If I had any smattering of brains
I’d know enough to follow the great Dao
And fear nothing except losing my way.
The great Dao is level as a highway
Yet people love to roam through the byways. 5
They enter splendid palaces
While fields go fallow and granaries are emptied.
They wear elegant clothing and carry lethal weapons.
They stuff themselves when they eat and buy up more than they want.
We call this following The Great Dow. 10
And that’s not following the great Dao!
***
NOTES
lines 10 and 11: I have taken a liberty here, replacing a Chinese pun with an American pun. In Chinese, Dao is a homonym of dao, meaning thief or theft. More literally, the lines read, “We call this grand theft, not Dao!”
COMMENTARY
Can you know without knowledge, Laozi asks in poem 10; because if you can, then that’s all the brains you’ll need to follow Dao, as he explains here in poem 53. Just beware the kind of appetite for novelties and rarities which can send you off to roam through the byways – a self-indulgence that becomes ever more misguided as a person grows more affluent and powerful. Eventually we reach grotesque imbalances, grand palaces reigning over wastelands, bon viveurs who are disciples of death, as poem 50 phrases it. That’s why, when it comes to following the great Dao, you should accept no substitutes.
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 