Daodejing Chapter 75: Value More, Worry Less About Life
Everyone finds meaning in the Daodejing. What else could explain the persistent longevity and popularity it enjoys? Agreeing on what that meaning is, now there’s the rub. As much as who was the author, when “he” did the writing, what the 5000 characters are ultimately saying is as contentious, and fun, to ponder and speculate on. Each person divines his own interpretation and the means of applying the lessons to their life. This is a lesson in itself. The realization that all of us have differing thoughts and opinions, and accepting the merit and value of all, for this alone I am grateful to the Daodejing.
As I near the end, what meaning is the Daodejing showing me? Have I learned anything, has any meaningful change occurred? While I make no claims to proficiency, much less mastery, acceptance of Nature binds much. Acceptance of who I am, how the past shaped me, and the complex feelings I carry around. Acceptance of my insignificance, but of my decisive importance to the people closest to me. Acceptance of paradoxes, the cyclic nature of things, how not caring can be caring, how not doing can get the most done. But the most unexpected lesson of accepting is that hard truths remain; there is right and there is wrong, and saying what we think has to be done.
“People starve simply because their rulers eat up too much of their tax grain. People are difficult to rule simply because their rulers try to rule their way. People take death too lightly simply because their rulers care too much for their life. So people who care less for life are wiser than those who value it more.”
There’s that feeling again. You know the feeling because you had to go back and read that again, possibly a few times. Yet another chapter advising the rulers of the people. What are the people to do? But is it? The people are not in control of their grain stores. People are not in control of the rules their communities live by. What people value is dictated by the actions of the rulers. This is the way of the world. The few dictate to the many, while the many quietly mutter in secret. How can one get a message to the people in a world where the rulers have rights over the definitive version.
What is the only thing the people can do? Only by setting aside their regard for consequences can life be lived their way. We are going so fast in the opposite direction today that the people actually think the ideas they have are their own. Only by shaking ourselves individually, and society collectively, loose of this fatal attraction to what somebody else thinks of us and what they will do, can we break free of the structures that have calcified around us, these traditions, this culture. Enough trying to build on this edifice. Laozi gave us the nudge, a declaration of defiance, and its momentum builds with the centuries, unheeded, small, but unstoppable.
Another thought-provoking read, Paul. You draw out the Daodejing’s paradoxes - acceptance but also defiance. Your point about shaking off what others expect of us feels especially pertinent.
You’re right about needing to reread that passage and many others of his writing. On first read, I think…wha? On second read, it starts to sink in and my wha turns to oh! Lots of good stuff in it.