Knowing not knowing is best.
Not knowing not knowing is sickness.
Truly
You have only to sicken of sickness.
Therefore 5
Sages don’t get sick, having sickened of sickness.
That’s why they don’t get sick.
***
COMMENTARY
Poem 70 never explicitly states its theme of doing not doing, and while here in poem 71 Laozi is less reticent, he still does not directly reference non-action (see Introduction section IV.3). Instead, he invokes it by starting with the admonition to know not knowing, a paradoxical use of language on which Laozi dotes. Not to know that, he goes on, is sickness, and this insight prompts another kind of wordplay he delights in, using the same word in different ways, as discussed in the commentary on poem 56. Here the word “sick” is repeated seven times in four lines, and it works. If anyone else tried that, it would be sickening.
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 