Lao Tzu for Everyone
Students, Scholars
& Seekers
Peter Gilboy, Ph.D.
Line 1 至虛極也守靜督也
Line 2 萬物旁作吾以觀其復也
Line 3 夫物雲雲
各復歸於其根曰靜
Line 4 靜是胃復命
Line 5 復命常也知常明也
Line 6 不知常妄妄作兇
Line 7 知常容
容乃公
公乃王
Line 8 王乃天 天乃道
Line 9 道乃 久沒身不殆
LESSON 16
Returning
home
Lao Tzu has already used a number of similes and metaphors in addressing us. He must, because what he wants to convey cannot be said any more than someone telling us about a particular taste or ache can convey that same taste or ache.
In this lesson we have a new metaphor-- 復fù return, or 復fù 歸guī, "returning homeward." But "return" does not suggest having gone somewhere, such as the market or a friend's house, and now we are coming back.
復fù is the return to who we are, our self, or 自zì 然rán self-so-ness, which we have been along but have continually overlooked. It is the realization of that quiet still-point in us that goes wherever we go.
Obviously this cannot be understood intellectually. Lao Tzu's words on the page do not translate into any kind of understanding at all. Merely reading about 復fù 歸guī "returning homeward" is like reading about breathing without taking into account the testimony of one's own breathing, which is already closer than hands and feet.
. . . . . .
Click on each line number
for Chinese-English interlinear
& commentary
Attaining to emptiness
is our utmost condition.
Holding to our still-point
is the most profound.
The myriad things
are bustling around me.
It is in stillness
that I behold them
ever returning to the Way.
You see, the myriad things
arise in all their varieties,
with each of them
ever returning
homeward to its root.
Call it our
still-point.
To discover one's
still-point is called
returning to
one's own nature.
To be returning to
one's nature
is to abide in it
To know the abiding
is to be enlightened.
Not realizing what abides,
is to be blind to oneself.
To be blind to oneself
does not bode well.
Knowing the abiding
is to be all-embracing.
Being all-embracing is
to be impartial
Being impartial is
to be kingly.
Being kingly
is to be heavenly.
Being heavenly
is to be in step
with the Way.
When one is in step
with the Way,
evermore one's sense
of "me" sinks away
without any harm at all.
. . . . . . .