Chapter of the Week: #64 [Archive]

Carl

I've got nothing to add but I did want to say that this thread really hit the spot.

Carl

Each week we address one chapter of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching can be obscure, especially if you think you're supposed to understand what it's saying! We find it easier and more instructive to simply contemplate how the chapter resonates with your personal experience. Becoming more aware at this fundamental level simplifies life. This approach conforms to the view that true knowing lies within ourselves. Thus, when a passage in the scripture resonates, you've found your inner truth. The same applies for when it evokes a question; questions are the grist for self realization.

Chapter 64
It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure;
It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop;
It is easy to break a thing when it is yet britle;
It is easy to dissolve a thing while it is yet minute.

Deal with a thing while it is still nothing;
Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in.

A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms
Grows from a downy tip.
A terrace nine stories high
Rises from hodfuls of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles
Starts from beneath one's feet.

Whoever does anything to it will ruin it;
whoever lays hold of it will lose it.

Therefore the sage, because he does nothing, never ruins anything;
and, because he does not lay hold of anything, loses nothing.

In their enterprises the people
Always ruin them when on the verge of success.
Be as careful at the end as at the beginning
And there will be no ruined enterprises.

Therefore the sage desires not to desire
And does not value goods which are hard to come by;
Learns to be without learning
And makes good the mistakes of the multitude
In order to help the myriad creatures to be natural and to refrain from daring to act.


Read commentary previously posted for this chapter.

Carl

[Note: I italicize phrases I borrow from the chapter, and link to phrases I borrow from other chapters to help tie chapters together. While making it more tedious to read, :? the Tao Te Ching is best pondered in the context of the whole.

Some things are universal, like deal with a thing while it is still nothing or as I learned as a child, 'a stitch in time saves nine'. Also, everyone would agree with: be as careful at the end as at the beginning, and there will be no ruined enterprises. While the East and the West universally recognized this in principle, the East, perhaps, has made a bigger deal of it.

For example, isn't this the essence of Zen? Remain at the beginning - [chref=56]let your wheels move only along old ruts[/chref]. Reality is neither before or after. Before and after are simply figments of our imagination, regardless of how real they feel. Reality is only 'now'. 'Now' is always beginning. So why aren't we as careful at the end as at the beginning?

We leave the beginning whenever mindfulness takes a holiday from 'now' to see some end or another. Sure, we are stuck with our imagination and its flights of fancy. However, realizing (i.e., right understanding) this danger at least helps us be more careful and ruin less.

The last part of this translation veers a bit from the original Chinese which says: Learn not learn, return masses pass by, support myriad things be natural, not dare act. With grammar and my eye the 'context of the whole', I'd say: Learn not to learn, but rather [chref=28]return[/chref] to [chref=63]savor[/chref] what the [chref=20]multitude[/chref] pass by, and allow the myriad things to be [chref=25]naturally so[/chref] by not [chref=48]not meddling[/chref].