The Door of all Wonders:
The Commentary on the Tao Te Ching
by Nirguna, Chor-kok Lam
Book II “Te Ching”
(The Classic of the Virtue)
(Chapter 38 to Chapter 81)
Chapter 38
A man of the highest virtue need not deliberately keep himself to be virtuous.
That is why he has virtue.
A man of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue deliberately.
That is why he is without virtue.
The man of the highest virtue never acts yet leaves nothing undone.
The man of the lowest virtue does not act but he thinks he has done.
A man of the highest benevolence acts without intentions.
A man of the highest rectitude acts with intentions.
A man most conversant in etiquette acts,
when no one responds to him,
he rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force.
Hence when the Truth was lost, there was virtue.
When virtue was lost, there was benevolence.
When benevolence was lost, there was rectitude.
When rectitude was lost, there was etiquette.
The etiquette is the wearing thin of loyalty and sincerity, the beginning of chaos.
A man who thinks he has foreknowledge is
the flowery embellishment of the Truth and the beginning of folly.
Hence a great man abides in the essence of purity, simplicity and honesty,
not in the superficial level to show off.
He discards the vanity and takes the purity.
Review
The Tao Te Ching tells us, “What is the Truth?” and “What is the Virtue?” In Chinese, “Tao” means the Truth while “Te” means the Virtue. The arrangement of the general version of the Tao Te Ching is divided into two parts. The first part is Book I called the Tao Ching or the Classic of the Truth (from Chapter 1 to Chapter 37) which by its name means the sacred texts telling us about the Truth. The second part is Book II called the Te Ching or the Classic of the Virtue (from Chapter 38 to Chapter 81) which by its name means the sacred texts telling us about the Virtue. In short, the knowledge of spirituality is to tell us about the Truth and its Virtue. The Truth is the origin while the Virtue is the manifestation of the Truth that people can follow as an outward expression of the Truth.
Actually, the concepts of the Truth and its application, i.e. the Virtue, are repeatedly expressed in all the Chapters. The meaning of the division of the two books lies on Chapter 1 which tells us the secret of the Truth, and in Chapter 38 which tells us how the Truth being manifested in different levels of life. Therefore, Chapter 1 is the beginning of book I telling us the Truth, while Chapter 38 is the beginning of book II telling us the Virtue. All the other Chapters mostly tell us both the Truth and its virtues with some special messages in each Chapter to convey.
Starting with the Te Ching here in this Chapter, Lao Tzu tells us, “What is the virtue?” First, he tells us, “What is the highest virtue?” Lao Tzu says:
“A man of the highest virtue need not deliberately keep himself to be virtuous.
That is why he has virtue.”
A person who has the highest virtue does not need to enforce himself to act with virtues. To be virtuous becomes his pure nature. Naturally he lives with virtues without any intention to be virtuous. No matter what he acts, he can only do goodness to people. By his own nature, he does not have any evil ideas and deeds. He is abiding in the Truth, being with the Oneness. By being Oneness, there is no good or evil in him, only the Truth which is even higher than the goodness. This is the highest spiritual attainment of life. People with this highest spiritual attainment are free from the bondage of sins and merits. No merits and no sins can bind them to be their slaves. They are the free people with the Truth only. They love the Truth and they act with the Truth.
However, if people need to differentiate between good and bad, they need to enforce themselves to be good and to avoid being bad. They are the people of the lowest virtue only. They always intend to do good deeds in order to prevent from doing harm; otherwise, they will forget the virtue and return to sinful deeds. They have not attained the highest stage of spirituality but only striving hard to attain higher. Since being virtuous has not yet been the whole of their character, they need to remind themselves always and do good deeds deliberately, thus Lao Tzu says:
“A man of the lowest virtue never strays from virtue deliberately.
That is why he is without virtue.”
The highest stage of virtue is doing good deeds without any intention to do any good deeds, while the lowest stage of virtue is doing good deeds with full intention to do good deeds. The lower one needs to be bound by the good deeds; then he will not go astray. “That is why he is without virtue.” He will go astray without virtue easily by being not mindful to the virtues. He is not yet being oneness with the Truth.
Then Lao Tzu further explains the difference between the one with the highest virtue and the one with the lowest virtue. The one with the highest virtue only identifies himself with the Truth, while the one with the lowest virtue identifies himself with his own ego, the limited being with a body. The highest one knows what he does is nothing but the Truth does its work only. He does not boast himself anything great in life. He is always humble as knowing and seeing the Truth doing work through him only. He is totally nothing. Therefore, Lao Tzu always says that humility is the virtue the sages always have. On the other hand, the lowest one has a large ego identifying himself as someone really great. He thinks it is only he himself to act and make good deeds. He thinks he is greater than many people. He does work and he is successful. He treats himself greater than the Truth as he sees himself act rather than seeing the Truth function in its own way, thus Lao Tzu says:
“The man of the highest virtue never acts yet leaves nothing undone.
The man of the lowest virtue does not act but he thinks he has done.”
The man of the lowest virtue cannot see the Truth act in its own way but thinks that he is the real doer. He is not yet with the Truth. Therefore, the Truth cannot function through him well.
Then Lao Tzu talks about “benevolence” and “rectitude” and their differences. Like a man of the highest virtue, a man of highest benevolence acts with beneficial deeds without any intentions. He never intends to give benefits to people but he does so naturally from his character only. As the one with the Truth, he cannot do harm to anyone but only beneficial to people. It is the highest benevolence bestowed on people through him without any intentions. He does not need any return either. He is a completely free person to act with benevolence.
However, the man with the highest rectitude acts with intentions to be rightful to people. This sense of doership is still strong in him. Like the man of the lowest virtues, he sees it is he who does work only, without seeing it is the Truth who does its work. He is not a free person and needs to be bound by the righteousness; otherwise, he will go astray. Also, he thinks he is great to be righteous, not knowing it is the Truth functioning through him and let him act with righteousness. This sense of ego, false identification of his limited body, is still there with the man of lowest virtue and lowest rectitude, thus Lao Tzu says:
“A man of the highest benevolence acts without intentions.
A man of the highest rectitude acts with intentions.”
With egoistic identification of the bodily self, a man with little or without any virtues, benevolence and rectitude, but only keeps the etiquette acts will be easily frustrated and then becomes extremely angry when people do not respond his courtesy properly. What he will do, Lao Tzu says:
“A man most conversant in etiquette acts,
when no one responds to him,
he rolls up his sleeves and resorts to persuasion by force.”
This is a great warning Lao Tzu tells every one of us to be mindful to our behavior and try to forbear a bit more if people are rude to our good deeds. Do not retaliate or blame people severely if what we do is only to harm ourselves and others whatsoever. Leave it. Calm down ourselves and see how the Truth will do the work. Whoever does with the Truth will be benefited with the Truth. Whoever opposes the Truth will be punished by the lack of the Truth. We cannot enforce people to act with courtesy if they do not have any virtues, benevolence and rectitude. What is the use of enforcing others to make further conflicts?
People with only etiquette acts are the lowest level of the manifestation of the Truth. Without the highest virtues, people still have the lowest virtues to remind themselves to be virtuous all the time ideally. Without the lowest virtues, people still have good conscience to be beneficial with the sense of benevolence and compassion to people. Without compassion, at least, people still have good reasoning power to be rectitude to people to avoid from bad consequences of doing bad deeds. When the good reasoning power is no more, people only insist on being polite to each other without knowing its goodness. They want to keep their honor and vanity only, thus Lao Tzu says:
“Hence when the Truth was lost, there was virtue.
When virtue was lost, there was benevolence.
When benevolence was lost, there was rectitude.
When rectitude was lost, there was etiquette.”
What is mere “etiquette”? Lao Tzu says:
“The etiquette is the wearing thin of loyalty and sincerity,
the beginning of chaos.”
When people throw away the Truth, they will lose the virtue, benevolence and rectitude one by one. Outwardly they still seem good people only because they keep the etiquette act as the means to get fame and honor in the sense of loyalty and sincerity given by people. Since the foundation is lost, the outward wearing is very thin and will be torn off easily. Chaos will be prevalent among people. They are like beasts to be shackled by etiquette act only. Our society will become chaotic if people do not observe the outward code of morality. Inwardly people tend to be evil-minded. This is the horrible situation we are now facing.
Why do people lose their foundation of the truthfulness? It is because people only see the outward appearance of fame and honor, pomp and show, without knowing the importance of keeping their foundation strong and firm. They are fools only, thus Lao Tzu says:
“A man who thinks he has foreknowledge is
the flowery embellishment of the Truth and the beginning of folly.”
People think they know, while they do not know. They do not know the Truth, but only the outward appearance of the Truth, i.e. the etiquette act. The etiquette act is only decoration not the real essence. The real essence is purity, simplicity and honesty, not the superficial level to show off. Without the essence, what is the use of any outward fake appearance? It is not long lasting and highly unstable. Without purity of our good nature, all the outward shows are lies only. Hence hypocrisy is so common among people. Here Lao Tzu gives us warning and tells us what to do to follow the sage to be simple and honest, thus Lao Tzu ends with the verse:
“Hence a great man abides in the essence of purity, simplicity and honesty,
not in the superficial level to show off.
He discards the vanity and takes the purity.”
Another translation which follows the Chinese words directly:
“Hence a great man abides in the thick,
not in the thin,
in the fruit, not in the flower.
Therefore, he discards the one and takes the other one.”
Here “thick” means the real essence of the Truth which is inherent inside of us as our pure nature being constant all the time, while “the thin” means only the outward appearance which may not last long without “the thick” inside us. This essence of the Truth is also the fruit as the thick, not the flower will wither soon as the thin. We should take the fruit of the Truth, not the flower of the Truth. The essence of the Truth is the thick, the fruit, i.e. purity, simplicity and honesty.
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