Having Faith in Not-Ourselves: Who Might We Become If We Let Go of Self Preoccupation?
From Verse 38 of the Tao Te Ching
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness and is therefore good. A foolish man tries to be good and is therefore not good.
The master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done.
The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self. The highest kindness is to give without condition. The highest justice is to see without preference.
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness and is therefore good. A foolish man tries to be good and is therefore not good.
The master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done.
The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self. The highest kindness is to give without condition. The highest justice is to see without preference.
Posted by Paul at 12:32 AM Permalink
8 Comments:
Richard Wilhelm:
Whosoever cherishes love acts but has no designs.
Whosoever cherishes justice acts and has designs.
Whosoever cherishes morality acts
and if someone does not respond to him
he waves his arms about and pulls him up.
Ron Hogan:
When kind people act,
they do so without thinking about it.
When the just act,
they're always sure
they're doing the right thing.
But when the righteous act,
and nobody reacts,
they try to force everyone
to do things their way.
Unknown
The kind man does something, yet something remains undone. The just man does something, and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something, and when no one responds he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.
Ch’u Ta-Kao (modern scholar’s translation)
The superior benevolence acts without a motive
The superior righteousness acts with a motive
The superior ritual acts, but at first no one responds to it;
Gradually people raise their arms and follow it.
To add further confusion, there are different edits of Tao te Ching in the original archaic Chinese. This scripture, if that is the appropriate word for the ancient document, is more than usually vulnerable to interpretations. As with the Bible, one may quote it to lend authority to one’s views; but it’s a suspect authority. I found a website which has 170 different versions of chapter 1, few of which are actual translations.
Lovely quotes, Paul.
I can see giving without conditions, though even there we are aware of how happy we are to be a giving person and so one condition is our own joy.
And who can see without preference? Why are these lofty ideals held up to man when he is, by nature, judgmental, selfish and always trying to "do"? Why is such perfection sought after, when by merely being aware that we are judgmental, selfish and too busy we can, at our best, simply try to be LESS of those things?
Daphne – Difficult and no doubt impossible to be 100% unbiased – but a good goal. One that unfortunately seems to have been set aside by most of journalism and the media today...
Pauline – Great questions.
Years ago I had what must have been an abridged version of the Tao Te Ching on a cassette tape. To me this quotation fits well with what I remember. At the time my reaction was to find it intriguing but also to share your response of “Who could actually do this??”
It reminds me of “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, who makes rain fall alike on the just and unjust.” Nobody’s perfect, but maybe people sometimes have states of mind that approach it and speak, write and live from out of that as much as possible – holding perfection up as a kind of signpost that says “This way…!” So as you say, what we actually attain along the way is being less our lesser natures and more our better.
but too little is self deprecating too. do no evil and harm no one. that sounds like a doctor's oath. i'd go with that.
Tuti – So even when we're concerned with the larger picture, we're part of it ourselves. And without seeing to our own well being, we can't be of use to others.
Kaushik – The observing self and the observed self - and with enough observation, it's possible to start identifying more with the observer than the observed.
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