Joseph Stalin once said, on the occasion of ordering the immediate execution of any Soviet soldier who failed to march head-long into German fire, that “It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Soviet Army.”
Wisdom loves irony and the
Dao De Jing is no exception. Nietzsche expressed contempt for what he called the “do-gooder” and this same contempt, based on the same reasoning, is expressed in the relatively large-scale Verse 38 which begins the “De Jing” section of the
Dao De Jing (De is translated as integrity, virtue, or efficacy and
Jing means “classic&rdquo
.
Let’s dive right in with the
David Hinton and the
Addiss/Lombardo translations. We will start with the easier to “get” Hinton:
High Integrity (Te/De) never has Integrity
and so is indeed Integrity.Let’s re-word this phrase just a little:
Doing good is not doing good
and so is, indeed, doing good.
Now the second sentence using Hinton:
Low Integrity never loses integrity
and so is not at all integrity.Now in our relatively awkward construct:
Base doing good is not doing good
And so is, indeed, doing good.
When we
plan to “do good”, to act with “integrity” we lack both goodness and integrity. Why? Because when we intend to do good or to act with integrity, we are operating from a subtly different motive. And what is that motive?
Anytime we act from motive, the self-defined “good” action serves another master and that master is the ego body (see:
The 3 Bodies). Thus it is not doing good at all, but it
appears to be the doing of good. It’s a show put on for others, as well as our own deficient/lacking self. Operating from motive, we are saying, “look at me - look at how wonderful I am.” Or we could be saying, “read my posts. See how spiritual I am.”
Lao Tse didn’t respect phonies, no matter how good their acts might appear. He saw through them. The
Dao De Jing, if its words kill the fear-based you, does away with
all standards. When we define ourselves through words and beliefs, we sustain the false “I”. We are using conceptual standards to produce an image of ourselves that validates our Fear-Self (
Liberation from the Lie). The
Dao De Jing is a plea for action and not the motive to define one’s self through one’s actions. It’s just action
as action. The maintenance of a “good”, “loving”, “loyal” self is, in a word, bullshit - a fiction designed to compensate for the inner pain of identification with inadequacy and worthlessness - the very issue that we discussed in
Verse 37.
One more key insight here. Integrity is not concerned with a definition of integrity. The word integrity and its many potential definitions are wholly conceptual. They are abstractions, coldly isolated from the immediacy of life. That’s why I say, forget goodness, Buddhism, love, charity, and all the other lovely sounding phrases that people resisting pain enjoy shouting to the world. For most of us they are merely public announcements designed to convince our suffering inner being that we aren’t as worthless and inadequate as it really believe ourselves to be.
This is about getting real and coming to the realization that these are just words and as words they are utterly without substance. Wake up to your own phoniness. I used to work in a prison and one thing many of the Black prisoners knew about so many of the white “do-gooders” that would visit the prison from time to time was just how vested they were in their words. They could smell their smarmy bullshit a mile away and would chuckle at their pious admonitions. The prisoners embraced their frailties, as well as the horrendous inequalities of the world in which they were raised. They saw through the facade of this
moral civilization.
Now a look at how Addiss/Lombardo translate this same phrase:
Hi Te? No Te!
That’s what Te is.
Low Te doesn’t lack Te;
That’s what Te is not.This stanza is not as forthright as the Hinton, but, for me, is a lot more powerful and that’s why I saved it for after the discussion. The remainder of the Verse follows this theme. Let’s be bold and use the Addiss/Lombardo translation.
Those highest in Te take no action
And don’t need to act.Let’s stop there and see what is going on in that statement and in the larger stanza in which it resides. This is one of those very esoteric statements in the
Dao that readers tend to gloss over, but is key to understanding not only this Verse, but the whole of the
Dao.
First, we can see that how Lao Tse uses Te in this sentence is very much like the way he uses Tao going all the way back to Verse 1. He refers to the mystery of non-being. In enlightenment it is clearly seen that while there is doing, the heart beats, the fingers, type, there is no doer. The beating heart is real - it’s not conceptual. The fingers typing are real, they are not conceptual. But the mental projection of a doer is conceptual and not real. This is the very key to awakening. Until this is seen, directly, one will inhabit one of the lower rungs of Te (described below). That is the key delusion of the unawakened. All suffering, all struggle is in the projection of the doer, which is not real in the first place. It is, entirely, a psychological energy that is, essentially, an adaptation to suffering when we were just infants.
So when Lao Tse says that there is no one who takes action, he is speaking from an enlightened perspective. We read these words, but there is no reader present. The reading may link up with memories - but all of that is of the body and is not our essential selves, unattached to any belief.
Let’s move on.
The lowest in Te take action
And do need to act.Lao Tse enjoyed hierarchies and enjoys them because they make what can be confusing clear. Verse 38 uses several hierarchies to elucidate the
scale of Te. Seen as points on a continuum, we can see that there is a living evolution to the highest Te, where there is no Te at all. The remainder of this Verse is a structured hierarchy.
Those highest in benevolence take action (we are moving down the the Te continuum, rung by rung)
But don’t need to act.
Those highest in righteousness take action
And do need to act.
Those highest in propriety take action
And if people don’t reciprocate
Roll up their sleeves and throw them out.How many of you can relate to the final reference? Unless you are honest with yourselves, you will always continue to live your life dishonestly.
Therefore,
Lose Tao
and Te follows.We’ve defined Te (De) as meaning integrity, but other translators have also used the terms virtue and efficacy. The difference between Tao and Te is that Tao is entirely empty, but Te has substance. But its substance is not self-referential. It is, always, contextual. It is of the moment. Thus there is no such thing as a man (or woman) of integrity/virtue/efficacy. There are only happenings which would appear to possess those qualities relevant to the moment. Once we elevate the essence of context into a Rule, we debase life. We have created a concept that supersedes the immediacy of life. We have started the path that leads to authority and force. This is not a trivial distinction. Now we have produced a “standard” and we can measure the relative worth and value of people based on how well they compare with the standard. We have a basis for who receives the gold stars and who will not. This is, indeed, a primrose path.
Lose Te
And benevolence follows.
Lose benevolence
And righteousness follows.
Lose righteousness
And propriety follows.
Propriety dilutes loyalty and sincerity:
Confusion begins.
Foreknowledge glorifies the Tao:
Stupidity sets in.The term “foreknowledge” refers to the codification of knowledge and observation. The term Tao (Dao) is used by both the Confucians and the Taoists. In this case, Lao Tse is attacking Confucian belief as conceptual by putting into place a “philosophy of life” that is divorced from the immediacy of living. He associates this rule-creation process with stupidity. The Tao (Way) of Confucianism can be taught. In contrast, Taoism can only be lived
Verse 38 concludes:
And so the ideal person dwells
In substance, not dilution (in reality as it presents itself and not in its “dilution” as concept)
In reality, not glory;
Accepts one, reject the other.Rejecting conceptual knowledge is an immediate outcome of awakening and this is, exactly, what differentiates the awakened person from the ordinary one. Freed from conceptual thinking, we really are incredibly, indescribably free. There is no good and bad - there is just this. We could spend ten thousand lifetimes debating what is good and what is bad and it would never come to an agreement that would take us one step away from concept. The ultimate concept is that of the self. Freed from that, all the other expressions of false knowledge fall perfectly into place.
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Verse 38
Tags: Behavior, ego, Belief, Concepts
