Tao Te Ching, Verse 2, Part IV

“People through finding something beautiful
Think something else unbeautiful,
Through finding one man fit
Judge another unfit.
Life and death, though stemming from each other, seem to conflict as stages of change,
Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,
Long and short as measures of contrast,
High and low as degrees of relation;
But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice
And what is the was of what shall be,
The sanest man
Sets up no deed,
Lays down no law,
Takes everything that happens as it comes,
As something to animate, not to appropriate,
To earn, not to own,
To accept naturally without self-importance:
If you never assume importanceYou never lose it.”
(Tao Te Ching, Verse 2, Bynner Translation)


“The sanest man sets up no deed, lays down no law, and takes everything that happens as it comes.”
I’d intended to wrap this up in the first fifteen days of the month, but I didn’t. Now I’m out of time. Too bad. I really do believe that eventually I’ll fall into a rhythm, eventually these posts won’t be ill-prepared, poorly written bits of nonsense. For now, that’s the best I can do. Luckily the ideas that I’d intended to address this month are recurring themes in the Tao, so there’ll be other chances. Since I seem to lack the ability to adequately comment on verse 2, I’ll leave you with the commentary of Siji Tzu:

"Walk through a garden. Do you see beautiful flowers? If they are beautiful to the eye and nose, then you must also label what is ugly. Describe a neighbor as a good person and another person becomes bad. Loud and quiet. Soft and hard. Before and after. The existence of each creates the other. Teach without word. Study and then forget. Let the tide ebb and flow."