flow continues, without interruption. So the water is not entirely motionless, it is always susceptible to movement in some direction or other. But at the same time water is the most pliable of substances; it will flow wherever it is directed, and it does not have any inner rigidity with which to resist applied pressure.
What is the moral in this? By being so docile, water is indestructible. Nothing can harm it. Even if the blazing, desiccating sun achieves a temporary victory, the water vapour will regroup in the atmosphere then fall by and by as refreshing rain.
But we humans will not be so flexible ourselves. We consider it ignoble to yield; shall not countenance the idea that we must be the ones to adapt and transform. We have ideas about who we are, and how things should be; and then vainly oppose and resist unconquerable forces for the sake of a spurious integrity.
It is because we misunderstand our true identity that we behave so irrationally. We imagine ourselves to be fixed, both physically in the form of bodies, and psychically in the form of our ego. If we let our bodies and egos change then we shall no longer recognise ourselves…and that to us is as death itself.
And so we ignorantly seek to defend what does not even exist, and die slowly of stultification in the process. It is through openness to change that refreshing currents of life find their way into our lives, bringing joy and energy as they come. But how many times have we met people who resist this process? They settle on some idea of who they are, quite often well before the age of thirty, and then desperately cling to this notion for the rest of their lives. But nature itself will not nourish outdated patters; and so it must be done virtually, in the person’s imagination. Divorced from any sense of reality they become lonely and isolated, dying eventually for the sake of that which they were afraid to let die.
It stays in places loathed by all men.
Therefore, it comes near the Tao.
Water is passive to all forces, and the absence of all else it shall be passive to gravity itself. Water appears to seek out the lowest position to occupy; seen another way it ends up there because it does not have the will to avoid it.
But the text suggests here when a person behaves like water, and is content to seek the lowest places it will come near to the Tao. Why would the Tao reveal itself to the humiliated?
The Tao is obscure to human consciousness when the individual is directed towards particular aims, desires, outcomes. Here the person, is being acted upon by the Tao, as all things are, but they are so blinded by their particular purpose in mind that they are unable to transcend their own situation and see the Tao itself.
When a person is stripped of all their desires and, like water, are not impelled towards anything from within, their consciousness is not filled with all the ideas, hopes, fantasies that fill the desirous person’s mind. But consciousness must be about something – the satisfied person does not drift into a vacant state of oblivion. We find instead that we become intensely aware, not of desirable states in the future, but on what is happening right here and now. Few people realise this fact, but the present moment can be explored, not with our intellectual faculties which process things in time and space, but with alternate faculties which might best be compared to feelings. These feelings soon increase in depth, meaning and beauty and it is this state that we find ourselves coming ‘near to the Tao’.
In choosing your dwelling, know how to keep to the ground.
This advice is both actual and figurative. If you build your house up on stilts then it becomes subject to the insidious impact of gravity which shall perpetually ‘strive’ to bring it back to the ground. Likewise, there is a downward drag on all endeavours that seek to elevate the doer above his fellows. It makes them feel bad to see you up there; is the feeling of superiority you get really worth all the anxiety and loneliness?
In cultivating your mind, know how to dive in the hidden deeps.
The surface of the lake is subject to the agitation of wind, waves, boats and bathers. In the depths the water is calm and motionless. Worldly desires are often likened to waves of perturbation, whereas wisdom of the Tao is likened to the deeps.
In dealing with others, know how to be gentle and kind.
Because this way you will get their cooperation! This is typically Taoist; gentleness and kindness happens to be the most practical and skilful way to deal with people. There is no abstract interest in goodness for the sake of goodness – simply the recognition of intelligent and unintelligent behaviour.
In speaking, know how to keep your words.
This is more than about speaking the truth, it is about honouring the words you have spoken. Of course, being dependable is always valued by other people, and being trustworthy will certainly help your prospects in life, but there is a deeper, more important lesson to be learnt here. We should get into the habit of viewing our words dispassionately, as utterances not even owned by us, but as naturally occurring events in the flow of life. And just as night follows day, our later behaviours should proceed logically from our verbal promises. If we devalue our promises as being ‘only words’ we might be tempted to view them as non-binding, and consider alternative outcomes than those the words suggest. It is certain that such intrusions of our own will shall certainly lead to outcomes at variance with the ideal way.
In governing, know how to maintain order.
Similar advice is presented here. The order we see in society is no different from the order we see in any of nature’s creations: the ant colony, the coral reef, the pine cone. Our mistake is in thinking that order must be first intellectually conceived and then imposed on the intransigent masses. We miss the fact that it is precisely the imposition that makes the people intransigent. Just as our words naturally indicate later outcomes, so too do the natural and authentic habits of the people produce orderly civilisations.
In transacting business, know how to be efficient.
The Tao Te Ching often reminds us that the sage is not attached to the fruits of their labour: ‘they do their work, but set no store by it.’ They do not waste their time on those aspects of the job they enjoy, and then neglect what is tedious or unpleasant. They are not fixated on maximising profit, and they are under no illusions that their work is vitally important and needs to be actively sold to the people. Whatever the sage is called to do in that moment he will do; when the job is completed, he desists. This is the perfect recipe for efficiency, and success.
In making a move, know how to choose the right moment.
Right timing is everything, we all know that. We commit blunders when we allow ourselves to be preoccupied with certain outcomes. We become anxious and our thoughts race: ‘maybe I’ll miss my chance’ or, ‘maybe this will prevent what I fear’. And because we believe unequivocally in the need to actively will and shape events, we try to force nature through our own device. The sage has no such worries: there isn’t anything in particular he’s expecting. This is why he is truly free to act spontaneously to the authentic needs of the situation.
If you do not strive with others,
You will be free from blame.
Firstly, because we won’t put a foot wrong; secondly, because we are never in a situation where we are contending with others. In the other Taoist classic The Book of Chuang-tzu we are reminded how we never get angry when we collide with a boat that has no driver. The sage is like a force of nature: there is nothing there to blame.
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