Understanding the Tao te Ching Chapter 27: Compassion for All

Good walkers leave no tracks, good speakers make no errors, good counters need no abacus, good wardens have no need for bolts and locks for no one can get by them. Good binders can dispense with rope and cord, yet none can unloose their hold.

Therefore the wise man trusting in goodness always saves men, for there is no outcast to him. Trusting in goodness he saves all things for there is nothing valueless to him. This is recognizing concealed values.

Therefore the good man is the instructor of the evil man, and the evil man is the good man's wealth. He who does not esteem his instructors or value his wealth, though he be otherwise intelligent, becomes confused. Herein lies the significance of spirituality.

Interpretation:

The first stanza of the chapter observes that, when you are very good at a thing, it can sometimes appear as if you are not doing it at all.  You have made it your nature.

The second stanza observes that a wise man chooses compassion.  Choose to include all people in his scope of care.  This is in keeping with earlier messages in the Tao te ching.  Since we all rise from the same source, can we say that one of us is more or less worth of care "saving?"  

Translations of the final stanza vary widely.  Looking at the characters:

不善人者，善人之資。不貴
其師，不愛其資，雖智大迷，是謂要妙。

the first line does clearly state that the "bad" or "not to be looked down on" person is the wise person's treasure.  The second sentence may or may not agree with Goddard's translation.  The character 不 is negative and seems to suggest that the wise man does not  愛 "love" his treasure.  Perhaps in light of earlier chapters on non-attachment this stanza is meant to suggest that the wise man values all men but does not become attached to them.

Understanding the Tao te Ching Chapter 26: Remaining Calm

The heavy is the root of the light; the quiet is master of motion.

Therefore the wise man in all the experience of the day will not depart from dignity. Though he be surrounded with sights that are magnificent, he will remain calm and unconcerned.

How does it come to pass that the Emperor, master of ten thousand chariots, has lost the mastery of the Empire? Because being flippant himself, he has lost the respect of his subjects; being passionate himself, he has lost the control of the Empire.

Interpretation:

Here the author ties the issue of opposites to individual life.  We know from earlier chapters that light and dark make each other, and the neither good nor evil can exist without the other.  So if we wish to remain on the path, how do we react to the events around us?  Too much excitement and we lose control, too much control and we lose passion.  The author suggests to us that we do not overreact to any experience that we have.  When the author asks how the master of the chariots can lose mastery of the kingdom, we can read them to say, if we cannot master our own responses, we cannot control the world around us.



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Understanding the Tao te Ching Chapter 25: The Greatness of All Things

25.

There is Being that is all-inclusive and that existed before Heaven and Earth. Calm, indeed, and incorporeal! It is alone and changeless!

Everywhere it functions unhindered. It thereby becomes the world's mother. I do not know its nature; if I try to characterize it, I will call it Dao.

If forced to give it a name, I will call it the Great. The Great is evasive, the evasive is the distant, the distant is ever coming near.

Tao is Great. So is Heaven great, and so is Earth and so also is the representative of Heaven and Earth.

Man is derived from nature, nature is derived from Heaven, Heaven is derived from Dao. Dao is self-derived.

Interpretation:

What existed the moment before the big bang?  It did not know time, it did not know space or movement.  Does that mean there was nothing there?  The Christians call the force from the time before time God.  The first stanzas of the Bible are very similar to the the first stanza here.

"1 In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

The second stanza asserts that the Tao, being unlimited acts without limitation and is the source of all things.

In the third stanza, the author makes a strange statement.  They say, "The Great (tao) is evasive and distant, the distant is ever coming near."  Why do you think the author would describe the Tao as "distant" and "ever coming near" when they in the same chapter make the observation that all things are part of the Tao?

The final two stanzas assert a message that at first seems to disagree with the earlier statements about the ego.    Here the author says that all things are great and possessed of greatness by their nature.  They are all of the Dao and the Dao is great, therefor all of us are great also.  

Knowing that the author believe that serving the ego (asserting greatness) is contrary to the way, how are we to take this new message of greatness?  Can we have greatness without ego?  What does this greatness mean is a world where all things are also suffused with this greatness?  Does this message parallel Jesus' sermon on the mount?  Does it differ?