The Tao Te Ching Commentary Verse 19: Banish Learning

The Dao De Jing is remarkably appropriate for these times of economic decline and the impending collapse of the world of cheap energy (carbon-based energy). This is a time when the Dao demands that we return to a simpler and communitarian way of life. The Age of the vast shopping malls, of the “Sunday drive”, of the towering skyscraper is coming to an end.
Verse 19 continues the themes of Verses 17 and 18 where learning and accomplishment based on conditions designed to impress others are decried as not the way of the Dao. The Dao De Jing needs to be seen as a call back to one’s natural self. It is a vigorous attack on a complex and cosmopolitan world esteemed by the confucians of ancient China. It is a call to return to living in balance with the earth. Were Lao Tsu return to this world, I doubt he would find much of interest on a university campus or wandering the streets of Paris or New York. Rather he would love wandering along a country stream, uncontaminated by the complex chemicals of industry. His spirit would soar in the high Rockies and their pristine air. He would love to just hang out with simple farmers in Nepal or Iran. I suspect he might admire this Mac Powerbook, but would greatly prefer his ink brush and rice paper.
In the translation of Verse 19 we will return to my favorite translator (and hopefully Lao Tsu would approve of their work); Addiss and Lombardo.
Banish learning, discard knowledge: People will gain a hundredfold.
Banish benevolence, discard righteousness: People will return to duty and compassion.
Banish skill, discard profit: There will be no more thieves.
When the text refers to learning and knowledge, the focus is on how the confucian philosophers of ancient China used and understood these terms. Confucians esteemed erudition, order, and refinement. These are all qualities that are spurned in the Dao De Jing. Instead, the Dao favors naturalness. Because the Dao is perfectly complete, exactly as it presents itself, it does not need anything added to it. People are perfectly suited to their essential tasks without advanced learning. The erudition and refinement so admired by the confucians were seen as separative and divisive by the daoists.
The same argument applies to benevolence, righteousness, skill, and profit. Here again, the terms benevolence and righteous are criticized for their public affectation. They are ego drives and not natural to the centered and balanced human being. When the hollow falseness of these ego drives are clearly seen, people will naturally return to duty (what needs to get done) and compassion, for both duty and compassion are already constituent qualities of the Dao. They do not need synthetic cultivation for the sake of appearance.
Verse 19 concludes:
These three statements are not enough. One more step is necessary:
Look at plain silk: hold uncarved wood. The self dwindles; desire fades.
We are asked to return to the perfect and direct simplicity of nature untarnished by the trivial affectations of falsely cultivated human beings. True or authentic cultivation is that which arises from the primal context of the Dao. This is identified as “plain silk” and “uncarved wood”. Where the confucian world raised human culture above the raw vigor of nature untrammeled by human intervention, daoist philosophy places primal nature above that of all human cultural achievement and affectation. The self that “dwindles” in taoist philosophy is, precisely, the cultivated and affected self that sees its smallness in the context of vast nature that holds everything in its loving and trustworthy embrace.

Tags: Affection, Learning, Leadership, trust