My Tao Te Ching — 3

(This is part of a series I’m writing on the Tao Te Ching)

Again, Stephen Mitchell’s translation:

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.

If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The Master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

I like this chapter a lot, though it took a long time for me to figure out what it means to me.

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.

We live in a world where everyone is a hero or a villain eventually. This couplet means that we should not do this. When we view someone as a hero or a villain, we unfairly set expectations for how they should behave, and this changes our perception of their behavior. For more of my thoughts on expectation, see How We Treat People. In Christianity we often hear the phrase “hate the sin, love the sinner”. I think, similarly, we should “esteem the noble act, love the noble actor”. We should love people not for their good or lack of bad, but for their humanity.

The second important part of this is that people become powerless. How often do we look at the good deeds of another and compare our worst selves to someone else’s best self? Another way this leads to powerlessness is that it can cause us to expect someone else to solve the hard problems. It might cause us to think (as expressed by Howard Jones in You’re the Buddha)

So who am I so nervous and shy
To be brilliant and talented?

Next, it discusses possessions and the peril of overvaluing them. This seems obvious, but it’s worth stating that obsession with things rarely (if ever) leads one to fulfillment.

The Master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,

In other translations besides Stephen Mitchell’s, it refers to filling their bellies, rather than their cores. So I believe this means have people be healthy. I don’t know exactly what it means to empty people’s minds. I think, however, that I understand the opposite of that pretty well: if you look at our political landscape, you’ll see masses of people whose minds are full of information supporting their position and the position of their chosen leaders. This information doesn’t serve them well. It closes their minds and separates them from their perceived opponents.

by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.

Ambition: desire and determination to achieve success
Resolve: firm determination to do something

That’s a pretty subtle difference. In other translations, it says bones rather than resolve. However, I really like this translation because of that subtlety. A theme in the Tao Te Ching is letting go of desire, which is one of the principle differences (in these definitions) of ambition and resolve. People are sometimes driven by their ambition to act against the good of their society because it will get them what they desire. Rarely do we hear that a person acted immorally due because they were simply resolved to do so.

He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

These lines really hit home for me. My circumstances led me to lose everything that I knew and to completely reevaluate desire. I consider this one of the greatest blessings of my life.

I was one of those people who thought they knew. I don’t think I was cocky about it, and I certainly wanted to learn more, but I had narrowed what I was willing to learn because of what I believed I knew. Learning that everything I believed I knew was wrong, I’ve come to terms with not knowing. This is what has led me to study as many different ideas as I can handle. I have not come to believe anything, but I have come to value the beliefs I’ve learned about. I find this more valuable than knowing.

I have too often heard desire expressed as “I’ll be happy when _________”. The funny thing about desire is that there’s an infinite supply. As soon as you attain that thing that was previously required for happiness, you’ll see that another desire has taken its place. Letting go of desire, one can see that happiness is always within reach.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

This idea of not-doing is a tough one. I’m still learning what it means, but it comes from Wu wei (wikipedia can tell you more about it). Basically, this means act according to the laws of nature.

When I envision myself not-doing, I picture a person at peace with himself and his circumstances. This person isn’t overly-concerned with the circumstances and events that surround him, but he reacts to them according to his resolve. When a situation needs his attention, he attends to it, and then lets it go.

When I’ve found myself crippled by anxiety, it has typically been the result of doing the opposite of this in my head, about things that are beyond my control. A more natural approach is to attend to the situations you can affect and accept the rest.

Overall, I think an important lesson here is that we shouldn’t look for greatness in others, nor should we set a goal for ourselves to be great. In stead, we should let go of desire and knowledge, and act according to our resolve/nature and the inherent greatness in us will find its way out.

What do you think?