Good walking leaves no track behind it;
Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at;
Good calculation makes no use of the counting-slips;
Good shutting makes no use of bolt and bar,
And yet nobody can undo it;
Good tying makes no use of rope and knot,
And yet nobody can untie it.
Hence, the sage is always good at saving men,
And therefore nobody is abandoned;
Always good at saving things,
And therefore nothing is wasted.
This is called ‘following the guidance of the Inner Light.’
Hence, good men are teachers of bad men,
While bad men are the charge of good men.
Not to revere one’s teacher,
Not to cherish one’s charge,
Is to be on the wrong road, however intelligent one may be.
This is an essential tenet of the Tao.
When we leave a track behind us we tempt the mass of people,
who are always on the look-out for convention, to follow in our footsteps. But the way we chose, at the time we chose it,
may not be the best way for them.
Therefore it is always best not to leave a trace behind you. The best walking follows a trail that is not
obvious to the follower; that way they are forced to find their own best way.
Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at;
The best speech is so natural, so apposite to the unique
time and place that it features perfectly in the flow of events. It is so perfect that people don’t even
consciously notice it.
Poor speech is based on abstract theories and principles and
is spoken regardless of the actual situation.
It therefore sticks out like a sore thumb, the people notice it, and
then disagree, or agree as the case may be.
Very bad talkers are usually those who have all sorts of pet
theories and opinions, and try to interject them whether they fit in with the
flow of events or not. Unfortunately
poor talkers are the ones who find it hard to perceive the flow, which is why
they must rely on so-called ‘universal truths’.
Good calculation makes no use of the counting-slips;
The sum of a calculation shall appear naturally in the flow
of events without the need for mental cogitation. To the sage who is one with the Tao, the correct
sum will appear to him as is if by intuition.
If we don’t believe that this is true – and those who do not
walk the perfect Tao will find it hard to believe – we must resort to laboriously
recording the components of the sum with slips.
But these slips can contain human error, can be totted up wrongly and so
on.
Good shutting makes no use of bolt and bar,
And yet nobody can undo it;
Good tying makes no use of rope and knot,
And yet nobody can untie it.
When a door is meant to be shut it will not occur to the
people to open it. Though the door might
be passed by multitudes on their way to work, not one of them will think to
turn the lock. The sage knows when a door
shall be closed to the people.
Those who don’t have this insight, will try and lock doors
according to their own prejudiced interpretation of reality. Perhaps for some distorted reason, the
imagine it is in their interest for the door to be locked. So they fasten it with ‘bolt and bar’.
This man without insight could not read the Tao and did not
understand that the door was not meant to be closed to the people. So as a result of that vulgar intervention,
the people must reply with their own.
They must force the door open with a crowbar!
Hence, the sage is always good at saving men,
And therefore nobody is abandoned;
Always good at saving things,
And therefore nothing is wasted.
In the world of people, the intuitive understanding of, say,
a calculation becomes the understanding of what is best for them. His interventions do not appeal to some and
not others, as is the case of bad speech.
He does not act based on ‘principles’ that help some and not
others. His actions are based on the
pure flow of the Tao, which is always benevolent.
This is called ‘following the guidance of the Inner Light.’
Bu this guidance doesn’t appear in a crude codified form as
it does with most people. He has risen
above such coarse categories of perception.
The guidance appears in concrete form from one moment to the next and to
profane eyes might well seem highly contradictory. But it is only through being able to perceive
this moment by moment guidance that he is able to always do the thing that is
correct and excellent. His methods do
not succeed in one moment and then fail in the next.
Hence, good men are teachers of bad men,
While bad men are the charge of good men.
The bad men may not even realise that they are being taught. Certainly good men do not have some kind of
curriculum that they once learned and now must teach. It is simply the way that the good man is the
example to all others. The process of learning
is actually the process of unlearning all the coarse codes of behaviour we
started picking up as children.
Bad men are not disciples to the good. They are the things in the world that the
good men redeems and corrects. It is
through their influence on the bad that we recognise they are the good.
Not to revere one’s teacher,
Not to cherish one’s charge,
Is to be on the wrong road, however intelligent one may be.
This is an essential tenet of the Tao.
For the bad man, it is an essential goal of his development
to both recognise his own badness and aspire to the goodness of the good
man. This is a big and important step
and in real life is often the preliminary to the spiritual life.
Until you realise that the goodness you see in yourself, and
the intelligence in all your codified thought counts for little you shall find yourself
immune to the impact of true wisdom.
From the perspective of the wise man, all the wisdom in the
world is worthless until it is actually bearing fruit in the people all around
you. Unless you are setting an example
for others to find the Tao, then you cannot be said to know the Tao
yourself. If the Tao is in one man, it
is in all who encounter him.
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