In these notes I reflect on five verses of the Tao Te Ching, as translated by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1997¹. Although I had previously skimmed the Tao Te Ching, I never truly connected. My earlier readings were superficial: the Tao Te Ching is not a novel to be read quickly and linearly; it is more like mathematics, demanding engagement and hard work. And, like mathematics, it reveals its depth gradually, with each new reading offering deeper insights and richer meaning.

While writing notes helps focus my thinking, I wasn't ready to commit to annotating all 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching. As an initial commitment, I selected five verses for reflection. What did I not understand? Could I make sense of it? How did I disagree? What new thoughts did the verse inspire? I repeatedly revisited both the verses and my notes, as well as other contextualizing material. Because the Tao Te Ching addresses profound themes, I restricted myself to a few hundred words per verse; it would be easy to write far more. Thus, although these notes have given me a foothold in understanding the text, they remain early steps, not likely of interest to anyone versed in Daoism. But perhaps they are of methodological interest to other people aiming to deeply process similar texts.

Verse 49: Trust and Power

      The wise have no mind of their own,
      finding it in the minds
      of ordinary people.

      They're good to good people
      and they're good to bad people.
      Power is goodness.
      They trust people of good faith
      and they trust people of bad faith.
      Power is trust.

      They mingle their life with the world,
      they mix their mind up with the world.
      Ordinary people look after them.
      Wise souls are children.
      

1. "The wise have no mind of their own, finding it in the minds of ordinary people": this can't literally be true. But perhaps it means a wise person understands they are not that special? Most wisdom is found in the world, often in surprising places, not in our own minds, no matter how brilliant we (or others) may think we are. So the wise listen well and deeply to many people, not just listening to others they judge wise. Certainly, they don't wallow in self-absorption. Or perhaps the line represents a deference to everyday will. Which might seem silly, but as a governance mechanism (democracy) it has worked surprisingly well².
2. "They're good to good people and they're good to bad people." An idea that appears in many traditions: that being good is worthwhile in itself, independent of the beneficiary. The justification may be selfish (you benefit by being good), or broadly altruistic (the world benefits). I wonder where this idea first appeared? It's in superficial contradiction to the tit-for-tat strategy in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. I'm sympathetic: tit-for-tat presumes the game continues. When possible, the better response is usually to stop playing and instead find good people to play games with. That said: I admire people who deliberately work to help people who have done bad things. The degree of hope is tremendously moving. An acquaintance used to work as a therapist for men who had abused their wives. That's a marvellous act, both her choice – it could not have been easy work, and she had many other options – and also speaks well of the society that supports it. It may illustrate the intent of the line: she was being good to people who had done bad³, but that didn't mean she would put up with bad treatment from them. It's interesting that achieving safety required considerable institutional support.
3. "Power is goodness": Empirically this is often false! What could they mean by this? Hammurabi famously (and somewhat reasonably) used the defense of the powerless as the justification for his own power. You can also read Hammurabi's (and similar, right up to the modern day) declarations as cynical propaganda. In practice I believe there's much variation in true underlying intent. The idea is admirable as an aspiration: what would such a world be like? How can we design institutions that align power with good? You can view ideas like democracy and markets and the invisible hand and separation of powers as (partially successful) attempts in this direction. In practice, power often insulates people from the consequences of their actions, and leads to their corruption. How to ensure power is goodness?
4. "They trust people of good faith and they trust people of bad faith. Power is trust." The powerful, being in a position to retaliate, may receive preferential treatment. Though they may also have a larger number of untrustworthy individuals attempt to exploit them. Another perspective is the enormous benefit in a position of default trust. Many of the people I know with the best lives are extremely trusting, and sometimes have been taken advantage of. And yet they benefit overall from their position of default trust. The level of reward depends on the ambient level of goodness in their environment: if it's high, default trust is rewarding; if it's low, default trust may lead to horrors. Perhaps one of the most interesting things about religions is that they often aspire to (and sometimes succeed?⁴) change that ambient level.
5. "They mingle their life with the world, they mix their mind up with the world": This is consonant, again, with humility about their understanding, realizing that no matter how much they know, there is far more wisdom elsewhere in the world. I'm reminded of Emerson's famous comment: "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Though Emerson isn't paying sufficient deference to the wisdom in others. But he understands the tension, and appreciates that it is worth learning to navigate. Something I could learn to do better myself!
6. "Ordinary people look after them." I don't understand the intent. Does it mean a wise person is dependent, relying on others to look after them? Or is this a reminder that we all look after each other? One remarkable consequence of the division of labour is that it both alienates us from overall purpose and produces much abundance and capacity to care for one another.
7. "Wise souls are children." This is the line most obviously close to conventional wisdom, indeed, to a platitude⁵. One problem with platitudes is that they're usually not taken seriously: people will nod and then behave contrary to the idea. One helpful thing about this verse is that some of the earlier lines describe child-like behaviour, and challenge you to consider whether it is right to behave in that way. So it creates tension that forces you to engage much more seriously with the final line. This is a good context to have created.
8. Wrong ideas mainly: Most of this seemed wrong to me. And yet it was interesting and stimulating to read in some depth. Closely related: I didn't really understand any of this, upon a superficial read. Even when I thought I did, as soon as I began asking questions I realized I hadn't understood. I was reading in a glazed state, ingesting words but not doing any deep processing. It took writing these notes to get anywhere.

Verse 37: Over all

      The Way never does anything,
      and everything gets done.
      If those in power could hold to the Way,
      the ten thousand things
      would look after themselves.
      If even so they tried to act,
      I'd quiet them with the nameless,
      the natural.

      In the unnamed, in the unshapen,
      is not wanting.
      In not wanting is stillness.
      In stillness all under heaven rests.
      

1. "The Way never does anything, and everything gets done": I don't know what this means. It is perhaps an attempt to create confusion in the mind of the reader, creating more mystery around the recurring entity referred to as the Way.
2. "If those in power could hold to the Way, the ten thousand things would look after themselves": There's a lot of advice to the powerful in the Tao Te Ching. It's often deferential or even sycophantic to power. Power is presumed to be static in the sense that it's something some people have and others do not. Still, the very viewpoint – offering advice to power – is subversive. I wonder how surprised the author (or authors and editors) of the Tao Te Ching would be at the impact on world affairs? They've had far more impact than any of the "powerful" at the time of composition⁶.
3. "In the unnamed, in the unshapen, is not wanting. In not wanting is stillness." This is, ironically, describing a genuine state of mind that one can cultivate. It's not the same as Iris Murdoch's idea of unselfing, but in my experience unselfing – connecting more deeply to the universe around us, and losing something of our sense of self – is often a good preparation for not wanting. And perhaps the reverse as well: when you cease wanting it can help you better commune with your surroundings.
4. "In stillness all under heaven rests": This seems like a throwaway line, mostly re-expressing the earlier points. It's a lovely image, though – maybe that is the point!
5. Wu Wei: This verse is concerned with wu wei, a repeated idea in the Tao Te Ching, meaning non-action or effortless action. This could easily be the subject of a long essay (or lifetime). I will make just a few observations.
   1. Harmony and our animal nature: One read is that wu wei means being passive, living a life of quiet contemplation in harmony with the wold. "In not wanting is stillness. In stillness all under heaven rests". But human beings are (in part) pan African plains apes. We are animals. We all have ambitions and desires and a drive for change; in some of us this is very strong. To deny that is itself to live in disharmony with our nature. I wonder to what extent wu wei is a coherent notion at all⁷?
   2. Connection to flow: The verse is closely connected to the notion of "flow" in modern psychology. In a state of flow we act in near-effortless harmony with our environment.
      1. Against flow: Flow is often idolized. I think that's a mistake. It's best adapted to activities like tennis, where you want to spend most of a match in flow, unconflicted with goal or environment. Or acting on stage, where actors ideally identify with their character. But while practicing you'll often be out of flow, learning to do things which at first are awkward and uncomfortable⁸. Often, if you're in flow too much it means you're learning little. This is true even for relatively well-defined tasks, like playing tennis. And it's even more true for highly creative tasks, which require that you get used to failure, to periods of (so-called) "unproductivity" and frustration, where the very notion of efficiency is a mistake. This doesn't mean you don't want to spend some time in flow. But it's a mistake to idolize flow as an aspiration. A better question: what's the right balance between flow and uncomfortable work, and how can we move closer to that balance?
      2. Higher flow: That said, there is also a notion that I think of as higher flow, in which you are comfortable with persistence, gumption, embracing mistakes, not being ashamed to be "bad" at things, living equably in the world, being happy to be in a state of creative uncertainty. These are skills too! And skills you can get better at. Children often start out very good at them. They lose that as they become more conscious of themselves as social beings, and begin to internalize social judgements. "Am I doing the right thing? Is this good enough? Will my friends still like me?" And then, they (sometimes) grow through that. (No intent to claim I've grown through it: I have in some ways, but I'm still very much working on others!)
   3. E. O. Wilson: Much stress is caused by tension between our individual selfish desires and group needs. Wilson points out this tension between individual and group is founded in evolutionary history, and appears in all eusocial species, not only human beings. As an example: many human systems (certainly, our economic system) serve the group more than they serve most individuals. Think of how many people have trouble finding an intrinsically satisfying job. Even many "good" jobs are alienating and dull, poorly suited for individuals, existing because they serve an economically valuable collective purpose. There's also many softer versions of this tension. When we reluctantly feel "I should do such-and-such" [perhaps go to the office Christmas party] it's often the result of such a conflict. My view is that such conflicts aren't to be rejected or regarded as bad. Rather, they're at the heart of human life, and learning to understand them deeply, sometimes even embrace them, is part of living well.
   4. Conflicted nature: More generally, I take wu wei to be a critique of conflicted nature. But conflicted nature is only bad when it's all you ever experience. It is a condition to embrace and understand, while realizing that being unconflicted some of the time is valuable. There is some viewpoint in which one must choose between the Will to Power and submission to nature. And another healthier viewpoint in which they actually work together. Ideally, wu wei is about this latter.
6. A modern version: We understand many things today where the Tao Te Ching is too simplistic. We saw above an example: the lack of understanding that humans are animals, with animal drives. It's interesting to ponder rewriting the Tao Te Ching to correct those errors⁹. Related: the idea of writing discovery fiction for the Tao Te Ching (or other similar works).

Verse 1: Taoing

      The way you can go
      isn't the real way.
      The name you can say
      isn't the real name.

      Heaven and earth
      begin in the unnamed:
      name's the mother
      of the ten thousand things.

      So the unwanting soul
      sees what's hidden,
      and the ever-wanting soul
      sees only what it wants.

      Two things, one origin,
      but different in name,
      whose identity is mystery.
      Mystery of all mysteries!
      The door to the hidden.
      

1. "The way you can go isn't the real way. The name you can say isn't the real name. Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed": The Tao Te Ching begins with a warning! Words and internal models – our own minds – might be our reality. But they are not reality! The text which is to follow isn't reality. It's a little tricky, since we (and the words) are part of reality. But they are only a tiny part, and we shouldn't confuse words with the whole reality¹⁰.
2. "So the unwanting soul sees what's hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants": Literally false, but pointing at something real. Be careful what (and how much) you want, for it will change what you see. This can be a very useful pattern. It can also be immensely destructive. I am skeptical the unwanting soul sees what's hidden. I think the unwanting soul often sees little. But it can be a good transition state and preparation to see.
3. "Two things, one origin, but different in name, whose identity is mystery. Mystery of all mysteries! The door to the hidden." As nearly as I understand, what's going on is that both the Way (the Tao) and the named have their origin in the Way. That Way is fundamentally a mystery, but is the source of all things. It's pretty close to a form of pantheism. Also to Korzybski's "the map is not the territory". Though it's more like "the territory is the source of both map and territory, but don't confuse the former for the latter", and with the caveat that we don't have direct access to the territory. It's also somewhat like the relationship between our written mathematics and the underlying Platonic reality. Something I like about this is the reminder that it is a mystery.

Verse 48: Unlearning

      Studying and learning daily you grow larger.
      Following the Way daily you shrink.
      You get smaller and smaller.
      So you arrive at not doing.
      You do nothing and nothing's not done.

      To run things,
      don't fuss with them.
      Nobody who fusses
      is fit to run things.
      

1. "Studying and learning daily you grow larger. Following the Way daily you shrink. You get smaller and smaller. So you arrive at not doing. You do nothing and nothing's not done": Again, as in the others, a puzzle is set up. Surely studying and learning and growing larger is good! So how is it in contradiction to the Way? Why does following the Way make you shrink? Does that make following the Way bad? Or does it mean studying and learning is bad? I suspect it's simply meant as a false dichotomy. Iris Murdoch's notion of unselfing comes to mind again: getting more connected to the universe, and less self-involved. Einstein put it interestingly, describing his life as a flight "from the I and the We to the It"; also his comment that "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious". I must say, I prefer Einstein's concrete engagement with the unself to the Tao Te Ching's too-abstract notion! When you read deeply into Einstein's writing and his life, it's astounding just how deeply and with how much concrete detail he explored the universe (and, indeed, the mysterium tremendum). But Einstein had the advantage that in modern times we can be far better connected to the unself. An example, one of many: his abandonment of the cosmological constant after Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe! I also admire Feynman's passionate commitment to the primacy of "doubt and uncertainty and not knowing". Again: carried out in great detail. I'm far afield here! To refocus on the line from the Tao Te Ching: perhaps it should simply be taken to mean focusing one's studying and learning on connection to something larger¹¹.
2. "To run things, don't fuss with them. Nobody who fusses is fit to run things." Le Guin notes that the word she translates as "fuss" is considered problematic by translators, and that another translation is "diplomatic". The result is: "To run things, be undiplomatic. No diplomat is fit to run things". I find this translation easier to understand! Diplomacy is often taken to mean leaving hard truths unstated. (Good diplomacy I suspect is often the opposite.) And that makes it harder to run things well, since it makes it harder to establish the truth as common knowledge. That said: what does this have to do with the first half of the verse? Maybe it's that insofar as we deal with truth, it is larger than us; we occupy less space, in some sense. Whereas our lies and misconceptions and misunderstandings are only in our self.

Verse 35: Humane power

      Hold fast to the great thought
      and all the world will come to you,
      harmless, peaceable, serene.

      Walking around, we stop
      for music, for food.
      But if you taste the Way
      it's flat, insipid.
      It looks like nothing much,
      it sounds like nothing much.
      And yet you can't get enough of it.
      

1. "Hold fast to the great thought and all the world will come to you, harmless, peaceable, serene." I like it! It's so often true. And hard to remember, so the reminder is valuable. It's easier to be impatient. Something I enjoy in the Tao Te Ching is the emphasis on dualities. "Be more patient" and "be more impatient" are both excellent pieces of advice. Indeed, sometimes they're both excellent pieces of advice in the exact same situation. It can be a bit like driving a car through an intersection where an accident is about to happen: it may be an excellent idea to greatly speed up or slow down, but staying the same speed may be a mistake¹².
2. "if you taste the Way, it's flat, insipid. It looks like nothing much, it sounds like nothing much. And yet you can't get enough of it." I don't understand this. At this stage of my understanding, it seems mostly worth noting as an assertion, part of my process of figuring out the intent behind the text. One interesting metaphorical meaning: suppose one identifies the Way with the underlying laws, the source of all things. Such laws are, in fact, rather abstract and inhuman and hard to connect with; insipid isn't entirely inaccurate. Steven Weinberg's observation "The more the universe is comprehensible the more it also seems pointless" may be related.

General observations

1. "The 5,000 character classic": I love this alternate title for the Tao Te Ching. It suggests a task everyone should attempt: what is your personal 5,000 word classic? How much wisdom can you distill into 5,000 words?
2. 100 word classics? It's enjoyable to think about even more condensed versions. A few that come to mind:
   1. Jesus's two great commandments: (1) "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"; and (2) "Love your neighbour as yourself".
   2. Keanu Reeves' spontaneous response to "What do you think happens when we die?": "I know that the ones who love us will miss us."
   3. Feynman's famous observation: "If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."
3. Puzzles as a way to cause serious engagement with what seems simple and familiar
   1. I resisted the idea of a deep reading of the Tao Te Ching for rather snotty reasons: "the ideas in the Tao Te Ching are very simple, there's no need for deep reading". It's true that the ideas are on the whole much simpler than doing difficult mathematics¹³. However, crucially: an idea can be simple and important, but also hard to internalize and understand the consequences of, to act on, and to understand the limits of. The Tao Te Ching is concerned with many such ideas. If they were written out plainly, we'd nod our heads, think "that's obvious", and then continue acting contrary to them in our everyday life. By presenting ideas in a more puzzling form, the Tao Te Ching forces deeper engagement.
   2. An example, just to illustrate the point: "Be kind to others". Sure, we say, sounds right, and move on to other things. But in practice being kind is fraught with tensions which make it hard. You didn't get enough sleep. Your neck hurts. Your kids are giving you a hard time. The person reminds you of your ex. Most of the verses artificially create tension which make it hard to accept their conclusions. I believe they're doing that to get you to sit with the ideas and engage with them much more slowly and at length. The basic media form is then: Each verse is a single puzzle, usually aimed at one main idea, often an idea that is conventional, but bears deeper engagement and reflection.
   3. A different approach (fiction and history): You can create this kind of tension in other ways. In fiction, the narrative forces characters to consider such "simple" problems, but in contexts which concretely illustrate the tensions which may be involved. It's a different approach to problematizing the familiar.
   4. Incidentally, Paul Dirac once complained: "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." The Tao Te Ching illustrates why this is valuable: as I said, it forces us to question and more deeply engage with ideas we already think we understand. That does not mean, however, that every way of problematizing the familiar is equally valuable!
4. After writing these notes, I'm enjoying the other verses more! I'm still often stymied or uncomprehending. But I understand more easily. And I suspect writing notes on a few more verses (and perhaps on structure, see below) would help me get more out of the remaining verses. Indeed, I suspect that once I've passed some threshold of understanding, reading the Tao Te Ching will be a pleasure and highly meaningful(?)
5. Notes on structure: I suspect I'd learn a lot by writing notes on the overall structure of the Tao Te Ching, and perhaps it would help me understand the local structure better. Incidentally, in this vein it was rewarding to ask ChatGPT to "take the (metaphorical) Fourier transform" of the text.
6. A generous enough read will make almost anything worthwhile: In fandoms, you often see fans put more and more into their understanding of a book or show. It can make the experience very rich, even when the underlying source material isn't very good. A benefit of the Tao Te Ching is that it is a rich focus for deep reflection.
7. Take seriously, but don't venerate. The aim is to metabolize: Some people, especially fans, venerate classic texts, and place them on a pedestal. I think that's a mistake. Not because we're smarter than the author. But culture advances, and sometimes ideas familiar to us supersede older ideas. When you've decided a text is worth taking seriously, you should attack the ideas, try to digest them, truly metabolize them.
8. As an act of communion: Something that puzzled me is why some people enjoy the Tao Te Ching even without deep reading. Le Guin points out that the beauty of the text plays an essential role. It is not "merely" style, it is content. I respond very strongly to beauty in many contexts – in art, music, sculpture, and many other places – but not so much in text. And that is perhaps why I had so much trouble connecting.
9. What will I take away?
   1. I've learned many ideas about writing that are new and exciting to me. I'm especially excited about the approach to problematizing the familiar. I've puzzled why there is so little interesting modern writing on "big issues". Many terrific books are written, but often on very narrow subjects. And I think it's because it can be hard to say something fresh about big issues.
   2. I'm less sure I'll take away that much from the ideas themselves. This is partly due to the chosen form: there are few of Hemingway's true sentences. I'm not sure any of the sentences will stick in my mind. And to some extent it's that the Tao Te Ching suffers the curse of success: many of its ideas are now carried by our culture in improved forms.
   3. I don't think I'll immediately return. But I will be curious to observe how much the ideas stay in mind. And I may return in future.

Footnotes

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