What Is Power (3h) Tao Te Ching (8)

Bundle:  How Can We Tell that It’s the Real Thing? Enduring Perspective

As Lao Tzu saw it (if I understand him rightly), instances of real power produce results that endure.  “What’s perfectly whole seems flawed, / but you can use it forever. / What’s perfectly full seems empty, / but you can’t use it up.” (45)  They fit into the great pattern of the everlasting, within which we experience the lesser pattern of cyclic change, as a return to the everlasting.  “Being the world’s pattern / of eternal unerring power / is to go back again to boundlessness.”  (28)  

We can see that the effect of an instance of real power endures.  The great pattern is the promotion of life, Being’s promotion of itself in beíngs; and our acts of aligning ourselves with the promotion of life, in our instances, are exertions of real power.  Knowing this truth, and the beauty and good of it, we place all instances within a perspective of the everlasting—that is, the harmony of Being.  Things ring true.

In looking after your life and following the way, gather spirit. // Have deep roots, a strong trunk. / Live long by looking long.” (59)

In Thoreau’s chapter of Walden, “Economy,” he said that we should measure the value of a thing by how much life it costs, “immediately or in the long run.”  That vision of perspective is the same as LT’s understanding of real power.  The effects of real power are felt immediately and at the later date when the abusers have exhausted and destroyed themselves.  There may be “many thousands gone,” victims of abuse, but real power continues to manifest itself in beings that embody it in their inherent, natural affirmation of the great pattern.

“The ten thousand things arise together; / in their arising is their return. // Peace:  to accept what must be, / to know what endures. / In that knowledge is wisdom. / Without it, ruin, disorder.” (16)

In our time, see, for instance, the fantasies of power in the Reich and the Soviet Union, and our ongoing efforts to extend our liberal, pluralistic, visionary democracy.  Defeating authoritarian totalitarianism has exacted a very high price in lives, and the democracy for which those lives were paid is very highly valuable.  We believe that the values that inform democracy as a chosen form of governance are enduring, including freedom to choose to promote life.

Probably it is not surprising that, since power is an attribute of Being, we know what is real power by whether it was there at the beginning, in the birth of our common nature, returns to its birthright in our immediate experience, and keeps on being born again. (51)  In our experience of real power, all three are present, and reveal its enduring value, and ours.  This three-fold awareness places all abuse in a perspective that empowers us.  What fits and aligns itself with that pattern is a manifestation of real power.  Do not accept substitutes.

The enduring perspective is true to the reality of sacred Being, and within it, our sacred being.

Living in this perspective, we see what a “small thing” it is, really.  We know that the power to live truly and well is real by how directly and simply it informs our vision of a good life, and how easy it is to see what good life is, and what a good life is.

Dualities merge into everlasting, expressive service to the dynamic whole. (45)  Fear is reduced to realistic caution.  Greed dissolves into generosity.  Real power is no big deal. It’s like breath.

“Quiet, / yes, and likely to endure. / Whose child? born / before the gods.” (4)

[Episode, “What Is Power?” Intro page (1), basic position (2), consulting Lao Tzu (3a), (3b), (3c), (3d), (3e), (3f), (3g), current (3h), (3i-9a), and further reflections (4).  Contents page to chapter, “WhatIs?”]