Book of Tao

1.

Words and names are not the way

They can't define the absolute

It's better that you look within

Hold your tongue and just be mute

Look within and look out too

You will not find a separation

Out there you see appearance

Within you see origination

Look within with wonder

At emptiness and bliss

For wonder names totality

Where nothing is amiss

The space within is always there

If you can moderate desire

A place of utter emptiness

And possibility entire

Lao Tzu begins the Book of Tao by telling us that the Tao, the absolute, cannot be defined with words. He says we must look for it. He will repeat this theme throughout. This looking or seeing is total seeing - looking out at the world of appearance and looking in at its origin in the spacious emptiness at the very center of our being. This emptiness is truly empty and truly great because it contains all possibility, all potential, and all that appears. It's the source of all that exists - and aware of itself as such. What a promise! He even tells us where to look. Look within for origin. Look without for creation. Look and see both ways simultaneously. Origin and creation are one!

Lao Tzu makes another promise. This emptiness that is totality is also bliss and wonder. Bliss is our true identity!

2.

Where beautiful and ugly

Do not stand in opposition

Where life and death or yes and no

Do not make a contradiction

Can you see the vacant place

Where good and bad and sad and merry

Disappear forevermore?

Where nothing ever is contrary

So stay within the emptiness

Unless you rise you never fall

Accepting that which comes your way

You are forever all in all

Good and bad, happy and sad, beautiful and ugly, all opposites and all contraries, all are appearances or conditions in awareness, in me. They all exist in my vacant center. I accept all conditions. I have no choice. I am made for acceptance. I am made open. I am all in all. I am all awareness that contains all objects, all events, all that is given, all that is presented by awareness.

Staying with awareness, emptiness, I am safe, no matter what is happening in the world. I do not overlook this, the source and container of all, this my true identity.

3.

If you love accumulation

Gain and increase every day

Thieves and robbers will be waiting

Just to take it all away

Best to be so empty-headed

That it seems you've lost it all

You will know you're on the way

Though others say you're at a stall

Do you want all the treasures of the world? Will they bring you happiness and joy? Are the rich happy? No matter how much you have, there's always more. You don't have the unlimited. But, rich or poor, you can be the unlimited! You can see it. Be empty headed. You can see boundless, unlimited awareness at the center of your being, in the place where you were told you had a head!

4.

This nothingness is like a well

Always giving, never taking

And all claims to origin

Neither wanting or forsaking

You know it's ever present

You find it where you have no face

It is a wondrous blessing

Original amazing grace

The Tao gives but asks no credit, does not lord it over creation. Unlimited, creative awareness exists at the center of your being, where you have no face. Look in a mirror. There's your face. But what is looking at the face in the mirror? Is it not pure awareness, the Tao itself, the core and origin of your existence, of all existence? This creative nothingness is your true identity.

5.

This emptiness is truly void

And infinitely capacious

It holds whatever comes its way

Eternally tenacious

Can you take whatever comes?

Though judgment calls it bad and good

Seeing is acceptance

And nothing to be understood

Tao, awareness is truly empty and void, open and capacious. It has to be. Its nature is to contain the world. It welcomes all and rejects nothing.

Seeing accepts all things, all things agreeable and disagreeable. Don't try to understand this acceptance. Just see that it is so. See that you are open to everything.

6.

Complete and full awareness

Is like an open valley

Of endless generation

That doesn't reach finale

It is a simple presence

It's a nothing you can see

You'll find it right at center

Wherever you may be

You are Tao. You are total awareness. You are the valley of the world. You contain the never ending succession of life, all that comes and goes. You are the valley-like openness, the still openness at the center of existence. Can you see this openness? See it as a void, an absence. Be it as a presence, a presence that generates and holds and nourishes all that appears from moment to moment.

7.

This presence is unlimited

Because it wasn't ever born

And it will not be perishing

Will never give you cause to mourn

It truly wants for nothing

It has no wishes of its own

It is the one and only

Eternally alone

It holds itself in vacancy

With no desire to advance

Remaining in simplicity

It merely witnesses the dance

The seer will remain behind

And never yearns for leaving home

Just living in the here and now

Prefers to stay unknown

Tao, awareness, nothingness has no limits, no boundaries in space, no boundaries in time. It has no beginning, no end. It has no divisions, no distinctions, no parts. It is forever one and forever alone. It cannot be divided between you and me. I am all of it. You are all of it. I am the one. You are the one. We are not separate, not two.

Can you stay with your true identity? Can you see it every day, each moment of every day? See it whenever it occurs to you to look. That's all you need to do. Become accustomed to seeing everyday. See your inner simplicity, and witness the dance of life. Look both ways! Look in at the simple awareness and out at the spontaneous rise and fall of events. You will see no separation. These are one, not separate, not two. You are whole and total!

8.

The seer flows like water

Lying low along the way

Nourishing whatever comes

To be held on display

The seer keeps to simple ways

And therefore is content

When joy or sorrow manifests

To give complete assent

If you can clearly be yourself

And never rise to interfere

Everyone will cherish you

And always hold you dear

Water symbolizes the Tao in many ways. Here Lao Tzu refers to its nourishing qualities. All life depends on water. It has supreme power over all living things, yet it makes no claim on what it creates. It does not seek preeminence. Water seeks the lowest places, and, in so doing, nourishes all it comes across. Can you see that you do the same? It is your nature to give life to all things. You give by giving awareness, consciousness to all things. It is your very nature to give. Can you see yourself giving life to all around you? Can you be this simple and clear presence?

9.

Don't fill a bowl

Till it's more than full

Or sharpen a blade

Till it must go dull

Don't pile up treasure

That comes at great cost

Approval and riches

Are easily lost

Can you only do

What's really needed

Then stop and withdraw

When your task is completed?

Enough is enough! Do you want to spend your life protecting your fame and possessions? Lao Tzu's natural way is to do only what is called for by the present moment. Do you want to give your life away to the pursuit of wealth? Do those who have more really have more? Or do they have less? They have to devote time and life to getting and protecting. Do they have time to let go, to see the truth? Living simply means enough is enough. Be satisfied with having just enough, doing just enough. If you take just enough, everything else is left!

10.

Can you see as a child sees

And keep the simple vision?

See the inner oneness

With absolute precision

Hold all things in your embrace

The entire world is in your care

Let things be just as they are

Extend acceptance everywhere

Let go all need to comprehend

The truth is here where all behold

Their infinite capacity

To welcome and enfold

Children do not imagine a head on their shoulders. They see that they are empty, room for the colorful world. They are space for their friends. They are nothing but awareness.

Can you see as a child sees? Can you see that in the place you learned you had a head and a face, you really have a void? You really are a void. But what a void! It embraces the world. It welcomes everything. Of course, to others, you have a head, a face. But others are not in a position to see what you see, to see that you are empty to contain all things. Can you see it? Can you look? Will you look?

The Tao Te Ching was written in ancient China over 2500 years ago. Legend has it that its author, Lao Tzu, left China when he was very old. A gatekeeper at a mountain pass sensed that Lao Tzu had more than ordinary knowledge. He persuaded him to record his vision and philosophy before leaving.

Lao Tzu stayed two days and wrote the Books of Tao and Te - much of it in verse. The message is addressed to the One in all of us, the only One, the Seer. May his classic of 5000 words inspire you the way it has millions of others since those far off days, the way it has inspired me.

11.

The empty hub at center

Allows a wheel to roll

The vacancy within defines

The function of a bowl

The openness within a house

Provides location to reside

The open space that is my heart

Is where ten thousand things abide

A wheel can roll because of the empty hub. A bowl can be filled because it is hollow. A house can be occupied because the rooms are spacious. The manifest world exists because of the emptiness at your center, in your heart. You are space, room, capacity for the ten thousand things. You are room for all things, events, thoughts, feelings. All things have a home in you.

12.

Too much sound can make you deaf

Too many colors leave you blind

Can you let desire die down

And not leave emptiness behind?

Wanting things can drive you mad

And acquisition makes you poor

See that you are everything

And leave off wanting more

Too much indulgence can make you deaf to the silence, blind to the void. Living solely for excitement means overlooking the quiet root of existence. Living for acquisition leads you to embrace and value aggression, makes you a slave to getting and keeping. Can you slow down enough to see that you already are everything? Value living from the truth and enjoying the world as it's given.

13.

Fame and shame are equal

And so are gain and loss

It isn't very difficult

To get this point across

Having fame you know that you

Are terrified to lose it

Making gain you always fear 

That others will abuse it

Can you see that you're not like

Your image or reflection?

Just see you are totality

By looking in your own direction

The one who is not limited

Accepts whatever comes or goes

And cares for everything around

On opening and close

There is no security in fame or in gain. These are just parts of the ever changing functioning or manifestation of objects and events, qualities and opinions. Fame and gain don't last. They don't even last a lifetime, which is only a flash in eternity. And if you should acquire wealth and fame, you will be the subject of the envy of others. You will have to defend them, fight to keep them. What a way to live!

Lao Tzu prefers another way, the way of doing nothing, nothing but seeing your true nature. You are not like your image in the mirror. You are pure awareness. You originate and accept all creation, including the image in your mirror. You are made to accept and receive and care for all things. Seeing this is bound to make a difference in your life.

My interpretation of the Tao Te Ching is based on the vision of headlessness discovered and tirelessly shared by Douglas E Harding. Don't miss the chance to read his classic work On Having No Head. You can also find extensive information about his vision on The Headless Way website. There you will find many experiments in seeing. Douglas would certainly say that the experiments are the heart of the matter. He would agree with Lao Tzu that words alone are not enough. Seeing is required.

14.

When you look, it isn't there

Listen and you cannot hear it

It seems to be beyond your reach

Because you are so near it

This single source of everything

Appears to be an empty image

Though it cannot be understood

You can see its naked visage

Follow it to nothingness

Approach it where you have no face

From nowhere to infinity

This vacant image leaves no trace

From never to eternity

This naked face is what you are

An empty, vacant, open door

Forevermore ajar

Tao is awareness, which appears as void or emptiness. Can you see the emptiness in the place where others see your face? This is the emptiness or void that is your no-face or no-head. It is wide open for the world, for the ten thousand things of creation.

Your only task is to see this emptiness whenever it occurs to you to look. See your empty face, the void in its infinity and eternity each moment. You will also see the ten thousand things that occur in time and space.

Your own body is one of these ten thousand things that are manifested in you, in your awareness, in the Tao. See the truth of who you are. To yourself, you are not the body topped off with a head. That is your image to other people.

15.

Those of old who knew the way

To origin and source within

Have seen the place where wholeness

And infinity begin

Alert as one on a frozen stream

Or one who watches for the foe

Deferential as a guest

And generous as melting snow

Plain as an uncarved block of wood

Expansive as a vale

Transparent just like water

Whose clarity will never fail

Can you keep yourself so still

That muddy water clears?

And wait until right action

Spontaneously appears?

Simple societies have existed until very recent times. People in these societies valued the simple joys of everyday living. They lived easily in friendliness and peace. No one posed a threat to anyone else.

The people were alert and plain, polite and generous. They had no need to hurry and rush through life. You can do the same today. Become a seer. Just be aware of your true identity as the Tao, pure awareness, and the Tao will take care of everything else.

Here Lao Tzu refers to water again, to another quality of water, to its clarity. Water clears when it is still. If you stay with your still and clear center you will find the outside turmoil clearing too. Stay with the unchanging truth of your being. It is bound to benefit everyone.

The image at the left is the Chinese ideograph for Tao. It is composed of two graphs, one meaning go, one meaning head. It is usually translated as Way. This combination of meanings is found in English as well. Consider these expressions: headway, head off, go away, head out. Douglas Harding points out that the ideograph looks like a head and a chopper. The head is about to be removed! The Tao is the gone-head! Your head must go. See the emptiness or blankness that exists in the place where you imagined a head. Nothing exists here but bare awareness. The Tao is this simple naked awareness.

16.

See that you are emptiness

Always quiet and at peace

You're in the place where all begins

The space where all things cease

All things arise and have their day

And then go back to the single source

Returning to serenity

With no regret and no remorse

When you see the source within

You only give assent

You see you're everlasting

And eternally omnificent

You are omnificent, all-creating. You create everything because you create your own point of view. All that you see depends on you. Without you, none of it would exist in the manner in which it appears in you. All appears in your emptiness, in your awareness.

This is not to say that you know how you do it. Creation happens in you, as you, on its own, spontaneously.

Return to the Tao, to your serene and peaceful center, and watch the myriad things of the world come and go. You are the host.

17.

It's best if you are barely known

The lesser state is being praised

Worse is being hated

Just stay empty and amazed

Only do what must be done

And see you are the one alone

When you finish all will say

We did this on our own

Lao Tzu is referring to leaders of states and, by extension, to all of us. The most effective leaders act by not acting for recognition. The best course is to stay centered and allow events to go their natural way. Do what is needed for the situation and then stop. Allow others to take the credit. What does personal recognition add to totality? Just recognize your open and accepting nature.

18.

Goodness and compliance

Came when people lost the way

Spontaneity declined

Hypocrisy was here to stay

Goodness and obedience appear when we lose the way. Rebellion comes too. We adopt living to please others and to avoid their disapproval. And do we ever regret it!

19.

Banish learned discourse

And everyone will be content

Eliminate propriety

Increase astonishment

Stay away from fraud and swindle

Everyone is bound to gain

You really have it all you know

There is no basis to complain

Can you see your empty core?

It isn't missing, gone or hidden

Just let go of neediness

And it will come unbidden

Do you know what is proper for other people? Can you let go of your need to interfere? Allow life to come to you on its own terms. Interfering in the lives of others with your so-called authoritative opinions and directions causes more misery in the world than anything else. And in giving misery, you eventually get it back.

We all want approval. We want to merit approval. We are so needy we give our lives away in an attempt to be seen in a good light by everyone. Is this possible? Is it worth the effort?

Can you see your empty core? This is the whole of what you need to do. Relax and let go. Stay empty and amazed. Only when you are empty and open can you be filled. See that you are always empty!

Isn't it encouraging to know that this is all there is to it? You can let go of all attempts to control or influence. Allow the world to come to you. See that you are made to receive and accept whatever is happening.

20.

You need not give a yes or no

Such distinctions matter little

Keep your vision open 

And be at center noncommittal

See that it's ridiculous

To seek success and fear to fail

To ever want what others want

To think you always must prevail

Other people look so bright

I am dark and void and null

Others are so very sharp

While I alone am dull

Others are so purposeful

Only I don't understand

Aimless, drifting, weak and dumb

Uninteresting and bland

I see I'm different from the rest

For I take in what's plainly shown

And I take my sustenance

Only from the great unknown

Where is your center? Where do you place your attention? If you are seeing clearly, your attention is on totality, all that is given in the present moment. You are not driven to appear successful in the eyes of others. You are not driven at all. You are aware that support and sustenance comes to you on its own from the Tao, the great unknown but clearly seen core of your being.

Lao Tzu says he is dull, even void. He is seeing the limitless emptiness of the Tao, the absent head. Remember Tao means go-head. His head is gone. What remains is the glorious emptiness and the ten thousand things, thoughts, events and feelings that fill it with brimming brightness. Of course he looks different from the rest. He is the source and container of all that appears. He is not a thing among things. He is the original. And of course this vision is sustaining. Not such a dull fellow after all! The dullness he sees is the amazing central void that makes brightness possible. He is total presence.

21.

Seeming utter emptiness

Quite impossible to trace

Yet it contains all images

Within its wide embrace

Appearing total darkness

Yet you see that it is right

To stay with its obscurity

The only origin of light

This ever present openness

At center and within

Can be seen just anytime

So look and look again

Your true center is always available. You can see the emptiness that contains all things whenever you remember to look, and the more you look, the more you remember to look. Be as persistent as you can. Let's be persistent. Let's look again right now. As an aid to directing your attention, point your finger to your face, to your gone-head. Others will tell you that your are pointing to your face. Do you see it differently? Of course you do. You see the truth from the position only you yourself occupy. You see absolute emptiness filled with all the images of the eternal here and now.

Most interpreters of Lao Tzu speak of the Master or Sage. I use the word Seer instead, because Lao Tzu insists we see the Tao, that it's visible as an absence and almost palpable as a presence. And isn't that good news? We can all see. We are all seers! We do it all the time. There's nothing to it. Lao Tzu simply tells us where to look, and that's where the head is missing. In place of a head we find the world. Look and see a head? Never. Look and see emptiness here and a universe there! There is no need to become a Sage or a Master. Become a Seer! Become what you already are! Allow it! There's nothing to do but allow!

It bears repeating! Lao Tzu repeats the same themes throughout the Tao Te Ching. He knows that we have been brought up to ignore the Tao, the gone-head. We imagine a head on our shoulders so we can be like everyone else. But we are not like anyone else. We are unique. We are the headless One, the absolute center of existence. So Lao Tzu repeatedly reminds us that we must look in order to see how the world is set up, how it is presented with emptiness here and fullness there. If we look repeatedly and see the arrangement, there comes a day when the seeing is natural, and the head is gone forever.

22.

Overcome by giving up

See that you are really nil

Look into your emptiness

If you want to have your fill

Be satisfied with little

Just content with what you need

If you are always wanting more

You surely are consumed by greed

Abide in your simplicity

Though you are not on display

See all things are shining bright

In marvelous array

If you do not boast or brag

Everyone will hold you high

If you do not argue

You will prevail thereby

Only see you are complete

And all things have come to you

Overcome by giving up

All except your inner view

The Tao is your original state. The farther you drift from it, the less content you are, the more you want in compensation for what you lost. Lao Tzu tells us that greed can consume us and that we really need very little to be satisfied. He also tells us that this is true because we already have the most marvelous gift of all. We have the bare awareness that holds all things. Only this naked simplicity truly satisfies. We need so little to be happy, to have all that can be had.

Can you stay with this vision of totality, of already having everything? If you can, you will not need to boast or brag or promote yourself in any way. You can't be promoted beyond totality. Others will quietly appreciate your presence, you who are in competition with no one. You are complete and whole. You have no need to prove yourself worthy, to gain back any missing parts or lost love. You have the whole bright world before you. You are not in need of anything that does not already belong to you.

23.

Say your piece and then be still

Like nature in a storm

That rains and blows and ceases

And sees the sun reborn

Open to the inward view

You are at one with all existence

There's nothing blocking up the way

Or putting up resistance

If you're at home with nothingness

And simply trust what comes about

You'll find that all is in its place

Without a question or a doubt

Have your say. Do what you must. But don't insist. You are not in competition with anyone. You are made to receive and contain the world, not to confront or face it down. You have no face to block or resist anything from your awareness, from your presence.

Your nature is pure and open presence. You are made to welcome and accept all creation. Can you trust and welcome? Lao Tzu promises that if you do, you find all is as it should be. All is in its place. The ten thousand things that come and go out there are contained in your open awareness here.

24.

Who stands on tiptoe topples

Who runs ahead soon looses speed

Who goes on show is hidden

Who pushes far gives up the lead

Don't depart from what is given

The ever present here and now

Don't overreach and don't oppose

Invite, admire and allow

All ten thousand things have limits. Lao Tzu honors those limits. He gives us the principle of sudden reversal. If you try to push beyond your limits, you invite disaster. Be content to go as far as you can. Don't try to stand out. Do so and become a target. Just stay aware of what is given. What is given is totality. There are no limits to wholeness. There are no targets in totality.

25.

Before creation did occur

This blessed emptiness was here

Alone forever and at peace

The source of all that does appear

Eternally unchanging

Forever lacking limit

This void is all potential

The everlasting ultimate

It flows through all existence

And then returns to source

It's ever at your center

Your only true recourse

For here begins the universe

The earth and humankind

Following this greatest way

You can never be defined

Here Lao Tzu gives us an outline of his view of existence. What appears to us as a void or an absence or emptiness is truly a mystery. It's the ultimate, the absolute. It's the source of existence in its infinite potential.

It's also a presence, pure and unchanging awareness, the always-so. This presence contains all that comes and goes in the here and now moment. It is your true, unchanging and eternal identity. It is beyond time because it contains time.

Can you see this Tao first in all things? You are the Tao, the one awareness, the only awareness. This awareness is very close at hand. It's at your very center, and it's always available. It's who you really are, and it's always at peace and beyond all upset.

26.

The naked center doesn't change

Its quietude is absolute

Yet from it spring all things that move

This bare awareness is the root

Can you go about all day

And never leave your true abode

No matter how enticing are

The splendors of the road?

Don't think that you can run around

And act a perfect fool

Just see that you are at the eye

Of nature's whirlpool

Can you stay centered in the Tao, the absolute? The Tao is your central emptiness. It is naked awareness. It appears to you as a void, and it appears in the place where your head is visible to others but not to you. What is visible to you? Everything! You contain all things. You, as the Tao, are the root, the origin, the source of this awareness. This is your true abode.

Who would abandon this totality for the limited excitements offered by the world? You are the center of this world, its origin and destiny.

27.

Can you walk and leave no tracks?

Make no errors when you talk?

Count without a tally?

Secure a door without a lock?

You can abandon no one

There's nothing you can leave behind

In you there are no limits

You are forever unconfined

What happens is spontaneous

Good and bad are just the same

In origin identical

Beyond both praise and blame

Here Lao Tzu talks about a special kind of action that does not show off or attract attention, action that leaves no tracks or traces. He calls it wu wei or doing nothing. See that at center, there is no doer - only emptiness. All action is free and easy and spontaneous. How foolish it is to assign credit or blame! Wu wei is the natural way to act for those who see that their true essence is open acceptance of all that occurs. Good and bad are relative terms. What is good for one is bad for another. Awareness accepts whatever the present moment brings. Awareness accepts all and opposes nothing.

28.

Know the strong but keep the weak

The whole wide world is born in you

You'll see just what a child sees

A vast and comprehensive view

Know the light but keep the dark

And watch ten thousand things emerge

In you they have their residence

Where space and time converge

Know the high but keep the low

Humility will honor you

Attend to your vacuity

There's nothing else to do

Be like an uncarved block of wood

Don't squander your potential

Or overlook your vacant core

Nothing else is so essential

What is Keeping the Weak? Water is weak, but given time and persistence it will wear down the hardest rock. Your true and open essence is weaker than water, weaker even than air. You are pure awareness, as transparent as a calm mountain lake, yet you have the capacity to reflect and take in all that presents itself to you. You remain constant and immutable while all else has its being in you. Be as persistent as water in seeing this transparency. Keep the weak, the vacuous and transparent. Keep your true nature.

What is Keeping the Low? Stay with Tao, and all things come to you as rivers flow into the sea. Receive and contain all creation. You are the one who holds totality. You are not one of the Ten Thousand Things. Lie low and see that this is true. Invite the world!

What is the Uncarved Block of Wood? This is Lao Tzu's symbol for simplicity and possibility. Before a piece of wood is carved into an object, it is potentially anything. The Tao, the pure awareness right here where we all are, is the ultimate simplicity that spontaneously manifests as the always changing world, as the ten thousand things. These ten thousand things are never the same. They change like the clouds. They are temporal and temporary. But the Tao, bare awareness, is eternal, out of time. The Tao contains time as it contains space. They are only measurements and dimensions of change.

29.

Do you want to change the world?

You cannot possibly succeed

The given cannot be improved

On this the seers are agreed

At times you find you're out in front

At other times you fall behind

Sometimes you're all commotion

But afterwards you must unwind

When all around is turmoil

Just stay with the serene

You are the quiet center

Of the ever changing scene

Can you see things as they are

And let them be all on their own?

Remain in pure awareness

You never need to stray from home

Things are just as they are. They arise out of nowhere. What good does it do to reject some events and accept others? It harms no one but yourself. You are not made to reject anything. You are made open and aware. You take in the world.

Existence changes constantly. You can't pin it down. Why not trust it? Let the ten thousand things come and go. You need do nothing. Stay with your true identity, pure presence. The scene changes. You remain empty.

All that is given is inevitable. Why wish for change? Change will come on its own. You are the Tao, the unchanging. Do nothing. Remain content. The turmoil and confusion cannot reach you. You are the immutable Tao, the everlasting simplicity.

30.

There is an ancient way to lead

That just allows and does not force

For what goes out will come around

And violence will lead to wars

The one who sees completes a task

And stops when it is done

Seeing all is on its own 

And not controlled by anyone

The seer sees that all is well

And does not need to please

Just gives acceptance everywhere

Puts everyone at ease

The Tao can change the world. The attitude of the Tao is acceptance. The attitude of so many people and institutions is force. This attitude says that we know what is right and what is wrong. We know how others should think. They should think as we do. We know how they should behave. They should behave as we do. We should take whatever actions are necessary to force compliance. The Taoist attitude is different. Allow others to go their own way. Let go of the need to control. The Tao is in charge and is worthy of its charge. What freedom you give to all you meet with this kind of acceptance!

31.

Weapons lead to violence

Which everyone despises

Avoid them altogether

Allow no compromises

If use of weapons has to be

When enemies just leave no choice

Use them but reluctantly

In victory do not rejoice

Ascendancy brings sorrow

And triumph doesn't carry pleasure

It severs you from wholeness

And robs you of your real treasure

Victory is like a funeral

Where loss of life must make you sad

For putting other people down

Never ought to make you glad

Once again we meet the principle of reversal. This time it's the cycle of aggression. People naturally resist force.

Ascendancy brings sorrow because it make you an object, a person, a limited thing. It may make you the greatest thing, even the top thing. But being any kind of a thing covers up your true and unlimited nature as absolute awareness. This is the greatest loss of all.

In addition to this loss of wholeness, you have set yourself up as a thing up against other things, as a person in the world. You have put yourself in competition for the world's limited resources. Others are bound to oppose you. They want what you have for themselves. Have you been victorious? Can you hold on to this victory?

32.

Awareness is not limited

It's like an uncarved block of wood

With infinite potential

Beyond all usefulness for good

If leaders could stay centered

In awareness pure and plain

This world would be as nourishing

As nature's gentle rain

Everyone would be at peace

And always living in the whole

Opposition and division

Could never take their toll

How easily we give up our original nature. We become fascinated by the outward display. We seek our security there, where it is not to be found. Lao Tzu points to another place. He points inward, to our awareness. He points to the awareness of infinite potential and possibility.

Seeing our original and open nature, we are centered on truth. As aware simplicity, we are truth. We absorb all opposites into the one openness we share with all beings. No peace and no support exceeds this. We are whole. We are totality, pure and plain.

33.

It may be said that you are wise

To see yourself as others do

But you are wiser still to see

From your own central point of view

Then you see you have it all

These riches that are always here

Belong to you completely

Because your vision is so clear

What does it mean to see yourself as others see you? Others see you from a distance. They see you as an object, as a human being, a thing in the world. But at no distance at all, you see yourself as pure openness, total clarity. From this vacant center, you see that you contain the ever changing world. You are rich and clear and wise. Would you trade this for being a limited, perishable human being?

34.

The empty center's everywhere

It flows both left and right

It brings to pass ten thousand things

And yet it never leaves your sight

It welcomes everything around

On nothing does it make a claim

It's in the heart of each and all

This ultimate without a name

Some can see that it is great

And some will say that it's obscure

It is your real identity

Simplicity that will endure

The Tao brings to pass all things. It welcomes all things. Events happen one way. Yet we often play the game of what-if. What if I had done something differently? This is the game of the impossible, the game of regret. All has happened as the Tao has given it. See and remember that the Tao is your real identity. All has happened as you, in your deepest heart, have desired. Even your rebellion against events was meant to be. All is always as it should be. All is as the Tao, as you, intended - even your regret! What freedom and joy there is in watching yourself truly welcome all that comes your way.

35.

Totality will be with you

If you can see the simple presence

Although there's danger all around

You give complete acceptance

Good music, food and company

Are welcome when you're traveling

The inner truth seems tasteless

Yet it produces everything

You look and you see nothing

You listen and hear silence

Its use is inexhaustible

It's ever worthy of reliance

What a contrast between those who value the pleasures of the senses above everything and those who value the Tao's simple presence, the source and origin of everything. This presence seems thin and tasteless compared to the pleasures of food and music and congenial company. But those who persist in seeing this presence and source have found everlasting truth. It's the presence that appears as a void, an absence, as emptiness, as nothing. Danger cannot penetrate this absence. It is safe! Look and see absence. Look and see refuge. Look and see the presence that manifests and welcomes all that occurs. You are totality.

Our big mistake is seeing in part. Our fundamental error is overlooking the fundament, the ground of being. We don't see what's here, only what's there. We miss the obvious. When we aren't aware of the Tao, the gone-head, we imagine a head here instead. We live in imagination rather than in truth. If we get this wrong by imagining a head where we should be seeing an absence, all that follows is in error. Yet it is easy to see this absence and live its truth. We are fortunate indeed if this way appeals to us.

36.

You cannot be diminished 

Unless you've been inflated

You cannot be defeated

Unless you've been elated

You cannot be belittled

Unless you've been esteemed

Unless you're wholly missing

You cannot be redeemed

The soft and slow can overcome

The rigid and the hard and fast

Just see your inner emptiness

For nothing else is made to last

Here again Lao Tzu tells us that the only thing we need to do is see our inner emptiness, see the Tao, see the seer. Nothing endures like nothing! It is so soft it puts up no resistance. It embraces all. It is so slow it doesn't move. It allows all else to move. Yet it overcomes all things. It witnesses all things first appear and then disappear. Are you inflated, elated and esteemed? If so, you are vulnerable. Give it up. Go missing. Be nothing. Now you are lasting and safe. How do you become nothing? Just look and see that you are truly nothing already. Look in that place where others find your face and you find the Tao.

37.

Only see you're doing nothing

Yet not a thing is left undone

For all things happen on their own

In you who are the all in one

If leaders could be centered

All ten thousand things would thrive

By seeing what is natural

All creation comes alive

Everyone would be content

With living simply every day

Desires would be moderate

And peace would be the only way

Once again, see! See that you are doing nothing. You are the empty center of existence. What could emptiness possibly do? All you can do is see and accept. Everything occurs spontaneously - in you! All you need do is be aware. And if leaders and influential people could be centered this way too, what marvels would occur. Harmony and contentment would prevail. Peace would reign. These people would not continue to interfere and meddle in the affairs of others. They would see no gain in that. They would see that gain is not possible in a world where totality is given every moment.

What is Lao Tzu's simple vision? It is total seeing, simultaneously seeing the inner emptiness and the outer fullness, the ten thousand things. Total seeing is seeing both this and that, both near and far. And it is seeing that these are not separate, not two. They are one, and they are all.

Looking within we see This, which is pure presence or awareness that appears as absence or void. This is the featureless absolute. Here is the origin and source. Here and now is Tao, at the center of my being, the empty center of my awareness. It is unlimited. It is infinite and eternal. Yet it is not of time, not in space. Rather it contains time and space. It is featureless simplicity, the one we all are. It alone endures and is always here. By its very nature as emptiness, this embraces that, here includes there, now encompasses all time. This vacancy at our center is not merely vacant. It is occupied! This emptiness is brimming. We are nothing and everything. The seer and the seen are one.

Our simplicity is occupied by a world that appears to us out of itself. The appearances are all the things and events, thoughts and feelings that we experience moment by moment. They are always moving and changing against the background of our inner stillness and sameness. They comprise the world we see when we look outward, away from our vacant center. This world contains That world. That world occupies This world, comes and goes spontaneously in our openness. What occurs in That world is temporal and temporary, perishable. This world in which they occur is more than eternal. It is once and for all! It is the place of origin, the source and substance of all that is seen. This inner aware absence is in no way separate from the world of objects out there. You see no division. In here is out there. Out there is in here. These worlds are really one, one in me, one in you, one in all who ever existed. This Tao, the gone-head, belongs to each. We are not separate either. We are all This! We are One! We are Whole!

Book of Te

38.

You needn't search for power

You already have it all

To seek outside your empty core

Is looking for a fall

The seer doesn't do a thing

But sees that all is finished

Foolish people run about

And leave totality diminished

Goodness must be doing

And justice never is complete

Propriety can't satisfy

Obedience is forced defeat

When totality is lost

Goodness comes to take its place

Followed by propriety

Bewilderment and end of grace

The seer sees periphery

But also sees the open core

And thus the seer sees the whole

And dwells therein forevermore

Lao Tzu begins the Book of Te by showing us what happens when we seek our identity outside our center of pure awareness. If I believe myself to be a human being, I am one among many. I have lost my wholeness. I am limited. I have put aside the vastness of pure awareness. Others are lost too, and they become my rivals. In such a world, order is kept by forced compliance. First come codes of behavior. The codes tell us what is good and what is proper. And the codes lay out the punishment for those who don't comply. Some rebel. Some go along. All live a diminished existence. Spontaneity is lost.

Lao Tzu tells me that I need not go along with this order. Nor do I need to challenge it. I simply see how the world is really given. I see human beings out there. I see my own reflection in the mirror out there. All of this is on the periphery. At my core I see only unlimited openness. Here is my real identity. I am the heart of existence. All is presented in me and as me.

39.

If you stay with clear awareness

The sky is open, pure and spacious

The earth is firm and friendly too

Activity is efficacious

But depart from clarity

The purest sky is torn apart

The earth is so divided

Felicity must flee your heart

The seer knows humility

Doesn't argue or cajole

Doesn't discard anything

Or mutilate the whole

The seer doesn't show at all

Doesn't sparkle like a jewel

The seer's vast immensity

Is truly less than minuscule

Find your identity at the core. Stay with clear awareness. All existence comes alive. Don't take this on faith. See for yourself. See the world in a different light, the light of wholeness and origin.

Ignore this clarity and all is false. Everything is divided into individual, self-contained things. No one is content. A thing can't contain itself. Only empty space can contain things. You are the empty clarity that contains this space and the ten thousand things.

Being like space, you do not show or show off. You are anonymous. You are faceless. You are humble enough to disappear completely so that all others are able to show their faces and their sparkle. You enable this! As clarity you enable the world.

40.

All is born of emptiness

Manifests and has its day

Then yields and surrenders

Returns and dies away

All things are born and live and die in your clear and empty awareness, in your sight. Only awareness remains forever open and unchanged. You are origin and eternity.

41.

When seers see their nothingness

They never let it out of sight

But others see it now and then

And miss out on its true delight

Still others only laugh it off

And look at it with ridicule

It wouldn't be the real truth

If it weren't laughed at by the fool

The brightest way seems darkness

Just going on seems like retreat

The simple way seems difficult

Capacity seems like defeat

Clarity can seem obscure

And love seem not to care

Totality seems not enough

And truth can seem to err

Awareness doesn't have a name

To all appearances is null

Yet it produces everything

And so this empty place is full

All this talk of nothingness! It all seems so backwards and contrary to common sense. How few take it seriously! This brightest and most obvious of all spots in the universe is just not seen. This empty center of awareness is not noticed. Even if it is noticed when it is pointed out, most people fail to see its worth. They seldom attend to attention itself. Others don't even give it a chance. They laugh at it without hesitation. Lao Tzu playfully tells us that their laughter proves its truth.

The very idea that this openness may be the ultimate seems so empty to some. They do not look to see that this emptiness is source of all that exists. It is the unchanging origin of existence. It looks dark, but it is the source of all bright things. You have it all. Just look. Watch all things emerge from and in your naked awareness. See the always changing complexity taking place in your changeless central simplicity. See that this nothing has potential. It's not a mere nothing. It's filled with its own creation!

42.

Awareness comes from nothingness

So all can see it's plainly one

Contains all opposition

Ten thousand things are now begun

All these things embrace the void

And face the manifest

Achieving thus true harmony

They find existence truly blessed

No one wants to be considered

Empty and alone

Yet that's exactly what the seers

Say they have been shown

And violence is not the way

So here I must advise

That those who live by violence

Prepare their own demise

Empty and alone! That is our true condition. That is the reason we all seek our identity elsewhere. We try to find our place in the world. So begins our fall from wholeness. We do great violence to our true nature. To seek your identity in the world is to forget that the world is in you, in your awareness. You are the sole consciousness, empty but ready to receive the manifold world.

Empty and alone! Does that mean that others lack consciousness? No. The void, emptiness, nothingness has no attributes, no qualities. It can't be divided. It resides at your center, at my center. The void is one. Each is it in totality. All beings are identical at center, identical as pure consciousness. Seers embrace this void and welcome the world. Is it a wonder they find creation blessed?

What are the Ten Thousand Things? These are all the objects and events and thoughts and feelings your awareness creates at every moment. They are always changing, always fresh. They are what's on display. They are your riches. Lao Tzu insists that you always have it all and asks how you could possibly want more. Isn't everything enough?

43.

Overcome by yielding

The weak can overcome the strong

For only absence can provide

The place where each and all belong

And thus it is that I can see

The worthiness of not contending

Yet few will ever comprehend 

The potency of bending

Is it possible to overcome limitations by yielding? Yield your limited identity as a someone. See that you are nothing now. You are an absence. Accept your unlimited ability as capacity to receive the world. Yield all contention and opposition. You are not a somebody up against (confronting) others. Others live in you. So few people see and appreciate their unlimited capacity to host the world.

44.

Which of these means more to you

Integrity or reputation?

Are gain and loss not equally

Responsible for limitation?

Everything that you possess

Is surely transitory

Just be pleased with emptiness

And witness inner bliss and glory

You know that your are always safe

If only you can be contented

With awareness as capacity

And with all that is presented

Is happiness based on gain and getting? Whatever you gain is temporary and limited. Gain and fame are traps. They can be lost and must be protected. You are not your possessions. Which means more to you, what you have or what you are? As capacity, you possess all that comes into your awareness. You are free, open and safe, in the place of lasting bliss. You are the never changing total potential to which the ever changing ten thousand things are presented You are the open awareness that accepts and possesses whatever comes into view. You are the emptiness that contains everything.

45.

Wholeness seems like imperfection

Yet its usefulness is sure

Fullness seems quite empty

But it is certain to endure

True straightness can seem twisted

True wisdom does not seem to know

Great eloquence seems halting

Great darkness seems to be aglow

Can you see that emptiness 

Contains all oppositions?

Like hot and cold and fast and slow?

All differences and all conditions?

So-called common sense has it wrong. Things are not as they appear. Above all, I am not as I appear - to you, to your camera, or to my mirror. How do I appear from here? to myself? to my own uncommon sense? If I appear at all, I appear to myself right here as emptiness, as an absence. This absence is the Tao, the absent head.

To see that all this is so, all you need to do is look - and keep looking. You are the absence that contains all that exists, the sameness that contains all differences. You are unlimited capacity for all limited things.

46.

When the absolute is cherished

Horses graze on the open green

When the absolute is lost

Only steeds of war are seen

No calamity exceeds desire

And always wanting more

Can you not see you have enough

And live in plenitude galore?

Cherish the Tao, the absolute. How do we cherish it? Lao Tzu tells us again and again that all we need to do is look. Look where the head is gone. Look any time it comes to mind. If we see our emptiness, our amplitude, we see that we have everything in our embrace. Spread your arms, and see that you embrace and include the world. Amplitude is plentitude! And excessive desire is calamity.

47.

No need to go outside a door

To see totality

Or look out of a window

For seeing what will always be

Going out you go astray

At home and center all is one

The seer doesn't have to do

To see that everything is done

Look within to see the source and container of all things. Can you see that this is your true identity? If you see this, you see all there is to see. You see pure awareness, perfect simplicity. You are home. You can look within anytime. You always find the Tao here at the still and quiet center of your being. And the Tao is worthy of your trust. It brings all things to you. It brings what you need each moment.

48.

In going after learning

Something's added every day

For resting in the ultimate

Everything must drop away

Day by day do less and less

Until nothingness is seen

All occurs quite on its own

A doer need not intervene

Allow all things to run their course

If you want to be proficient

Make a fuss and bother

And existence will be insufficient

Can you learn to rely on the Tao? Nothing else will serve you so well, for nothing else is so true. Nothing else is absolute, ultimate and final. Can you begin to let go of the identity you have built up over so many years? The efforts of your personal self to order your life have not brought satisfaction. The more you see your empty and creative core, the more your preoccupation with personal concerns drops away - on its own. Your true identity is pure awareness, centered in the place where others see your head, where you see only absence. Claim your true and unchanging nature. All you need to do is look within!

49.

The seer doesn't own a thought

For thoughts do not reside within

Thoughts concern ten thousand things

And that's the way it's always been

The seer doesn't rush to judge

And treats all people well

Considers no one bad or good

Attracts but never does repel

The seer trusts things as they are

And takes all people at their word

Giving trust to everyone

Knows faithfulness will be returned

The seer turns your view around

So you can never be beguiled

And gives you back all that you lost

The vision of a little child

When your view is total and singular, you are seeing as a child sees. You are seeing an undivided world, a world in which the seer and the seen are one. It is all you and all yours. Even those you call others are you! Seen in this light, the light of origin, all is seen in all its vividness, as if for the first time.

The seer treats all people with acceptance according to the open and welcoming nature of awareness. This may be startling to some, especially to those who react according to a moral code of proper behavior. The seer sees that these codes are artificial systems of thought imposed from the outside. The seer prefers the natural values of simple and spontaneous acceptance. What advantage does this provide? When you treat people with acceptance and trust, you are trusted and welcome everywhere. Give trust, and trust is given in return.

Turn yor view toward the Tao. See the gone-head. See your eternal and infinite capacity to receive all that occurs, all things and all events. This is the simple vision of the small child who still sees totality and still knows joy.

 

50.

Between the time when they are born

And the time that they will die

Three in ten will follow life

Three others only will deny

Three others are so casual

They live as though they're passing through

But one remains who clearly sees

There's not a single thing to do

Can you be like the one who sees 

The world emerging on its own?

What's needed for each moment

Arises from the great unknown

This one doesn't have a fear

Of weaponry or wild beast

These enemies can't harm the one

Whose separate self is long deceased

This vast awareness is everyone's true identity, but not everyone will appreciate it. Some will go along with tradition and the mores of their time, including the common view that they are a thing much like the image they see in the mirror. They will ignore awareness. Others will deny and despise existence. They will rebel against the ways of their neighbors and peers. They too ignore awareness. Still others will live only for the day, and they will reap the passing of days. They do not see eternity in their midst. But one remains, perhaps only one in ten, who sees what is given. This one is the seer. The seer sees the world arising moment by moment from the aware emptiness that is seen where the head is gone. This is the Tao. This is awareness. And the seer knows that this Tao is invulnerable. All things are vulnerable. This alone is not a thing. This alone is nothing.

51.

Everything arises

From this total emptiness

Is nourished and completed

And finds creation blessed

All things arise from nothingness

Are cared for by existence

Which freely gives what is required

For bountiful subsistence

Existence does not make a claim 

On what it has created

It nourishes and serves and leads

Is honored and appreciated

Are you a thing? Or are you nothing, not a thing, no thing? You can settle this question for yourself just by looking. Look within, at your central emptiness, at your missing head. Only you can do this looking. No one else is in a position to see it where you see it. Others see your head. You see nothing. But from this nothing emerges all existence. It's not merely nothing. It's the mysterious source of existence, and it's filled with its own creation. Please look to see that this is true for you. It's never otherwise for the seer. The beauty and bounty of existence comes from this most humble and most potent of all places, the great within.

Everything arises from nothing - on its own. What does that leave for us to do? Nothing! Do nothing. If you see that creation is arising moment by moment out of your central emptiness, that is all there is to it. That is the doing, which is really a non-doing. What to do? Trust that being aware of the Tao, seeing the gone-head, will occur more and more often. You can neither force it nor prevent it. If you see it, it's easy. It comes on its own. Just trust that it will always do so. If you are impressed with the magnificence and glory of this vision, it will continue to come. If you see that you are seeing the timeless, the eternal, it will continue to come, because you have seen it for all time! If you see that you are bare awareness, you will see that you are not the doer. You are the awareness that allows all doings to occur.

52. 

All things emerge from nullity

The only derivation

Of everything that manifests

The source of all creation

Stay in touch with origin

There's nothing that you need deny

Seeing your totality

You will not fear to die

Do not be in haste to speak

And always guard the senses

You will find your heart at peace

And in the place where all commences

See the subtle and the clear

It is the empty source of light

There is no danger in this place

That is forever in plain sight

Lao Tzu wants us to see the subtle and clear core of being right here where the head is gone. It's the place of total peace. And it's the place of origin of all ten thousand things. Watch these things emerge and subside in the Tao, in your clear awareness. We can see this any time we care to look. Lao Tzu tells us why we should care.

See that as awareness you are totality. You are the clear origin and only owner of dynamic existence. You are both. As the unchanging, undying source of all things, you are at peace and out of danger. As the possessor of creation, you are at peace even amidst turmoil if you see that you are the source of the turmoil. Stay in touch with origin! It's never out of sight. It's the light that shines on the world, the light of pure awareness.

53.

This way is wide and easy

Yet people love to stray

They love to take the sidetracks

And wander from the way

When the few are rich and wealthy

Living way above their needs

The granaries are empty

And the fields are full of weeds

When rulers spend on weapons

And implements of war

It's a never ending circle

Of ever wanting more

When the rich have all abundance

What remains must surely dwindle

Having more than you can use

Is thievery and fraud and swindle

What does it mean to get sidetracked? Pursue the interests of the false self to get ahead - to get a head. Why not prefer the wide and easy way of seeing how existence is truly given? to see the gone-head? the simple truth?

Lao Tzu calls it thievery when the few capture the bulk of a country's worth. This is no basis for a decent life. Even those in power would be better off if they didn't have to defend their position and their possessions. This kind of power does not last. It has always led to rebellion and to the overthrow of those who hold the power.

True power lies in seeing your true nature as unlimited potential to originate and sustain the world. This is real wealth and abundance, and it's yours by nature. Claim it by seeing it!

Wu wei, doing nothing, is spontaneous action. Everything occurs on its own - in emptiness. When Lao Tzu says to do nothing, he wants us to see our emptiness, to see that there is no one here to do anything. Even thoughts occur on their own, one following another. These thoughts can lead to a special kind of thought called a decision. Decisions too occur on their own, spontaneously. So what should you do? Do nothing. You are not any kind of thing that could do anything. You are no-thing. See that you are simply nothing, the nothing that beholds all activity. And see that all activity takes place in you.

54.

Hold fast to this awareness

Seeing that it is your root

It will not ever slip away

This ever present absolute

It cannot be uprooted

It's always held in veneration

Discovered very close at hand

In every generation

Allow its presence in your life

Awareness real and profound

Allow it in the family

Its blessings will abound

And if you care to share it

With neighbor and with friend

Its potency will multiply

With benefits that never end

You ask me how I know it's true

It isn't something I mistook

Well nothing is more obvious

The only thing I do is look

Bare awareness is your root. It is the source and nourishment and support of your world, the absolute at the center of existence. It has never been otherwise. This awareness is not new. It is eternal. It is what you have always been, unchanged since the day you were born and before.

It is also unchanged since olden days. Some people have seen it in all the ages of humanity. This view has been recorded since the invention of writing. The joy in sharing it is overwhelming. And the power of sharing this vision is boundless. Though it is thoroughly plain, it is the source of all delight. Sharing it with others can only spread the blessings. And sharing makes it easier to keep up the seeing yourself.

Why is Lao Tzu so sure of this? He can see it! He sees the Tao, the gone-head, the naked awareness. Nothing else is so plainly obvious. He looks where his face is absent and sees only openness to take in all delights.

It is also unchanged since olden days. Some people have seen it in all the ages of humanity. This view has been recorded since the invention of writing. The joy in sharing it is overwhelming. And the power of sharing this vision is boundless. Though it is thoroughly plain, it is the source of all delight. Sharing it with others can only spread the blessings. And sharing makes it easier to keep up the seeing yourself.

Why is Lao Tzu so sure of this? He can see it! He sees the Tao, the gone-head, the naked awareness. Nothing else is so plainly obvious. He looks where his face is absent and sees only openness to take in all delights.

55.

One who sees full emptiness

Is like a child just born

With muscles weak and bones so soft

Yet with a grip that's strong

The newborn hasn't been fulfilled

Its nature is pure vacancy

Nullity and nothingness

And potent spontaneity

It can scream and cry all day

And yet it never does get hoarse

It only does what naturally

Emerges from the inner source

To see this inner nature

Is seeing in a way that's bold

Into the only place there is

That cannot possibly grow old

Children and seers are similar in not imagining themselves to be an object, a human object with a head and a face. Infants and very young children have no concepts about their identity. They simply see what is. They have no thoughts on the subject. But they soon learn what others say they are. They see a face in the mirror. That's who they are now. Over the years they watch that face growing older. They know they will someday die. They have the knowledge that kills.

The seer returns to the pure, simple and total vision of the child, seeing the unchanging and undying vacancy at center, the nullity that is full of the world. Yet there is a difference. Unlike the child, the seer is awake to the Tao, aware of the all-creative nullity that exists in place of the face, instead of the head.

What is Te? Te is most often translated as Power, and what a power! It's the infinite potential of Tao, of This, of the awareness at your center. Te is the unlimited possibility of the Tao to become the ten thousand things. Tao is infinite emptiness with unlimited potential. And you can see it! You can see this infinite and creative emptiness, the Tao that holds the kaleidoscopic world.

56.

Those who know don't like to say

Those who say don't know

Be still and guard the senses

And see what doesn't show

Untie tangles, dim the glare

Dull the sharp and join the dust

Abide in primal unity

And then do what you must

You cannot hold it or let go

It can't be blamed or praised

In all-embracing oneness

Be astonished and amazed

Those who know don't like to say. They know that it can't be captured in words. They know that others are likely to take the words themselves for the truth. The truth is not in words. The truth is in seeing, in seeing the oneness at your center, the oneness you have in common with all beings.

Don't become entangled and identified with the ten thousand things. You are not a thing like your reflection in the mirror. You are not an image. You are the original! How can you fail to be amazed? How can you continue to ask for more?

You'll see more than what's on show! You'll see the void or absence at your center. It's a void that is plain to all the senses. You'll hear it as the silence that contains all sound. Using any of your senses, it is total plainness and purity. This void is pure and unadorned awareness, simple and absolute presence.

57.

To truly lead with fairness

You must put aside control

Abandon imposition

Make spontaneity your goal

The more you try to run their lives

With rules and prohibition

The poorer people's lives become

The more they live in opposition

The more you deal with others

With cunning and with guile

The more that other people say

Our lives are not worthwhile

The more you hoard your treasures

The more you're giving hope to thieves

The more you sharpen weapons

The more the country grieves

Do nothing and see all is done

And everyone is true

Drop the rules and people owe

Prosperity to you

Just let go of all desire

And people will return

To natural and simple ways

To life without concern

Do nothing and see all is done. Allow spontaneity. Lao Tzu is showing us two ways of doing. The first way is the more familiar. It's the way of opposition and imposition, of trying to impose our will on the world. It's the way of calculated action. Of course we must all plan and be assertive to some extent. We must do what is needed for living. But if we imagine this assertiveness to be the only mode of action, then we don't know when to stop. We do not know its limits. We push too far, and the world pushes back.

Lao Tzu prefers a second way of doing. He calls it wu wei, doing nothing. The Tao does nothing, and all is done. Everything happens on its own, with no help from you or me. Hold still a minute and look. Has anything stopped just because you are doing nothing? Does action continue? Of course it does. Trust that all is as it should be, and do what you will.

Doing nothing is identical to seeing everything. See that your inner being cannot act. See the setup. Here, where the head is gone, is Tao, which is empty and void. Emptiness cannot act, but it can contain action. All action is out there in the world, happening on its own. And the world out there is happening in you!

58.

Let your lead be gentle

And people will be satisfied

Let it be severe and harsh

And be rejected and defied

Happiness may reign today

But who knows what tomorrow holds?

Sadness too will have its time

As all ten thousand things unfold

The seer's sight is sharp and pointed

But it does not cut or pierce

The seer sees and shows the truth

This gentle way is never fierce

Who knows what tomorrow holds? No one is certain. Allow events to unfold as they will. Don't interfere in the affairs of others. Lead gently. Knowing that calculated action may backfire, are you prepared to take the blame?

The seer leads by doing nothing. Do nothing. See everything! Do nothing that is calculated. See totality. See the absence that is the source and substance of all that exists. Watch actions arise spontaneously. Even what seem like conscious decisions arise on their own. Be at your ease, and all will be at ease in your presence.

59.

To serve and care for others

With restraint and moderation

Stay centered in the here and now

And free of limitation

If you keep returning

To this your central root

You will possess forever

Awareness undilute

How can you best serve others? By being sure of yourself, of your own root. Stay centered in the here and now, in your own presence, your own awareness. When you are sure of your own unlimited identity, share it with others. It's our common identity after all. Awareness is not a thing that has qualities or parts that could be divided. It is identical for all of us. It is your nature to share it!

60.

It's best to lead a large domain

As you would cook a little fish

Don't poke and prod or you are bound

To spoil the country and the dish

Just stay open and aware

And evil cannot get a hold

Cannot find a home in you

Even evil's not that bold

At center you harm no one

And no one's able to harm you

This kind of reciprocity

Creates the world anew

How do you cook a small fish? By leaving it alone. Put it on the fire, and let it cook itself. We are back again to Lao Tzu's perennial theme, don't interfere. Lead a country the same way. Provide for the basic needs, then let it run itself. Don't exploit others for your own benefit. All will go smoothly on its own, with no harm to others and no harm to you.

Lao Tzu is also speaking about your true essence as awareness. No one is able to harm you, because, as awareness, you are an absence. The Tao, the absent head, is invulnerable. It is pure bliss.

Many of the chapters in the Book of Te are addressed to the leader of a country. We can learn from these because we all must assume the role of a leader at times. Lao Tzu tells us not to lead by opposing and prohibiting. If it harms no one then give the people what they want. The Taoist story of Three in the Morning tells of a keeper of monkeys who had to reduce their ration of nuts because of a shortage that year. He told the monkeys they would have three nuts in the morning and four nuts in the evening. The monkeys raised such a fuss about the situation that the keeper had to reconsider. He came back to the monkeys with a new plan. They would have four nuts in the morning and three nuts in the evening. Now the monkeys were satisfied. The keeper had allowed them to have what they wanted. And it had cost him nothing. If we really stop to listen to what people want, we will no doubt find that most of their wants amount to no more than four in the morning. An effective leader listens to others and does not insist on three in the morning!

61.

A great domain is like the sea

Whose power comes from lying low

And due to this humility

Its greatness has to grow

A small domain can lie low too

Acknowledging its low location

Surrender and humility

Give rise to exaltation

If you lie low you too arise

To uppermost position

For everyone's attracted to

One who doesn't fear submission

Here Lao Tzu speaks of the power of humility and lying low. This is not the humility of putting yourself down, exclaiming your unworthiness. This is the true humility of seeing that you already occupy the lowest place in the universe. As rivers flow to the sea, all objects flows directly to your awareness. You can see this is so! Look up at the sky (or the ceiling). Now look out at the horizon or the hills (or the wall). Bow down further, and see your feet. If you continue to lower your gaze, you see your legs, your waist, your chest, and finally your absence, your gone-head. This is the Tao, accommodation for all things.

62.

I'm at the center and the source

Of all ten thousand things

Where I receive the benefits

That pure awareness brings

These benefits belong to all 

To good and bad the same

For nature gives you what you need

With no regard for praise or blame

Words and deeds of excellence

May bring you honor and acclaim

But nature values each alike

And is indifferent to fame

When new leaders are installed

Don't send gifts or lofty praise

Stay centered in the unity

Provided by the inward gaze

Why should you esteem the void?

It does away with imperfection

Those who seek are bound to find

It disappears on close inspection

Nature gives to everyone alike, but humans are not satisfied with this. They want to divide and name, grade and rank, own and possess. Who is first? Who is best? Where do I fit in?

Lao Tzu tells me I don't fit in at all. On the contrary, everything fits in me! How fortunate I am if I can see this. And I can see it if I look inward, in the direction of the gone-head. Here is the primal oneness that I am, that we all are, undivided and without a name. And its nature is bliss, the bliss of wholeness. What greater gift could I share with anyone?

When I see my real nature as the capacity or space that contains everything and everyone, I see that I reject nothing and no one. I accept both good and bad into my awareness. I have no choice. It is my nature to accept what is given in awareness. To reject anything would make me less than whole. But that is not even possible. When I look, when I am seeing, I know that I am pure presence and filled to the brim with the ten thousand things!

Lying LowThe sea gets its power from lying low. So too does awareness. All the waters of the earth run to the sea, yet it never overflows. That is because the sea is also the source of the waters that rain down on the land. So too is awareness the source of the myriad things it contains. As the sea is the source and substance of the rain, so is awareness the origin and the substance of all that manifests within it. There could not be a greater power than the ability to create this enchanting world out of sheer nothingness. The Tao as the absent head is the power of infinite possibility.

63.

Begin with the easy

And do without doing

There isn't a thing 

That you should be pursuing

Begin with the simple

There's no need attacking

Your greatness will lie

In all that you're lacking

Tackle problems when they're small

And still subject to solution

The largest problem is resolved

By simple deeds of diminution

Can you center every day

And see all the seers see

Empty here and brimming there

A marvelous asymmetry?

Begin with the easy. Begin with the simple. Begin now! All you need to do is see the asymmetry of the setup or design of existence. See both this and that, the emptiness here and the fullness there. This is total seeing. And it's total being. You are all that you see. You are the void that produces and accommodates the plenum. You are both. All abundance lies in the lack at the center of your being, the lack of a head. This is the Tao, the gone-head. This absence of a head is the presence of all else.

What is a deed of diminution? It's any letting go of your identity as an object. You are not a person. You are accommodation for the personal. You are awareness and all that it contains. Why settle for the merely personal?

See that you are the gone-person as well as the gone-head.

Asymmetry is a word that Douglas Harding uses to describe how we relate to one another. We are not in symmetrical relationship. We are not face to face with one another. We are face to no-face. We are face to space, face to emptiness, face to Tao. We can look and see that this is true. Let's get up close and look at the face of a friend. If you prefer, look at the face in your mirror. How many faces do you see? I can't speak for you, but I see only one face ---- that of my friend or my reflection. If I see only one face, what do I see where my own face is missing? I see not a thing, only absence, void, emptiness, the Tao!

Of course I can never be face to face with anyone. The setup is not symmetrical. Here at the center I am not a face. I am bare capacity to contain all faces and all other things out there on the periphery. This is my identity. I am the container, and I am the contents as well. These two aspects of my nature are not opposites. They are one. The absence at the center is truly all. It creates, embraces, and holds the forever changing content at the periphery. Awareness is not divided. This absence is also pure presence or awareness. It is my gone-face. My face is what I present to you - for better or for worse.

64.

To keep the peace is easy

Begin before a problem stirs

Handle things before they happen

And trouble before it occurs

Be calm and conquer worries

Before they can proceed

The very largest tree begins

As just a tiny seed

It takes a single step to start

A journey of a thousand miles

And just one brick to start to build

The grandest domiciles

Let things happen as they will

You do not need to interfere

See that you do nothing

That causes discord to appear

"It takes a single step to start a journey of a thousand miles." This is one of the best known and most quoted aphorisms in the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu is telling us to take that step now! Now is the opportune time. Now is the only time. And now is out of time. It's eternal.

So see totality now! See that all is in you. Even time is in you. See it now for all time. See it whenever it occurs to you to see. It's a new way of seeing, though what you see is that which has always been so. And this new way of seeing brings a new way of being, a new attitude. You no longer have a need to attempt to control the world. You can allow the world to function for itself, to happen on its own. You have no need to oppose or interfere. You do not add to the disunity and disruption that so often prevails.

65.

Those of old who found the way

Could see their inner core

They saw that it was hidden

And didn't bring it to the fore

When people think they know the truth

They want all others to concur

But they are happy and content

When they remain unsure

Don't try to lead with cleverness

Prefer instead simplicity

It's obvious that truth must lie

In nothingness and clarity

The absence at my core is hidden from others. They see my head instead of my absence. My head is their truth. My absence is my truth. They can see absence by looking within, just as I do. It's the same absence, the same clarity. Lao Tzu tells us that the seers of old did not bring this absence to the fore. They did not make it an object, and therefore an object of contention. How then do I share this simplicity with others? By showing them where to look. They must look where their own heads are missing. The Tao, the gone-head, is the same for each of us. It's the same emptiness. It's the one awareness, the one emptiness.

66.

The sea is large and mighty

Because it lies below

The streams and rivers of the world

Thus capturing their flow

If you want to have your fill

Then you must see that you are hollow

If you want to lead the way

Then you must be prepared to follow

When you lead you are above

But no one feels put down

And when you must be out in front

Know that no one's losing ground

When you see that you're not built

For facing up or confrontation

No one can contend with you

Who are the ultimate negation

A cup is hollow, therefore it can receive and hold your beverage. You must be hollow if you are to receive the manifest world as it is, without distortion or opposition. You are made hollow. You have no face with which to confront others. You have the others' faces. Your own face is gone, missing, hollow. It's the ultimate and everlasting negation that contains all that is presented to it. It's the negation that holds all things positive, the emptiness that is always full.

When you take action and lead others, can you do so as the one who is equal to all others, not as one who is above others? You are not above others and taking what is not yours. You are below everyone and receiving the fullness of creation. You are the hollow and empty center of existence.

You are the empty center of everything that appears. The center is right where you are now. To find the center, it helps to find the periphery first. So let's find it. Look straight ahead, and you see objects. Above these objects are more objects, and more still objects are below and to the left and right. These objects occupy the periphery. But where is the center? The only place you haven't looked is within. Look in your own direction! Nothing appears here. It is at the center of the field of appearances. This is a precise geometry. And it's a cornucopia. Out of the emptiness at the center pours the abundance of manifest objects. When you see in all directions, you are seeing the whole. And the whole includes the hole, the hollow, the nameless emptiness within - at the center. This is your true, unchanging, eternal identity.

67.

On seeing inner nothingness

You see it's great beyond compare

Though many find it curious

That you would even care

I have three treasures that I keep

The first is friendliness

The second is to stay behind

The third is wanting less

For if you're friendly and you care

You can dare to do what's needed

And if you always stay behind

The lead will surely be conceded

And if you're satisfied with less

You have everything to give

Keep these treasures in your heart

Then you will truly live

Here are Lao Tzu's famous Three Treasures. These treasures are values that arise naturally from abiding in your inner nothingness. They certainly aren't the values that most people cherish.

The first treasure is love, compassion, or friendliness. Being nothing, you are open. You embrace all creation by your very nature.

The second treasure is humility, staying behind. Seeing that you are nothing, you allow all others to go ahead. You do not struggle for superiority.

The third treasure is frugality, wanting less, wanting only the void of awareness. Wanting nothing above all else, you can be generous and giving. You do not need to contend.

68.

Violence is not the way

The greatest warriors know

That treachery and anger

Will not defeat the foe

You only win if you don't strive

And gain if you do not oppose

This is the certain victory

Simplicity bestows

Lao Tzu is concerned with the values that arise naturally from abiding in inner nothingness. He is also concerned about the values that arise from ignoring this inner void. He warns us that we cannot push ourselves on the world. Victory does not mean opposing and overcoming others. True victory is receiving others into your own simplicity, into the clarity at the center of our being.

69.

In conflict just be cautious

And always on your guard

Rather than advance an inch

Instead retreat a yard

In this way you go along

And make your gain without advancing

You deal with the rival

As your position is enhancing

Remember that it's possible

Your rival just may yield

So don't advance on such a foe

Let differences be healed

Notice that, as Tao, you are the source and substance of the world out there. You are in no way separate from the myriad things and events of the world. You contain these things and events. They are really not out there at all. They occur within you. You can't ignore them. So you must deal with them. Lao Tzu tells us to go easy and gently. Be cautious. Don't push and force your way. Allow time for problems to resolve. Wholeness comes in its own time. And the more you see the wholeness of being, the more quickly it comes to all experience. Seeing wholeness is seeing the clarity that contains all existence. Look within for the Tao.

What is the Tao? Who am I? I am pure presence, and I am all that is present in that presence. I am pure awareness, and I am all that exists in that awareness. I am nothing and everything. It's all me. Everything is me and exists in my light. Everyone is me. There are no others. I am the one alone. I am the Seer.

I am the Seer, and I am the Seen. And these are not two. I am the vacuity at center, and I am all that occupies this vacuity. And these are not two. Only This is. Only I am. Nothing exists apart from me, and I am not divided into parts. All exists in me and as me. And This is the Tao of the gone-head.

70.

Embarrassingly obvious

And always near at hand

It is this nothingness you see

But never understand

Though truth within is ageless

Very few will ever see

My face is what I give to you

The jewel within is me

Lao Tzu's teaching is based on the ageless Tao within each of us, the gone-head. Though this truth is glaringly obvious, few can see it. Few even bother to look, to attend to attention, to be aware of awareness. We imagine a head where there is only awareness. We imagine a face where there is only absence. We imagine a limited thing where there is only the jewel of absolute eternity.

Douglas Harding says that headlessness is embarrassingly obvious. I have freely used Douglas's expressions when they coincide with Lao Tzu's meanings. In this verse Lao Tzu is saying that his words are very easy to follow. His words are pointing to the Tao, the jewel, the absolutely obvious absence within.

71.

You cannot understand the truth

Claim to know and show you're ill

Just see that you are missing

That truth is bare and nil

Unknowing is the final cure

When knowledge takes its heavy toll

Pure presence is totality

And absence makes you whole

Tao is not a thing or an object to be known or understood. Tao is naked awareness. Let go of knowing. Unknowing is the cure of the disease of understanding. The Tao, the truth, is not to be understood but to be seen, and to be seen as an absence at that. It is our real identity. The absence of a head is the presence of pure awareness. Within this awareness is all that occurs moment by moment. Nothing is missing!

72.

When the sense of wonder goes

Disaster is not far behind

Don't intrude in people's lives

And they won't think you are unkind

The seer sees both this and that

But doesn't ask for praise

Finding this immensity

With just a simple inward gaze

Here is Lao Tzu's principle of reversal one more time. Disaster follows when you interfere in the lives of others. People resent meddling. Your intentions may be unassailable, but your reward is rebellion. You cannot impose your will. It would be far better to adopt the seer's stance. See that your own inner immensity is room for the will of totality, for what is actually happening each moment.

73.

The way is very easy

Its purposes prevail

When all is done in silence

Intention cannot fail

Its net is vast and over all

With meshes large and wide

Yet it loses nothing

Holds everything inside

What is the intention of the way, of the whole? Just what is happening right now! You are made to contain everything, not to pick and choose. Nothing can be lost or rejected or abandoned. Resistance is futile. You are pure open awareness, made for acceptance. What a relief to realize this. All that happens is meant to happen by the Tao, by totality, by you in reality. All is as it should be.

74.

You truly are what isn't born

You need not be afraid to die

Just live your life and know that you

Will never lose the inner eye

You can't control what is to be

In using tools you don't command

Unlike the master carpenter

You're bound to cut your hand

You are the one who was never born. You are the witness of what is born and eventually perishes. Remain the witness. Let things take care of things. Everything happens on its own, spontaneously. Does this mean you are not free to choose and decide? No, it means that even your own decisions occur spontaneously. You can't interfere in the world of things, because that world occurs within your being.

75.

The people starve when taxes take

The bulk of what they earn

When leaders interfere too much

They get rebellion in return

The people do not fear to die

If leaders rob them of their lives

But taking no more than you need

You see that everybody thrives

Very little is needed for a happy and abundant life. No-thing is needed for bliss. Allow others to have what they need. You don't need to accumulate things. You are totality, nothing and everything, nothing containing everything. You are the absence that is pure presence. More is not possible. More things and more control over others means more trouble! Let go of excess. Accept totality.

76.

We're soft and supple when we're born

Hard and rigid when we die

Living plants are pliable

Deadwood is brittle and dry

This way life befriends the weak

But death draws near the strong

The hard and stiff are bound to break

The supple bends and goes along

Lao Tzu contrasts the softness and receptivity of our true nature as awareness with the hardness and severity of our false identity as a name, a person in a world of persons. As a person, we are hard and impenetrable. As awareness, we are open and clear, receptive and flexible. We accept whatever comes to us. We don't resist. Those who resist are broken. Those who accept are whole.

77.

Nature's way of doing

Is like the bending of a bow

For pulling on a bow you see

The low go high and the high go low

Nature takes from those who have

And gives to those who lack

When nature takes from human beings

They fight to get it back

But if you see you have it all

You're not afraid to give away

Expecting nothing in return

It all comes back with no delay

Here's a revealing statistic for the year 2000. Earth's population is 6,000,000,000. The 200 richest people in the world have more wealth that the poorest 2,000,000,000 combined. Has anything changed since Lao Tzu's day?

Everyone is entitled to life's necessities. Where is your wealth? Do you see that you have all that you need and more? You have the Tao, total awareness. Allowing nature to have its way, you don't claim more than you can use. You claim your real riches instead. You see that you are totality, and Tao takes care of the rest. All are equal in this regard.

Have you noticed that all of the definitions of the Tao and the Seer are identical? The Seer is the Tao. The Tao is the Seer. The Tao is the presence of awareness that is seen as the absence of a head. The Seer is the same!

You, as the Seer, are in no way separate from the world. You are all that is. And what a joy it is to see how all is given - here and now and forever. See the Tao. See the Seer. See the Truth.

78.

Water is so very soft

It overcomes because it yields

By wearing down the hardest rock

It shows what power weakness wields

The weak can overcome the strong

The soft can overcome the hard

Everybody knows it's true

So hold the low in high regard

The seer sees serenity

Where others see affliction

The seer sees the inner truth

Where others only see a fiction

Water flows as life should flow. It goes around all obstacles, and, doing so, wears them down by its persistence. Water does not oppose. Water merely goes the way of its own nature. It remains calm and serene. Can you do the same? All power lies in such a course. Your victory lies in not distorting your true and original nature.

And what is this nature? What is your inner truth? It is the serene and open presence at the center of your being. Can you see this? Can you see the creative emptiness where others see your face?

79.

There's little good in making peace

If resentment lingers

You'll never see an end to blame

If everyone is pointing fingers

It's better to be pointing

At the peaceful and creative place

Where you see naught but emptiness

And others say they see your face

Let's point a finger one more time at the empty face, the gone-head. Point here rather than there. Notice the arrangement. See how existence is presented in non-existence, how everything appears in nothing. Existence emerges from this no-thing at your center. All peace is here at center. All opposition is out there in the world of heads and faces. Where do you prefer to live?

80.

If a land is small and the people few

And the rulers recognize what's needed

The simple ways of courtesy

Are happily and gladly heeded

For people need so little

To live their lives aright

Are food and home and clothing

Not enough for pure delight?

Though nearby lands are close enough

To hear their roosters crow

The people will be so content

That not a one will want to go

If you live in the simplicity at your center, you will not want to go anywhere. You will see that there is nowhere to go and no one here to go anywhere. You are the still center of existence. There is nothing at your center to move. Can you see that everything moves in you while you remain absolutely still? Simplicity also means contentment with little. Of course you need the basic necessities of life. But do you need great wealth or fame? If you are seeing that at your center, as awareness, you are totality, you will have no need to build a self. Nothing can be added to totality. You are whole and free to enjoy the delights of living!

Can you see this freedom? At center you are free of everything. You are free of sounds, of movement, of colors and shapes, thoughts and feelings. And this freedom is not merely freedom from. It's also freedom for. As the Tao, you are empty and empty-headed, open and free. You are always free - for accepting, for embracing and for loving existence. Why not stay free? Don't try to make a name for yourself. Don't try to get a-head. Don't try to face the world. Just see that all existence is facing you!

81.

Truth need not be eloquent

And eloquence may not be true

There is no need to argue

When truth is shining through

Those who see may not be learned

The learned may not see

To see you merely need to look

In pure simplicity

The seer doesn't have to hoard

And does not fear to lose

The more you give, the more you have

So why should you refuse?

Why not give it all away?

For emptiness brings benefit

And as the seers always say

The more you give, the more you get

Lao Tzu began his text by telling us that the Tao cannot be named. His final words recall that theme. See it. Don't just talk or write or think about it. It's not contained in words or names. See it! Let go of all that keeps you from seeing what really is. See your true identity, this aware nothing that you are, right here where your face is absent and your head is gone. See that all that you let go as identity comes back as content. Nothing is lost. To see that this is true, all you need to do is look.

Look again now. No need to point this time. You know where to look by now. Can you see the Tao, the absence of a head that is at the same time the presence of the multifarious world? This is total seeing. Nothing is left out. Only the head, the name, the false self is missing. Totality remains!

And that's the end of the story. There is nothing for you or me to do but continue seeing the truth about the world and its origin within each of us. I am grateful to Lao Tzu for sharing his Tao with me. I am also grateful to all of those who have interpreted his writing in English. I have depended on their renderings of the text to attempt my own version. Above all, I am grateful to Douglas Harding for showing me what he calls two-way seeing. There is nothing like seeing the truth, nothing more rewarding. Again I will recommend that you read any of the books that Douglas has written. All of them contain experiments in seeing. Doing the experiments is a sure way to make total seeing your accustomed way of seeing the world. You have nothing to lose but your head!

Ready for more headless verses?   A See Change by Jim Clatfelter

Jim Clatfelter

Published 2000, by Jim Clatfelter

Comments welcome.

Email to jim-clatfelter@verizon.net.

Don't forget The Headless Way website.

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Book of Tao

1.

Words and names are not the way

They can't define the absolute

It's better that you look within

Hold your tongue and just be mute

Look within and look out too

You will not find a separation

Out there you see appearance

Within you see origination

Look within with wonder

At emptiness and bliss

For wonder names totality

Where nothing is amiss

The space within is always there

If you can moderate desire

A place of utter emptiness

And possibility entire

Lao Tzu begins the Book of Tao by telling us that the Tao, the absolute, cannot be defined with words. He says we must look for it. He will repeat this theme throughout. This looking or seeing is total seeing - looking out at the world of appearance and looking in at its origin in the spacious emptiness at the very center of our being. This emptiness is truly empty and truly great because it contains all possibility, all potential, and all that appears. It's the source of all that exists - and aware of itself as such. What a promise! He even tells us where to look. Look within for origin. Look without for creation. Look and see both ways simultaneously. Origin and creation are one!

Lao Tzu makes another promise. This emptiness that is totality is also bliss and wonder. Bliss is our true identity!

2.

Where beautiful and ugly

Do not stand in opposition

Where life and death or yes and no

Do not make a contradiction

Can you see the vacant place

Where good and bad and sad and merry

Disappear forevermore?

Where nothing ever is contrary

So stay within the emptiness

Unless you rise you never fall

Accepting that which comes your way

You are forever all in all

Good and bad, happy and sad, beautiful and ugly, all opposites and all contraries, all are appearances or conditions in awareness, in me. They all exist in my vacant center. I accept all conditions. I have no choice. I am made for acceptance. I am made open. I am all in all. I am all awareness that contains all objects, all events, all that is given, all that is presented by awareness.

Staying with awareness, emptiness, I am safe, no matter what is happening in the world. I do not overlook this, the source and container of all, this my true identity.

3.

If you love accumulation

Gain and increase every day

Thieves and robbers will be waiting

Just to take it all away

Best to be so empty-headed

That it seems you've lost it all

You will know you're on the way

Though others say you're at a stall

Do you want all the treasures of the world? Will they bring you happiness and joy? Are the rich happy? No matter how much you have, there's always more. You don't have the unlimited. But, rich or poor, you can be the unlimited! You can see it. Be empty headed. You can see boundless, unlimited awareness at the center of your being, in the place where you were told you had a head!

4.

This nothingness is like a well

Always giving, never taking

And all claims to origin

Neither wanting or forsaking

You know it's ever present

You find it where you have no face

It is a wondrous blessing

Original amazing grace

The Tao gives but asks no credit, does not lord it over creation. Unlimited, creative awareness exists at the center of your being, where you have no face. Look in a mirror. There's your face. But what is looking at the face in the mirror? Is it not pure awareness, the Tao itself, the core and origin of your existence, of all existence? This creative nothingness is your true identity.

5.

This emptiness is truly void

And infinitely capacious

It holds whatever comes its way

Eternally tenacious

Can you take whatever comes?

Though judgment calls it bad and good

Seeing is acceptance

And nothing to be understood

Tao, awareness is truly empty and void, open and capacious. It has to be. Its nature is to contain the world. It welcomes all and rejects nothing.

Seeing accepts all things, all things agreeable and disagreeable. Don't try to understand this acceptance. Just see that it is so. See that you are open to everything.

6.

Complete and full awareness

Is like an open valley

Of endless generation

That doesn't reach finale

It is a simple presence

It's a nothing you can see

You'll find it right at center

Wherever you may be

You are Tao. You are total awareness. You are the valley of the world. You contain the never ending succession of life, all that comes and goes. You are the valley-like openness, the still openness at the center of existence. Can you see this openness? See it as a void, an absence. Be it as a presence, a presence that generates and holds and nourishes all that appears from moment to moment.

7.

This presence is unlimited

Because it wasn't ever born

And it will not be perishing

Will never give you cause to mourn

It truly wants for nothing

It has no wishes of its own

It is the one and only

Eternally alone

It holds itself in vacancy

With no desire to advance

Remaining in simplicity

It merely witnesses the dance

The seer will remain behind

And never yearns for leaving home

Just living in the here and now

Prefers to stay unknown

Tao, awareness, nothingness has no limits, no boundaries in space, no boundaries in time. It has no beginning, no end. It has no divisions, no distinctions, no parts. It is forever one and forever alone. It cannot be divided between you and me. I am all of it. You are all of it. I am the one. You are the one. We are not separate, not two.

Can you stay with your true identity? Can you see it every day, each moment of every day? See it whenever it occurs to you to look. That's all you need to do. Become accustomed to seeing everyday. See your inner simplicity, and witness the dance of life. Look both ways! Look in at the simple awareness and out at the spontaneous rise and fall of events. You will see no separation. These are one, not separate, not two. You are whole and total!

8.

The seer flows like water

Lying low along the way

Nourishing whatever comes

To be held on display

The seer keeps to simple ways

And therefore is content

When joy or sorrow manifests

To give complete assent

If you can clearly be yourself

And never rise to interfere

Everyone will cherish you

And always hold you dear

Water symbolizes the Tao in many ways. Here Lao Tzu refers to its nourishing qualities. All life depends on water. It has supreme power over all living things, yet it makes no claim on what it creates. It does not seek preeminence. Water seeks the lowest places, and, in so doing, nourishes all it comes across. Can you see that you do the same? It is your nature to give life to all things. You give by giving awareness, consciousness to all things. It is your very nature to give. Can you see yourself giving life to all around you? Can you be this simple and clear presence?

9.

Don't fill a bowl

Till it's more than full

Or sharpen a blade

Till it must go dull

Don't pile up treasure

That comes at great cost

Approval and riches

Are easily lost

Can you only do

What's really needed

Then stop and withdraw

When your task is completed?

Enough is enough! Do you want to spend your life protecting your fame and possessions? Lao Tzu's natural way is to do only what is called for by the present moment.

Do you want to give your life away to the pursuit of wealth? Do those who have more really have more? Or do they have less? They have to devote time and life to getting and protecting. Do they have time to let go, to see the truth? Living simply means enough is enough. Be satisfied with having just enough, doing just enough. If you take just enough, everything else is left!

10.

Can you see as a child sees

And keep the simple vision?

See the inner oneness

With absolute precision

Hold all things in your embrace

The entire world is in your care

Let things be just as they are

Extend acceptance everywhere

Let go all need to comprehend

The truth is here where all behold

Their infinite capacity

To welcome and enfold

Children do not imagine a head on their shoulders. They see that they are empty, room for the colorful world. They are space for their friends. They are nothing but awareness.

Can you see as a child sees? Can you see that in the place you learned you had a head and a face, you really have a void? You really are a void. But what a void! It embraces the world. It welcomes everything. Of course, to others, you have a head, a face. But others are not in a position to see what you see, to see that you are empty to contain all things. Can you see it? Can you look? Will you look?

The Tao Te Ching was written in ancient China over 2500 years ago. Legend has it that its author, Lao Tzu, left China when he was very old. A gatekeeper at a mountain pass sensed that Lao Tzu had more than ordinary knowledge. He persuaded him to record his vision and philosophy before leaving.

Lao Tzu stayed two days and wrote the Books of Tao and Te - much of it in verse. The message is addressed to the One in all of us, the only One, the Seer. May his classic of 5000 words inspire you the way it has millions of others since those far off days, the way it has inspired me.

11.

The empty hub at center

Allows a wheel to roll

The vacancy within defines

The function of a bowl

The openness within a house

Provides location to reside

The open space that is my heart

Is where ten thousand things abide

A wheel can roll because of the empty hub. A bowl can be filled because it is hollow. A house can be occupied because the rooms are spacious. The manifest world exists because of the emptiness at your center, in your heart. You are space, room, capacity for the ten thousand things. You are room for all things, events, thoughts, feelings. All things have a home in you.

12.

Too much sound can make you deaf

Too many colors leave you blind

Can you let desire die down

And not leave emptiness behind?

Wanting things can drive you mad

And acquisition makes you poor

See that you are everything

And leave off wanting more

Too much indulgence can make you deaf to the silence, blind to the void. Living solely for excitement means overlooking the quiet root of existence. Living for acquisition leads you to embrace and value aggression, makes you a slave to getting and keeping. Can you slow down enough to see that you already are everything? Value living from the truth and enjoying the world as it's given.

13.

Fame and shame are equal

And so are gain and loss

It isn't very difficult

To get this point across

Having fame you know that you

Are terrified to lose it

Making gain you always fear 

That others will abuse it

Can you see that you're not like

Your image or reflection?

Just see you are totality

By looking in your own direction

The one who is not limited

Accepts whatever comes or goes

And cares for everything around

On opening and close

There is no security in fame or in gain. These are just parts of the ever changing functioning or manifestation of objects and events, qualities and opinions. Fame and gain don't last. They don't even last a lifetime, which is only a flash in eternity. And if you should acquire wealth and fame, you will be the subject of the envy of others. You will have to defend them, fight to keep them. What a way to live!

Lao Tzu prefers another way, the way of doing nothing, nothing but seeing your true nature. You are not like your image in the mirror. You are pure awareness. You originate and accept all creation, including the image in your mirror. You are made to accept and receive and care for all things. Seeing this is bound to make a difference in your life.

My interpretation of the Tao Te Ching is based on the vision of headlessness discovered and tirelessly shared by Douglas E Harding. Don't miss the chance to read his classic work On Having No Head. You can also find extensive information about his vision on The Headless Way website. There you will find many experiments in seeing. Douglas would certainly say that the experiments are the heart of the matter. He would agree with Lao Tzu that words alone are not enough. Seeing is required.

14.

When you look, it isn't there

Listen and you cannot hear it

It seems to be beyond your reach

Because you are so near it

This single source of everything

Appears to be an empty image

Though it cannot be understood

You can see its naked visage

Follow it to nothingness

Approach it where you have no face

From nowhere to infinity

This vacant image leaves no trace

From never to eternity

This naked face is what you are

An empty, vacant, open door

Forevermore ajar

Tao is awareness, which appears as void or emptiness. Can you see the emptiness in the place where others see your face? This is the emptiness or void that is your no-face or no-head. It is wide open for the world, for the ten thousand things of creation.

Your only task is to see this emptiness whenever it occurs to you to look. See your empty face, the void in its infinity and eternity each moment. You will also see the ten thousand things that occur in time and space.

Your own body is one of these ten thousand things that are manifested in you, in your awareness, in the Tao. See the truth of who you are. To yourself, you are not the body topped off with a head. That is your image to other people.

15.

Those of old who knew the way

To origin and source within

Have seen the place where wholeness

And infinity begin

Alert as one on a frozen stream

Or one who watches for the foe

Deferential as a guest

And generous as melting snow

Plain as an uncarved block of wood

Expansive as a vale

Transparent just like water

Whose clarity will never fail

Can you keep yourself so still

That muddy water clears?

And wait until right action

Spontaneously appears?

Simple societies have existed until very recent times. People in these societies valued the simple joys of everyday living. They lived easily in friendliness and peace. No one posed a threat to anyone else.

The people were alert and plain, polite and generous. They had no need to hurry and rush through life. You can do the same today. Become a seer. Just be aware of your true identity as the Tao, pure awareness, and the Tao will take care of everything else.

Here Lao Tzu refers to water again, to another quality of water, to its clarity. Water clears when it is still. If you stay with your still and clear center you will find the outside turmoil clearing too. Stay with the unchanging truth of your being. It is bound to benefit everyone.

The image at the left is the Chinese ideograph for Tao. It is composed of two graphs, one meaning go, one meaning head. It is usually translated as Way. This combination of meanings is found in English as well. Consider these expressions: headway, head off, go away, head out. Douglas Harding points out that the ideograph looks like a head and a chopper. The head is about to be removed! The Tao is the gone-head! Your head must go. See the emptiness or blankness that exists in the place where you imagined a head. Nothing exists here but bare awareness. The Tao is this simple naked awareness.

16.

See that you are emptiness

Always quiet and at peace

You're in the place where all begins

The space where all things cease

All things arise and have their day

And then go back to the single source

Returning to serenity

With no regret and no remorse

When you see the source within

You only give assent

You see you're everlasting

And eternally omnificent

You are omnificent, all-creating. You create everything because you create your own point of view. All that you see depends on you. Without you, none of it would exist in the manner in which it appears in you. All appears in your emptiness, in your awareness.

This is not to say that you know how you do it. Creation happens in you, as you, on its own, spontaneously.

Return to the Tao, to your serene and peaceful center, and watch the myriad things of the world come and go. You are the host.

17.

It's best if you are barely known

The lesser state is being praised

Worse is being hated

Just stay empty and amazed

Only do what must be done

And see you are the one alone

When you finish all will say

We did this on our own

Lao Tzu is referring to leaders of states and, by extension, to all of us. The most effective leaders act by not acting for recognition. The best course is to stay centered and allow events to go their natural way. Do what is needed for the situation and then stop. Allow others to take the credit. What does personal recognition add to totality? Just recognize your open and accepting nature.

18.

Goodness and compliance

Came when people lost the way

Spontaneity declined

Hypocrisy was here to stay

Goodness and obedience appear when we lose the way. Rebellion comes too. We adopt living to please others and to avoid their disapproval. And do we ever regret it!

19.

Banish learned discourse

And everyone will be content

Eliminate propriety

Increase astonishment

Stay away from fraud and swindle

Everyone is bound to gain

You really have it all you know

There is no basis to complain

Can you see your empty core?

It isn't missing, gone or hidden

Just let go of neediness

And it will come unbidden

Do you know what is proper for other people? Can you let go of your need to interfere? Allow life to come to you on its own terms. Interfering in the lives of others with your so-called authoritative opinions and directions causes more misery in the world than anything else. And in giving misery, you eventually get it back.

We all want approval. We want to merit approval. We are so needy we give our lives away in an attempt to be seen in a good light by everyone. Is this possible? Is it worth the effort?

Can you see your empty core? This is the whole of what you need to do. Relax and let go. Stay empty and amazed. Only when you are empty and open can you be filled. See that you are always empty!

Isn't it encouraging to know that this is all there is to it? You can let go of all attempts to control or influence. Allow the world to come to you. See that you are made to receive and accept whatever is happening.

20.

You need not give a yes or no

Such distinctions matter little

Keep your vision open 

And be at center noncommittal

See that it's ridiculous

To seek success and fear to fail

To ever want what others want

To think you always must prevail

Other people look so bright

I am dark and void and null

Others are so very sharp

While I alone am dull

Others are so purposeful

Only I don't understand

Aimless, drifting, weak and dumb

Uninteresting and bland

I see I'm different from the rest

For I take in what's plainly shown

And I take my sustenance

Only from the great unknown

Where is your center? Where do you place your attention? If you are seeing clearly, your attention is on totality, all that is given in the present moment. You are not driven to appear successful in the eyes of others. You are not driven at all. You are aware that support and sustenance comes to you on its own from the Tao, the great unknown but clearly seen core of your being.

Lao Tzu says he is dull, even void. He is seeing the limitless emptiness of the Tao, the absent head. Remember Tao means go-head. His head is gone. What remains is the glorious emptiness and the ten thousand things, thoughts, events and feelings that fill it with brimming brightness. Of course he looks different from the rest. He is the source and container of all that appears. He is not a thing among things. He is the original. And of course this vision is sustaining. Not such a dull fellow after all! The dullness he sees is the amazing central void that makes brightness possible. He is total presence.

21.

Seeming utter emptiness

Quite impossible to trace

Yet it contains all images

Within its wide embrace

Appearing total darkness

Yet you see that it is right

To stay with its obscurity

The only origin of light

This ever present openness

At center and within

Can be seen just anytime

So look and look again

Your true center is always available. You can see the emptiness that contains all things whenever you remember to look, and the more you look, the more you remember to look. Be as persistent as you can. Let's be persistent. Let's look again right now. As an aid to directing your attention, point your finger to your face, to your gone-head. Others will tell you that your are pointing to your face. Do you see it differently? Of course you do. You see the truth from the position only you yourself occupy. You see absolute emptiness filled with all the images of the eternal here and now.

Most interpreters of Lao Tzu speak of the Master or Sage. I use the word Seer instead, because Lao Tzu insists we see the Tao, that it's visible as an absence and almost palpable as a presence. And isn't that good news? We can all see. We are all seers! We do it all the time. There's nothing to it. Lao Tzu simply tells us where to look, and that's where the head is missing. In place of a head we find the world. Look and see a head? Never. Look and see emptiness here and a universe there! There is no need to become a Sage or a Master. Become a Seer! Become what you already are! Allow it! There's nothing to do but allow!

It bears repeating! Lao Tzu repeats the same themes throughout the Tao Te Ching. He knows that we have been brought up to ignore the Tao, the gone-head. We imagine a head on our shoulders so we can be like everyone else. But we are not like anyone else. We are unique. We are the headless One, the absolute center of existence. So Lao Tzu repeatedly reminds us that we must look in order to see how the world is set up, how it is presented with emptiness here and fullness there. If we look repeatedly and see the arrangement, there comes a day when the seeing is natural, and the head is gone forever.

22.

Overcome by giving up

See that you are really nil

Look into your emptiness

If you want to have your fill

Be satisfied with little

Just content with what you need

If you are always wanting more

You surely are consumed by greed

Abide in your simplicity

Though you are not on display

See all things are shining bright

In marvelous array

If you do not boast or brag

Everyone will hold you high

If you do not argue

You will prevail thereby

Only see you are complete

And all things have come to you

Overcome by giving up

All except your inner view

The Tao is your original state. The farther you drift from it, the less content you are, the more you want in compensation for what you lost. Lao Tzu tells us that greed can consume us and that we really need very little to be satisfied. He also tells us that this is true because we already have the most marvelous gift of all. We have the bare awareness that holds all things. Only this naked simplicity truly satisfies. We need so little to be happy, to have all that can be had.

Can you stay with this vision of totality, of already having everything? If you can, you will not need to boast or brag or promote yourself in any way. You can't be promoted beyond totality. Others will quietly appreciate your presence, you who are in competition with no one. You are complete and whole. You have no need to prove yourself worthy, to gain back any missing parts or lost love. You have the whole bright world before you. You are not in need of anything that does not already belong to you.

23.

Say your piece and then be still

Like nature in a storm

That rains and blows and ceases

And sees the sun reborn

Open to the inward view

You are at one with all existence

There's nothing blocking up the way

Or putting up resistance

If you're at home with nothingness

And simply trust what comes about

You'll find that all is in its place

Without a question or a doubt

Have your say. Do what you must. But don't insist. You are not in competition with anyone. You are made to receive and contain the world, not to confront or face it down. You have no face to block or resist anything from your awareness, from your presence.

Your nature is pure and open presence. You are made to welcome and accept all creation. Can you trust and welcome? Lao Tzu promises that if you do, you find all is as it should be. All is in its place. The ten thousand things that come and go out there are contained in your open awareness here.

24.

Who stands on tiptoe topples

Who runs ahead soon looses speed

Who goes on show is hidden

Who pushes far gives up the lead

Don't depart from what is given

The ever present here and now

Don't overreach and don't oppose

Invite, admire and allow

All ten thousand things have limits. Lao Tzu honors those limits. He gives us the principle of sudden reversal. If you try to push beyond your limits, you invite disaster. Be content to go as far as you can. Don't try to stand out. Do so and become a target. Just stay aware of what is given. What is given is totality. There are no limits to wholeness. There are no targets in totality.

25.

Before creation did occur

This blessed emptiness was here

Alone forever and at peace

The source of all that does appear

Eternally unchanging

Forever lacking limit

This void is all potential

The everlasting ultimate

It flows through all existence

And then returns to source

It's ever at your center

Your only true recourse

For here begins the universe

The earth and humankind

Following this greatest way

You can never be defined

Here Lao Tzu gives us an outline of his view of existence. What appears to us as a void or an absence or emptiness is truly a mystery. It's the ultimate, the absolute. It's the source of existence in its infinite potential.

It's also a presence, pure and unchanging awareness, the always-so. This presence contains all that comes and goes in the here and now moment. It is your true, unchanging and eternal identity. It is beyond time because it contains time.

Can you see this Tao first in all things? You are the Tao, the one awareness, the only awareness. This awareness is very close at hand. It's at your very center, and it's always available. It's who you really are, and it's always at peace and beyond all upset.

26.

The naked center doesn't change

Its quietude is absolute

Yet from it spring all things that move

This bare awareness is the root

Can you go about all day

And never leave your true abode

No matter how enticing are

The splendors of the road?

Don't think that you can run around

And act a perfect fool

Just see that you are at the eye

Of nature's whirlpool

Can you stay centered in the Tao, the absolute? The Tao is your central emptiness. It is naked awareness. It appears to you as a void, and it appears in the place where your head is visible to others but not to you. What is visible to you? Everything! You contain all things. You, as the Tao, are the root, the origin, the source of this awareness. This is your true abode.

Who would abandon this totality for the limited excitements offered by the world? You are the center of this world, its origin and destiny.

27.

Can you walk and leave no tracks?

Make no errors when you talk?

Count without a tally?

Secure a door without a lock?

You can abandon no one

There's nothing you can leave behind

In you there are no limits

You are forever unconfined

What happens is spontaneous

Good and bad are just the same

In origin identical

Beyond both praise and blame

Here Lao Tzu talks about a special kind of action that does not show off or attract attention, action that leaves no tracks or traces. He calls it wu wei or doing nothing. See that at center, there is no doer - only emptiness. All action is free and easy and spontaneous. How foolish it is to assign credit or blame! Wu wei is the natural way to act for those who see that their true essence is open acceptance of all that occurs. Good and bad are relative terms. What is good for one is bad for another. Awareness accepts whatever the present moment brings. Awareness accepts all and opposes nothing.

28.

Know the strong but keep the weak

The whole wide world is born in you

You'll see just what a child sees

A vast and comprehensive view

Know the light but keep the dark

And watch ten thousand things emerge

In you they have their residence

Where space and time converge

Know the high but keep the low

Humility will honor you

Attend to your vacuity

There's nothing else to do

Be like an uncarved block of wood

Don't squander your potential

Or overlook your vacant core

Nothing else is so essential

What is Keeping the Weak? Water is weak, but given time and persistence it will wear down the hardest rock. Your true and open essence is weaker than water, weaker even than air. You are pure awareness, as transparent as a calm mountain lake, yet you have the capacity to reflect and take in all that presents itself to you. You remain constant and immutable while all else has its being in you. Be as persistent as water in seeing this transparency. Keep the weak, the vacuous and transparent. Keep your true nature.

What is Keeping the Low? Stay with Tao, and all things come to you as rivers flow into the sea. Receive and contain all creation. You are the one who holds totality. You are not one of the Ten Thousand Things. Lie low and see that this is true. Invite the world!

What is the Uncarved Block of Wood? This is Lao Tzu's symbol for simplicity and possibility. Before a piece of wood is carved into an object, it is potentially anything. The Tao, the pure awareness right here where we all are, is the ultimate simplicity that spontaneously manifests as the always changing world, as the ten thousand things. These ten thousand things are never the same. They change like the clouds. They are temporal and temporary. But the Tao, bare awareness, is eternal, out of time. The Tao contains time as it contains space. They are only measurements and dimensions of change.

29.

Do you want to change the world?

You cannot possibly succeed

The given cannot be improved

On this the seers are agreed

At times you find you're out in front

At other times you fall behind

Sometimes you're all commotion

But afterwards you must unwind

When all around is turmoil

Just stay with the serene

You are the quiet center

Of the ever changing scene

Can you see things as they are

And let them be all on their own?

Remain in pure awareness

You never need to stray from home

Things are just as they are. They arise out of nowhere. What good does it do to reject some events and accept others? It harms no one but yourself. You are not made to reject anything. You are made open and aware. You take in the world.

Existence changes constantly. You can't pin it down. Why not trust it? Let the ten thousand things come and go. You need do nothing. Stay with your true identity, pure presence. The scene changes. You remain empty.

All that is given is inevitable. Why wish for change? Change will come on its own. You are the Tao, the unchanging. Do nothing. Remain content. The turmoil and confusion cannot reach you. You are the immutable Tao, the everlasting simplicity.

30.

There is an ancient way to lead

That just allows and does not force

For what goes out will come around

And violence will lead to wars

The one who sees completes a task

And stops when it is done

Seeing all is on its own 

And not controlled by anyone

The seer sees that all is well

And does not need to please

Just gives acceptance everywhere

Puts everyone at ease

The Tao can change the world. The attitude of the Tao is acceptance. The attitude of so many people and institutions is force. This attitude says that we know what is right and what is wrong. We know how others should think. They should think as we do. We know how they should behave. They should behave as we do. We should take whatever actions are necessary to force compliance. The Taoist attitude is different. Allow others to go their own way. Let go of the need to control. The Tao is in charge and is worthy of its charge. What freedom you give to all you meet with this kind of acceptance!

31.

Weapons lead to violence

Which everyone despises

Avoid them altogether

Allow no compromises

If use of weapons has to be

When enemies just leave no choice

Use them but reluctantly

In victory do not rejoice

Ascendancy brings sorrow

And triumph doesn't carry pleasure

It severs you from wholeness

And robs you of your real treasure

Victory is like a funeral

Where loss of life must make you sad

For putting other people down

Never ought to make you glad

Once again we meet the principle of reversal. This time it's the cycle of aggression. People naturally resist force.

Ascendancy brings sorrow because it make you an object, a person, a limited thing. It may make you the greatest thing, even the top thing. But being any kind of a thing covers up your true and unlimited nature as absolute awareness. This is the greatest loss of all.

In addition to this loss of wholeness, you have set yourself up as a thing up against other things, as a person in the world. You have put yourself in competition for the world's limited resources. Others are bound to oppose you. They want what you have for themselves. Have you been victorious? Can you hold on to this victory?

32.

Awareness is not limited

It's like an uncarved block of wood

With infinite potential

Beyond all usefulness for good

If leaders could stay centered

In awareness pure and plain

This world would be as nourishing

As nature's gentle rain

Everyone would be at peace

And always living in the whole

Opposition and division

Could never take their toll

How easily we give up our original nature. We become fascinated by the outward display. We seek our security there, where it is not to be found. Lao Tzu points to another place. He points inward, to our awareness. He points to the awareness of infinite potential and possibility.

Seeing our original and open nature, we are centered on truth. As aware simplicity, we are truth. We absorb all opposites into the one openness we share with all beings. No peace and no support exceeds this. We are whole. We are totality, pure and plain.

33.

It may be said that you are wise

To see yourself as others do

But you are wiser still to see

From your own central point of view

Then you see you have it all

These riches that are always here

Belong to you completely

Because your vision is so clear

What does it mean to see yourself as others see you? Others see you from a distance. They see you as an object, as a human being, a thing in the world. But at no distance at all, you see yourself as pure openness, total clarity. From this vacant center, you see that you contain the ever changing world. You are rich and clear and wise. Would you trade this for being a limited, perishable human being?

34.

The empty center's everywhere

It flows both left and right

It brings to pass ten thousand things

And yet it never leaves your sight

It welcomes everything around

On nothing does it make a claim

It's in the heart of each and all

This ultimate without a name

Some can see that it is great

And some will say that it's obscure

It is your real identity

Simplicity that will endure

The Tao brings to pass all things. It welcomes all things. Events happen one way. Yet we often play the game of what-if. What if I had done something differently? This is the game of the impossible, the game of regret. All has happened as the Tao has given it. See and remember that the Tao is your real identity. All has happened as you, in your deepest heart, have desired. Even your rebellion against events was meant to be. All is always as it should be. All is as the Tao, as you, intended - even your regret! What freedom and joy there is in watching yourself truly welcome all that comes your way.

35.

Totality will be with you

If you can see the simple presence

Although there's danger all around

You give complete acceptance

Good music, food and company

Are welcome when you're traveling

The inner truth seems tasteless

Yet it produces everything

You look and you see nothing

You listen and hear silence

Its use is inexhaustible

It's ever worthy of reliance

What a contrast between those who value the pleasures of the senses above everything and those who value the Tao's simple presence, the source and origin of everything. This presence seems thin and tasteless compared to the pleasures of food and music and congenial company. But those who persist in seeing this presence and source have found everlasting truth. It's the presence that appears as a void, an absence, as emptiness, as nothing. Danger cannot penetrate this absence. It is safe! Look and see absence. Look and see refuge. Look and see the presence that manifests and welcomes all that occurs. You are totality.

Our big mistake is seeing in part. Our fundamental error is overlooking the fundament, the ground of being. We don't see what's here, only what's there. We miss the obvious. When we aren't aware of the Tao, the gone-head, we imagine a head here instead. We live in imagination rather than in truth. If we get this wrong by imagining a head where we should be seeing an absence, all that follows is in error. Yet it is easy to see this absence and live its truth. We are fortunate indeed if this way appeals to us.

36.

You cannot be diminished 

Unless you've been inflated

You cannot be defeated

Unless you've been elated

You cannot be belittled

Unless you've been esteemed

Unless you're wholly missing

You cannot be redeemed

The soft and slow can overcome

The rigid and the hard and fast

Just see your inner emptiness

For nothing else is made to last

Here again Lao Tzu tells us that the only thing we need to do is see our inner emptiness, see the Tao, see the seer. Nothing endures like nothing! It is so soft it puts up no resistance. It embraces all. It is so slow it doesn't move. It allows all else to move. Yet it overcomes all things. It witnesses all things first appear and then disappear. Are you inflated, elated and esteemed? If so, you are vulnerable. Give it up. Go missing. Be nothing. Now you are lasting and safe. How do you become nothing? Just look and see that you are truly nothing already. Look in that place where others find your face and you find the Tao.

37.

Only see you're doing nothing

Yet not a thing is left undone

For all things happen on their own

In you who are the all in one

If leaders could be centered

All ten thousand things would thrive

By seeing what is natural

All creation comes alive

Everyone would be content

With living simply every day

Desires would be moderate

And peace would be the only way

Once again, see! See that you are doing nothing. You are the empty center of existence. What could emptiness possibly do? All you can do is see and accept. Everything occurs spontaneously - in you! All you need do is be aware. And if leaders and influential people could be centered this way too, what marvels would occur. Harmony and contentment would prevail. Peace would reign. These people would not continue to interfere and meddle in the affairs of others. They would see no gain in that. They would see that gain is not possible in a world where totality is given every moment.

What is Lao Tzu's simple vision? It is total seeing, simultaneously seeing the inner emptiness and the outer fullness, the ten thousand things. Total seeing is seeing both this and that, both near and far. And it is seeing that these are not separate, not two. They are one, and they are all.

Looking within we see This, which is pure presence or awareness that appears as absence or void. This is the featureless absolute. Here is the origin and source. Here and now is Tao, at the center of my being, the empty center of my awareness. It is unlimited. It is infinite and eternal. Yet it is not of time, not in space. Rather it contains time and space. It is featureless simplicity, the one we all are. It alone endures and is always here. By its very nature as emptiness, this embraces that, here includes there, now encompasses all time. This vacancy at our center is not merely vacant. It is occupied! This emptiness is brimming. We are nothing and everything. The seer and the seen are one.

Our simplicity is occupied by a world that appears to us out of itself. The appearances are all the things and events, thoughts and feelings that we experience moment by moment. They are always moving and changing against the background of our inner stillness and sameness. They comprise the world we see when we look outward, away from our vacant center. This world contains That world. That world occupies This world, comes and goes spontaneously in our openness. What occurs in That world is temporal and temporary, perishable. This world in which they occur is more than eternal. It is once and for all! It is the place of origin, the source and substance of all that is seen. This inner aware absence is in no way separate from the world of objects out there. You see no division. In here is out there. Out there is in here. These worlds are really one, one in me, one in you, one in all who ever existed. This Tao, the gone-head, belongs to each. We are not separate either. We are all This! We are One! We are Whole!

Book of Te

38.

You needn't search for power

You already have it all

To seek outside your empty core

Is looking for a fall

The seer doesn't do a thing

But sees that all is finished

Foolish people run about

And leave totality diminished

Goodness must be doing

And justice never is complete

Propriety can't satisfy

Obedience is forced defeat

When totality is lost

Goodness comes to take its place

Followed by propriety

Bewilderment and end of grace

The seer sees periphery

But also sees the open core

And thus the seer sees the whole

And dwells therein forevermore

Lao Tzu begins the Book of Te by showing us what happens when we seek our identity outside our center of pure awareness. If I believe myself to be a human being, I am one among many. I have lost my wholeness. I am limited. I have put aside the vastness of pure awareness. Others are lost too, and they become my rivals. In such a world, order is kept by forced compliance. First come codes of behavior. The codes tell us what is good and what is proper. And the codes lay out the punishment for those who don't comply. Some rebel. Some go along. All live a diminished existence. Spontaneity is lost.

Lao Tzu tells me that I need not go along with this order. Nor do I need to challenge it. I simply see how the world is really given. I see human beings out there. I see my own reflection in the mirror out there. All of this is on the periphery. At my core I see only unlimited openness. Here is my real identity. I am the heart of existence. All is presented in me and as me.

39.

If you stay with clear awareness

The sky is open, pure and spacious

The earth is firm and friendly too

Activity is efficacious

But depart from clarity

The purest sky is torn apart

The earth is so divided

Felicity must flee your heart

The seer knows humility

Doesn't argue or cajole

Doesn't discard anything

Or mutilate the whole

The seer doesn't show at all

Doesn't sparkle like a jewel

The seer's vast immensity

Is truly less than minuscule

Find your identity at the core. Stay with clear awareness. All existence comes alive. Don't take this on faith. See for yourself. See the world in a different light, the light of wholeness and origin.

Ignore this clarity and all is false. Everything is divided into individual, self-contained things. No one is content. A thing can't contain itself. Only empty space can contain things. You are the empty clarity that contains this space and the ten thousand things.

Being like space, you do not show or show off. You are anonymous. You are faceless. You are humble enough to disappear completely so that all others are able to show their faces and their sparkle. You enable this! As clarity you enable the world.

40.

All is born of emptiness

Manifests and has its day

Then yields and surrenders

Returns and dies away

All things are born and live and die in your clear and empty awareness, in your sight. Only awareness remains forever open and unchanged. You are origin and eternity.

41.

When seers see their nothingness

They never let it out of sight

But others see it now and then

And miss out on its true delight

Still others only laugh it off

And look at it with ridicule

It wouldn't be the real truth

If it weren't laughed at by the fool

The brightest way seems darkness

Just going on seems like retreat

The simple way seems difficult

Capacity seems like defeat

Clarity can seem obscure

And love seem not to care

Totality seems not enough

And truth can seem to err

Awareness doesn't have a name

To all appearances is null

Yet it produces everything

And so this empty place is full

All this talk of nothingness! It all seems so backwards and contrary to common sense. How few take it seriously! This brightest and most obvious of all spots in the universe is just not seen. This empty center of awareness is not noticed. Even if it is noticed when it is pointed out, most people fail to see its worth. They seldom attend to attention itself. Others don't even give it a chance. They laugh at it without hesitation. Lao Tzu playfully tells us that their laughter proves its truth.

The very idea that this openness may be the ultimate seems so empty to some. They do not look to see that this emptiness is source of all that exists. It is the unchanging origin of existence. It looks dark, but it is the source of all bright things. You have it all. Just look. Watch all things emerge from and in your naked awareness. See the always changing complexity taking place in your changeless central simplicity. See that this nothing has potential. It's not a mere nothing. It's filled with its own creation!

42.

Awareness comes from nothingness

So all can see it's plainly one

Contains all opposition

Ten thousand things are now begun

All these things embrace the void

And face the manifest

Achieving thus true harmony

They find existence truly blessed

No one wants to be considered

Empty and alone

Yet that's exactly what the seers

Say they have been shown

And violence is not the way

So here I must advise

That those who live by violence

Prepare their own demise

Empty and alone! That is our true condition. That is the reason we all seek our identity elsewhere. We try to find our place in the world. So begins our fall from wholeness. We do great violence to our true nature. To seek your identity in the world is to forget that the world is in you, in your awareness. You are the sole consciousness, empty but ready to receive the manifold world.

Empty and alone! Does that mean that others lack consciousness? No. The void, emptiness, nothingness has no attributes, no qualities. It can't be divided. It resides at your center, at my center. The void is one. Each is it in totality. All beings are identical at center, identical as pure consciousness. Seers embrace this void and welcome the world. Is it a wonder they find creation blessed?

What are the Ten Thousand Things? These are all the objects and events and thoughts and feelings your awareness creates at every moment. They are always changing, always fresh. They are what's on display. They are your riches. Lao Tzu insists that you always have it all and asks how you could possibly want more. Isn't everything enough?

43.

Overcome by yielding

The weak can overcome the strong

For only absence can provide

The place where everything belongs

And thus it is that I can see

The worthiness of not contending

Yet few will ever comprehend 

The potency of bending

Is it possible to overcome limitations by yielding? Yield your limited identity as a someone. See that you are nothing now. You are an absence. Accept your unlimited ability as capacity to receive the world. Yield all contention and opposition. You are not a somebody up against others. Others live in you. So few people see and appreciate their unlimited capacity to host the world.

44.

Which of these means more to you

Integrity or reputation?

Are gain and loss not equally

Responsible for limitation?

Everything that you possess

Is surely transitory

Just be pleased with emptiness

And witness inner bliss and glory

You know that your are always safe

If only you can be contented

With awareness as capacity

And with all that is presented

Is happiness based on gain and getting? Whatever you gain is temporary and limited. Gain and fame are traps. They can be lost and must be protected. You are not your possessions. Which means more to you, what you have or what you are? As capacity, you possess all that comes into your awareness. You are free, open and safe, in the place of lasting bliss. You are the never changing total potential to which the ever changing ten thousand things are presented You are the open awareness that accepts and possesses whatever comes into view. You are the emptiness that contains everything.

45.

Wholeness seems like imperfection

Yet its usefulness is sure

Fullness seems quite empty

But it is certain to endure

True straightness can seem twisted

True wisdom does not seem to know

Great eloquence seems halting

Great darkness seems to be aglow

Can you see that emptiness 

Contains all oppositions?

Like hot and cold and fast and slow?

All differences and all conditions?

So-called common sense has it wrong. Things are not as they appear. Above all, I am not as I appear - to you, to your camera, or to my mirror. How do I appear from here? to myself? to my own uncommon sense? If I appear at all, I appear to myself right here as emptiness, as an absence. This absence is the Tao, the absent head.

To see that all this is so, all you need to do is look - and keep looking. You are the absence that contains all that exists, the sameness that contains all differences. You are unlimited capacity for all limited things.

46.

When the absolute is cherished

Horses graze on the open green

When the absolute is lost

Only steeds of war are seen

No calamity exceeds desire

And always wanting more

Can you not see you have enough

And live in plenitude galore?

Cherish the Tao, the absolute. How do we cherish it? Lao Tzu tells us again and again that all we need to do is look. Look where the head is gone. Look any time it comes to mind. If we see our emptiness, our amplitude, we see that we have everything in our embrace. Spread your arms, and see that you embrace and include the world. Amplitude is plentitude! And excessive desire is calamity.

47.

No need to go outside a door

To see totality

Or look out of a window

For seeing what will always be

Going out you go astray

At home and center all is one

The seer doesn't have to do

To see that everything is done

Look within to see the source and container of all things. Can you see that this is your true identity? If you see this, you see all there is to see. You see pure awareness, perfect simplicity. You are home. You can look within anytime. You always find the Tao here at the still and quiet center of your being. And the Tao is worthy of your trust. It brings all things to you. It brings what you need each moment.

48.

In going after learning

Something's added every day

For resting in the ultimate

Everything must drop away

Day by day do less and less

Until nothingness is seen

All occurs quite on its own

A doer need not intervene

Allow all things to run their course

If you want to be proficient

Make a fuss and bother

And existence will be insufficient

Can you learn to rely on the Tao? Nothing else will serve you so well, for nothing else is so true. Nothing else is absolute, ultimate and final. Can you begin to let go of the identity you have built up over so many years? The efforts of your personal self to order your life have not brought satisfaction. The more you see your empty and creative core, the more your preoccupation with personal concerns drops away - on its own. Your true identity is pure awareness, centered in the place where others see your head, where you see only absence. Claim your true and unchanging nature. All you need to do is look within!

49.

The seer doesn't own a thought

For thoughts do not reside within

Thoughts concern ten thousand things

And that's the way it's always been

The seer doesn't rush to judge

And treats all people well

Considers no one bad or good

Attracts but never does repel

The seer trusts things as they are

And takes all people at their word

Giving trust to everyone

Knows faithfulness will be returned

The seer turns your view around

So you can never be beguiled

And gives you back all that you lost

The vision of a little child

When your view is total and singular, you are seeing as a child sees. You are seeing an undivided world, a world in which the seer and the seen are one. It is all you and all yours. Even those you call others are you! Seen in this light, the light of origin, all is seen in all its vividness, as if for the first time.

The seer treats all people with acceptance according to the open and welcoming nature of awareness. This may be startling to some, especially to those who react according to a moral code of proper behavior. The seer sees that these codes are artificial systems of thought imposed from the outside. The seer prefers the natural values of simple and spontaneous acceptance. What advantage does this provide? When you treat people with acceptance and trust, you are trusted and welcome everywhere. Give trust, and trust is given in return.

Turn yor view toward the Tao. See the gone-head. See your eternal and infinite capacity to receive all that occurs, all things and all events. This is the simple vision of the small child who still sees totality and still knows joy.

 

50.

Between the time when they are born

And the time that they will die

Three in ten will follow life

Three others only will deny

Three others are so casual

They live as though they're passing through

But one remains who clearly sees

There's not a single thing to do

Can you be like the one who sees 

The world emerging on its own?

What's needed for each moment

Arises from the great unknown

This one doesn't have a fear

Of weaponry or wild beast

These enemies can't harm the one

Whose separate self is long deceased

This vast awareness is everyone's true identity, but not everyone will appreciate it. Some will go along with tradition and the mores of their time, including the common view that they are a thing much like the image they see in the mirror. They will ignore awareness. Others will deny and despise existence. They will rebel against the ways of their neighbors and peers. They too ignore awareness. Still others will live only for the day, and they will reap the passing of days. They do not see eternity in their midst. But one remains, perhaps only one in ten, who sees what is given. This one is the seer. The seer sees the world arising moment by moment from the aware emptiness that is seen where the head is gone. This is the Tao. This is awareness. And the seer knows that this Tao is invulnerable. All things are vulnerable. This alone is not a thing. This alone is nothing.

51.

Everything arises

From this total emptiness

Is nourished and completed

And finds creation blessed

All things arise from nothingness

Are cared for by existence

Which freely gives what is required

For bountiful subsistence

Existence does not make a claim 

On what it has created

It nourishes and serves and leads

Is honored and appreciated

Are you a thing? Or are you nothing, not a thing, no thing? You can settle this question for yourself just by looking. Look within, at your central emptiness, at your missing head. Only you can do this looking. No one else is in a position to see it where you see it. Others see your head. You see nothing. But from this nothing emerges all existence. It's not merely nothing. It's the mysterious source of existence, and it's filled with its own creation. Please look to see that this is true for you. It's never otherwise for the seer. The beauty and bounty of existence comes from this most humble and most potent of all places, the great within.

Everything arises from nothing - on its own. What does that leave for us to do? Nothing! Do nothing. If you see that creation is arising moment by moment out of your central emptiness, that is all there is to it. That is the doing, which is really a non-doing. What to do? Trust that being aware of the Tao, seeing the gone-head, will occur more and more often. You can neither force it nor prevent it. If you see it, it's easy. It comes on its own. Just trust that it will always do so. If you are impressed with the magnificence and glory of this vision, it will continue to come. If you see that you are seeing the timeless, the eternal, it will continue to come, because you have seen it for all time! If you see that you are bare awareness, you will see that you are not the doer. You are the awareness that allows all doings to occur.

52. 

All things emerge from nullity

The only derivation

Of everything that manifests

The source of all creation

Stay in touch with origin

There's nothing that you need deny

Seeing your totality

You will not fear to die

Do not be in haste to speak

And always guard the senses

You will find your heart at peace

And in the place where all commences

See the subtle and the clear

It is the empty source of light

There is no danger in this place

That is forever in plain sight

Lao Tzu wants us to see the subtle and clear core of being right here where the head is gone. It's the place of total peace. And it's the place of origin of all ten thousand things. Watch these things emerge and subside in the Tao, in your clear awareness. We can see this any time we care to look. Lao Tzu tells us why we should care.

See that as awareness you are totality. You are the clear origin and only owner of dynamic existence. You are both. As the unchanging, undying source of all things, you are at peace and out of danger. As the possessor of creation, you are at peace even amidst turmoil if you see that you are the source of the turmoil. Stay in touch with origin! It's never out of sight. It's the light that shines on the world, the light of pure awareness.

53.

This way is wide and easy

Yet people love to stray

They love to take the sidetracks

And wander from the way

When the few are rich and wealthy

Living way above their needs

The granaries are empty

And the fields are full of weeds

When rulers spend on weapons

And implements of war

It's a never ending circle

Of ever wanting more

When the rich have all abundance

What remains must surely dwindle

Having more than you can use

Is thievery and fraud and swindle

What does it mean to get sidetracked? Pursue the interests of the false self to get ahead - to get a head. Why not prefer the wide and easy way of seeing how existence is truly given? to see the gone-head? the simple truth?

Lao Tzu calls it thievery when the few capture the bulk of a country's worth. This is no basis for a decent life. Even those in power would be better off if they didn't have to defend their position and their possessions. This kind of power does not last. It has always led to rebellion and to the overthrow of those who hold the power.

True power lies in seeing your true nature as unlimited potential to originate and sustain the world. This is real wealth and abundance, and it's yours by nature. Claim it by seeing it!

Wu wei, doing nothing, is spontaneous action. Everything occurs on its own - in emptiness. When Lao Tzu says to do nothing, he wants us to see our emptiness, to see that there is no one here to do anything. Even thoughts occur on their own, one following another. These thoughts can lead to a special kind of thought called a decision. Decisions too occur on their own, spontaneously. So what should you do? Do nothing. You are not any kind of thing that could do anything. You are no-thing. See that you are simply nothing, the nothing that beholds all activity. And see that all activity takes place in you.

54.

Hold fast to this awareness

Seeing that it is your root

It will not ever slip away

This ever present absolute

It cannot be uprooted

It's always held in veneration

Discovered very close at hand

In every generation

Allow its presence in your life

Awareness real and profound

Allow it in the family

Its blessings will abound

And if you care to share it

With neighbor and with friend

Its potency will multiply

With benefits that never end

You ask me how I know it's true

It isn't something I mistook

Well nothing is more obvious

The only thing I do is look

Bare awareness is your root. It is the source and nourishment and support of your world, the absolute at the center of existence. It has never been otherwise. This awareness is not new. It is eternal. It is what you have always been, unchanged since the day you were born and before.

It is also unchanged since olden days. Some people have seen it in all the ages of humanity. This view has been recorded since the invention of writing. The joy in sharing it is overwhelming. And the power of sharing this vision is boundless. Though it is thoroughly plain, it is the source of all delight. Sharing it with others can only spread the blessings. And sharing makes it easier to keep up the seeing yourself.

Why is Lao Tzu so sure of this? He can see it! He sees the Tao, the gone-head, the naked awareness. Nothing else is so plainly obvious. He looks where his face is absent and sees only openness to take in all delights.

It is also unchanged since olden days. Some people have seen it in all the ages of humanity. This view has been recorded since the invention of writing. The joy in sharing it is overwhelming. And the power of sharing this vision is boundless. Though it is thoroughly plain, it is the source of all delight. Sharing it with others can only spread the blessings. And sharing makes it easier to keep up the seeing yourself.

Why is Lao Tzu so sure of this? He can see it! He sees the Tao, the gone-head, the naked awareness. Nothing else is so plainly obvious. He looks where his face is absent and sees only openness to take in all delights.

55.

One who sees full emptiness

Is like a child just born

With muscles weak and bones so soft

Yet with a grip that's strong

The newborn hasn't been fulfilled

Its nature is pure vacancy

Nullity and nothingness

And potent spontaneity

It can scream and cry all day

And yet it never does get hoarse

It only does what naturally

Emerges from the inner source

To see this inner nature

Is seeing in a way that's bold

Into the only place there is

That cannot possibly grow old

Children and seers are similar in not imagining themselves to be an object, a human object with a head and a face. Infants and very young children have no concepts about their identity. They simply see what is. They have no thoughts on the subject. But they soon learn what others say they are. They see a face in the mirror. That's who they are now. Over the years they watch that face growing older. They know they will someday die. They have the knowledge that kills.

The seer returns to the pure, simple and total vision of the child, seeing the unchanging and undying vacancy at center, the nullity that is full of the world. Yet there is a difference. Unlike the child, the seer is awake to the Tao, aware of the all-creative nullity that exists in place of the face, instead of the head.

What is Te? Te is most often translated as Power, and what a power! It's the infinite potential of Tao, of This, of the awareness at your center. Te is the unlimited possibility of the Tao to become the ten thousand things. Tao is infinite emptiness with unlimited potential. And you can see it! You can see this infinite and creative emptiness, the Tao that holds the kaleidoscopic world.

56.

Those who know don't like to say

Those who say don't know

Be still and guard the senses

And see what doesn't show

Untie tangles, dim the glare

Dull the sharp and join the dust

Abide in primal unity

And then do what you must

You cannot hold it or let go

It can't be blamed or praised

In all-embracing oneness

Be astonished and amazed

Those who know don't like to say. They know that it can't be captured in words. They know that others are likely to take the words themselves for the truth. The truth is not in words. The truth is in seeing, in seeing the oneness at your center, the oneness you have in common with all beings.

Don't become entangled and identified with the ten thousand things. You are not a thing like your reflection in the mirror. You are not an image. You are the original! How can you fail to be amazed? How can you continue to ask for more?

You'll see more than what's on show! You'll see the void or absence at your center. It's a void that is plain to all the senses. You'll hear it as the silence that contains all sound. Using any of your senses, it is total plainness and purity. This void is pure and unadorned awareness, simple and absolute presence.

57.

To truly lead with fairness

You must put aside control

Abandon imposition

Make spontaneity your goal

The more you try to run their lives

With rules and prohibition

The poorer people's lives become

The more they live in opposition

The more you deal with others

With cunning and with guile

The more that other people say

Our lives are not worthwhile

The more you hoard your treasures

The more you're giving hope to thieves

The more you sharpen weapons

The more the country grieves

Do nothing and see all is done

And everyone is true

Drop the rules and people owe

Prosperity to you

Just let go of all desire

And people will return

To natural and simple ways

To life without concern

Do nothing and see all is done. Allow spontaneity. Lao Tzu is showing us two ways of doing. The first way is the more familiar. It's the way of opposition and imposition, of trying to impose our will on the world. It's the way of calculated action. Of course we must all plan and be assertive to some extent. We must do what is needed for living. But if we imagine this assertiveness to be the only mode of action, then we don't know when to stop. We do not know its limits. We push too far, and the world pushes back.

Lao Tzu prefers a second way of doing. He calls it wu wei, doing nothing. The Tao does nothing, and all is done. Everything happens on its own, with no help from you or me. Hold still a minute and look. Has anything stopped just because you are doing nothing? Does action continue? Of course it does. Trust that all is as it should be, and do what you will.

Doing nothing is identical to seeing everything. See that your inner being cannot act. See the setup. Here, where the head is gone, is Tao, which is empty and void. Emptiness cannot act, but it can contain action. All action is out there in the world, happening on its own. And the world out there is happening in you!

58.

Let your lead be gentle

And people will be satisfied

Let it be severe and harsh

And be rejected and defied

Happiness may reign today

But who knows what tomorrow holds?

Sadness too will have its time

As all ten thousand things unfold

The seer's sight is sharp and pointed

But it does not cut or pierce

The seer sees and shows the truth

This gentle way is never fierce

Who knows what tomorrow holds? No one is certain. Allow events to unfold as they will. Don't interfere in the affairs of others. Lead gently. Knowing that calculated action may backfire, are you prepared to take the blame?

The seer leads by doing nothing. Do nothing. See everything! Do nothing that is calculated. See totality. See the absence that is the source and substance of all that exists. Watch actions arise spontaneously. Even what seem like conscious decisions arise on their own. Be at your ease, and all will be at ease in your presence.

59.

To serve and care for others

With restraint and moderation

Stay centered in the here and now

And free of limitation

If you keep returning

To this your central root

You will possess forever

Awareness undilute

How can you best serve others? By being sure of yourself, of your own root. Stay centered in the here and now, in your own presence, your own awareness. When you are sure of your own unlimited identity, share it with others. It's our common identity after all. Awareness is not a thing that has qualities or parts that could be divided. It is identical for all of us. It is your nature to share it!

60.

It's best to lead a large domain

As you would cook a little fish

Don't poke and prod or you are bound

To spoil the country and the dish

Just stay open and aware

And evil cannot get a hold

Cannot find a home in you

Even evil's not that bold

At center you harm no one

And no one's able to harm you

This kind of reciprocity

Creates the world anew

How do you cook a small fish? By leaving it alone. Put it on the fire, and let it cook itself. We are back again to Lao Tzu's perennial theme, don't interfere. Lead a country the same way. Provide for the basic needs, then let it run itself. Don't exploit others for your own benefit. All will go smoothly on its own, with no harm to others and no harm to you.

Lao Tzu is also speaking about your true essence as awareness. No one is able to harm you, because, as awareness, you are an absence. The Tao, the absent head, is invulnerable. It is pure bliss.

Many of the chapters in the Book of Te are addressed to the leader of a country. We can learn from these because we all must assume the role of a leader at times. Lao Tzu tells us not to lead by opposing and prohibiting. If it harms no one then give the people what they want. The Taoist story of Three in the Morning tells of a keeper of monkeys who had to reduce their ration of nuts because of a shortage that year. He told the monkeys they would have three nuts in the morning and four nuts in the evening. The monkeys raised such a fuss about the situation that the keeper had to reconsider. He came back to the monkeys with a new plan. They would have four nuts in the morning and three nuts in the evening. Now the monkeys were satisfied. The keeper had allowed them to have what they wanted. And it had cost him nothing. If we really stop to listen to what people want, we will no doubt find that most of their wants amount to no more than four in the morning. An effective leader listens to others and does not insist on three in the morning!

61.

A great domain is like the sea

Whose power comes from lying low

And due to this humility

Its greatness has to grow

A small domain can lie low too

Acknowledging its low location

Surrender and humility

Give rise to exaltation

If you lie low you too arise

To uppermost position

For everyone's attracted to

One who doesn't fear submission

Here Lao Tzu speaks of the power of humility and lying low. This is not the humility of putting yourself down, exclaiming your unworthiness. This is the true humility of seeing that you already occupy the lowest place in the universe. As rivers flow to the sea, all objects flows directly to your awareness. You can see this is so! Look up at the sky (or the ceiling). Now look out at the horizon or the hills (or the wall). Bow down further, and see your feet. If you continue to lower your gaze, you see your legs, your waist, your chest, and finally your absence, your gone-head. This is the Tao, accommodation for all things.

62.

I'm at the center and the source

Of all ten thousand things

Where I receive the benefits

That pure awareness brings

These benefits belong to all 

To good and bad the same

For nature gives you what you need

With no regard for praise or blame

Words and deeds of excellence

May bring you honor and acclaim

But nature values each alike

And is indifferent to fame

When new leaders are installed

Don't send gifts or lofty praise

Stay centered in the unity

Provided by the inward gaze

Why should you esteem the void?

It does away with imperfection

Those who seek are bound to find

It disappears on close inspection

Nature gives to everyone alike, but humans are not satisfied with this. They want to divide and name, grade and rank, own and possess. Who is first? Who is best? Where do I fit in?

Lao Tzu tells me I don't fit in at all. On the contrary, everything fits in me! How fortunate I am if I can see this. And I can see it if I look inward, in the direction of the gone-head. Here is the primal oneness that I am, that we all are, undivided and without a name. And its nature is bliss, the bliss of wholeness. What greater gift could I share with anyone?

When I see my real nature as the capacity or space that contains everything and everyone, I see that I reject nothing and no one. I accept both good and bad into my awareness. I have no choice. It is my nature to accept what is given in awareness. To reject anything would make me less than whole. But that is not even possible. When I look, when I am seeing, I know that I am pure presence and filled to the brim with the ten thousand things!

Lying LowThe sea gets its power from lying low. So too does awareness. All the waters of the earth run to the sea, yet it never overflows. That is because the sea is also the source of the waters that rain down on the land. So too is awareness the source of the myriad things it contains. As the sea is the source and substance of the rain, so is awareness the origin and the substance of all that manifests within it. There could not be a greater power than the ability to create this enchanting world out of sheer nothingness. The Tao as the absent head is the power of infinite possibility.

63.

Begin with the easy

And do without doing

There isn't a thing 

That you should be pursuing

Begin with the simple

There's no need attacking

Your greatness will lie

In all that you're lacking

Tackle problems when they're small

And still subject to solution

The largest problem is resolved

By simple deeds of diminution

Can you center every day

And see all the seers see

Empty here and brimming there

A marvelous asymmetry?

Begin with the easy. Begin with the simple. Begin now! All you need to do is see the asymmetry of the setup or design of existence. See both this and that, the emptiness here and the fullness there. This is total seeing. And it's total being. You are all that you see. You are the void that produces and accommodates the plenum. You are both. All abundance lies in the lack at the center of your being, the lack of a head. This is the Tao, the gone-head. This absence of a head is the presence of all else.

What is a deed of diminution? It's any letting go of your identity as an object. You are not a person. You are accommodation for the personal. You are awareness and all that it contains. Why settle for the merely personal?

See that you are the gone-person as well as the gone-head.

Asymmetry is a word that Douglas Harding uses to describe how we relate to one another. We are not in symmetrical relationship. We are not face to face with one another. We are face to no-face. We are face to space, face to emptiness, face to Tao. We can look and see that this is true. Let's get up close and look at the face of a friend. If you prefer, look at the face in your mirror. How many faces do you see? I can't speak for you, but I see only one face ---- that of my friend or my reflection. If I see only one face, what do I see where my own face is missing? I see not a thing, only absence, void, emptiness, the Tao!

Of course I can never be face to face with anyone. The setup is not symmetrical. Here at the center I am not a face. I am bare capacity to contain all faces and all other things out there on the periphery. This is my identity. I am the container, and I am the contents as well. These two aspects of my nature are not opposites. They are one. The absence at the center is truly all. It creates, embraces, and holds the forever changing content at the periphery. Awareness is not divided. This absence is also pure presence or awareness. It is my gone-face. My face is what I present to you - for better or for worse.

64.

To keep the peace is easy

Begin before a problem stirs

Handle things before they happen

And trouble before it occurs

Be calm and conquer worries

Before they can proceed

The very largest tree begins

As just a tiny seed

It takes a single step to start

A journey of a thousand miles

And just one brick to start to build

The grandest domiciles

Let things happen as they will

You do not need to interfere

See that you do nothing

That causes discord to appear

"It takes a single step to start a journey of a thousand miles." This is one of the best known and most quoted aphorisms in the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu is telling us to take that step now! Now is the opportune time. Now is the only time. And now is out of time. It's eternal.

So see totality now! See that all is in you. Even time is in you. See it now for all time. See it whenever it occurs to you to see. It's a new way of seeing, though what you see is that which has always been so. And this new way of seeing brings a new way of being, a new attitude. You no longer have a need to attempt to control the world. You can allow the world to function for itself, to happen on its own. You have no need to oppose or interfere. You do not add to the disunity and disruption that so often prevails.

65.

Those of old who found the way

Could see their inner core

They saw that it was hidden

And didn't bring it to the fore

When people think they know the truth

They want all others to concur

But they are happy and content

When they remain unsure

Don't try to lead with cleverness

Prefer instead simplicity

It's obvious that truth must lie

In nothingness and clarity

The absence at my core is hidden from others. They see my head instead of my absence. My head is their truth. My absence is my truth. They can see absence by looking within, just as I do. It's the same absence, the same clarity. Lao Tzu tells us that the seers of old did not bring this absence to the fore. They did not make it an object, and therefore an object of contention. How then do I share this simplicity with others? By showing them where to look. They must look where their own heads are missing. The Tao, the gone-head, is the same for each of us. It's the same emptiness. It's the one awareness, the one emptiness.

66.

The sea is large and mighty

Because it lies below

The streams and rivers of the world

Thus capturing their flow

If you want to have your fill

Then you must see that you are hollow

If you want to lead the way

Then you must be prepared to follow

When you lead you are above

But no one feels put down

And when you must be out in front

Know that no one's losing ground

When you see that you're not built

For facing up or confrontation

No one can contend with you

Who are the ultimate negation

A cup is hollow, therefore it can receive and hold your beverage. You must be hollow if you are to receive the manifest world as it is, without distortion or opposition. You are made hollow. You have no face with which to confront others. You have the others' faces. Your own face is gone, missing, hollow. It's the ultimate and everlasting negation that contains all that is presented to it. It's the negation that holds all things positive, the emptiness that is always full.

When you take action and lead others, can you do so as the one who is equal to all others, not as one who is above others? You are not above others and taking what is not yours. You are below everyone and receiving the fullness of creation. You are the hollow and empty center of existence.

You are the empty center of everything that appears. The center is right where you are now. To find the center, it helps to find the periphery first. So let's find it. Look straight ahead, and you see objects. Above these objects are more objects, and more still objects are below and to the left and right. These objects occupy the periphery. But where is the center? The only place you haven't looked is within. Look in your own direction! Nothing appears here. It is at the center of the field of appearances. This is a precise geometry. And it's a cornucopia. Out of the emptiness at the center pours the abundance of manifest objects. When you see in all directions, you are seeing the whole. And the whole includes the hole, the hollow, the nameless emptiness within - at the center. This is your true, unchanging, eternal identity.

67.

On seeing inner nothingness

You see it's great beyond compare

Though many find it curious

That you would even care

I have three treasures that I keep

The first is friendliness

The second is to stay behind

The third is wanting less

For if you're friendly and you care

You can dare to do what's needed

And if you always stay behind

The lead will surely be conceded

And if you're satisfied with less

You have everything to give

Keep these treasures in your heart

Then you will truly live

Here are Lao Tzu's famous Three Treasures. These treasures are values that arise naturally from abiding in your inner nothingness. They certainly aren't the values that most people cherish.

The first treasure is love, compassion, or friendliness. Being nothing, you are open. You embrace all creation by your very nature.

The second treasure is humility, staying behind. Seeing that you are nothing, you allow all others to go ahead. You do not struggle for superiority.

The third treasure is frugality, wanting less, wanting only the void of awareness. Wanting nothing above all else, you can be generous and giving. You do not need to contend.

68.

Violence is not the way

The greatest warriors know

That treachery and anger

Will not defeat the foe

You only win if you don't strive

And gain if you do not oppose

This is the certain victory

Simplicity bestows

Lao Tzu is concerned with the values that arise naturally from abiding in inner nothingness. He is also concerned about the values that arise from ignoring this inner void. He warns us that we cannot push ourselves on the world. Victory does not mean opposing and overcoming others. True victory is receiving others into your own simplicity, into the clarity at the center of our being.

69.

In conflict just be cautious

And always on your guard

Rather than advance an inch

Instead retreat a yard

In this way you go along

And make your gain without advancing

You deal with the rival

As your position is enhancing

Remember that it's possible

Your rival just may yield

So don't advance on such a foe

Let differences be healed

Notice that, as Tao, you are the source and substance of the world out there. You are in no way separate from the myriad things and events of the world. You contain these things and events. They are really not out there at all. They occur within you. You can't ignore them. So you must deal with them. Lao Tzu tells us to go easy and gently. Be cautious. Don't push and force your way. Allow time for problems to resolve. Wholeness comes in its own time. And the more you see the wholeness of being, the more quickly it comes to all experience. Seeing wholeness is seeing the clarity that contains all existence. Look within for the Tao.

What is the Tao? Who am I? I am pure presence, and I am all that is present in that presence. I am pure awareness, and I am all that exists in that awareness. I am nothing and everything. It's all me. Everything is me and exists in my light. Everyone is me. There are no others. I am the one alone. I am the Seer.

I am the Seer, and I am the Seen. And these are not two. I am the vacuity at center, and I am all that occupies this vacuity. And these are not two. Only This is. Only I am. Nothing exists apart from me, and I am not divided into parts. All exists in me and as me. And This is the Tao of the gone-head.

70.

Embarrassingly obvious

And always near at hand

It is this nothingness you see

But never understand

Though truth within is ageless

Very few will ever see

My face is what I give to you

The jewel within is me

Lao Tzu's teaching is based on the ageless Tao within each of us, the gone-head. Though this truth is glaringly obvious, few can see it. Few even bother to look, to attend to attention, to be aware of awareness. We imagine a head where there is only awareness. We imagine a face where there is only absence. We imagine a limited thing where there is only the jewel of absolute eternity.

Douglas Harding says that headlessness is embarrassingly obvious. I have freely used Douglas's expressions when they coincide with Lao Tzu's meanings. In this verse Lao Tzu is saying that his words are very easy to follow. His words are pointing to the Tao, the jewel, the absolutely obvious absence within.

71.

You cannot understand the truth

Claim to know and show you're ill

Just see that you are missing

That truth is bare and nil

Unknowing is the final cure

When knowledge takes its heavy toll

Pure presence is totality

And absence makes you whole

Tao is not a thing or an object to be known or understood. Tao is naked awareness. Let go of knowing. Unknowing is the cure of the disease of understanding. The Tao, the truth, is not to be understood but to be seen, and to be seen as an absence at that. It is our real identity. The absence of a head is the presence of pure awareness. Within this awareness is all that occurs moment by moment. Nothing is missing!

72.

When the sense of wonder goes

Disaster is not far behind

Don't intrude in people's lives

And they won't think you are unkind

The seer sees both this and that

But doesn't ask for praise

Finding this immensity

With just a simple inward gaze

Here is Lao Tzu's principle of reversal one more time. Disaster follows when you interfere in the lives of others. People resent meddling. Your intentions may be unassailable, but your reward is rebellion. You cannot impose your will. It would be far better to adopt the seer's stance. See that your own inner immensity is room for the will of totality, for what is actually happening each moment.

73.

The way is very easy

Its purposes prevail

When all is done in silence

Intention cannot fail

Its net is vast and over all

With meshes large and wide

Yet it loses nothing

Holds everything inside

What is the intention of the way, of the whole? Just what is happening right now! You are made to contain everything, not to pick and choose. Nothing can be lost or rejected or abandoned. Resistance is futile. You are pure open awareness, made for acceptance. What a relief to realize this. All that happens is meant to happen by the Tao, by totality, by you in reality. All is as it should be.

74.

You truly are what isn't born

You need not be afraid to die

Just live your life and know that you

Will never lose the inner eye

You can't control what is to be

In using tools you don't command

Unlike the master carpenter

You're bound to cut your hand

You are the one who was never born. You are the witness of what is born and eventually perishes. Remain the witness. Let things take care of things. Everything happens on its own, spontaneously. Does this mean you are not free to choose and decide? No, it means that even your own decisions occur spontaneously. You can't interfere in the world of things, because that world occurs within your being.

75.

The people starve when taxes take

The bulk of what they earn

When leaders interfere too much

They get rebellion in return

The people do not fear to die

If leaders rob them of their lives

But taking no more than you need

You see that everybody thrives

Very little is needed for a happy and abundant life. No-thing is needed for bliss. Allow others to have what they need. You don't need to accumulate things. You are totality, nothing and everything, nothing containing everything. You are the absence that is pure presence. More is not possible. More things and more control over others means more trouble! Let go of excess. Accept totality.

76.

We're soft and supple when we're born

Hard and rigid when we die

Living plants are pliable

Deadwood is brittle and dry

This way life befriends the weak

But death draws near the strong

The hard and stiff are bound to break

The supple bends and goes along

Lao Tzu contrasts the softness and receptivity of our true nature as awareness with the hardness and severity of our false identity as a name, a person in a world of persons. As a person, we are hard and impenetrable. As awareness, we are open and clear, receptive and flexible. We accept whatever comes to us. We don't resist. Those who resist are broken. Those who accept are whole.

77.

Nature's way of doing

Is like the bending of a bow

For pulling on a bow you see

The low go high and the high go low

Nature takes from those who have

And gives to those who lack

When nature takes from human beings

They fight to get it back

But if you see you have it all

You're not afraid to give away

Expecting nothing in return

It all comes back with no delay

Here's a revealing statistic for the year 2000. Earth's population is 6,000,000,000. The 200 richest people in the world have more wealth that the poorest 2,000,000,000 combined. Has anything changed since Lao Tzu's day?

Everyone is entitled to life's necessities. Where is your wealth? Do you see that you have all that you need and more? You have the Tao, total awareness. Allowing nature to have its way, you don't claim more than you can use. You claim your real riches instead. You see that you are totality, and Tao takes care of the rest. All are equal in this regard.

Have you noticed that all of the definitions of the Tao and the Seer are identical? The Seer is the Tao. The Tao is the Seer. The Tao is the presence of awareness that is seen as the absence of a head. The Seer is the same!

You, as the Seer, are in no way separate from the world. You are all that is. And what a joy it is to see how all is given - here and now and forever. See the Tao. See the Seer. See the Truth.

78.

Water is so very soft

It overcomes because it yields

By wearing down the hardest rock

It shows what power weakness wields

The weak can overcome the strong

The soft can overcome the hard

Everybody knows it's true

So hold the low in high regard

The seer sees serenity

Where others see affliction

The seer sees the inner truth

Where others only see a fiction

Water flows as life should flow. It goes around all obstacles, and, doing so, wears them down by its persistence. Water does not oppose. Water merely goes the way of its own nature. It remains calm and serene. Can you do the same? All power lies in such a course. Your victory lies in not distorting your true and original nature.

And what is this nature? What is your inner truth? It is the serene and open presence at the center of your being. Can you see this? Can you see the creative emptiness where others see your face?

79.

There's little good in making peace

If resentment lingers

You'll never see an end to blame

If everyone is pointing fingers

It's better to be pointing

At the peaceful and creative place

Where you see naught but emptiness

And others say they see your face

Let's point a finger one more time at the empty face, the gone-head. Point here rather than there. Notice the arrangement. See how existence is presented in non-existence, how everything appears in nothing. Existence emerges from this no-thing at your center. All peace is here at center. All opposition is out there in the world of heads and faces. Where do you prefer to live?

80.

If a land is small and the people few

And the rulers recognize what's needed

The simple ways of courtesy

Are happily and gladly heeded

For people need so little

To live their lives aright

Are food and home and clothing

Not enough for pure delight?

Though nearby lands are close enough

To hear their roosters crow

The people will be so content

That not a one will want to go

If you live in the simplicity at your center, you will not want to go anywhere. You will see that there is nowhere to go and no one here to go anywhere. You are the still center of existence. There is nothing at your center to move. Can you see that everything moves in you while you remain absolutely still? Simplicity also means contentment with little. Of course you need the basic necessities of life. But do you need great wealth or fame? If you are seeing that at your center, as awareness, you are totality, you will have no need to build a self. Nothing can be added to totality. You are whole and free to enjoy the delights of living!

Can you see this freedom? At center you are free of everything. You are free of sounds, of movement, of colors and shapes, thoughts and feelings. And this freedom is not merely freedom from. It's also freedom for. As the Tao, you are empty and empty-headed, open and free. You are always free - for accepting, for embracing and for loving existence. Why not stay free? Don't try to make a name for yourself. Don't try to get a-head. Don't try to face the world. Just see that all existence is facing you!

81.

Truth need not be eloquent

And eloquence may not be true

There is no need to argue

When truth is shining through

Those who see may not be learned

The learned may not see

To see you merely need to look

In pure simplicity

The seer doesn't have to hoard

And does not fear to lose

The more you give, the more you have

So why should you refuse?

Why not give it all away?

For emptiness brings benefit

And as the seers always say

The more you give, the more you get

Lao Tzu began his text by telling us that the Tao cannot be named. His final words recall that theme. See it. Don't just talk or write or think about it. It's not contained in words or names. See it! Let go of all that keeps you from seeing what really is. See your true identity, this aware nothing that you are, right here where your face is absent and your head is gone. See that all that you let go as identity comes back as content. Nothing is lost. To see that this is true, all you need to do is look.

Look again now. No need to point this time. You know where to look by now. Can you see the Tao, the absence of a head that is at the same time the presence of the multifarious world? This is total seeing. Nothing is left out. Only the head, the name, the false self is missing. Totality remains!

And that's the end of the story. There is nothing for you or me to do but continue seeing the truth about the world and its origin within each of us. I am grateful to Lao Tzu for sharing his Tao with me. I am also grateful to all of those who have interpreted his writing in English. I have depended on their renderings of the text to attempt my own version. Above all, I am grateful to Douglas Harding for showing me what he calls two-way seeing. There is nothing like seeing the truth, nothing more rewarding. Again I will recommend that you read any of the books that Douglas has written. All of them contain experiments in seeing. Doing the experiments is a sure way to make total seeing your accustomed way of seeing the world. You have nothing to lose but your head!

Jim Clatfelter

Published 2000