Each seemingly individual part of a whole is potentially dangerous (and generally useless) if it doesn’t function in harmony. What’s true for the chariot in this verse of the Tao Te Ching is true for you as well. Your life needs to have a relationship with the Tao, and that relationship is characterized by Lao-tzu as a bond forged by humility. In other words, wholeness and humility are one and the same, so update the way you think about your relationship to life, and play your part “in accordance with the whole.”
Here’s what Lao-tzu seems to be instructing as I read and interpret this verse of the ancient Tao Te Ching:
Cultivate your relationship with the planet.
Live in the spirit of wholeness, knowing that you have a role as one of the parts of the Tao. Remind yourself that you cannot interfere with the Tao and live a life of greatness. This means respecting the environment in every way by living in an Earth-friendly manner as a part of its oneness. Become an advocate for conservation. Make time to pick up and recycle trash. Drive an environmentally friendly automobile, or better yet, walk in peace to as many places as possible. Wholeness means maintaining a sense of balance with the all-providing, gentle, nonpushy Tao. In humility, you’re able to feel your own tiny role in this great drama orchestrated by your Sources. You’ll see what Lao-tzu means by: “A man’s life brings nothing unless he lives in accordance with the whole universe.”
Change the way you think of yourself from being separate to seeing yourself in all that you encounter.
As you live in wholeness, notice how you begin to feel a connection to all of life, rather than the separateness that your ego prefers. See yourself in everyone you encounter, in every creature on our planet, in the forest and the oceans and the sky—the more you do, the more you’ll want to stay in a state of cooperation rather than competition. You’ll also feel more inclined to reject the concept that there is a “them.” Practice this way of being and notice that the type of happiness that may have eluded you for a lifetime is part of the oneness you begin to enjoy.
Here’s how Rumi expressed this sentiment:
If you put your heart against the earth with me, in serving every creature, our Beloved will enter you from our sacred realm and we will be, we will be so happy.
Do the Tao Now
Go for a walk today and think in wholeness terms with all that you encounter during a 30-minute period. See yourself in those you might otherwise have judged, including the very old, very young, obese, disabled, or indigent. As you look at them, remind yourself, I share the same originating spirit with every one of these people. This will help you feel whole by shifting from your ego to the virtue of the Tao.
40th Verse
Returning is the motion of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
The 10,000 things are born of being.
Being is born of nonbeing.
Living by
Returning and Yielding
I see one of the greatest teachings of the Tao Te Ching here in the shortest of its 81 passages. If you can master the wisdom in these four lines, you’ll be as happy, content, and centered in the Tao as any sage.
With the first word, returning, you’re being nudged toward an understanding of the basic principle of your existence. Without needing to leave your body, you’re asked to die while alive. You accomplish this by realizing that you’re one of the 10,000 things that has appeared in the world of form. What Lao-tzu is expressing here in the 40th verse is what contemporary quantum physics has confirmed many centuries later: Particles do not come from particles at the tiniest subatomic level. Instead, when the infinitesimally small specks are collided in a particle accelerator, there’s nothing remaining but waves of “particle-less” energy. In order for you, a much bigger speck, to form, you must have come from an originating spirit.
Now Lao-tzu may have known nothing of quantum physics in the 6th century b.c., but he was teaching an essential truth even then: It’s spirit that gives life. So to truly live out your destiny as a piece of the originating Tao, you must shed your ego and return to spirit—or you can wait until your body dies and make your return trip at that time.
Six centuries after Lao-tzu dictated the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching, the man who wrote a huge percentage of the New Testament also spoke of whence we come. Formerly called Saul of Tarsus, he became known as Saint Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. In his letter to the people of Ephesus, he wrote: “You were created to be like God, and so you must please him and be truly holy” (Eph. 4:24). This is an invitation for us all to return to what we came from, which is loving, kind, and not exclusive in any way.
How is this accomplished, according to Saint Paul and Lao-tzu, who emphasizes this point in many of the verses of the Tao Te Ching? You do so by yielding your ego, surrendering, and being humble. To that end, in his letter to the people of Corinth, Saint Paul quotes Jesus directly: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul then goes on
