Standing on tiptoes, you don’t stand firm.
Striding ahead, you don’t go forward.
Self-display blocks awareness.
Self-righteousness blocks status.
Self-praise blocks accomplishment. 5
Self-pride blocks longevity.
As far as Dao is concerned
That’s being overfed and overextended
And who doesn’t hate that?
When you have Dao, that’s not your way. 10
***
NOTES
line 9: More literally, “All beings hate them.”
line 10: More literally, “Having Dao, you don’t dwell there.” This line also appears in poem 31.
COMMENTARY
In the first two lines of poem 24, Laozi takes a statement of the obvious and equates it with a paradox. His point, however, is well taken: The first stance described is precarious and infrequent while the second is all too common, yet neither of them work. And the reason neither works is because they both originate in a self-fixated place and therefore cannot achieve success. Lessen self-awareness, the penultimate line of poem 19, is the theme of this poem, and as with lines 10–13 of poem 22, here too Laozi unfolds that theme like a fan, displaying different panels of self-awareness, each its own form of blockage. Poem 7 concludes with the same point, that self-interest blocks self-realization. It’s a vital message for our own age, when everyone is quick to blame their clouded awareness and insignificant status and negligible accomplishment and unattainable longevity on anything but themselves. Yet we are the only ones at fault, because we are the ones who get in our way – self-awareness blocks De. So instead of achieving success, we settle for gratifying our appetites and running up debt, using things to fill a need that things cannot fill.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 