Good travelers don’t leave any trails.
Good speakers don’t require corrections.
Good accountants don’t depend on calculators.
The firmly shut door doesn’t use locks or bolts
But you will never open it. 5
The tightly tied knot doesn’t use rope or cord
But you will never loosen it.
The Sage has always been good
At taking care of others
So no one is abandoned 10
And at taking care of things
So there is no squandering.
We call this stealing into the light.
The good man is the bad man’s teacher.
The bad man is the good man’s material. 15
If you don’t admire your teacher
If you don’t love your material
Then it won’t matter how smart you are
You will be engulfed in confusion.
We call this the essential essence. 20
***
NOTES
line 3: More literally, “Good counters don’t use tally slips” – a reference to the bamboo slips that were used as a “forerunner to the abacus.”[1] This ancient technique is also referenced in poem 79.
lines 14–20: This theme of recognizing the value of people who are not good also appears in poem 62.
COMMENTARY
One of the most beautiful of all the 81 poems of the Dao De Jing, poem 27 never loses its flow, taking us through a sequence of subjects with simple observational language. Laozi begins with some insights into expertise, Daoist style. Sinologist and translator Arthur Waley was referencing numerous tales of craftspersons in Daoist literature when he wrote:
The wheelwright, the carpenter, the butcher, the bowman, the swimmer, achieve their skill not by accumulating facts concerning their art, nor by the energetic use either of muscles or outward senses; but through utilizing the fundamental kinship which, underneath apparent distinctions and diversities, unites their own Primal Stuff to the Primal Stuff of the medium in which they work.[2]
In other words, expertise derives from the apprehension of unity (see Introduction section IV.8). And just as expertise does not waste effort in accumulating facts, so too the aware person does not struggle to undo the locks or untie the knots in people’s minds. You cannot give a person an idea they do not have; you can only give someone the tools to articulate the ideas they already have. Which is why Sages take care of others inclusively, without judgment, and are frugal and responsible in dealing with things. If it sounds simple that’s because it is, yet most of us truly don’t know why we should bother doing any better than what we’ve settled for. Elsewhere in the Dao De Jing Laozi regards education with suspicion, but here he pinpoints its value in the emotional engine of teaching rather than the informational value of whatever is being taught. Lacking that engine, our schools can only produce boobs.
FOOTNOTES
1. The Way and Its Power. Arthur Waley, translation and commentary. New York: Grove Press, 1958, pp. 58–59
2. The Way and Its Power, Waley, p. 177.
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 