What’s best of all is just like water.
Water is so good
It can nourish the ten thousand things
Without striving.
It seeks the point that everyone hates. 5
Thus it is near Dao.
The best homes are closest to the ground.
The best thinking achieves the most depth.
The best contacts are the most humane.
The best talking is the most sincere. 10
The best governance is the most fair.
The best service has the most effect.
The best move is made at the right time.
This above all:
By not striving, it remains flawless. 15
***
NOTES
line 1: what’s best of all: Dao, which is also compared to water in poems 32 and 43.
line 5, seeks the point: Thanks to the Yin energy we call gravity, water always seeks the lowest point. And who doesn’t hate lowering themselves, for anyone or anything?
line 9, humane: Here Laozi praises the Confucian value of ren, humaneness, as he does in poem 38. Poems 5, 18, and 19 take a different approach.
COMMENTARY
Poem 8 is the first of several poems in the Dao De Jing to delight in water – a Yin element of course, and one more instance of Laozi directing our attention to the female principle (see Introduction section IV.5). At the start and at the end of this poem, water is praised for its capacity to get things done without striving – a fundamental insight of Daoist thought, the bedrock principle of non-action (see Introduction section IV.3). If water can nourish the ten thousand things naturally, without striving, just by letting gravity tug it here and there and letting different temperatures transform it into vapor or liquid or crystals, then you too can become an endless source of sustenance for others by relinquishing all thoughts and feelings, all agendas and definitions for yourself. The closer you come to that state, the closer you’ll come to what’s best in your home, thinking, contacts, talking, governance, service, and movements. And doing what’s best is the whole point, of life and of this poem – which is why Laozi closes with non-action, or more specifically here, non-contention, and equates it with perfection, a theme stated more plainly in poems 22 and 66.
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 