If only I had the tiniest grain of wisdom, I should walk in the Great Way, and my only fear would be to stray from it.
The Great Way is very smooth and straight; and yet the people prefer devious paths.
The court is very clean and well garnished, but the fields are weedy and wild, and the granaries are very empty!
They wear gorgeous clothes, they carry sharp swords, they surfeit themselves with food and drink, they possess more riches than they can use! They are the heralds of brigandage! As for Tao, what do they know about it?
(Tao Teh King 53–Wu translation)
If only I had the tiniest grain of wisdom, I should walk in the Great Way.
We must not forget that Tao means Way. In other philosophies, walking in a “way” means following a prescribed order of thought and action that was formulated by some external authority. It is a process of conformity and intellectual profession. Not so here. Walking the Tao is living in the perfect consciousness that is the Tao, of manifesting the inherent Truth and Reality of the universe itself. The Tao has no basis but itself. No ideas or verbal formulations can establish or explain it. No one who “follows” in any manner understands the Tao, much less expresses It. What is needed is even a tiny grain of wisdom. That living seed will reveal itself as the Tao, for the Tao is not perceived as an object separate from anything.
And my only fear would be to stray from it.
There is a healthy fear: the fear of deviating from the Tao and losing It. For if the Tao is lost, what remains to us? Nothing.
The Great Way is very smooth and straight; And yet the people prefer devious paths.
Our evolutionary path has taken us through many forms in which we have only been parts of something, never a self-sufficient whole. Therefore being part of a herd is deeply conditioned in us. Consequently, however independent-minded we may potentially be, the habit of identifying with others and being part of an association is not just hard to break, it is systemic in our subconscious and therefore totally reflexive. We run with the herd without giving it a thought, even if the running is internalized and basically intellectual/emotional. Since the Path that is the Tao is only walked by a single person at a time, those who need company and support are at a marked disadvantage all the way. Because of this people are strongly attracted to devious, roundabout and ultimately futile paths, for all paths except the Tao are exactly that: futile. We live multitudes of wasted lives as a result.
When I was first in India a man told me the story of a man who went into the astral world and saw a gigantic heap of bones. When he asked what they were he was told that those were the bones of the lives in which he had remembered and sought God. This impressed him very much and he began to think that he might not be appreciating himself enough. All those bones! Then he saw an even bigger mountain of bones. These, he was told, were the bones of the lives in which he did not remember or seek God. Suddenly things were back in perspective!
A person’s mind is like a mirror. If the mirror is bent or distorted in any way it relays a bent or distorted image. So naturally those with flawed minds pursue only flawed paths. This is why Sri Ramakrishna often said: “The mind is everything.” For practically speaking it is.
The court is very clean and well garnished, But the fields are weedy and wild, And the granaries are very empty!
That which is artificial, the creation of man, is well kept and impressive, but that which is of nature, that which is of life itself, is neglected and sterile. Such are those who are alienated from the Tao. Enemies of the Tao, they are enemies of themselves.
They wear gorgeous clothes, they carry sharp swords, they surfeit themselves with food and drink, they possess more riches than they can use! They are the heralds of brigandage! As for Tao, what do they know about it?
Everything looks admirable, but they are embodiments of dishonesty and deceit. In time they shall bring themselves and all society down into the muck and chaos of all that oppose the Tao, the True Way. Such people are forerunners of death and destruction. We who like to boast of our “high standard of living” should pause and reconsider the way along which we find ourselves rushing and being rushed.
Next in the Tao Teh King for Awakening: The Individual and the State