Know manhood but keep to womanhood.
In this way you become a valley to the world.
When you are a valley to the world
You have everlasting De that will not fade
Bringing you back again to the bloom of youth. 5
Know the white but keep to the black.
In this way you define a pattern for the world.
When you are a pattern for the world
You have everlasting De that will not fail
Bringing you back again to being endless. 10
Know glory but keep to the shamed.
In this way you become a ravine to the world.
When you are a ravine to the world
You have everlasting De that will suffice
Bringing you back again to the uncarved block. 15
Once the uncarved block has been cut up into tools
The Sage will utilize them.
They then will go on to have prominent careers.
But the best carving does not cut up things.
***
NOTES
lines 1 and 2: Valleys are also associated with the female principle in poem 6.
line 7: This image also appears in poem 22.
lines 15 and 16, the uncarved block: See Introduction section IV.4.
COMMENTARY
Despite all that may be outgoing and active and dynamic in the personality that De draws into focus, that personality arises through the person’s ability to follow Dao and be open and receptive to De – in other words, through their willingness to be still and make themselves lower, through the female principle (see Introduction section IV.5). So Laozi makes his point right up front, with line 1 reflecting poem 10’s challenge, Can you attain womanhood? Here too more is at work than a reference to the mystical capability to create a spiritual embryo. In all three of poem 28’s admonitions of what we should know, Laozi is offering social advice that is as counterintuitive today as it was in ancient China. It’s still very hard for us to understand power on more than a superficial level, and so men are elevated over women; very hard for us to confront our own shadow, and so the darker other is feared; very hard to stop locating ourselves through the eyes of others, and so the shamed are despised. But when you rise to these hard tasks you become most truly yourself, and your contribution to the world is incalculable. You also make out like a bandit: getting younger, shedding limitations, attaining purity. Hence the concluding praise to the Daoist icon of purity, an uncarved block of wood. But while the Sages hold to that image as their model, they are still willing to use the tools that have been carved out of it – this is the care they take with others and things, which Laozi praises in poem 27.
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 