What Is Power (3f) Tao Te Ching (6)

Bundle:  How to Govern

“Can you love people and do things, / and do so by not doing?” (10)

That would be the first Q in the TTC presidential candidates debate.  Lao Tzu often applies the wisdom of living in accord with the Way to the matter of good governance and wise leadership (“rule” is for abusers).  #10 concludes,  “To give birth, to nourish, / to bear and not to own, / to act and not lay claim, / to lead and not rule: / this is mysterious power.” These are the virtues of any of us (wisdom that everybody knows but few apply:  e.g. soft overcomes hard), and are the duties of a leader.  LT gives a lot of attention to good governance and leadership, but TTC is not like Machiavelli’s The Prince or Castiglione’s The Courtier; LT is anti-hierarchical, seeking good for all.

Real power is a mystery of life; and the ways of a wise leader, like any of us, are mysterious, and yet they are entirely practical in their tangible foundation.  In 13 LT founds good leadership on a universal, physical fact of human reality:  “I suffer because I am a body.”  What naturally follow from being mindful of that universal human condition are empathy and compassion.  With a tongue-in-cheek, ironic humor, LT suggests that people who are “entrusted with the commonwealth” should  be cognizant of their own bodily good before they are given responsibility for the care of others, because then they will “treat the body politic / as gently as their own body”—equally vulnerable and valuable. Le Guin’s footnote offers good commentary:  This demystifies the autocratic view that some individuals are superior, and thereby are magically imbued with power and the right to rule.  Rather, real power flows from virtue, and is available to everyone, by following the Way.  Positions of leadership are earned, by way of virtuous action.

Real power is “no power” (to be zenny about it).  It is the opposite of what the deluded abusers envision and enact.  But it is the way of natural being, in accord with the way of Being.  Which is often the humorously ironic double meaning of the “no” in Zen. On the minor side, it simply asserts that reality is the opposite of what the deluded think it is.  But on the major side, it is an accurate description of what is, as perceived by non-dichotomous thinking in accord with Being.  E.g. “no mind” means that real mind is not what dualistic egotism thinks it is; but at the same time, “no mind” resolves consciousness back into harmony with Consciousness.  This is also the way of “do so without doing.”  When ordinary citizens, or leaders, act with natural empathy and compassion, their acts resolve into, “return to,” Being’s simple inclination to be, which is good.

Real power acts in such a way that to the deluded and abusive it appears to be “not acting;” real power does by appearing to be “not-doing.”  This seems like a very difficult puzzle; indeed to the abusive it is unsolvable (at least without some serious therapy).  If we read the phrase, “act by not acting, do by not doing,” we begin with the thought of acting and doing, and then seem to be negating action and doing; but if we begin with “not acting” and “not doing,” we realize that both are states of being, and thus of acting and doing. LT is proposing that we truly be and accomplish, in contrast to the destruction and death that the deluded take to be acts/deeds of power, but that, in reality, bring doing, acting, and being to a halt.

Real power is a letting go of power, like letting go of ego and the ego’s wants.  Leaders with real power do not cling to power.  Like the good, they have no selfish goal.  Knowing that the soft overcomes the hard, as water wears away stone, they “gather spirit,” lead themselves wisely, and win by yielding, so that they do not lose compassion, and the people do not come to grief.  “So the wise say: / By bearing common defilements. / you become a sacrificer at the alter of earth; / by bearing common evils / you become a lord of the world.”  (38, 59, 69, 78) 

Not a hint force.  It seems magical.  And yet, with experience and practice of good, upon accurate observation and clear reflection, it’s not such a mystery.  It happens all the time.  The abusive deluded just don’t get it.  (And that’s why Bernie can says, truthfully, after talking to so many people during his campaign for the nomination, that a great many people are better than their political leaders.)

Abusers “are people, my friend” (Mitt Romney on corporations), who are “troubled spirits,” who naturally “act up” and act out, if they are not kept under control (60, which begins:  “Rule a big country / the way you cook a small fish.”).  Le Guin notes that the word is “kwei, ‘ghosts,’ not bad in themselves but dangerous if they possess you.  Waley reads [this] as a warning to believers in Realpolitik:  a ruler ‘possessed’ by power harms both the people and his own soul.”  Here I get a sense that they are like archetypes, in both our individual and our communal psyches, who become überempowered by obsessive imbalance and step out of the healthy order of intangible phenomena to disorder the tangible.  LT advises us to keep them under control by keeping them within the harmonious Way.  Then they won’t lose their intangible energies, but they won’t harm people.  “And so, neither harming the other, / these powers will come together in unity.”

If the people are not coerced into service of the abusers, with their fixating “law and order,” they are free to find their own contentment.  “So a wise leader might say: / I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves. / I love to be quiet, and the people themselves find justice. / I don’t do business, and the people prosper on their own. / I don’t have wants, and the people themselves are uncut wood.” (57)  I take it that LT is not proposing a paradisaical vision of life in a lush and deathless garden; rather, he proposes an integral harmony of actual, everyday people (and another). The children return to their mother, know her, and live according to her ways.

When we begin to govern, just as when we begin to name, we begin to intervene, to impose ourselves, our analytical ego-consciousness, and we begin to order/disorder, to carve/cut the untouched material of Being in being.  If we follow the way, in governance as in other activities, we should set ego aside and make ourselves and our governance like a riverbed in a valley, a vessel and pathway that is shaped by the Way for its flowing way (32).

After all, since the people are the uncut wood of communal life, if they are to be carved/formed (or form themselves) into a commonwealth, the project must be administered with the ordinary, selfless virtues of modesty, simplicity, and carefulness.  “When the work’s done right,” the evidence of good-governance will be that “the people say, ‘Oh, we did it!’.” (17, 28) 

Beings naturally go about their ways, accepting the Great Way and depending on it and trusting it, while it does its work of sustaining life, anonymously (“unnamed”) and without fanfare (“call it a small matter”), and unconditionally (it “lays no claim,..asks nothing of them”).  “Call it great.”  “All the world will come” to such a leader, an “unwanting soul” who is “harmless, peaceable, serene,” who “holds fast to the great thought,” the sacredness of Being being.  Such a leader, being a natural conduit of the Way, is naturally attractive and influential.  “So the wise soul / without great doings / achieves greatness.” (32, 34)

She places herself below the people, and from that position “predominates without dominating, / and leads without misleading.” The people never tire of enjoying her leadership and praising her. (66).

[Episode, “What Is Power?” Intro page (1), basic position (2), consulting Lao Tzu (3a), (3b), (3c), (3d), (3e), current (3f), (3g), and further reflections (4).  Contents page to chapter, “WhatIs?”]