Well rooted in it, you cannot be yanked out.
Clasping it firmly, you cannot misplace it.
Those to come will pay honors without ceasing.
Practice it within yourself: Its De is real.
Practice it in your family: Its De multiplies. 5
Practice it in your community: Its De lasts long.
Practice it in your nation: Its De prospers.
Practice it in the world: Its De is universal.
That’s how you can be seen as yourself
The family seen as the family 10
The community seen as the community
The nation seen as the nation
The world seen as the world.
How do I know the ways of the world?
By this. 15
***
NOTES
lines 14 and 15: A variation of these lines also ends poem 21.
COMMENTARY
The it referred to throughout the first half of poem 54 is Dao. And if Laozi is being indirect by never using that word, it may be his way of keeping our attention on the actual subject of poem 54, namely De, which is mentioned repeatedly. This poem may be Laozi’s clearest articulation of De’s function as the engine of self-realization, the power to enable things to become themselves at their fullest potential. And because De is a natural process, its power is not contingent on education. So as he does in poem 21, Laozi here steps forward in the first person in the penultimate line, to let you know how he can know what he’s talking about. By this, he explains, leaving the rest of the discussion to the teaching without words, the constancy that is free of thought.
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 