The knowing don’t talk, the talkers don’t know.
Plug the leaks
Latch the gates
Flatten the peaks
Loosen the straits 5
Harmonize with light and settle with dust.
We call this hidden union.
Then you cannot be engaged or dismissed
Cannot be enriched or disadvantaged
Cannot be ennobled or dishonored. 10
Thus the whole world finds its treasure in you.
***
NOTES
lines 2 and 3: These lines also appear in poem 52.
lines 4–6: These lines also appear in poem 4, although there I have used a different English rendition.
COMMENTARY
The opening line of poem 56 is a perfect example of the kind of wordplay Laozi favors, a parallel structure in which words can take each other’s places, also seen in poems 27, 42, 77, and 81. He has a similar inclination for reiterating a word only with different meanings in its iterations, as in poems 1, 2, 38, 46, and 71. Both techniques imply the arbitrary nature of words and thus their essential meaninglessness – a necessary reminder, insofar as people are crazy to name things and then talk about them. Only when you’ve stopped the ebb and flow of information and melodrama in your life can you achieve the tranquility to unite with Dao. That process involves coming into harmony with spirit, Shen – implied by the call to harmonize with light, here and in poem 4, as discussed in the commentary to poem 55. Union with Dao happens on your own, in stillness; but the result is to free your active self from the control of others – and everyone will always be grateful to you for your freedom.
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 