Devoted to education
Each day you accumulate more.
Devoted to Dao
Each day you lose more.
You lose and lose and lose 5
Until you do nothing.
When you’re doing nothing
Nothing is left undone.
You can take and keep the entire world
Once you stop trying to run its business. 10
You can’t run its business if you’re going to run the world.
***
NOTES
lines 7 and 8: This is also how Dao operates, as described in the opening of poem 37.
COMMENTARY
Poem 48 begins by observing the distinction between devotion to education and devotion to Dao – a reminder that the Dao De Jing, with its direct language and simple rhyme schemes, is not aimed at a highly educated class. Neither is Dao, which works and is available regardless of your level of education, and so Laozi opens poem 53 with, If I had any smattering of brains / I’d know enough to follow the great Dao. Devotion to education, however, demands that you accumulate information, which leads to conflict and confusion. Moreover, to embark on any path of continuous accumulation is to put yourself in peril; as poem 44 points out, Constant hoarding must result in huge loss. That road leads away from non-action, wu wei, which I have rendered here as doing nothing (see Introduction section IV.3). And of course with non-action, you can run the world. That’s why Laozi advises you to leave fretting about the world’s business to the bean counters and micro-managers. The world’s business is just that, the world’s business – and not the business of anyone who is running the world. The best generals don’t waste their time inspecting footlockers, and the greatest rulers, as poem 17 observes, are only said to exist.
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 