Without stepping outside one’s doors, one can know what is happening in the world.
Without looking out of one’s windows, one can see the Tao of heaven.
The farther one pursues knowledge, the less one knows.
Therefore the Sage knows without running about, understands without seeing, accomplishes without doing.
(Tao Teh King 47)
Though we know him mostly through his novels and short stories, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was also a philosopher who wrote very interestingly on the everyday aspects of human life that we almost never think about. I was really impressed by one essay in which he said that those who knew and understood themselves could know and understand every human being. His reasoning was that we all consist of the same elements, the differences between us being determined by the quality and degree of those elements as well as how much or little we express them. The colors of a painting are basically the same as those in other paintings, but the arrangement, amount and shade can vary infinitely. So it is with us. Knowing ourselves we can know others. This may be part of the reasoning of Lao Tzu.
Without stepping outside one’s doors, one can know what is happening in the world.
This is certainly true for a very astute person, assuming that the outside world comes to him by contact with other people in his home and observation of the material objects that also enter there. However, if we enlarge “one’s doors” to include the town in which he lives and maybe a bit of the countryside, then any intelligent and perceptive person can see and understand through the various elements of his environment what is happening in the world, or at the least the world of his nation.
We must remember that the world of Lao Tzu had no newspapers, radio, television or all the means of information and communication without which we now cannot imagine living for a day. So he is speaking of someone who would be a kind of social and philosophical Sherlock Homes who could know the whole by studying the part.
Without looking out of one’s windows, one can see the Tao of heaven.
Frankly, I cannot image anyone being able to know the Tao of heaven without spending a great deal of time in the confines of one’s house, for only there can meditation and study be engaged in intensely.
The farther one pursues knowledge, the less one knows.
I believe this is especially true at this point in time. While I was in my teens I realized that a worthwhile school or university should be little more than a gigantic library with a staff of qualified advisors to guide the student in a personal pursuit of knowledge according to his inclination or need. In 1963 after I returned from my first trip to India I met one of the country’s leading computer experts. At that time computers were immense things with whirling tape reels that cost a fortune to install and maintain. But he told me that the day of home computers was coming, and when it did schools would be obsolete. So it has proven, though nearly everyone is lagging behind and students still are imprisoned in the educational gulags. I knew a child who learned to read at the age of two through an computer program called Reader Rabbit. Bank Street Writer was a word processor intended for use by kindergarten students. There is no need to travel hundreds and thousands of miles for a good education. It is right at hand in the home.
After beginning to write on this verse I went online to investigate what was available for home study through the internet. There were many programs available. One had a video of an American teenager who grew up in China but through the internet had a thoroughly American education. Now he attends the university that sponsored the internet education he received all the way from the early grades through high school. (Many universities now offer online degree programs.) So Lao Tzu’s ideals about learning can be better realized now than in his day.
The philosophical meaning of this verse is that the further we go from ourselves for knowledge (in the highest sense) the less we will know, for infinity, the Tao, is within.
Therefore the Sage knows without running about, understands without seeing, accomplishes without doing.
The yogi especially travels far, understands and accomplishes within what the “outsiders” can never imagine. All of his activity is in a realm undreamed of by others. Swami Sivananda in one of his letters wrote: “I always travel throughout the world, and those who are quick catch me.” The lives of great yogis prove this to be true. Sitting in caves the yoga adepts know what is going on throughout the world. A man once told me he traveled thousands of miles to meet a great mystic only to find that the saint knew all about him and told him he had been looking in on him for a long time, and mentioned the various things that had been going on with him: inner things that only one who knew his heart and mind could have known. Those who lived with him had no idea of the things the mystic knew.
Next in the Tao Teh King for Awakening: Conquering the World by Inaction