Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Tao Te Ching
Chapter 5
Christmas Trees

Heaven and Earth aren’t humane
Treating the 10,000 things like Christmas trees.
Sages are heartless too
Treating people like Christmas trees.
The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows,
Empty yet inexhaustibly giving,
Responding with what fits.
The more talk, the less understanding,
The more words, the less truth.
The external disguises the eternal.

Commentary

“To start from nowhere and follow no road is the first step.”

Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE via Thomas Merton
(Zhuangzi)

from Zhuangzi

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“The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”

Koheleth 1
from Ecclesiastes קֹהֶלֶת‎

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“Whenever the mouth opens and the tongue moves, disaster is close behind.”

Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

Themes: Less is More

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“I shall kill the fleeing deer of this and that, On the mountain of the body believing in an I.”

Tilopa 988 – 1069 CE

Themes: Egolessness

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“Responding with what fits.”

Wang Pang 1044 – 1076 CE via Red Pine

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“When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

Rumi مولانا جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی 1207 – 1283 CE
(Rumi Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī)
from Masnavi مثنوي معنوي‎‎) "Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning”

Themes: Sacred World

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“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 CE
(Eckhart von Hochheim)

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“There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one. Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words, the less litigation.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE

Themes: Less is More Time

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“Avoid the faults of your nation… There is not a nation among even the most civilized that has not some fault peculiar to itself…It is a triumph to correct in oneself such failings… There are also family failings as well as faults of position, of office, or of age.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

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“The world has always been the same — an endless farce, an antic game, a universal masquerade!”

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE
from Faust, part II

Themes: Delusion

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“You can't prevent time passing. When something has passed, why do thoughts still loiter?”

Ryokan 良寛大愚 1758 – 1758 CE
(Ryōkan Taigu,“The Great Fool”)

Themes: Non-Thought

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“The universe... is always emptying, always full; the more it yields, the more it holds.”

Witter Bynner 1881 – 1968 CE
(Emanuel Morgan)

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“A peak in a poke and a pig in a pew.”

James Joyce 1882 – 1941 CE
from Finnegan's Wake

Themes: Religion

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“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

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“You can only be kind or cruel if you have, and cherish, a self… Altruism is the other side of egoism.”

Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“‘That’ has a name but ‘this’ doesn’t have a name.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

Themes: Creativity

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“A tragedy is a comedy misunderstood. Once you realize what you are, there's nothing but gratitude and laughter.”

Stephen Mitchell 1943 CE –
from Second Book of Tao

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“The difference between reading a love poem and being in love.”

David Mitchell 1969 CE –
from Bone Clocks

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Comments (1)

  1. Shan Dao
    Shan Dao 6 years ago
    None of the other translations we’ve seen use Christmas trees for these characters (the most common is Straw Dogs, chu2 gou3) though Red Pine in a commentary compares how straw dogs were used in China to how Christmas trees are used in the West. In ancient China, straw dogs were used in ceremonies praying for rain. They were used briefly and then thrown away like Christmas trees here.