Daodejing Chapter 60: How To Rule A Big Country
Though this is about something else.
[Author’s Note: I have a long-running series about The Daodejing on Medium. I have chosen not to include that series here, but Chapter 60 has become significant; important to me and a Question of Culture, and I believe to many of you also. This chapter is astonishing.]
The Daodejing has eighty-one chapters, nine times nine. Nine represents strength and masculinity, and nine represents infinity and immortality. Because nine is the highest number, it represents great success. Therefore, eighty-one chapters, and a chapter can’t be a single sentence anyway. On such things our existence turns. Books and words have power, because beliefs have power.
“Ruling a big country is like frying a small fish. When the world is ruled with the Dao, ancestral spirits will find no place to exert their power. Not ancestral spirits that can’t exert their power; it is ancestral spirits’ power that does not harm people. Not just ancestral spirits’ power that does not harm people, the sage also does not want to harm people. When neither of the ancestral spirits and the sage harm people, their power will join hands to return virtue to people.”
If you are laughing, “Yeah, ruling a big country is just like frying a little fish!”, then compliments to your cognitive jump. We need a light touch to fry fish, rule nations, and manage the tangle of influences that pull us in all directions every moment of existence.
We can set this opener aside, the chapter that never was, and delve into Chapter 60.
In Laozi’s time, the influence of ancestors continued for all time. During life, family elders made all important business and personal decisions. Rituals and offerings were expected of everyone to show respect to those that had passed. Spirits of the departed influenced events. All facets of society and cultural life hinged on these rituals and devotion. Confucius is most quoted for his saying that children must respect their parents, but he didn’t create these traditions. He codified the history that was long there.
So, the emphasis on the harm that ancestral spirits can bring to the living is fascinating and surprising. That they have power, that there is truth in the afterlife, and the directed intention of spiritual beings is not denied, but what is asserted is that the living are not beholden to the whims of the spirits. Not shackled to the past, in fact able to be protected from their old habits and expectations. Protected by what? By allowing ourselves to be guided by The Dao.
Our nature can lead us to what feels right. I see it every day, living in this world where the past reaches out through popular culture, through rituals and traditions based on old beliefs. And I see people hurt. We let other people, even family with the best intentions, make decisions for us. We all do this, and it doesn’t matter how often things turn out right or wrong, what matters is that we — me — I gave up the responsibility to make my own judgements. How difficult the task of escaping the meaner aspects of culture, as eternal as the ancestral spirits, and us with so little time to make a difference! What a subversive, even revolutionary document The Daodejing was and is.
[Author’s Note: For those interested, the translation used for this series is Dao De Jing, translated by Ju Yan’an. It was my first and has become my favourite translation. Find it here.]
[Author’s Note: Thank you for taking the time to visit. All pictures were taken by the author or family member, unless otherwise noted.]
I've yet to catch up on the last few chapters, but this one makes sense, and none at the same time?? Or, is it just me, I cannot tell. I gotta come back to this one.