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Daodejing Chapter 70: Put the Dao into Practice
The Daodejing appears to wander aimlessly, even drunkenly, around its subject. A chapter may speculate on the mysteriousness of existence, while another points out the necessity of opposites. Then there is time for a quick indictment of performative ritual and its champions. Now the proper mindset to take into battle, and how to behave and be seen after. All to come around and point again from an adjacent angle. Is it random, this shuffled string of characters like so many bamboo strips tied loosely together? Something this old, we will never know; nobody can ever know.
But I think there is order in what looks like scatter. There is purpose behind the random walk. Intention is moving, from abstraction to specificity, or more crucially, from uncertainty to confidence. In Chapter 20, the frustration of being unheeded spilled off the page, so much so, that I imagined Laozi losing his certainty a little. His confidence, surrounded by so many bright and enlightened others, was shaken. And now, surrounded by lords rushing into wars and soldiers fighting angry, again Laozi pauses the narrative.
My words are quite easy to understand, and quite easy to put into practice. But no one seems to understand them, or put them into practice. My words have their origin, just as things have rules to follow. People don’t understand that, so they don’t…
