MEDITATIONS: TAO TE CHING CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
the ancient child asks
can you control the universe by overtly grasping it
can you shape and bend it to your will with outward force
can you assert yourself over nature and truly control it
no
the uncreated can be grasped only by not grasping it
the uncreated can be willed only by an inward force
the uncreated can be controlled only be releasing control
completely
yes
control by surrendering
bend and shape through an inward willing
passively assert through active non-assertion
to make it is to spoil it
to hold it is to lose it
the ancient child asks
should you interfere with the world
no
to interfere with the world puts it just outside your reach
you can not succeed
the unfolding world is a heavenly vessel which can not be made
because it already exists
beyond desire and conception
and always has
attempting to create it
scars it
sometimes beyond recognition
to make it is to spoil it
to hold it is to lose it
do not interfere
dance with it instead
some things go forward
other things recede
some things lead
other things follow
some things blow hot
other things blow cold
some are strong
others are weak
some things are separate
other things come together
some things stand
other things fall
—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching; An authentic Taoist translation. translated by John Bright-Fey
It is tempting to try to force the conditions of your existence to conform to your will. This is because life is suffering—that is to say that to exist as a conscious being also means that suffering is an inevitability. You and everyone you will ever meet will, at best, eventually grow old, infirm, sick, and then they will die. Mortality means doom as well as meanwhile visitations of pain and sorrow. So it is no wonder we wish the world were different than it is. It only makes sense that people become possessed by self-deceit, arrogance, and resentment; likewise, it follows that self-deceived collectives, convinced of their virtue, power, and rightness, bare their resentment toward Nature, both the external and their own. They become hateful toward the conditions of their existence and are thereby consumed by an archetypal form of pessimism. They find themselves at a crossroads—either they mold the world to fit their purposes, or else they turn away from life and wish it destroyed.
But no one possesses the power to control the world by force. One can only become possessed by such delusions. No, we have but the abilities of assent and dissent, the faculties of desire and aversion. Nature, the objective transcendent, determines how it presents itself to us dependent only on whether or not we accept or reject it. This is what Lao-tzu means when he says, “control by surrendering / bend and shape through an inward willing / passively assert through active non-assertion.” It is the same as the alchemist transmuting the philosopher stone: the power to reconstitute how the external world manifests to you is found through insight and self-transformation.
In other words, we cannot control the universe, only ourselves—and not even ourselves but for our determinations as to what is good and what is bad. We can affirm life as it is, or, because it will never conform to our wills, we can decide that it ought not to be in the first place. We can choose to dance with life, or we can scar it beyond recognition. Such is the nature of a dualistic world. There can be no joy without suffering; to wish it otherwise is to wish unwittingly for oblivion.
Lao-tzu. “Chapter Twenty-Nine”. Tao Te Ching; An Authentic Taoist Translation, translated by John Bright-Fey, Sweetwater Press, 2014. pp.55-6
