MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

this is a warning

beware the constraint of looking
and ceasing to see

the seeds of chaos that were sown

by the sons and daughters
of the emperors and empresses

are buried in the soil
where they can do no harm to your essential nature

you must protect the ancestral treasures
your life force
your essence
your spirit

benevolent altruism
honest authority
observed ceremony
the songs of creativity

can not be managed
by any manner of collective intent

to govern through the tao way of life
is to do so without notice
and remain invisible to the world

to govern by the tao way of life
granting light and sound to the eyes and ears
attracts the heartmind and heart spirit of the world

to govern through light and sound
without the tao way of life
engenders the fear of the world

to govern by unwise force
alone
breeds hatred in the world that nourishes the seeds of chaos

having faith in the faithless
destroys the heart of man
and they become sleeping automatons driven by words and labels

the method of the true self as original nature
is all that is needed
to embody
to accomplish
wonders

—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey

“This is a warning.” Beware your presumptions—or worse, your unconscious motivations—becoming projections which blind you to objective reality. Do not make the error of fixating on those descendants of authority and power. To do so is to dig up those “seeds of chaos” which, if left buried, can do no harm to your moral character. However, if you unearth those seeds and instead plant them into your own bosom, God help you then (if you’ll excuse the expression), because thereafter you will see nothing but ever-transforming demonic phantasms. Your vision will become utterly constrained under the shackles of ideology. You will fall under possession by the ghosts of dead men, and those spirits, obsessed with power, will reign over you as tyrants.

So instead, you are better off tending to yourself. For within you are “ancestral treasures”—instincts. In another words, you have in your possession those numerous traits which were inherited over the course of generations, culminating in the potential inside your soul. “Your life force,” “your essence,” and “your spirit” are what the alchemists called the Lapis, the Philosopher’s Stone—a metaphor: for your potential is that which can transmute lead into gold. It is that which can, through the voluntary acceptance of personal responsibility, transform something that is normally evil, unjust, corrupting, or tyrannical into something beneficial. For instance:

Infantilizing altruism tempered by the judgement of wisdom can become genuinely empowering, allowing for the the individual helped to become self-governing rather than dependent.

Authority justified by honesty turns tyrannical manipulation and deception into voluntary association, negotiation, and meritocratic hierarchy (as opposed to a hierarchy derived from lies, force, and power).

By truly observing—read: understanding and respecting—the ceremonies and traditions handed down from one generation to the next, their meanings and purposes can be protected. Rather than mere social gatherings and opportunities to signal virtue, observed ceremonies can become tools of wisdom and method.

Likewise, raw creativity without form or boundary can become—once exposed to discipline, practice, and voluntary limitation—an artform which reflects, or perhaps reveals, some formerly hidden aspect of objective reality.

But again, beware. For these things listed here can only be achieved and maintained through individual, voluntary action. Responsibility is in a sense ownership. You are in possession of potential—your “ancestral treasures;” therefore, it is up to you to make that potential manifest. If you believe instead that those things priorly listed can be made and kept by “collective intent,” you are sorely mistaken. The tragedy of the commons has failed to dawn upon you. You have yet to realize that responsibility of the group means no ownership by the individual, and that no ownership by the individual means no individual responsibility taken—not without the initiation of violent and coercive force.

This is the opposite of governance through the Tao way of life, which is to say, no real governance at all. You need not recognize coercive authority, nor do you need to be recognized as such. Simply through acts of individual responsibility, you become the example for others to follow. Through influence alone, your actions inspires those around you. Their eyes and ears open to the actualization of their own souls. They become motivated to manifest their own potentials. What need for governance is there for such self governing individuals?

But to govern through influence alone, without the example of the Tao way of life, one must rely on fear. Veiled force, open coercion, and subtle deception (and sometimes not so subtle deception) become your only tools. Without the Tao way of life, wisdom is abolished. The vision becomes constrained and cannot distinguish among competence, morality, and power. Chaos spreads, and with it, hatred. As a consequence, veneration of the faithless becomes commonplace. Those governed become demoralized, “sleeping automatons driven by words and labels.” They are ruled by the ideological ghosts of long dead men. Just as you are, they are under possession by Maya—in Buddhism, worldly illusion.

Yet all this can be avoided through the realization that you are not apart from the world, but a part of it. Your internal nature is a product of Nature external. It is a transcendent reality, something objective beyond your subjective experience. And it is up to you whether or not to align yourself with the Tao; but if you do, and if you face yourself and the world by taking responsibility for what you have inherited, then perhaps life might reveal itself to you as something miraculous.

Embody the Tao and bring forth the wonders.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Seventeen”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.30-1