Verse 26 - Living Calmly

[Eva Libre]

26th Verse

 

The heavy is the root of the light.

The still is the master of unrest.

 

Realizing this,

the successful person is

poised and centered

in the midst of all activities;

although surrounded by opulence,

he is not swayed.

Why should the lord of the country

flit about like a fool ?

If you let yourself be blown to and fro,

you lose touch with your root.

To be restless is to lose one's self-mastery.

 

Contemplation/Meditation Verse

I have the ability

          to stay poised and centered,

regardless of what goes before me.

 

 

Do The Tao Now

Sit in a quiet place and picture the one person with whom you have some kind of long-standing conflict sitting there before you.  Now say out loud, directly to him or her, "I forgive you.  I surround you with love and light, and I do the same for myself."  This will put the message of the 26th verse of the Tao Te Ching to work for you by bringing about a sense of calm.

 

Source - Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life (Living the Wisdom of the Tao)

by Dr Wayne W Dyer

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr Dyer -

 

Vow to seek a calm inner response

in the circumstances of your life.

In the midst of any kind of unrest -- be it an argument, a traffic jam, a monetary crisis, or anything at all -- make the immediate decision that you will find the calm center of yourself.  By not thinking of what is taking place, and instead taking a few deep breaths in which you opt to empty your mind of judgments, it becomes impossible to mentally "flit about like a fool".  You have the innate ability to choose calmness in the face of situations that drive others to madness.  Your willingness to do so, especially when chaos and anger have been your previous choices, puts you in touch with "the master of unrest".  There was a time when I thought this was impossible.  Now I know that even in the most troublesome of times, my reaction is to choose stillness . . . the way of the Tao.

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr Dyer -

Don't lose touch with your root.

With a written declaration or picture placed strategically in your home and workplace, remind yourself that no one can make you lose touch with your root without your consent.  Affirm the following often:

 

I have the ability to stay poised and centered,

regardless of what goes before me.

 

Then vow to put this new ay of being into practice the next time a situation of unrest crops up.  Do the mental work in advance and you'll achieve the self-mastery that Lao-tzu refers to in this verse.  More significantly, you'll be in harmony with the Tao, which is your ultimate calling.

[Eva Libre]

From Vimala McClure - The Tao of Motherhood

 

26

CENTER

 

Pay attention and stay centered.

 

You carry the mantle of "Mother",

the eternal principle of balance and

stability.

 

When your children's energy is

scattered, be grounded.  When

your children throw tantrums,

be still.  Know what you stand for.

 

Be firm and consistent to teach your

children about boundaries.  Thus you

will root them in health and release

their souls to limitlessness.

[Eva Libre]

From Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star

The inner is foundation of the outer

The still is master of the restless

 

The Sage travels all day

                     yet never leaves his inner treasure

Though the views are captivating and beg attention

                     he remains calm and uninvolved

Tell me, does the lord of a great empire

                     go out begging for rice ?     

 

One who seeks his treasure in the outer world

                     is cut off from his own roots

Without roots, he becomes restless

Being restless, his mind is weak

And with a mind such as this

                     he loses all command below Heaven      

[Eva Libre]

From Richard Grossman - The Tao of Emerson

 

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

 

Gravity is the root of lightness;

stillness, the ruler of movement.

 

Therefore, a wise prince, marching the whole day,

          does not go far from his baggage wagons.

Although he may have brilliant prospects to look at,

          he quietly remains in his proper place,

          indifferent to them.

How should the lord of a myriad chariots

          carry himself lightly before the kingdom ?

If he do act lightly, he has lost his root;

If he proceed to active movement,

          he will lose his throne.

 

 

From the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Spiritual Laws", "Politics"

 

The fact of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal,

          is universal.

And each force by its own activity

          develops the other.

Nature will not have us fret and fume.

Our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless.

Only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action

          are we strong.

There is no need of struggle, convulsions,

          and despairs,

Or the wringing of hands and the gnashing of teeth.

We miscreate our own evils.

[Eva Libre]

Tao Te Ching - The Classic Book of Integrity and The Way by Lao-Tzu

A New Translation by Victor H Mair

based on the recently discovered Ma-Wang-Tui Manuscripts

 

26 (70)

 

          Heavy is the root of light;

          Calm is the ruler of haste.

 

For these reasons,

          The superior man may travel the whole day

                    without leaving his heavy baggage cart.

          Though inside the courtyard walls of a noisy inn,

                    he placidly rises above it all.

 

          How then should a king with ten thousand chariots

                    conduct himself lightly before all under heaven ?

 

          If he treats himself lightly,

                    he will lose the taproot;

          If he is hasty,

                    he will lose the rulership.

[Eva Libre]

Lynn's - Daode jing of Laozi

 

The heavy is the foundation of the light, and quietude is the sovereign of activity.

 

For all things, the light cannot uphold the heavy, and the small cannot press down the large.  the one who does not act causes action, and the one who does not move causes movement.  This is the reason that the heavy is surely the foundation of the light and quietude is surely the sovereign of activity. (1)

This is why the sage travels throughout the day yet does not separate himself from his retinue.

Because he treats the heavy [himself as sovereign] as the foundation [of the state], he does not separate himself from it [the protection of his retinue].

 

So despite the presence of glorious scenery, he remains relaxed and detached.

 

His heart/mind is not captivated by it. (2)

 

How could one be the master of ten thousand war chariots and yet treat his own person lighter than all under Heaven ! (3)  If he treats it lighter, he will lose his foundation.  If he engages in activity, he will lose his sovereignty. (4)

 

If he treats it lighter, he will not hold down [pacify/stabilize] what is heavier [all under Heaven].  "Lose his foundation" means he will lose his life.  "Lose his sovereignty" means he will lose the position of sovereign.

 

 

Text, in Italics above, is Wang Bi's commentary.

The notes below, are from the translator, Richard John Lynn -

(deb's note - "section" is used for verse in these notes.)

 

(1)  Cf. Wang's commentaries to section 16, third passage, and section 45, last passage.  His commentary to Top Yin of Hexagram 32, Heng (Perseverance), in the Yijing (Classic of changes) reads: "Quietude is the sovereign of activity, and repose is the master of action.  Thus repose is the state to which the one at the top [the ruler] should reside, and it is through quietude that the Dao of everlasting duration works" (Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 339; see Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 380).  Qian Zhongshu cites another relevant passage from the Yijing to help elucidate this passage; it is from the Tuanzhuan (Commentary on the Judgments) to Hexagram 24, Fu (Return): "In Fu [Return] we can see the very heart and mind of Heaven and Earth !"  to which Wang Bi comments:

 

Return as such means "to revert to what is the original substance [ben]", and for Heaven adn Earth we regard the original substance to be the mind/heart.  Whenever activity ceases, tranquility results, but tranquility is not opposed to activity.  Whenever speech ceases, silence results, but silence is not opposed to speech.  As this is so, then even though Heaven and Earth are so vast that they possess the myriad things in great abundance, which, activated by thunder and moved by the winds, keep undergoing countless numbers of tranformations, yet the original substance of Heaven and Earth consists of perfectly quiescent nonbeing [wu, nothingness].  Thus it is only when earthly activity ceases that the heart/mind of Heaven and Earth can be seen.  If Heaven and Earth were to have had being [substance, actuality] instead for this heart/mind, then it never would have been possible for all the different categories of things to become endowed with existence.

(Lyn, The Classic of changes, 286;

see Lou, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 336-37)

 

(2)  Wang's commentary suggests that the base text is the text he knew.  In place of "glorious scenery" (rongguan), however, the Mawangdui texts have "walled hostelry" (huanguan), and it is likely that Text A, which has "only" (wei) in place of "despite" (Sui), is the more authentic reading: "Only when there is a walled hostelry to which he can retire can he become detached" (Mawangdui Hanmu boshu, 121).  Wang's commentary is obviously not to this version.  See Henricks, Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching, 238.

 

(3)  Cf. section 13, fourth and fifth passages.

 

(4)  The sage should reside in quietude and not get caught up in activity.  Cf. Wang's Zhouyi lueli (General Remarks on the Changes of the Zhou), Ming tuan (Clarifying the Judgments): "The many cannot govern the many; that which governs the many is the most solitary [gua, the One].  Activity cannot govern activity; that which controls all activity that occurs in the world, thanks to constancy, is the One.  Therefore for all the many to manage to exist, their controlling principle must reach back to the One, and for all activities to manage to function, their source cannot but be the One" (Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 25; see Lou,Wang Bi ji jiaoshi, 591).

 

[Eva Libre]

From Stephen Mitchell - tao te ching - A New English Version

 

The heavy is the root of the light.

The unmoved is the source of all movement.

 

Thus the Master travels all day

without leaving home.

However splendid the views,

she stays serenely in herself.

 

Why should the lord of the country

flit about like a fool ? 

If you let yourself be blown to and fro,

you lose touch with your root.

If you let restlessness move you,

you lose touch with who you are.

 

 

From Byron Katie - A Thousand Names For Joy

- Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

 

The Master travels all day

without leaving home.

However splendid the views,

she stays serenely in herself.

Peace is our natural condition.  Only by believing an untrue thought is it possible to move from peace into emotions like sadness and anger.  Without the pull of beliefs, the mind stays serenely in itself and is available for whatever comes along.

 

Who would you be in people's presence without, for example, the story that anyone should care about you, ever ?  You would be love itself.  When you believe the myth that people should care, you're too needy to care about people or about yourself.  The experience of love can't came from anyone else; it can come only from inside you.

 

I was once walking in the desert with a man who began to have a stroke.  We sat down, and he said, "Oh my God, I'm dying.  Do something !"  He was talking through one side of his mouth because the other side had become paralyzed.  What I did was just sit there beside him, loving him, looking into his eyes, knowing that we were miles from a phone or car.  He said, "You don't even care, do you ?"  I said, "No."  And through his tears, he started to laugh, and I did, too.  And eventually his faculties returned; the stroke had come to pass, not to stay.  This is the power of love.  I wouldn't leave him for a caring.

 

If someone were knifed in front of me, what would compassion look like ?  I would do everything within my power to help, of course, but to think that this shouldn't be happening would be to argue with reality.  That's not efficient.  If I cared, I couldn't be the intimacy that I am.  A caring would move me away from the real, would separate me from the one who is stabbed and from the one with the knife, and I am everything.  To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love.  Love joins with everything.  It doesn't exclude the monster.  It doesn't avoid the nightmare -- it looks forward to it, because, like it or not, it may happen, if only in your mind.  There's no way that I would let caring interfere with what I experience as my very own self.  It has to include every cell, every atom.  It is every cell and every atom.  There is no "also". 

 

When something feels right, I do it; I live my life out of that caring.  That's how I contribute to life: by picking up the trash on the sidewalk, by recycling, sitting with the homeless, sitting with the wealthy, helping people who are deeply confused question their thinking.  I love what is and how it changes through my hands and yours.  It's wonderful to be so available to change what I can, and for it to be effortless, always.

 

Some people think that compassion means feeling another person's pain.  That's nonsense.  It's not possible to feel another person's pain.  You imagine what you'd feel if you were in that person's shoes, and you feel your own projection.  Who would you be without your story ?  Pain-free, happy, and totally available if someone needs you -- a listener, a teacher in the house, a Buddha in the house, the one who lives it.  As long as you think there's a you and a me, let's get the bodies straight.  what I love about separate bodies is that when you hurt, I don't -- it's not my turn.  And when I hurt, you don't.   Can you be there for me without putting your own suffering between us ?  Your suffering can't show me the way.  Suffering can only teach suffering.

 

The Buddhists say that it's important to recognize the suffering in the world, and that's true, of course.  but if you look more deeply, even that is a story.  It's a story to say that there is any suffering in the world.  Suffering is imagined, because we haven't adequately questioned our thoughts.  I am able to be present with people in extreme states of torment without seeing their suffering as real.  I'm in the position of being totally available to help them see what I see, if that's what they want.  They're the only ones who can change, but I can be present, with kind words and the power of inquiry.

 

It's amazing how many people believe that suffering is a proof of love.  If I don't suffer when you suffer, they think, it means that I don't love you.  How can that possibly be true ?  Love is serene; it's fearless.  If you're busy projecting what someone's pain must feel like, how can you be fully present with her ?  How can you hold her hand and love her with all your heart as she moves through her experience of pain ?  Why would she want you to be in pain, too ?  Wouldn't she rather have you present and available ?  You can't be present for people if you believe that you're feeling their pain.  If a car runs over someone and you project what that must feel like, you're paralyzed.  But sometimes in a crisis like that, the mind loses its reference, it can't project anymore, you don't think, you just act, you run over and pick up the car before you have time to think This isn't possible.  It happens in a split second.  Who would you be without your story ?  The car is up in the air.

 

Sadness is always a sign that you're believing a stressful thought that isn't true for you.  It's a constriction, and it feels bad.  Conventional wisdom says differently, but the truth is that sadness isn't rational, it isn't a natural response, and it can't ever help you.  It just indicates the loss of reality, the loss of the awareness of love.  Sadness is the war with what is.  It's a tantrum.  You can experience it only when you're arguing with God.  When the mind is clear, there isn't any sadness.  There can't be.

 

If you move into situations of loss in a spirit of surrender to what is, all you experience is a profound sweetness and an excitement about what can come out of the apparent loss.  And once you question the mind, once the stressful story is seen for what it is, there's nothing you can do to make it hurt.  You see that the worst loss you've experienced is the greatest gift you can have.  when the story arises against -- "She shouldn't have died" or "He shouldn't have left" -- it's experienced with a little humor, a little joy.  Life is joy, and if you understand the illusion arising, you understand that it's you arising, as joy.

 

What does compassion look like ?  At a funeral, just eat the cake.  You don't have to know what to do.  It's revealed to you.  Someone comes into your arms, and the kind words speak themselves; you're not doing it.  Compassion isn't a doing.  Whether or not you're suffering over their suffering, you're standing or you're sitting.  But one way you're comfortable, the other way you're not.

 

You don't have to feel bad to act kindly.  On the contrary: the less you suffer, the kinder you naturally become.  And if compassion means wanting others to be free of suffering, how can you want for others what you won't give to yourself ?

 

I read an interview with a well-known Buddhist teacher in which he described how appalled and devastated he felt while watching the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  While this reaction is very popular, it is not the reaction of an open mind and heart.  It has nothing to do with compassion.  It comes from believing unquestioned thoughts.  He believed, for example, "This shouldn't be happening" or "This is a terrible thing".  It was thoughts like these that were making him suffer, not the event itself.  He was devastating himself with his unquestioned thoughts.  His suffering had nothing to do with the terrorists or the people who projected fearful meanings onto that picture of a plane hitting a building, who killed themselves with their unquestioned thoughts and took away their own state of grace.

 

The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes.  And compassion begins at home.  Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist.  That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality.  I've taken the walk myself.

 

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace.  "If I felt completely peaceful", they say, "why would I bother taking action at all ?"  My answer is "Because that's what love does".  To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane.  As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become.  As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin.  My experience is the opposite.  Love is action.  It's clear, it's kind, it's effortless, and it's irresistible.

[Eva Libre]

Dr Dyer's Essay on Verse 26 -

 

In this chapter of the Tao Te Ching, you're being advised to maintain a sense of serenity regardless of what you may see taking place around you.  Moreover, you're being told that the true master knows that the ability to stay calm is always located within.  From this perspective, there's no need to assign responsibility to others for how you feel.  Even though you may live in a world where blame and faultfinding are endemic, you will own your feelings and actions.  You will know that circumstances don't determine your state of mind, for that power rests with you.  When you maintain a peaceful inner posture, even in the midst of chaos, you change your life.

 

The wisdom of this verse of the Tao Te Ching prompts you to know that you have a choice.  Do you want to be in a state of confusion or to have a tranquil inner landscape ?  It's up to you !  Armed with this insight, the Tao master doesn't allow an external event to be a disturbance.  Lao-tzu tells you that assigning blame for your lack of calmness will never bring you to the state of being that you're striving to attain.  Self-mastery only blossoms when you practice being aware of, and responsible for, what you're feeling.

 

This particular part of the Tao Te Ching is one that you'll probably want to immerse yourself in repeatedly.  After all, what could be better than the freedom of going through life without feeling that people and circumstances control you without your permission ?  Are you depressed ?  Irritated ?  Frustrated ?  Exhilarated ?  Ecstatically in love ?  Whatever your current state, if you believe that a changing economic picture or a tapestry of events taking place around you is responsible -- and you then use these external factors to explain your inner state of mind -- you've lost touch with your root.  Why ?  Because you're allowing yourself to be "blown to and fro" by the shifting winds of circumstance.

 

The solution for a life of unrest is choosing stillness.  The quiet of the Tao is oblivious to any turmoil in the world of the 10,000 things.  Be like the Tao, advises Lao-tzu: "The still is the master of unrest".  You have a choice in every moment, so you can decide to be a host to God and carry around with you the calmness that is the Tao, or you can be a hostage to your ego, which insists that you can't really help feeling disorderly when you're in circumstances that resemble pandemonium.