Verse 24 - Living Without Excess

[Eva Libre]

24th Verse

 

If you stand on tiptoe, you cannot stand firmly.

If you take long steps, you cannot walk far.

 

Showing off does not reveal enlightenment.

Boasting will not produce accomplishment.

He who is self-righteous is not respected.

He who brags will not endure.

 

All these ways of acting are odious, distasteful.

They are superfluous excesses.

They are like a pain in the stomach,

a tumor in the body.

 

When walking the path of the Tao,

this is the very stuff that must be

uprooted, thrown out, and left behind.

 

 

Contemplation/Meditation Verse

Boasting or showing off are superfluous excesses

          this practice must be uprooted,

thrown out, and left behind forever.

 

 

Do The Tao Now

 

Tomorrow morning, do something expressing your kindness to someone who will be totally surprised by your actions.  E-mail someone, expressing your love and appreciation.  Call a grandparent who may be feeling lonely in an assisted-living facility.  Send flowers to a loved one who's alone, or even a stranger if necessary.  Note how your gratitude for another truly nurtures your Tao path, not that of your ego.

 

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

by Dr Wayne W Dyer

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr Dyer -

 

Change your life by consciously choosing

to be in a state of gratitude.

 

The journey of your life will change when you emphasize gratitude for all that you are, all that you accomplish, and all that you receive.  Practice silently repeating I thank You throughout your waking hours, and as you fall asleep and awaken.  It really doesn't matter whether you're thanking God, Spirit, Allah, the Tao, Krishna, Buddha, the Source, or self, because all those names represent the great wisdom traditions.  Give thanks for the sunshine, the rain, and your body, including all of its components.  Have a brain-, heart-, liver-, and even a toenail-appreciation day !  Your practice of gratitude helps you focus on the real Source of everything, as well as notice when you're letting ego dominate.  Make this a silent daily practice: Give thanks for the bed, the sheets, the pillows, and the room you sleep in at night; and in the morning, say I thank You for what lies ahead.  Then begin the beautiful day doing something kind of another human being someplace on the planet.

[Eva Libre]

Advice from Dr Dyer -

 

Change your life by examining your urge

to boast and be self-righteous.

 

When you're about to brag to others about your credentials or accomplishments, momentarily sense the urge to recall Lao-tzu's advice that "this is the very stuff that must be uprooted, thrown out, and left behind".  On the Tao path, inner approval is healthy and pure, while self-righteous boasting is simply superfluous.  When you notice your gloating habit, you can choose to get back on the Tao path by remembering this 24th verse of the Tao Te Ching.  Pomposity and self-inflating comments can then be seen as weeds you really have no need for.  By returning to radical humility and seeing the greatness within everyone, you've then cleared your life of excessive self-importance . . . and this is the way of the Tao. 

[Eva Libre]

From Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star

 

On his tiptoes a man is not steady

Taking long strides he cannot keep pace

 

To the self-serving, nothing shines forth

To the self-promoting, nothing is distinguished

To the self-appointing, nothing bears fruit

To the self-righteous, nothing endures

 

From the viewpoint of Tao, this self-indulgence

          is like rotting food and painful growths on the body --

Things that all creatures despise

So why hold onto them ?

When talking the path of Tao

          this is the very stuff

          that must be uprooted, thrown out, and left behind 

[Eva Libre]

From Richard Grossman - The Tao of Emerson

 

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

 

He who stands on his tiptoes does not stand firm;

He who stretches his legs does not walk easily.

So, he who displays himself does not shine;

He who asserts his own views is not distinguished;

He who vaunts himself does not

          find his merit acknowledged;

He who is self-conceited has

          no superiority allowed to him.

Such conditions, viewed from the standpoint of the Tao,

Are like remnants of food, or tumors on the body,

          which all dislike.

Hence those who pursue the Tao

          do not adopt and allow them.

 

From the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Prudence", "Culture"

 

If a man lose his balance, and immerse

          himself in any trades and pleasures

          for their own sake,

He may be good wheel or pin,

But he is not a cultivated man.

The man of the world avoids all brag.

 

Prudence consists in avoiding and going without,

          not in the inventing of means and methods,

          not in adroit steering, not in general repairing.

Such is the value of these matters

That a man who knows other things,

          can never know too much of these.

[Eva Libre]

From Vimala McClure - The Tao of Motherhood

 

24

SECURITY

 

Your children are not you.

 

To try to show the world what a

good mother you are diminishes

you.  To try to show the world

what good children you have

diminishes them.

 

Heal your insecurity by holding

to the truth.  The One Consciousness

flows through all without

boasting.

[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

 

24 (66)

          Who is puffed up cannot stand,

          Who is self-absorbed has no distinction,

          Who is self-revealing does not shine,

          Who is self-assertive has no merit,

          Who is self-praising does not last long.

 

          As for the Way, we may say these are

               "excess provisions and extra baggage".

          Creation abhors such extravagances.

 

Therefore,

          One who aspires to the Way,

               does not abide in them.

[Eva Libre]

Lynn's - Daode jing of Laozi

 

One up on tiptoes does not stand firm.

    

If one prizes advancement, he neglects security.  Thus the text says, "One up on tiptoes does not stand firm".

 

One who takes big strides does not move; (1) one who flaunts himself does not shine.

 

Avoid flaunting yourself, and your brilliance will remain unimpaired. (2)

 

One who insists that he is right is not commended.

 

Avoid insisting that you are right, and your rightness will commend itself.

 

One who boasts about himself has no acknowledged merit.

 

Avoid boasting about yourself, and your merit will be acknowledged.

 

One filled with self-importance does not last long.

 

Avoid self-importance, and your virtue will long endure.

 

In respect to the Dao, we can say about such behavior, too much food is an excrescence making the rounds.

 

Discussing such things in respect to the Dao, a good simile for Que Zhi's [sixth century BCE] (3) behavior is that it is like too much food at a sumptuous feast.  Although the basic dishes might be very fine, anything more is wasteful extravagance.  Although Que Zhi's basic accomplishments deserved merit, because he bragged about them, this excessive behavior was regarded as an excrescence.

 

The people always hate this, so one who has the Dao has nothing to do with it.

 

 

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)  This line does not occur in the Mawangdui texts; as Wang does not refer to it, it is likely that it was not part of the text that he knew.  However, the Heshang Gong commentary refers explicitly to it.  See Heshang Gong, 2:6 (15653B), and cf. Erkes, Ho-shang Kung's Commentary on Lao-Tse, 51.

 

(2)  This and the next three passages of commentary are identical with the first four passages of Wang's commentary to section 22.  See the note to Wang's commentary on the first passage there.

 

(3)  "When he [Que Zhi] conversed with Duke Xiang of Shan, he was quick to boast of his accomplishments.  The heir apparent of Shan said to the grandees of court, 'Wenji [Que Zhi] is finished !  Positioned beneath seven others, he seeks to eclipse those above him.  He is amassing resentment, which has become the root of disorder.  He increases the resentment and would use the disorder as steps upward, but how could he manage to stay in office doing that !' " (see sixteenth year in the reign of Duke Cheng [574 BCE] in Kong, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi [Correct meaning of Zuo's Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals], 28:18b-19a).  Cf. Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5:399.

[Eva Libre]

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

 

He who stands on tiptoe

doesn't stand firm.

He who rushes ahead

doesn't go far.

He who tries to shine

dims his own light.

He who defines himself

can't know who he really is.

He who has power over others

can't empower himself.

He who clings to his work

will create nothing that endures.

 

If you want to accord with the Tao

just do your job, then let go.

 

 

From Byron Katie - A Thousand Names For Joy

- Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

 

He who defines himself

can't know who he really is.

 

Reality is very clear when your mind is clear.  It couldn't be simpler, though people feel that there's got to be something hidden behind it.  It's user-friendly: what you see is what you get.  Whatever happens is good, and if you don't think so, you can question your mind.  I see people and things without a story, so when it comes to me to move toward them or away from the, I move without argument.  I don't know why not.  The movement is always perfect, and I have nothing to do with it.

 

So, because there's nothing hidden, reality sounds like this: Woman sitting in chair with cup of tea.  That's as sweet as I want it, because that's what is.  I call it the last story.  When you love what is, it becomes so simple to live in the world, because you understand that everything is as it should be.

 

It's common for me to speak from the position of a personality, even though I don't believe it, from the position of mankind, from the position of earth, from the position of God, from the position of a rock.  If these things even exist, I am their origin.  And I'll call myself "it", because I don't have a reference point for separation.  I am all those things, and I don't have any concept that I'm not.  I've simply learned to speak in a way that doesn't alienate people.  This leaves me as benign, unseen, unknown, as a comfortable place for people.  I speak to them from the position of a friend, and if people trust me, it's because I meet them wherever they are.  I'm in love.  It's a love affair with itself.  When mind loves itself, it loves everything it projects.  To meet people where they are, without any conditions, is to meet my own self without conditions.  I'm in love with everything.  It's total vanity.  I would kiss the ground I walk on -- it's all me.

 

I like speaking as a human.  I call  it my disguise.  The first thing I did when I woke up to reality was to fall in love with form.  I fell in love with the eyes and the floor and the ceiling.  I am that.  I am that.  It's nothing, and it's everything.  None of it is separate.  Just to be born into this goodness, right now, with eyes open, is enough.

 

As I gaze out at the sky on this perfect day, I don't even know it's a sky until mind names it.  In that moment, it comes into existence.  There is no world to see until mind "I"s me and begins to produce names that, to an unquestioned mind, would separate reality into this, this, this, this.  I love that my mind doesn't believe my mind.  Without meaning, how can separation exist ?  I appear as the old and the new, the beginning and the end, I'm you, I'm everything -- this ecstatic pulse, this nameless joy, this dancing without movement, this electrifying brilliant nothingness.

[Eva Libre]

Dr Dyer's Essay for Verse 24 -

 

In this verse, Lao-tzu advises that the path of the Tao needs to be cleared of any weeds of excessive personal importance.  After all, accomplishments derive from the all-creating Source that Lao-tzu calls "the Tao".  Everything that you see, touch, or own is a gift from the Tao; thus, it is your duty to suspend your ego and seek an attitude of gratitude and generosity for the Tao's creativity.  In this way, you walk the path of the Tao by becoming like it is, which is always existing in a state of unlimited giving.  It is to this state that the 24th verse of the Tao Te Ching urges you to return.

 

Notice how the natural flow of the Tao operates:  It asks nothing of you as it provides you and everyone else with unlimited supplies of food, air, water, sunshine, land and beauty.  It is always creating for the benefit of all, and it has no need for prideful boasting or demanding something in return.

 

This poem by Hafiz bears repeating here to illustrate this point:

 

Even

After

All this time

The sun never says to the earth,

 

"You owe

Me."

 

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights the

Whole

Sky.

 

The sun symbolizes the Tao at work:  It offers its warmth, light, and life-giving energy to all, illuminating the globe without any demand for recognition.  Imagine if the sun needed attention and demanded accolades for its efforts -- it would shine only where it felt most appreciated or when it received payment for that life-giving energy !  Soon the world would be partially shut off from the sun's magnificence, and ultimately the entire planet would be covered in darkness as wars erupted over ways of appeasing the "sun god".  It's easy to see why Lao-tzu refers to such inclinations to be boastful and self-righteous as "odious" and akin to "a tumor in the body".

 

Walk the path of the Tao by being a giver rather than a taker, providing for others and asking nothing in return.  Then view your desires to brag and seek approval as weeds appearing in our journey.  Seeing yourself as important and special because of your artistic talent, for instance, is walking the path of ego.  Walking the path of the Tao means that you express appreciation for the hands that allow you to create a sculpture.