Expect to see the essential nature of others by remaining silent.
Deliberately bite your tongue and zip your lips at the precise moment that you’re tempted to get involved in the lives of those around you. Become aware of your inclination to tell others, particularly your family members, how they should be conducting their lives. Even if you hold off for a few moments before you butt in to someone else’s business, you’re on your way to allowing those around you to find their anchor of the universe within themselves. This new discipline of resisting your habit to get involved by pausing before interfering will enable you to see how capable everyone truly is when they’re in the energy field of someone who allows rather than dictates.
Do the Tao Now
Print or copy the first two lines of this 37th verse: “The Tao does nothing, but leaves nothing undone.” Read the words repeatedly until you’ve committed them to memory; then go for a 30-minute walk and take note of their truth. The air, sky, clouds, grass, wind, and flowers . . . nothing natural that you see is undone, but nothing is taking place to work it all out. It is all accomplished by the truth of these words.
I’m reminded of a 13th-century poem by Rumi called “Nibble At Me,” which applies perfectly to this section of the Tao Te Ching:
Nibble at me.
Don’t gulp me down.
How often is it you have a guest in your house
who can fix everything?
Let your all-knowing guest fix things while you live naturally.
38th Verse
A truly good man is not aware of his goodness
and is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good
and is therefore not good.
The master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.
The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self.
The highest kindness is to give without condition.
The highest justice is to see without preference.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.
The great master follows his own nature
and not the trappings of life.
It is said:
“He stays with the fruit and not the fluff.”
“He stays with the firm and not the flimsy.”
“He stays with the true and not the false.”
Living Within
Your Own Nature
Here’s the message behind this seemingly paradoxical verse of the Tao Te Ching: Your nature is to be good because you came from the Tao, which is goodness. But when you’re trying to be good, your essential nature becomes inoperative. In your effort to be good, moral, or obedient, you lose touch with your Tao nature.
There’s one sentence in this verse that I pondered for days before writing this short essay: “When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.” I felt perplexed because it seemed so contradictory to what the Tao Te Ching was teaching. Finally, in a moment of contemplation while I meditated on a drawing of Lao-tzu, it became clear to me: Nature is good without knowing it were the exact words I heard in my meditation. I then understood what Lao-tzu seemed to want me to convey about this somewhat confusing (to me) 38th verse.
Live by your essential nature, the Tao, which is oneness; it has no polarity. Yet the moment that you know you’re good, you introduce the polarity of “good” versus “bad,” which causes you to lose your connection to the Tao. Then you introduce something new—you figure that if you can’t be good, you’ll try to be moral. And what is morality but standards of right and wrong that you try to uphold? As Lao-tzu seems to be saying to me, The Tao is oneness; it has no standards for you to follow. In other words, the Tao just is; it isn’t doing anything, yet it leaves nothing undone. There’s no morality; there is only the unattached Tao. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair, but it is essential nature, and you’re encouraged to be true to your own.
As morality is lost, the idea of ritual surfaces, so you try to live in accordance with rules and customs that have defined “your people” for centuries. But I could almost hear Lao-tzu saying: The Tao is infinite and excludes no one. Rituals keep you disconnected from the Tao, and you lose them by trying. So you rely upon laws, further dividing yourself and creating chaos for yourself. Again, the Tao just is its own true, essential nature—it has no laws, rituals, morality, or goodness. Observe it and live within its nature. In other words, act without being concerned for your own ego. Give as the Tao does, without condition or trying to be good, moral, or just. Just give to all without preference, as Lao-tzu advises.
I admit that living by this 38th verse may be the total opposite of what you’ve learned in this lifetime. It certainly represents both an intellectual and a behavioral challenge for me at times. You may appreciate knowing that many of the scholars whom I researched regarding this verse said that Lao-tzu wrote it (and the next one) in response to his opposition to Confucius, his contemporary who laid out specific edicts and codes of conduct for the people. What Lao-tzu seemed
