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"You become like a little child anew."
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Tao Te Ching — Chapter 28
The Taoist Classic by Lao Tzu
Translated and Explained
28
Knowing the manly, but clinging to the womanly,
You become the valley of the world.
Being the valley of the world,
Eternal virtue will never desert you,
And you become like a little child anew.
Knowing the bright, but clinging to the dark,
You become a model to the world.
Being a model to the world,
Eternal virtue will never falter in you,
And you return to the boundless.
Knowing honor, but clinging to disgrace,
You become the valley of the world.
Being the valley of the world,
Eternal virtue will be full in you,
And you return to the state of uncarved wood.
When the uncarved wood is split,
Its parts are put to use.
When the sage is put to use,
He becomes the head.
The best way to carve is not to split.
Be Like Uncarved Wood
Lao Tzu is fond of the image of the uncarved wood as
a symbol of simplicity and humility. He uses it several
times in his book. A piece of wood is as simple as something
can ever be, but it contains numerous possibilities.
When carved, it can become almost anything you want. Still,
nothing surpasses the natural state of wood before the knife
is put to it.
We should not think that we improve the wood by
our carving. We just change it. That way it may become
more useful to us, but in no way finer than it was in its
original state.
This is even more obvious if compared to what it
was when still part of a living tree, where it participated in
the wonderfully complex process of life and growth. When
cut from that tree it becomes a log. A chunk of material,
passively reduced to whatever we make of it, or abandoned
and decomposed.
Whatever we do to wood, it can never be as splendid
as it was on the living tree.
Polarities
In this chapter, Lao Tzu also uses quite strong
polarities, such as honor and disgrace, preferring the latter. That
might be hard for most people to accept. But insisting on
being honored is a mentality that surely leads to disgrace.
The one who accepts disgrace, on the other hand, will
be honored already by this.
We frequently witness examples of this in modern
day politics, where pompous dignitaries fall from grace
when they refuse to admit any wrongdoings, although
evident. Those who confess humbly and regretfully, on the
other hand, can find themselves even more praised than ever
before. We do love to forgive a repenting sinner.
Choosing the darkness before the bright seems
even more absurd to us, because we have a tradition of
comparing the latter to salvation and the former to its
opposite, damnation. It's deeply rooted in the Christian
vocabulary, since the time when Jesus called himself the light.
Consequently, we call his counterpart the prince of darkness.
But the opposites mean something else to Lao
Tzu. Darkness refers to the dim valley compared to the
brightly lit mountain, the shady side, yin, instead of the sunny
side yang. Tao Te Ching keeps repeating the ideal of yielding,
so the sage modestly steps out of the light, into the
shadows, and never insists on attention.
The Chinese words used can also be translated
white and black, but the meaning is the same. Choosing the
latter shows exemplary character, because it proves that you
are not driven by personal gain.
The manly and womanly are opposites of the same
kind as light and dark. Yang is regarded as manly and yin
as womanly, in the Chinese tradition. In the symbol, yang
is the white field hovering over the black yin, like
Heaven rises above Earth.
Anyone choosing the former will elevate himself
over others, thereby losing compassion for them. It's
impossible to lift everyone else to an elevated position, but if
you choose the lowest seat, then others will fall effortlessly
into your lap.
Usually, Lao Tzu compares this yielding to the
motherly, but here he lets us know that it also brings out the child
in us.
When you let go of your ambitions, the world
becomes fresh before your eyes. You see it for what it is, instead
of what you want from it. That's the eye of the child.
The Virtuous Past
The virtue mentioned several times in this chapter is
Te, part of the book's title. This virtue being eternal refers to its
ancient tradition. It could not be eternal without
stretching into the past as well as into the future.
In the time of Lao Tzu, the ancient past was
regarded with much more reverence than the present and the
future. So, that side of eternity was valued higher. Virtue of
recent origin would be regarded as preposterous.
Antiquity, not only in China, valued its history
tremendously, but saw little reason to ponder the future at
any length. We tend to do the opposite, because we believe
the future to be one of continued improvement – at least its
potential.
If you make the right choices by following the
ancient virtue, you become like a child, simple as uncarved
wood, and thereby boundless. You lose the limits of
preconception, the prejudice brought on by wants and ambitions.
It's a state of mind, which is brought on by
virtuous choices – not for the sake of reaching it, but because of
these choices being the virtuous ones. That's why virtue fills
you, never falters, and never deserts you. True virtue needs
neither reason nor rewards. It's just the way it should be,
which is according to the Way.
Put to Use
Lao Tzu ends the chapter with what seems to be some
play with words. The sage is like uncarved wood, which is
put to use when split. But when the sage is put to use, he
takes command. Some serve and some lead. It's natural for
the sage to lead, even when he is reluctant to do so.
He will lead even when others expect him to serve.
He points the Way. How else to use him?
The sage knows to remain in the state of
uncarved wood, utter simplicity, in whatever grand tasks he gets
involved. He is not split, either by distraction or ambition,
but remains with what we call the whole picture.
That's how the world should be treated. It's a whole
that must not be split into this and that. All things are
connected to the whole, and malfunction when separated from it.
This is something we are right now starting to
understand about the world we live in. We give this
knowledge a fancy new name, ecology, but it's been known for ages.
© Stefan Stenudd.
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