(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
46.
Those who have Tao retreat before horses depositing their excrement upon the neighbor’s lawn. Those who are without Tao are themselves military horses giving birth in the suburbs. The harm is not great for those who are not yet content, and the blame is not great for those who have already obtained their desires.[1] Causing contentment to actually indeed both be enough and always almost but not quite yet sufficient.
47.
You don’t leave your front door yet have knowledge of everything under heaven. You could never spy into the window of enlightenment and still face the heavenly way like an unraveling tongue of light. This journey fills the far reaches, but its knowledge fills few. According to the sacred person, not walk but know, not see but understand, a shell of a man yet become complete.
48.
If you exist always to increase the benefits you receive from study, then you will also always be bring the Tao daily harm. Harm it again and again as a result of this effort to arrive at being without being. Without being and without not being. If all of your choices are as a means to avoiding having attachments then you will have attachments. This method is not enough if you truly want to choose to live in the universe.
49.
The sacred person is without the permanent heart, instead carrying the heart of the 100 Smiths[2] as if this heart were her heart. The sacred person carries the mind of his companion in the palm of his hand.
If this particular Smith is a good person, then I treat him well. If this other Smith is not quite so good, then I am just as considerate with this person as I would be with my own petulant daughter. This is the truly righteous goodness. If one Smith is trustworthy, then of course I trust this Smith, and if another Smith is untrustworthy, I also trust said Smith. This is the trust of the glorious golden pinnacle horde.
If a sacred person is to live in the world below the heavens, then this person must suck-suck here, and so become in this earthly realm a muddy heart to those surrounding hundred Smiths all pouring out their ears and eyes while the sacred person considers them all to be like children scampering across the open field and occasionally drawing blood.
50.
Every person who exits the womb will die, some in their beds, some with a blow-dryer on their private region. Thirty disciples are born and thirty disciples will die. The place from which a person sprouts is also the force that leads to the grave, bringing all of my thirty disciples from infancy to senility. Is this the cause of a man’s burden? It is as a result of it, that life’s larger stream is so thick and generously laden. But I have heard that he who is skillful in managing the life entrusted to him for a time, that this person travels on the land without having to shun rhinoceros, tiger, or brain lesion, and enters a military encampment without having to avoid the communal bathrooms. The rhinoceros finds no place in him into which to thrust her horn, nor the tiger a place in which to fix his claws,[3] nor the brain lesion a ganglia on which to attach itself. And for what reason? Because there is in him no place of death.
51.
The Tao gives birth to it.[4] Virtue nourishes and raises it.[5] Things shape it.[6] Situations complete it.[7]
It is because of the ten thousand things[8] that there is no one who doesn’t respect the Tao and esteemed virtue. The Tao that is the respected Tao—and the virtue that is the esteemed virtue—is not commanded by man, and furthermore eternal nature.
It is because of this that the Tao gives birth to it, and virtue nurtures and raises it. Grows it, raises it, completes it ripens it, nourishes it covers it.[9] Life yet has nothing to offer but the endless and potentially enlightening stumbling blocks it throws in the way of its various agents, many of these agents playing the parts of stumbling blocks themselves, like my cat.
Being yet cannot be relied upon, duration is not yet slaughtered. This is called obscene virtue.
52.
The universe has a beginning. This beginning can only be owing to its also being the universe’s mother.[10] Since obtaining this mother, owing to this, know that child we call the universe. Recover and abide by this nagging mother and so be as if without a body and so experience no danger.
Block that joy, close that door, and you will end your life idle. Open up this aforementioned well of joy, and your affairs on this earth will be numerous; you will end your life unrescued from the cares of the world. See every thin thread of vein on the back of a leaf and speak with understanding. Abide by the flexible path and you’ll call yourself strong. Use this light I’m offering you my precious tongue fart, and you’ll recover a brighter understanding. Without losing life’s calamity, is to be clothed in eternity.
53.
Causing myself to be introduced like that to the having of knowledge, to walk at the great Tao, that which to only apply it is a dreadful thing. The great Tao’s happiness is seen as the path of foreigners, while the people instead follow the winding intestinal tracks they claim is really the best way. A dynasty’s happiness is to be divided, a field’s happiness is to be full of weeds, a granary’s happiness is to be empty. Serve the refined colors, carry the sharp sword, crush down food and drink, and have wealth and money in excess. This is called the way of robbery and boastfulness. And also not the way of the Tao unfortunately!
54.
Goodly established persons do not pull out.[11] Those who are good at cuddling do not strip off their clothes.[12] It is owing to our sacrifice of the traditions of worship that children and grandchildren continue to pour out of our legs in a ceaseless stream.[13]
Study obnoxious engorged arrogance in yourself, and that virtue will become like a religious conversion. Study it in the household, and you will have a surplus of mewing virtue gobbling up your earnings. Study it in your hometown, and that virtue will be of great longevity; study it as a nation, and that virtue will be a great abundance. Study it at the lip of the universe, and that virtue is universal.
Therefore, the body observes the body, the home observes the home, the countryside observes the countryside, my nation spies on my nation, and the universe sees itself. [14] What am I as a result of this abundant knowledge of the universe, alas?[15]
Like this.
55.
Hold the thick virtue in your mouth and compare it to a naked child. This poisonous insect is not a poisonous insect. This fierce beast will not seize you in its jaws and scrape your scalp clean. This grabby bird will not struggle with your lunch meat like a blind thief.
The bone’s as weak as bird’s wings, and the tendons are tender, yet the grasp is solid. Not yet knowing the conjoined female and the male, yet you exploit their work, and also arrive at the very marrow of being.[16] You end the day howling, but do not become hoarse, and also arrive at understanding.
When you know this sort of understanding, your words are eternal, and when you know this eternity, your words are clear and evident. It is auspicious to help things grow. The cloud of mind is strong and powerful. Those who are strong will eventually grow old. You may say this is not Tao, but those who do not follow Tao die in the bloom of youth.
56.
Those who know have no need to speak. They who speak have no knowledge.
Block your over-flowing joy like an adept battling the sea. Close the door and content yourself with your shoddy living quarters. Defeat that sharp blade with a blunt stone. Separate the numerous piles that fill your room into more manageable stacks of like objects. Create a more harmonious ambience through the discrete placement of certain low-wattage lights. Allow the roiling dust that fills your halls to settle and become as alike with the earth floor. This is called the obscure union.
All of this causes you to not appear to be too needy or grasping, but may lead to intimacy and light kissing, or perhaps you will not obtain your goal, but have removed all the obstructions in your life, have not obtained her true love, but have the benefit of her sincere friendship, have not obtained happiness, yet will have the pleasure of harming many who have achieved happiness through your thoughtless actions. In short, to not win the woman yet to win her esteem, and therefore to be forever alone because you will always be cheap and mean.
You’re the most valuable thing under heaven.
57.
As a result of a punitive expedition, rule of a nation is secured, and it is as a result of strange doings that the army is utilized to maintain order. It is through finding yourself unemployed that you come to obtain the whole under heaven. What am I as a result of this abundant knowledge of the universe, alas?
Like this:
When, under heaven, many envy those who give in to their taboo desires, the public finds itself riddled with hate. When the people have many sharp utensils, the homeland ponders the dusk of its days. When many of the people are talented, strange objects nourish the market’s rise. When law decrees that nourishment must be made available to all, thefts abound in the capital.
This causes the sacred person to say: I will do nothing, and naturally the people will become as transformed; I will pleasure myself in the quiet meadow, and naturally the people will become just; I will be an unemployed vagabond, and naturally the people will become wealthy; I will be without desires, and naturally the people will be as plain as wood.
58.
When the government is stuffy and depressed, all cigars and heavy drinking, then the people are like a rich wine themselves, ruddy-cheeked and peering into the oval office on the tip toes of children giggling at the improprieties of their overseers. When the government investigates and examines into every tradesman’s business, the people find themselves lacking in the eyes of their magistrate. Misfortune, sigh, of which fortune leans on. Fortune, sigh, below which misfortune lies prostrate. Who knows of these extremes? They who are without propriety.
The path to a proper recovery becomes peculiar, and those good ministers who will lead us to it become like bewitching demons. Confused people of the globe, your rule over this earth has been as long as written history. It is appropriate for the sacred person to play pretend he is a talking square or triangle from the Euclidean universe.[17] The sage finds a corner to hide in without having to cut others to the quick during times of political strife, is direct yet not indiscreet,[18] glossy yet does not show off.
59.
For ruling men or serving God, nothing gets the job done like stinginess. The husband who promises only to be stingy, is also quick to obey. Those who are quick to serve are also serious about the acquisition of virtue. They emphasize the accumulation of virtue, and consequently can’t bear its weight. Those who are unable to bear virtue’s weight are consequently ignorant of the extremes of being. Like the hilarious little man Tom Thumb and his amusing adventures, but those who are ignorant of these extremes at least have their country.
When you have a nation of mothers, may your country thrive for a long long time. This is called having a deep root for the ramparts’ base, long in the birthing to then live a long time. Consider this as the Tao’s.
60.
Governing a great country seems the same as cooking a small savory.[19] If it is managed according to Tao, then that demon will be no god. If that demon is indeed God after all, then at least God will not harm anyone knowingly. If God does end up knowingly harming people for whatever reason, then at least the saints will not also harm people, and when two citizens do not harm each other, then virtue crosses back from its hiding place in among the many hells and once again belongs to them.
61.
The obscene people of the great country downriver where the universe converges are the female birds and beasts of the universe. These female birds and beasts always win over the males of their species as a result of their inner tranquility. It is similar with the great country in respect to the smaller country, consequently obtaining said smaller country,[20] but if the small country presents itself as less than the great country, the reverse will be the case.[21]
The vagina is quiet-quiet.
Take a small country. It can be modest. It is often there.
If the big country is below the small country, it will take the big country. If there is no size in this country and it can hold a modest animal, there is no fault. Therefore, take it down or take it down.
The next one is said to be a small country below the big country, and a big country below the small country. If the big country wants to be a sire, the big country will not lose it, and it will merge with the small country and graze. Small countries do not want to enter your filthy living rooms. Make it a servant. Both husbands have their own desires, and the big ones should be down on their knees and begging forgiveness for whatever small acts of indiscretion they have performed. Big countries and small countries have their own desires, and so big countries should be modest.
62.
The Tao is something dark and mysterious living in the corner of the ten thousand things. It is that which is precious in the good, and it is also the grifter’s refuge. Beautiful words are considered beautiful because they teach respect. A beautiful stride is known as such because more and more people are walking this festive strut every day. Who among the grifters would give up all they have in an ecstasy to the eyeless beggar?
Which is exactly why the sons of heaven were erected, and the three just public offices[22] to be put into place. Although some esteemed person may have cupped his hands and bowed before the jade ring as the first team of horses passes, it is not comparable to having received the Tao.
If we gauge the world according to what was deemed valuable in antiquity here, then where are the Tao people?
Do not say: seek the Tao in an effort to seek gains, commit crimes in order to escape evil. Because being under heaven’s expensive.
63.
It is being without being, occupied without occupation, a flower that is not a flower, the big that is small, the many who are a few, responding to resentment with a virtuous gleam, planning for disaster at the slightest hint of change, being big when faced with thin personages, their faces merely a mess of lines.
To be under heaven’s a difficult business. You must work for change, and big business must work to conceal itself in the details. It is according to the sacred person that, when you finally find yourself to be nothing special, this will allow you to complete that great task. The man who belittles promises must trust few. Much ease becomes much difficulty. Therefore, according to the sacred person, if you act like it is very difficult, you will be able to finish it without the thing actually having been difficult.
64.
A thing that is still is easy to hold, and things that are not floating on the table are easy to plot. They that are fragile fall apart easily, and the subtle things are blown away.[23]
Be it at the point of not yet having being,[24] and always govern in a state of not yet having chaos.[25]
The tree’s embrace grew from a miniscule nut with determined steps towards a time has yet to arrive. The nine layers of happiness begin on the bound earth. The longest walk starts with a single ludicrous step.
People who exist defeat it. People with a tight grasp lose it. It is therefore crucial, according to the sacred person, to be without being and therefore to not be defeated, without grasping and therefore with nothing to lose.
Employees are always becoming defeated when their task is nearly complete. However, those who are scrupulous enough to end each task as if it were a beginning will then not be defeated by their occupation. It is also, according to the sacred person, to desire to be without desire, rather than desiring those valuable rarities of commodity. Study not studying; return to the crowd-man you just passed through in order to assist the ten thousand things of nature without at the same time being one.
65.
Those ancients who were so good at being Tao were not so as a result of their efforts to make the people bright with understanding, but in an effort to make fools of them. They who are difficult to govern, are so because of how much they know. A country that is governed wisely is full of thieves. A country that is not governed wisely is a country of happiness and fortune. These two manner of governing are also part of the larger pattern we are inspecting here.[26]
To always know to inspect the larger pattern is called obscure virtue. Obscure virtue is found in having been deep, having been distant, having lived with things reversed, so fall behind to arrive at the great flowing.[27]
[To continue reading go here.]
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[1] Unlike for example those who are always craving for more and more and more—snorting heroin in the bathroom of the local high school one moment and eating platefuls of cheap beef products from out a greasy paper bag the next.
[2] The “100 Smiths” being the common term for the many silent faces that populate our streets with longing and regret. These are the ordinary underlings of the long-established regime, and the sorts of people who will not allow themselves to remember the dark reaches they fall into in sleep.
[3] Like the spry Mowgli fellow.
[4] Everything from helpless whelp to the infinitesimal quark.
[5] Into partial humans and encrustations of primordial matter.
[6] Into murky-lidded boys and barren landscapes.
[7] Various unfair and difficult situations finalize the circle of being from grass to the graveyard.
[8] That they exist and are always like, “Wow. Look at me being and being in you and through you and around you and consuming you while others consume me and move through me and are in me at that same time and so on and like endlessly and about me.”
[9] As in, brings them to their full growth, nurses them on its obscene teat, completes them through obscene coupling, matures them through obscene humiliation, maintains them through obscene means, and overspreads them like an obscene quilt for the fruit of youth is always ripe for plucking. Provide for it and overturn it when it is no longer small, but large and consuming every living thing around it to satiate its boundless hunger.
[10] And certainly does not need another one, you adorable nostril mouth.
[11] As in, “Construction is not removed.”
[12] Or, “If you hold on to the prison, you will not be freed from it.”
[13] “You will educate your children and grandchildren that the sacrifices will be cut off.”
[14] I say, watch yourself, and in watching yourself, watch yourself watching. And when you tire of this, watch the part that is watching yourself watching. Soon you will grow very tired. Then you must endure further and watch the part that is watching yourself watching yourself watching. This is the path of the nervous breakdown, and a good place to begin, but also very far from even the most vomit-strewn of Tao’s.
[15] For still, I am an eye stuck between two lobes. Even when the whole universe has become satiated by its virtuous actions, I am incapable of escaping my twisting and incorrigible internal eye. And when I look at others, they too have a tiny eye in their brains that twists in every direction like a well-oiled ping pong ball that may even occasionally hop out of their heads and into other people’s heads only to knock their ping pong ball third eye out and have it go into another head, and so on and so forth.
[16] Even you American children who laugh right in the faces of your adoring parents.
[17] Who is harmless for all of his corners exist in the idealized realm.
[18] Even when reprimanding those who would sell their liberty for a sense of security.
[19] Both being succulent when consumed.
[20] Through diplomatic or covert means
[21] How is this possible? A perfect example can be found in contemporary China and its rise on the world stage. Just look at this marvelous transformation if you have any doubts concerning the above statement. America, supposedly the greatest country in the world, toppled easily as a result of its arrogant confidence, while China slowly and steadily rises to become the invaluable ally, and then, the scolding parent.
[22] Senior Grand Tutor, Grand Perceptor, Gestapo
[23] They that are tiny and easy to disperse, such as for example the tiny dark experts with whom I am currently conversing while they perch upon my shoulder.
[24] Make a difference when it is unformed. Guide the unborn fetus through the 4 stages of Taoist training, from “Laying the Foundations,” to “Transforming Jing to Qi,” to “Transforming Shen in Dao.” Where is the fourth stage here? It too is a mystery.
[25] As in, it is too late to wait till the chaos appears. The people are not white mice raised by government officials.
[26] The pattern of cracks become crackles and fires become fists, of up turned to down and down turned around, of all the little chairs put in their beds, and all the little beds put up on their heads, to be more precise, if you must know.
[27] This flowing river is also a piercing sound and a bird midflight. It hurts to think about.
Gabriel Boyer has been making up stories about himself for as long as he can remember. There was never a time he was not fully seated in his various delusions. He continues to delude himself daily. You can read more about him here.
