Chapter 19: On Simplicity and Unlimited Potential
Cut off prevailing wisdom, discard discrimination,
and the people will benefit a hundredfold.
Cut off craftiness, discard profiteering,
and thieves and bandits will cease to exist.
Cut off hypocrisy, discard deception,
and the people will return to filial piety and parental
care.
These three sayings are insufficient in their message,
perhaps to these should be added:
Look to the simplicity of undyed cloth,
embrace the potential of an uncarved block,
reduce selfishness, and
cut out insatiable appetites.
When we institutionalize and
popularize wisdom and outsmarting knowledge – what has worked for some people (usually
celebrities) in certain circumstances in the past – we run the risk of quashing
individual intuition and innovation. One
example: How many people have bounced from fad diet to fad diet or one workout
routine to the next feeling without getting the results they want? How many then give up feeling like a failure
and settling for a diminished life instead of discovering what actually works
for their bodies in their circumstances?
There are as many ways to a successful, abundant life as there are
people in this world. If we never go
against the prevailing, trending knowledge and wisdom of the day – what
everybody else is talking about – we run the risk of never find our own Way. While we don’t always need to reinvent the
wheel, it is important to give ourselves the freedom to explore, combine, and
even reject conventional knowledge and wisdom if it isn’t producing the
outcomes we want for our lives.
The highest good is like water, which is impartial does not discriminate against anyone with limiting labels based on subjective social stereotypes and constrained cultural constructs. We can avoid falling into the “beauty” trap,
for example and embrace our place in the universe as rare and beautiful treasures. Giving ourselves permission
to be true to ourselves, to our core being, is always more beneficial than
trying to show off, prove ourselves to the world, or try and enhance our worthiness with external commodities and things. We can choose to sever
the peer pressure to be seen a certain way, the anxiety of acceptance, and the
craze of conditional culture that could cancel us at any moment, which results
in the desperate need to put up false facades and Potemkin villages – in other
words to lie and deceive to fit in. By
doing so, we can restore and reconnect with sources of unconditional love and
acceptance – usually rooted in the family.
That is often easier said than done,
as marketing moguls have the craft of emotional manipulation down to a
subliminal science. Their creative craftiness
is designed to do one thing – profit.
The health, fitness, and beauty industries bring in billions by
capitalizing on our personal dissatisfaction with our lives, which ironically
is perennially promoted by the industry to keep bringing us back for more – to
try the next biggest thing, the next miracle cure, and the next secret
solution. Similar to the health and
wellness industry, there is an inherent hypocrisy in parts of our institutionalized
health and medical care system whose very financial success is predicated on
people being and staying sick and unwell.
It is a system that far too often prescribes pills to mask and manage
symptoms (and then more prescriptions to manage side-effects) rather than
addressing root causes. Meanwhile,
health care providers and insurance companies often marginalize and exclude
alternate forms of functional medicine and natural remedies that they cannot
capitalize on. Whenever there is wisdom
and knowledge gilded with the authority of an institution promoted by a market
seeking to creatively and craftily capitalize on it, there is the danger of
hypocrisy, deception, discrimination, and outright thievery.
However, eliminating these potential
problems at the source is not enough to transform the cultural messages we are
bombarded with every day. Using textile
and woodworking metaphors, what is needed is to add to and advocate for our
inherent worth and infinite potential – unadorned with fancy and frivolous
embellishments and unshaped by external expectations. We can choose to see ourselves and others this
way. We are not the clothes we wear, the
makeup we put on, or the sum of our body parts.
We are soo much more! This same sentiment is powerfully expressed in the song "Try" by Grammy Award winning singer & song-writer Colbie Caillat. Simply put, each of us is unique and precious, as
we are, where we are right now. Our
worth is non-negotiable and unchangeable!
The very fabric of our souls and the strands of personality and
perspective that comprise the tapestries of our lives are miraculous and
marvelous – even if the world is blind to it.
Who we really are, undyed and untainted by countless compulsive cultural
comformities, concessions, and compromises, is beautiful and exquisite. Regardless of how long we have allowed the
cacophony of cultural cries to drown out our individual voices, no matter how
tainted or stained we may feel we have become, we can be washed clean. We eliminate the limiting labels that
pigeon-hole us. We can cut out the
clutter from our lives, create space for something better.
Each of us has a powerful purpose on this planet and gifts to give ourselves and others. In simplicity and humility, each of us can advocate for the inherent worth and potential of ourselves and everyone around us. As Australian thought leader Shamsa Lea puts it: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. Be confident enough in your own awesomeness that you don’t think twice about creating opportunities for others, there are enough to go around.” In true humility not self-deprecation, we can increase selflessness and reduce selfishness and self-interest – the personal harvest that seeks to fill only our own mouths without regard for others. We can also cut out the insatiable appetites of our lives – appetites such as greed and lust, the desperate need for praise and prestige, acceptance and accolades. Insatiable appetites, or what life coach Brooke Castillo calls false pleasures, are like a valley can never be filled with fleeting feelings from outside ourselves, which come like a flashflood and are gone in an instant without leaving much long-term benefit – they only leave us deficient and needing more – like baby birds with open mouths. On the contrary, when we try to fill an emptiness inside ourselves with those external things, we ultimately make the emptiness worse – the more we pour into them the larger the valley gets as they erode more and more of our core character and the substrate of our souls is washed away. This is the opposite of the deep wellspring and life-giving reserves stored deep inside that constantly and consistently nurture and nourish us.
Like an uncarved block of wood,
unshaped by external hands, each of us can choose our own Way, free of the
expectations of others. No matter how
broken we may feel, there is wholeness still inside of us. We are not our scars or our brokenness. Our fractured souls can be unified. No matter where we’ve been, what
we’ve gone through, or how far or how long we may have strayed from ourselves,
that’s not who we are, just what where we’ve been. Regardless of what struggles and trials we
may currently face, that’s not who we are – just where we are. We can return to the wellspring of our souls
and experience a joyous homecoming and restoration. We can reconnect with and strengthen our own inner core. We can nourish and expand our roots and experience new growth. Each
of us has infinite personal potential to learn and grow. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been stuck,
how long we’ve felt trapped inside our own skins, how we got there, or even
whose fault it was (our own or someone else’s), there is ALWAYS a Way – a Way
forward, a Way upward, a Way around, or a Way through any obstacles inside or
out – to get from where we are in our lives to where we want to be. It all starts with the single step of
choosing to change the way we see ourselves and those around us. ~ DCB
Etymology Notes: The character 素 (originally written as 𦃃),
often translated as “simple, unadorned, or plain” depicts the natural state of
undyed silk on the bottom 糸 and a simplified remnant of 𠂹, which is a depiction of hanging flowers. Some variants replace
the top with 生 (later further simplified to 主), meaning to produce, give birth to, or in this case,
inborn. The association of all these
elements refers to the simple aesthetic and inborn attributes of raw silk or
hanging flowers, that don’t need any further adornments or embellishments to
stain or dye them to become any more beautiful than they already are the moment
they are born or produced.
Translation Notes: This chapter has
undergone substantial revisions in its transmission and even the discovered
manuscripts from Mawangdui and Guodian reveal differences. In deciding which characters to translate,
which variants to accept, and whose interpretations to follow, I have greatly
benefitted from the experience and expertise of dozens of scholars,
archaeologists, and paleographers. In
most cases, I have given preference to the earliest Guodian manuscript
readings, which are devoid of later anti-Confucian polemical revisions. For an excellent discussion of the numerous
variants and readings of this chapter, refer to Robert G. Henricks, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 12-15.
Comments
Post a Comment