The Great Tao is universal like a flood.
How can it be turned to the right or to the left?
All creatures depend on it,
And it denies nothing to anyone.
It does no work,
But it makes no claims for itself.
It clothes and feeds all,
But it does not lord it over them:
Thus, it may be called ‘the Little’.
All things return to it as to their home,
But it does not lord it over them:
Thus it may be called ‘the Great’.
It is just because it does not wish to be great
That its greatness is fully realised.
When the river is on flood there is nowhere that is not the river. And though the river turns right, the Tao is
there no less than if the river had turned left. Indeed, the Tao is like the gravity that acts
upon the waters; and it is like the ocean that is waiting at the river’s end.
All creatures depend on it,
And it denies nothing to anyone.
Even when a creature dies the Tao remains as the consciousness that
animated the creature. The Tao cannot be
lost; it is the constant space in which all living and dying occur and in which
all living and dying are the same thing.
We partake of it; it animates us and we can feel it in our deepest sense
of selfhood. It cannot possibly fail
us. If we are able to doubt the Tao then
that ability guarantees that we can be denied.
We depend on it, and yet the Tao allows us to partake of its own
immutable nature that we do not, in fact, need to depend on it because we are
already self-sufficient.
It does its work,
But it makes no claims for itself.
Those who make claims for the work they have done are just the puppets
of the Tao, but yet imagine themselves the authors and the doers. When we come to see that we are just the
vehicle for a higher power, we too, cease to take credit for the work that we
do and want nothing other than to praise the true author of all that we are.
It clothes and feeds all,
But it does not lord it over them:
Thus, it may be called ‘the Little’.
When we go out to work to buy food, it is the Tao that sets up the whole
charade. At no point are we
independently acting; the whole project is the Tao at work. But we are not lorded over! If we were we
would be acutely aware that there is a master who is granting all the goods of
Earth to us. But so humble is the Tao,
so ‘Little’, that most of us never even suspect the reality of the Tao and see
only ourselves and an illusory autonomy.
All things return to it as to their home,
But it does not lord it over them:
Thus it may be called ‘the Great’.
When the illusion falls away, we cannot fail to return to the Tao and it
is in this moment of recognition that the tables are turned: we are nothing,
and the Tao alone is ‘Great’. This is a
beautiful moment is anybody’s life. With
a sudden release, we feel the weight that we were carrying when we imagined we
were the great ones.
It is just because it does not wish to be great
That its greatness is fully realised.
We, on the other hand, do wish to be great. We come up with all sorts of plans and
schemes that will raise us above our fellow men and women, and fixated, in our
minds, we go against the natural patterns of rise and fall that keep our
progress slow and steady; we ward off failure, we go to all measures to avoid
it, but this pent up force of the Tao will always have its way in the end. The greatness we aimed for turns into abject
failure. And all this the Tao lets us do…for
It does not wish to always play the Lord.
It is a moment of great liberation when we realise that we no longer
need to be great. Our confidence and self-esteem
is not needed when we have the peace of the Primal Simplicity buoying us up in
every moment. We are safe, and secure
and realised. And this gives us options. We do not need to achieve what the world
considers to be achievement. The bliss
of achievement and respect is already felt deep inside as a warmth and a peace
that never goes away. So what to do with
ourselves when the world’s projects no longer inspire? We can follow our hearts
and do what we love to do! What else is there except to do what we want to do
for its own sake. And as every happy,
successful individual will tell us: when we are doing what we love, then
greatness is never far away – a greatness that we no longer even need.
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