Tao never makes any ado,
And yet it does everything.
If a ruler can cling to it,
All things will grow of themselves.
When they have grown and tend to make a stir,
It is time to keep them in their place by the aid of
the nameless Primal Simplicity,
Which alone can curb the desires of men.
When the desires of men are curbed, there will be
peace,
And the world will settle down of its own accord.
If we can only reconcile ourselves to the way things are; if we can find
our peace on the inside and cease always trying to manipulate nature in order
to meet our demands, then we will discover to our astonishment that all our
basic needs and desires will be met of their own accord. Like Jesus said: ‘look at the lilies of the
field – they do not labour or spin.’
This is because having our needs met is our birth right as a citizen of
this planet. When we find peace on the
inside, we will find life unfolding easily and naturally and without the need
for any fretting on our side.
Our work will issue from us easily and joyfully. The people will beat a path to our door
wishing to remunerate us for what we have done.
They seek out the fruits of our labour as naturally and as joyfully as
the bee seeks out the nectar of the flower.
If a ruler can cling to it,
All things will grow of themselves.
The ruler errs from the Tao when he starts to imagine how he wishes his
people to behave. And with these vision
in mind he issues laws and edicts designed to coerce the people into following
his vision. But there is no need for all
this interference. If the ruler is at
peace with himself he will trust his people and enjoy them. They will be left free to act as their desires
and instincts tell them. They will
regulate themselves. They will have the
native insight into what true infraction of the Tao is, and the transgressor
will be corrected in the best and most natural way.
When they have grown and tend to make a stir,
It is time to keep them in their place by the aid of
the nameless Primal Simplicity, Which alone can curb the desires of men.
When matters have grown and tend to make a stir – that is, when things
have departed from the Tao and grown out of balance – the usual remedy taken by
man is to correct them with the opposite course. An economy that has been allowed to develop too
much national debt must retrench and pass through a period of austerity by way
of correction. This is the usual course.
But here the sage is saying something rather different. For the trouble is with the above strategy is
that it shall before long go too far in the opposite direction. There is the danger that austerity will
become the new normal, and green shoots of economic growth will be suppressed
out of fear. This situation will continue
until all balance is lost. New
strategists come in and announce the wisdom of more spending, and soon the
original problem is repeated…and round we go.
So what is the sage recommending?
The return to primal simplicity is the stepping back from the world into
the realm of Emptiness: the abode of the Tao itself. At the level of the Tao none of this
disturbance is happening. The Tao is the
steady backdrop that remains even when we have lost touch with it and fallen
into imbalance. Abiding in the primal
simplicity gives us the peace and the patience to let balance restore itself
very naturally. It gives us the strength
to work hard and pay back the deficit, while knowing that our boundless energy
is arising from a limitless source.
Knowing what is backing us up, we do not need to fear poverty and we do
not need to adopt austerity as a policy.
We are confident that we can pay off the deficit and have enough to
spare. Our peace and our pleasure is
taken in that which need not be paid for.
Only when we find this shall our deficit creating desires by fulfilled
for free.
When the desires of men are curbed, there will be
peace,
And the world will settle down of its own accord.
This is the beautiful message of hope that we find in all the religions,
and the truth of it can be found within us all if we only take the trouble to
go within.
Say we desire a new sports car because we want the beauty and we want
the thrill of the speed and we want that feeling of warmth that we get from our
neighbour respect (and envy). Well, what
the sage is telling us here is that the essence of all these things is a
certain inner feeling. The sports car
makes us feel good in so many different ways.
When we find the Tao there is no sports car in our drive, but the exact
same feelings that the sports car gives are there in bucket loads. And this is the important lesson. We don’t really want the sports car itself,
we want the feelings that it gives us.
And these feelings can be gained in a way that is infinitely more
intelligent. We do not have to compete
and strive in the business world in order to find the Tao. We do not need to worry that our neighbours
are trying to steal our Tao, or that some mindless vandal will scrape a key
along the door in pure envy. The Tao is
ours. It is safe and pristine and
available to us whenever we want it.
When we gain this inner treasure our behaviour in the world completely
changes. We become calmer, simpler and
happier. Our actions are authentic and
necessary and entirely in keeping with the basic, inviolable order of
things. This is why the sage promises us
that the ‘world will settle own of its own accord.’
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