Great Souls Chapter 6 Lao Tzu

6
Lao Tzu
In looking to the Tao Teh Ching, which for the sake of brevity I will refer to as
the Tao, for guidance on the ways to teach, especially in the Asian context, we
may feel uneasy about its authorship or date. Such unease in a scholar of
history or philosophy may be understandable, but understanding lacunae such
as these may be part of what we can learn about teaching from the book.
The sage or sages referred to in it are nameless. We are told in it that the sage
"does his work, but sets no store by it" (2). That the sage mentioned is usually
referred to in the present tense, not as a person from the distant past or future,
but in the here and now, also suggests a timeless quality. The actual here and
now of the text is not specified or concretized, thus leaving the sage free.
Being concretely specific and egocentric seems to run against the spirit or flow
of the poems.
This spirit also comes out when we try to define exactly what the sage does:
Does he govern, rule, or teach? What is he a ruler, governor, teacher of? The

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point is that he is and is not all of these things at any one time. In each instance
of the present, what we can say is that the sage is "the Sage". While these

issues may create problems for the impatient reader who wants to have factual answers to such questions, such a reading misses the whole point about
the unassuming qualities of the Sage which guarantee his success and power.
In a way, our carping after solutions to these problems confirms Lao Tzu's
point that by moving away from self-assertion, we actually move more into the
public gaze. This paradoxical movement works for the book as well. While it
does not try to locate itself in any specific culture, what we can be in no doubt
about is that this book is at the heart of Chinese and Japanese cultures, and by
extension, many other Asian cultures. In this lecture, I only want to try to find
new ways to think and talk about teaching in the Asian context and to see if
there are any flows between Lao Tzu and the other teachers I look at in these
lectures. And, in what I understand as the spirit of the Tao, this should be done
as simply as possible.
Claims that Lao Tzu's book blends Buddhist and Confucian ideas, while ultimately conjectural, suggest at least that the book may be trying to blend Indian and Chinese ideas in new ways, and that it does not worry about telling
the reader specifically what it is trying to do. It just gets on with what it has to
do: "He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it" (2). Taking this
advice, to see how it works, so will I. Because I want to experience the Way
as I read, and communicate this experience, I will follow the flow of the poems' order. This seems to be the way Lao Tzu teaches as he writes or speaks.
The Tao is a collection of eighty one poems that seem to be loosely ordered,
if "ordered" is the right word. This allows the ideas to flow free of restrictive
overt explanations of how this flow works. If it works, it works. There is so

little explicit guidance to the reader on how to read the book because the
reader is expected to adopt a Taoist way of reading and so accept the flows.
If the reader is not already Taoist before reading the poems, the reader will
either have to learn how to think in Taoist ways or miss the experience offered
by the book.
In the first poem, we are told that as both the hidden and the manifest, the Tao
has different aspects and essences that "flow from the same source" (1). We
need to accept this flow if we are to understand. Instead of trying to resolve
paradoxes or apparent contradictions, the sage understands that the oppo-

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sites met with in experience need each other, and that by accepting the order
inherent in these paradoxes, he does not waste time trying to sort them out:
Therefore, the Sage manages his affairs without ado,
And spreads his teaching without talking.
He denies nothing to the teeming things.
He rears them, but lays no claim to them.
He does his work, but sets no store by it.
He accomplishes his task, but does not dwell upon it (2).

In this teaching without talking, there is a modesty that recognizes the paradox
in trying to gain acceptance for one's own way as the only right way:
When all the world recognizes beauty as beauty, this in itself is ugliness.
When all the world recognizes good as good, this in itself is evil (2).

Such a paradox is created by an imbalance which is produced by everyone
trying to see or think the same way. Imbalance, or the loss of a paradoxical
opposite, actually creates another paradox. Whatever we try to do, there will
always be this force of paradox. Domination, understood as trying to create a
totality of oneness or agreement, is shunned. The sage governs by preventing
such a desire to achieve agreement at the expense of the paradox:
Therefore, the Sage's way of governing begins by
Emptying the heart of desires,
Filling the belly with food,
Weakening the ambitions,
Toughening the bones (3).

By trying to do things we don't do them; but by trying not to do things, we
actually do them: "Practice Non-Ado, and everything will be in order" (3).

When we try to order our class or terrain by differentiating between people,
we necessarily fail to create the desired order, and create chaos instead. But
by not trying to create order, we let things organize themselves into order.
Order is not imposed by the sage, but allowed to exist by not interfering in
things. This is the Tao or Way to do things by not doing things. The force
which drives this way is imaged as a bellows. The sage does not try to explain
it in words, but looks within himself and tells others to look within themselves
for it:

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No amount of words can fathom it:
Better look for it within you (5).

It cannot be explained in words that impose meaning on others. Each person
needs to find this Way for himself or herself. Truth is not out there and expressible in words, but within waiting to be recognized. By not trying to make
this Way fit into one linguistic formula or not trying to define it as a thing that
exists out there, we can only find the Way to see it for ourselves. How to find
it, not what it looks like when we find is, is all we can say. This suggests that
truth is not a manifest thing that everyone can or should try to fix or tie down

by agreeing as to what it is. The more we try to nail it down or fix it as the truth,
the less true we are to the Way. By trying to explain what we know rationally
or why what we know is an ordered thing, we are not being rational or orderly. Instead, we are creating disorder (which would be an irrational thing to
do).
In trying to assert ourselves as sages in order to gain recognition, security, and
power, we will fail, as our actions always produce a paradoxical state as a
way of balancing the forces we over-use:
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 his self is realized? (7).

Modesty, selflessness, and self-criticism are the only attributes that bring about
leadership, security and safety. By always doubting ourselves, we can paradoxically find certainty. If we want one thing, we should try to realize its opposite. This may explain why the Sage should not exalt talented students. The
rivalry produced by such attempts to rank order others is a force for disorder,
not order (3). Chaos, contention and disagreement are the results of trying to
force order and agreement on others. There is no direct path or method that
will create what we want.

The method for working in this paradoxical way is an ethical force which does
not try to force others or things into our pre-determined systems or patterns.
By allowing others and things to flow free of our imposed restrictions or orders, we are being ethical:

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The highest form of goodness is like water.
Water knows how to benefit all things without striving with them (8).

Non-resistance is the only way to ensure order. By trying to force others to do
things, we only make them resist and thus undermine our effectiveness. Water-teaching invites those we teach to flow with us for their own benefit. As the
Way lies in each of us for us to discover ourselves, we cannot expect others to
find the Way by telling them to do things our way. To seek such conformity
through force, we only create dissension. We teachers, as water, need to be
flexible, to change our shapes for each situation to maximize this flow. To
prepare ourselves for this Non-Ado, we need to look into ourselves first. This
introspection is a form of diving in the water of who we are. To make things or
ourselves grow, we cannot try to grow by asserting what we are. Instead, we
must be critical of ourselves and introspective: "In cultivating your mind, know
how to dive in the hidden deeps" (8). To be seen, we must hide ourselves; to

grow we must first swim in our own thoughts; to be seen, we must first find
what is hidden in our own deeps. This skill or attribute does not come about
as a result of our assertions, but from our self-criticisms and our awareness
that we cannot say for certain that we are already growing: "In speaking,
know how to keep your words" (8). By being aware of our own hidden
depths, we know that we do not know, and so guard ourselves against asserting that we do know. Such self-criticism is a constant activity that prevents us
from trying to dominate others by forcing our views on them as the only way.
In these watery deeps, marked by our modesty and self-criticism, is "hidden
Virtue" (10).
We cultivate this virtue by always asking ourselves questions. These questions
are to remind us of our doubts and inadequacies:
In washing and clearing your inner vision,
Have you purified it of all dross?
In governing your people and governing your state,
Are you able to dispense with cleverness? (10).

Unless we see that our inner vision is covered in dross, and that we are not
clever, we will always fail to be effective and perceptive. Accepting our weaknesses, we overcome them. Ignoring them, they overcome us. Instead of trying to fill ourselves or our students, we should try to accept or cultivate their
emptiness. The thing we create is not what is useful. Instead, the empty space
inside it is what makes it useful:

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We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful (11).

While we focus on the tangible things we use, we miss the simple fact that the
emptiness or spaces in that tangible thing are what we actually use to learn by:
Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful (11).

The Sage sees that we must learn to recognize virtue, and that this is within
ourselves as an intangible, not a tangible, thing: "He prefers what is within to
what is without" (12). Putting this virtue into words is only to lose the emptiness by trying to make the thought tangible, as something shaped by language.
While our words create the shape, they are not the value or the virtue. What is
within or unexpressed are the hidden depths which can be understood beyond our shaping words. This may be the mysterious power of the force of the
Tao. The ethical point seems to flow into the next poem, where we are comforted in our emptiness and in our willingness to risk losing what we have.
Only if we take such risks will we find ourselves and be understood. To have
real power, we must be willing not to have it, and to lose this power out of love
for the world we sacrifice ourselves for: "Only he who can do it with love is

worthy of being the steward of the world" (13). Here, Lao Tzu stresses the
ethical power of love as the one condition necessary for successful teaching.
Our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for others flows from our willingness to
sacrifice our views of ourselves to our honest self-criticism. The Tao is formless, soundless, and incorporeal. As such, it exists as a paradoxical expression
or an unnamable name, as "the formless Form, the imageless Image./ We call
it the indefinable and the unimaginable" (14). Our words are only powerful
paradoxically as we recognize their powerlessness to be tangible. When we
try to make this force tangible in words, we try to explain the paradox away,
and so we fail to say anything.
What qualities do we need to follow the Tao? The answer lies with the "ancient adepts". We must turn to them to see things as they are:
The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and flexible, profound and comprehensive.
Their minds were too deep to be fathomed (15).

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Again, there is the water imagery. The subtle and flexible qualities of water, its
profundity and comprehensiveness, make it too "deep" to be "fathomed",
measured, or understood in words. Unless we too can practice these qualities, we will remain shallow, limited, fixed, and blunt. Such bluntness has already been hinted at in the image of a person who by continually trying to
sharpen or preserve a sword actually blunts and destroys it:
Keep on beating and sharpening a sword,

And the edge cannot be preserved for long (9).

The qualities exhibited or possessed by the ancients -which we have lost in
our attempts to improve or shape what we already are - are offered as a way
for us to act now, if only we can find these things within ourselves:
Hesitant like one wading in a stream in winter;
Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;
Cautious and courteous like a guest;
Yielding like ice on the point of melting;
Simple like an uncarved block;
Hollow like a cave;
Confused like a muddy pool (15).

Many of these images are of water. That not all of them are only seems to
reinforce the poet's distrust of totalities and universalities. Such qualities may
not be attractive to those who only want the tangible and the certain. But for
those who look within and see beyond their dross and problems, such qualities seem natural. Only when we accept our limitations and behave accordingly will we be able to achieve anything. Without these modest qualities, we
will fail to see the Way or Tao. Because we doubt that we can see it, we may
see it. To embrace such qualities requires sacrifice on our part. Only by losing
ourselves can we gain self-knowledge and our soul. Instead of surrendering to

the desire to "rush to early ripening" (15), we should always try to control
ourselves by self-criticism. Out of our limitations will come our potentialities.
Out of our failure and inadequacy will come our success and skill.
That Lao Tzu seems to embrace the stance of what was thought of as the fool
should not surprise us. Paradoxically, only the fool can be wise. By accepting
our emptiness we attain "interior peace" (16). That others may see us as fools
should not alarm us. Such a response paradoxically shows us that we have
succeeded. By doing little, we do much; by saying little, we say much. Instead

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of trying to speak volumes which will only ensure our failure at the moment we
may think we succeed, we need to control our language and hide ourselves:
The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,
All the people say, "We ourselves have achieved it!" (17).

This quality has been absorbed into Chinese poetics and language sensitivity
in The Mustard Seed Manual: "The end of all method is to seem to have no
method". The Way comes or arises from within others, not as an imposition
from the teacher. When we have taught well, the students think they have
taught themselves. To seek recognition or reward means that we are not lost
within ourselves, but are seeking the tangible again. Such a refusal to accept
defeat and failure is unethical and therefore doomed to failure. Our expectations of recognition are not based on love and self-sacrifice, but only on worldly
ambitions that paradoxically destroy any chances we may have for success as
teachers. By putting ourselves in the way, we have paradoxically moved ourselves out of the way and of the Way.
When we try to be clever, wise, shrewd and sharp, and when we discriminate
between men through ideas of justice and humanity, we promote division and
power relations which actually impede our assistance to others. In place of
such qualities, and over our dropping of them, we should recognize "a Higher
principle":
See the Simple and embrace the Primal,
Diminish the self and curb the desires! (19)

Learning, understood as an analytical fragmentation of things, is not part of the
Simple or the Primal, but the cause of disagreement and division:
Have done with learning,
And you will have no more vexation.
How great is the difference between "eh" and "o"?
What is the distinction between "good" and "evil"?
Must I fear what others fear?
What abysmal nonsense this is!

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Paradoxically, this abandonment of learning is what is to be learned. Without
understanding this, we talk only nonsense, and harmful nonsense at that because it promotes fragmentation of our selves and leads to a lack of understanding by taking us away from the Way or Tao.
Such assertions of apparent contradictions or impossible propositions are meant
to shock the reader or listener. They draw attention to the writer who now for
the first time in the poems talks about himself in the first person. He draws
attention to himself by criticizing himself as a fool. His praise of folly paradoxically flows in what sounds like his most poetically self-conscious writing up to
this point. He draws attention to himself by denying his relevance and value:
What a fool I am!
What a muddled mind I have!
All men are bright, bright:
I alone am dim, dim.
All men are sharp, sharp:
I alone am mum, mum!
Bland like the ocean,
Aimless like the wafting gale (20).

Seen through the eyes of others, he knows he is regarded as a fool and a
failure. But what reassures him is that his "disgrace" and "calamities" are signs
of self-sacrifice and that he is following the Tao (13). When all men are one
thing and agree that that thing is beautiful or good, that is ugliness and evil (2).
His wisdom is to recognize he is a fool and different to all men. By being a
contrarian to others, he is able to keep away from their "nonsense". His folly is
wise, their wisdom is nonsense. His self-images are of the ocean and the
wind: things that flow and do not have fixed shapes. He cannot be put into
other men's boxes and so remains in touch with the Tao:
All men settle down in their grooves:
I alone am stubborn and remain outside.
But wherein I am most different from others is
In knowing to take sustenance from my Mother! (20)

This mother is "the Eternal Tao", "'the Mother' of all things" (1). In this he
contemplates "the Return" (16) to his source, the Way. To flow with this source,
he must remain outside the boxes of other men's thinking, outside the grooves
that others follow so easily. Such are the grooves of conventional wisdom

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which seem to have been created by men following the nonsense of other men
before them. The grooves suggest a cart, which in turn suggests a beast of
burden or an ox as the creator of those grooves. The sustenance the "I" takes
is the milk from the mother's breast. As a child, he is yet to be shaped; he is
foolish, mum, dim. His folly protects him.
At this point in the poems' flow, we have been returned to the beginning or first
poem by the image of the Tao as the Mother. We realize with the next poem
that we have been moving around like the gale or the ocean, not in a straight
line. Since the first poem, Lao Tzu has not offered a definition of the Tao. He
has only given us a name for it: "the Mother". In the succeeding nineteen poems, we have experienced the shapeless shape of one who writes with the
Tao. Only after we have experienced this are we ready for a definition of it,
which is more than knowing its name:
Now what is the Tao?
It is something elusive and evasive…
It contains within Itself an unfailing Sincerity.
Throughout the ages Its Name has been preserved
In order to recall the Beginning of all things.
How do I know the ways of all things at the Beginning?
By what is within me (21).

We are reminded of the beginning of the Tao. We sense a pattern, "elusive and
evasive" though it may be. If we try to fit this pattern into the grooves of the ox,
we will destroy it, not preserve it. Knowledge of the Tao comes from contact
with the "Beginning", and this beginning is to be looked for within ourselves,
not in the grooves of other men's thoughts. If we can look with sincerity, we
can find it.
The self-effacement of the writer up to this poem is shifted to the foreground
by his sudden emergence in the first person voice now. His absence paradoxically makes possible the effect of his sudden presence. But no sooner do we
hear this voice than it disappears again into the wind and water of the Way in
the next poem which summarizes the way of the Sage as it has been described
and followed up to this point. The recurrence of the points is the point. We are
being taken back into what has been said since the poems began.
The new quality being advocated in Poem 22 is wholeness. The summary
flows into the evasive and elusive hint at the end of the poem that we are now

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experiencing the wholeness of Lao Tzu's Tao:
Indeed, the ancient saying: "Bend and you will remain whole" is no idle word.
Nay, if you have really attained wholeness, everything will flock to you (22).

While recognizing that the image of the verb "flock" may be an accident of
translation, such happy accidents seem to be in keeping with the flow of the
Tao. The flocking of everything so far said of the Way of the Sage flocks to us
again. The nature image of sheep coming together without a shepherd, in their
own unordered order prepares us for the opening image of the next poem:
"Only simple and quiet words will ripen of themselves" (23). The words ripen
within us. They are not violently imposed on us as part of the grooves of
accepted or conventional wisdom, "the rash endeavours of men" (23). Such
impositions cannot last long because they are violent. As more of what has
already been said recurs in the succeeding poems we are experiencing the
gentle flow of the Tao as it seems to expand while it is being reformulated.
Occasionally, we hear new things that flow out of the repetitions:
Man follows the ways of the Earth.
The Earth follows the ways of Heaven,
Heaven follows the ways of the Tao,
Tao follows its own ways (25).

The ways of the earth - the water, the wind, the sheep, the ripening seeds or
plants, the poems themselves - are now seen as the point of the images that
have been flowing in the poems. We follow these images as the ways of the
Earth. It is what man does. The pastoral qualities of the imagery strengthen
their simplicity and quietness. In the flow from man to the Tao we can feel the
ways of the Tao by following the ways of the Earth. The flows are not singular,
but plural - many and various, not the groove, but the wind and water, the
flocking of animals:
Good walking leaves no track behind it;
Good speech leaves no mark to be picked at (27).

Walking and speech are placed together. The track or groove cannot be found
in the Tao of these poems. The ways to return are not along the way we have
come. We jump or suddenly find ourselves back at the beginning. Nothing is

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linear or fixed in the words or the Way. The Sage finds his way by "'following
the guidance of the Inner Light'" (27). This inner light is ethical teaching, as is
made clear as the poem directly flows into:
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 (27).

This is the first time the Sage is referred to explicitly as a teacher. While there
are many ways, there is "the wrong road", the grooves of what others think
and do insincerely, unthinkingly and impositionally. Much has been made of
this master/pupil relationship by Western educationalists who see it as foreign
to their modern sense. But this relationship can be found in Jesus' and Socrates',
as well as Confucius', relationships with their charges. The Inner Light of the
Tao creates a bond without ropes: "Good tying makes no use of rope and
knot/ And yet nobody can untie it" (27). The Tao is this bond between teacher
and student. Both are following the Way. The ethical force of the relationship
comes from the Inner Light, that which is within us, not without us. Strength
comes from simplicity, by our not trying to do too much.
Now that we have gained a sense of the paths we are on, Lao Tzu's imagery
seems to form its own patterns or ways:
To be the Brook of the World is
To move constantly in the path of Virtue
Without swerving from it,
And to return again to infancy…
To be the Pattern of the World is
To move constantly in the path of Virtue
Without erring a single step,
And to return again to the Infinite…
To be the Fountain of the World is
To live the abundant life of Virtue,
And to return again to Primal Simplicity (28).

We are instructed to be the brook, the fountain, the pattern - water is the
pattern of fluidity as it moves "constantly" and returns us to infancy, the Infinite,
and Primal Simplicity. This is the imagery of Virtue. Though we should not be
stuck in the grooves of nonsense, we should remain on the Way. By moving

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on, we go back through our virtue which comes from our following the Way.
What we go back to is our simplicity and the infinite and our infancy where we
can find the mother, the eternal Tao. In our Primal Simplicity, we diversify by
becoming "useful vessels" (28). As vessels, we remember from poem 11, it is
our emptiness that is important, not the material which shapes this emptiness.
From poem 4, we also recall that the Tao itself is an empty vessel.
In Poem 29, the Sage is described as avoiding "all extremes, excesses and
extravagances" because he knows that there is a time for all things, as the
Preacher also sings in Ecclesiastes. Knowing this, we should not expect to
"take the world" and do what we want with it. As a vessel, the world is only
the shape of the emptiness we need to have. To look for extremes is to destroy this emptiness and not succeed. Poem 30 seems to develop this point
when in it Lao Tzu refers to the Sage as a ruler who does not try to conquer
the world or use force. To succeed in order to develop too much is only to
decay. Such a path is against the Tao and will fail. For this reason, Lao Tzu
addresses the reader directly in order to stress the reader must practice modesty, not pride or boastfulness. In all things are the makings of their undoing:
"even a victory is a funeral" (31). The paradox is Lao Tzu's way of expressing
the idea of all things turning to their opposites that may also be found in
Ecclesiastes. Moderation comes from understanding the irony and paradox
of this cyclical path we follow in our lives. To resist this way is to go against the
Tao. So we must learn when to stop and suppress our pride:
To know when to stop is to preserve ourselves from danger.
The Toa is to the world what a great river or an ocean is to the streams and
brooks (32).

The world flows into the Tao, it contributes to the Way. The Tao does not fit
into the world. We cannot change this flow. Instead we must go with it by
recognizing our limitations, not by trying to always add to our successes. When
we focus on our power over others we are missing the Tao. What we achieve
by this over-ambition is less than we achieve by following the Way:
He who knows men is clever;
He who knows himself has insight.
He who conquers men has force;
He who conquers himself is truly strong (33).

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We become strong when we know our limitations and act according to them.
By controlling ourselves, we have the strength to keep what we achieve. By
looking within, we find true knowledge and power to follow the Tao. In this
modesty, we are practicing the Tao:
It is just because it does not wish to be great
That its greatness is fully realized (34).

Against this greatness, our hubris or pride can have little effect:
The Great Tao is universal like a flood.
How can it be turned to the right or to the left? (34)

Again the image of water is evoked to show just how the Tao works, and the
futility of resisting the power of this water. As a flood, it is not controlled by
man and has no specific shape. When we try to put ourselves above it or
show off we do not achieve anything permanent. Our achievements decay or
are swept away. By not trying to be clever or to impress others, we can
achieve lasting power:
Music and dainty dishes can only make a passing guest pause.
But the words of the Tao possess lasting effects,
Though they are mild and flavourless,
Though they appeal neither to the eye nor to the ear (35).

Here is one of the few times that Lao Tzu calls attention to himself, albeit
indirectly. He does not say that the reader or listener should examine the words
in the Tao or explain exactly how the poet's words are "mild and flavourless"
or modestly sensual. But we are reminded that the aim of style is to have no
style. When we shape things too much in order to impress people with our
own work we are asserting our own achievements which will pass. But if we
try to learn from the words of the Tao, our words may last. There are visual
and aural images in the Tao, but they are not developed into extended fancy
literary effects. Of course, such a style is still a literary effect, but Lao Tzu
could argue that this is the effect of the Tao. The water imagery that has flowed
throughout the Tao is given in short or compressed passages, not developed
into set pieces which distract us from the point being made by imposing the
poet's style between us and the point. Apart from lists, points are made in two
or three lines. When images recur, they are not exactly the same. Such repetition would invite emphasis on the images as man-made things. By seemingly

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accidentally dropping his water images into his poems, the effect on the reader
is more like a tidal wave or a flood which slowly moves on and carries the
reader with them. By not calling attention to them, Lao Tzu invites us to see or
hear for ourselves. In this way, the images have "lasting effects". How the
flood or river or brook appears to the eye or ear is not stated; nor is the
coloring of the bowl or the sword. Such sparse images seem plain and simple,
"mild and flavourless". To concretize the images with superfluous details would
be to make "music and dainty dishes" which would not last. Only the passing
guest or superficial reader would be attracted by such over-stylized or fancy
effects. Lao Tzu wants to keep his reader with him, not have him pass on. He
knows this will happen because "The soft and weak overcomes the hard and
strong" (36). Water, not swords or other man-made things will overcome and
last.
The flow of words in the Tao which do not try to impress the reader or listener
through being clever or artificial is the water of the Tao as Lao Tzu wants us to
understand and experience it. The primal simplicity of the words seems to
echo or flow from the Tao. We order things by keeping them simple and in
their place: "It is time to keep them [all things] in their place by the aid of the
nameless Primal Simplicity" (37). By not trying to re-arrange them into our
own way of thinking which by definition is not following the Tao, we move
things around and bring them together in over-stylized fancy dishes or words.
By repeating or changing his words seemingly with every sentence, the poet
creates the impression that his images are natural in so far as they occur and
recur from time to time, and are not assembled into long passages or poems
where they are expanded or over-extended. The brevity and changes in the
drift of the language is meant to resist this temptation to re-organize the words
into other shapes. The implication seems to be that the words in the Tao are
themselves part of the Tao and take their shape from it. While they may seem
haphazard or not organized along the lines of highly stylized poetry, they nevertheless are paradoxically shaped and ordered.
How this has implications for the way we teach language will have to wait for
tomorrow, as now we continue to follow the Tao. That there seems to be an
irony in Lao Tzu's disclaimer is more of a literary matter than a pedagogical
one, and so should not hold us up here, except to note that by using words in
his own special way, he has been attracting an attentive reader's attention from
the first poem. That he drops his paradoxical statement about how apparently
bland the Tao's words are in the middle of the Tao may most simply be read

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as yet another way of calling the reader's or listener's attention back to the
start of the book as part of the experience of going back before going forward: one of the teachings of the Tao.
But the poet's reference to his own words in poem 35 signals another flow
that becomes more apparent from this point. The words start to fold in on
themselves:
High Virtue is non-virtuous;
Therefore it has Virtue.
Low Virtue never frees itself from virtuousness;
Therefore it has no Virtue (38).

The words seem plain enough in their repetitiveness, but the sense is striking
more because of this rather than despite it. By trying to appear virtuous or
force virtue on others for "private ends" and with "rolled-up sleeves" (38), we
lose our virtue. Such actions indicate a flow; only this time it seems a flow
away from the Way: "It is the beginning of all confusion and disorder" (38).
What is confused and disordered comes from our loss of the Way. By imposing order on our outer world and on others by way of ceremony, we only
create the opposite, disorder. The attempt to know what will happen in future,
as a way of controlling it, is "the beginning of folly" (38). Here, folly seems to
be caused by our attempts to impose order which is no order from the Tao.
The poem ends with a description of the "full-grown man" preferring "what is
within to what is without" (38). Part of the way Lao Tzu teaches us to see
what is within is by showing us what is within the words we like to use - the
paradoxes and ironies which actually order us and ensure disorder when they
are not understood, or not used simply.
The next two poems are respectively the longest and the shortest in the Tao.
Together they seem to encapsulate the main ideas of the book up to this point.
The long poem 39 returns to the themes of humility and of being one with the
Tao, while poem 40 reiterates what the Tao is:
The movement of the Tao consists in Returning.
The use of the Tao consists in softness (40).

The long and the short of it come at the heart or middle of the eighty-one
poems of the Tao. If we feel that the points now being made have been made

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before in the Tao and by the ancients, we are meant to feel this: it is one of the
recurrences that Lao Tzu sees as the way of the Way. Much in the following
poems seems to be such repetitions. But some things are new to the poems.
Poem 42 makes the first explicit reference to the Yin and the Yang. The "myriad
things" derive "harmony from the proper blending of the two vital Breaths"
(42). The truly great princes and sages modestly or humbly call themselves
helpless, little and worthless, and so are great. We gain by losing and lose by
gaining: the paradoxes are the harmony of the Yin and Yang breaths. These
breaths are in Lao Tzu's words -which embody the spirit of the two breaths.
But of the two sides of things, the soft controls the hard, the weak control the
strong, the practices of Non-Ado produce results (43). Poem 47 explicitly
describes the Sage's paradoxical power of knowing, seeing and achieving:
Thus, the Sage knows without traveling,
Sees without looking,
And achieves without Ado (47).

In poem 48, Lao Tzu makes a claim which causes us to pause:
Learning consists in daily accumulating;
The practice of Tao consists in daily diminishing (48).

How this can be learned and practiced by us teachers is really what these
lectures are all about. We need to unlearn how to learn. In this, we learn the
Tao. Instead of trying to control and order what is not meant to be controlled
and ordered, we need to learn how to follow the Way of Non-Ado by making
things simple and returning the Primal Simplicity we have lost. "To win the
world, one must renounce all" (48), or else we will, as Saint Paul says, gain the
world and lose our souls. In his Non-Ado, "The Sage only smiles like an
amused child" (49). What this means for teaching I will address tomorrow in
my final lecture when I try to bring together the teachings of all the great souls
I have been trying to understand over the past week.
The next surprise sprung by Lao Tzu is in poem 50, which seems not to be a
poem but prose. In it, for the first time, dying is considered and said not to be
a concern for the Sage because "there is no room for Death in him" (50). The
reason is explained in poem 51: "It is Tao that gives them life". For the Sage,
death is only a return to the Great Tao. All of life's experiences lead to this

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recurrence to "a common Beginning" (52). That the end is the beginning is yet
another of the paradoxes of the Tao. After this death poem comes one that
may sound a note of discouragement regarding those in power now: "As for
Tao, what do they know about it". But if the Tao is "All-under-Heaven", then
the thoughts of death and failure are part of it, and so cannot be rejected. In
the midst of the changing fortunes of the court, the Tao with its repetitions and
recurrences offers a way of "cultivating the Changeless" (52). Without being
distracted into a consideration of flux or mutability, we may simply say that for
our purposes in these lectures Lao Tzu recognizes the paradox of unchanging
change, and that the continuities of the Tao offer him a way of relating to the
past as something close in the words of the sages and the Tao they practiced
before those who have power lost the Way by trying to control it rather than
letting it shape them.
In place of what those at court do, Lao Tzu reiterates his advice to the reader
or listener: "Cultivate Virtue in your own person" (54); "Virtue is akin to the
new-born babe" (55). It all comes back to this virtue or ethical force which
must come from within and not be imposed on the world and others without.
After the poem on death, when Lao Tzu reiterates that when we overgrow we
"decay" and that "whatever is against the Tao soon ceases to be" (55), he is
amplifying his warning about Death. Such a fate is not for the follower of the
Tao who cannot decay or cease to be.
To "win the world by letting alone" (57), the Sage must learn not to speak or
order others to do things. As the Tao is within, we need to see "what is within"
(57), and not concern ourselves with what others do. The result for the poet
is: "I do not make any fuss, and the people transform themselves" (57). When
we do not try to impose order on others or anything of the world, we avoid
complicating things: "I have no desires and the people return to Simplicity"
(57). For these reasons:
He who knows does not speak.
He who speaks does not know (56).

Again, the paradox turns the language in on itself. We are being directed to
look within. What we can know is ourselves, not others. If those others are
following the Tao, they will understand us. If they aren't, then they won't.

Lao-Tzu 137

This seems to raise the question of how the Sage is to communicate with
others in order to enlighten them. That this is another paradox means that
within it there is the inner meaning. We have to find it for ourselves. Lao Tzu is
both saying and not saying what to do. In emphasizing his own Inner Light, he
recounts what he knows about himself and has observed about others. By
presenting himself as a fool or a simple person, he is not trying to impose
himself on his reader or listener. By seeming not to teach, he is teaching; by
seeming not to be clear in his paradoxes he is clear. He produces effects
without doing anything himself because he knows the others will do it themselves:
Therefore, the Sage squares without cutting,
carves without disfiguring,
straightens without straining,
enlightens without dazzling (58).

He does things by not doing other things. By not doing them, the Tao works
within them to change them or shape them. What Lao Tzu advises his readers
and listeners on is what not to do. All that he tells them to do is to look within
themselves. They are the ones who must see what is there. This avoidance of
interference is remarked on again: "the Sage does no harm to his people" (60).
"If only the ruler and his people would refrain from harming each other, all the
benefits of life would accumulate" (60). He does not force others to do anything as this would be pointless and counterproductive. The results would be
"strange" (57). He knows that if what he says has virtue, it will be heard: "A
good word will find its own market" (62). He lets others come to him instead
of reaching out to them:
A great country is like the lowland toward which all streams flow. It is the
reservoir of all under heaven, the Feminine of the world (61).
The Tao is the hidden Reservoir of all things (62).

The stress here is on "all things". The Sage, the student, the ruler, the ruled, all
exhibit the same Tao when they do things without Ado. To express this in Zen
terms: the Tao is the Tao. Communication seems to be represented as the flow
of water towards its place. Without trying to place other words in Lao Tzu's
mouth, he seems to see the world as a self-organizing flow which can only
work when it is left alone. When we try to do difficult things such as imposing
order on this flow, we fail. Instead, by doing the easy thing we let the order

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come by itself:
Difficult things of the world
Can only be tackled when they are easy.
Big things of the world
Can only be achieved by attending to their beginnings.

When we complicate what we do and try to build it into imposing knowledge,
we only make things more difficult to do. We need to go back to the source
every time we begin to do things.
To save others from being overcomplicated is one of the tasks of the Sage.
Part of this comes from the Sage's power when he: "Learns to unlearn his
learning,/And induces the masses to return from where they have overpassed"
(64). Forcing them to do things is the easy or quick solution, but it doesn't
work. It requires much Ado from the misguided ruler or teacher. In contrast,
the Sage leaves them to find their own way by helping them to look within
themselves:
He only helps all creatures to find their own nature,
He does not venture to lead them by the nose (64).

Only in "the state of simplicity" (65) will the people be able to enlighten themselves. Those who practice the Tao do not "try to enlighten" others, but show
them how to find enlightenment within themselves. Within us, as Socrates,
Jesus, Buddha and Confucius also knew, we have the keys to our own knowledge. By humbling himself and his words, the Sage places himself beneath
others so that they will flow to him:
How does the sea become the king of all streams?
Because it lies lower than they! (66)

Again, learning and order are shaped in water imagery. The relationship between the teacher and the student is a flow from the student to the teacher, not
from the teacher to the student as a torrent of imposed knowledge and obligatory thoughts. The Tao and the water must flow freely, and so it cannot be
forced on others.
By this point in the flow of his poems, Lao Tzu is ready to indirectly address
the reader and listener again about how they may be understanding him. He

Lao-Tzu 139

does this through another paradox:
My words are very easy to understand, and very easy to practice:
But the world cannot understand them, nor practice them (70).

He returns to the outer trappings of his apparent failure to teach. But paradoxically, this means that he is successful. His lowness and humility are necessary if he is to teach anyone. The world, overcomplicated and caught up in
trying to impose order, cannot recognize the simple when it sees it. The world
seems to be sick, while Lao Tzu has insight:
To realize that our knowledge is ignorance,
This is a noble insight.
To regard our ignorance as knowledge,
This is mental sickness (71).

Knowledge, understood as the imposed order we place on the world and
ourselves, is ignorance as it ignores the Tao. This is the insight that frees the
Sage from worrying about such knowledge. When we confuse what we think
we know about how to order others and things with knowledge, we fail to see
our ignorance. All we can know is the Tao within us and how to flow with it.
Striving, ambition, and worldly power create ignorance under the guise of
creating knowledge. Non-Ado, humility and weakness allow us to find knowledge which seems to be ignorance to those who do not know:
The mighty and great will be laid low;
The humble and the weak will be exalted (76).

This is the flux of the Tao.
As the Tao draws to a close, or better, flows to the sea, Lao Tzu starts to
repeat almost verbatim what he has said at the beginning of the poems:
Therefore, the Sage does his work without setting any store by it, accomplishes his task without dwelling upon it. He does not want his merits to be
seen (77).

While this is a repetition of what was said at the beginning of the Tao, it is
paradoxically also different: it is now in prose, not verse. He is becoming more
explicit about his water-teaching method as he draws closer to the sea:

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Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water:
But, for attacking the hard and the strong, there is nothing like it! (78)

This appears to be the point his paradoxes have been flowing to: "Truth sounds
like its opposite!" (78). As more and more of what has already been said in
the Tao is repeated in these closing poems, we sense the lapping power of
water to move or destroy impediments to its flow. With each repetition, a
small part of the reader's or listener's ignorance and resistance is silently washed
away by the healing power of Lao Tzu's sincere words. The transformation is
occurring in the student as the student starts to recognize what is what, to
detour a Buddhist phrase, about the Tao and the Tao being practiced silently
in it.
Just how the Tao is intended as a teaching tool which operates through the
reader's and listener's sensitivity to the ways language is used in it as a simple
flow is indirectly raised by Lao Tzu in the last poem, as the Tao is about to
flow into the sea or back to its beginning:
Sincere words are not sweet,
Sweet words are not sincere.
Good men are not argumentative,
The argumentative are not good.
The erudite are not wise (81).

Sincerity is the mark of a good and wise person. These qualities are exhibited
in the words they use. To teach without arguing or displaying one's erudition is
the ethical responsibility of the poet and the teacher: "The more he gives, the
more he abounds" (81). Lao Tzu has repeatedly been giving his simple, sincere, and good words throughout the Tao. The Tao's final line introduces a
new word into the poems:
The Way of the Sage is to do his duty, not to strive with anyone (81).

We are reminded that the Tao has not finished. There is the new beginning
with the reference to "duty". Exactly what this duty is has been implicitly or
silently described throughout the Tao. Lao Tzu has been practicing it from the
beginning. But all of this is said indirectly. The reader and listener have to see
and understand this for themselves by reading poetically.

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When responding to the words of the poems, it would be foolish to find them
poor or weak. If we have understood anything about the Tao, we know at
least that by becoming one thing, things become paradoxically opposite things.
And so, the words are sweet and argumentative and erudite because they do
not try to be so. By doing little directly, they do much indirectly. By being
critical of himself, the poet is indirectly being critical of others. By not arguing
with others, the teacher silently and indirectly is arguing. In the instant of failure, there seems to be a transformational success. The power of these paradoxes as indirect ways of communicating and as ways of encouraging us to
see things in new ways are the most powerful contributions Lao Tzu develops
from his experience of the Tao. He shapes his poems' words in such a way as
to reach us without trying to reach us. This is the art of teaching. Its ethical
concerns are inextricably entangled or submerged in its language and style.
The teacher as poet and ethicist can only make his points by denying his
worldly ambitions and power. Throughout the Tao we have been kept on the
edge of failure and doubts. It seems that only through our willingness to live on
this point can we understand the way forward is to go back and to go within
ourselves. The apparent chaos and folly of this unworldly way or Tao is reassuring, not off-putting, as we now understand how order comes from chaos
and wisdom comes from folly.

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