MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

the ancient child asks
how do you turn around and listen to your soul

by selflessly acting with
the power of authentic benevolence

you can not plan to do good works
good works can only be done naturally

a person who plans to be good
will have no power
and will not be authentic

the difference between authentic and inauthentic
is the benevolent power of your soul

an authentic man never acts
an authentic man has no hidden agenda
an authentic man seeks no rewards for his deeds

an inauthentic man tries too hard
an inauthentic man had ulterior motives
an inauthentic man constantly thinks of rewards

authenticity can not be willed or proscribed
authenticity can not be planned or enforced

false manners are a sham

morality worn like a coat gives rise to shallowness
that casts a shadow
over everyone

rules and propriety arise from this darkness
constricting the hearts and minds of humanity
forcing their souls
to a hiding place

life becomes chaotic

great men lecture you on your faults
complicating simple things
until
they are barely recognizable

and you don’t know which way to turn

but the authentic man
allows his soul to take the lead of his life
holds firmly to his inner truth
gently grasping the seeds of life

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

To listen to your soul is to listen to your inner voice of conscience. This voice is louder in some than it is in other; however, it is something we all ought to practice discerning from amongst the noise of everyday life. And why listen to your voice of conscience? Why put forth all the effort of foregoing pleasures and enduring pain just because a feeling said so? Because, that voice is something born out of your instincts. It is something crafted over generations and generations of evolutionary history during which your ancestors were shaped by the conditions of their existence. In other words, that voice was tuned as to be in harmony with the most constant, stable, and transcendent aspects of the universe. It is honest—authentic—and thus can lead you down a life-affirming Path.

That is the purpose of the Tao. It is one Way by which you can come to life more life-affirmingly—benevolently, as opposed to bitterly, destructively, and vengefully. This qualifies what it means to act selflessly: as in some sense, pure selflessness is impossible (for the pursuit of it would become a selfish act by definition); but if to act selflessly is to affirm life as it is over how you want life to be, then authentic benevolence is possible. All you need to do is to let go of contrived means by which to obtain specified outcomes and instead act in the direction suggested by your voice of conscience.

From Dr. Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life:

Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

Perhaps the above advice sounds counter-intuitive to some. Maybe it even seems like flowery non-sense more than sagacious wisdom. To those of your who feel this way, know that to pursue expedience over meaning means to deafen yourself to your own instincts. Deafened to them, you will not hear them coming; not hearing them coming, they will take you unaware. You will be (and likely already are) largely a slave to your impulses and emotions. You will render yourself helpless in the face of life’s most personal obstacles. You will stand in your own way having made yourself powerless to move yourself forward.

This is the difference between authenticity and inauthenticity. The authentic man, informed as to who he is, doesn’t need to try to be anyone else. Not fearing life’s inevitable negative consequences, he is brave enough to be honest with himself and others. Like Aristotle’s Virtuous Man, he does for the pleasure of doing. He does not need to be bribed with vice and cannot be bribed, for vice holds no value for him. The inauthentic man, in contrast, must identify with a façade—a persona. He must push himself every step of the way because the path he walks is unfit for his instincts. He is a sham, a liar; he deceives himself and he deceives others because dishonesty is his most practiced-with tool. He suffers from Aristotelian Incontinence and must constantly bribe himself or be bribed by others with the very vices than weaken his will and resolve.

The choice between these two Ways of being, authentic and inauthentic, must be made by you. Virtue cannot be forced. To attempt to do so necessitates inauthenticity. It leads to shallow virtue signaling and the grip of tyranny squeezing ever tighter. Eventually, the hearts and minds of people are crushed in the attempt to force them to conform. From this, chaos is born. What was simple before becomes unknowably complex. People lose direction, and are lost as if in fog where before they had a clear path.

Authenticity, therefore, can only arise from voluntary choice. It is something you choose for yourself and not something you can force onto others—which is, after all, the desperate clinging to external outcomes. The authentic man lets go of these things, listens to his conscience, and holds on only to his moral character. It is from such an attitude that life is affirmed, nourished, and allowed to grow.

Lao-tzu. “Chapter Thirty-Eight”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.77-8