Undyed Silk
Some people are kind all the time and never once say the word "kindness".
Some people say it all the time.
絕聖棄智，民利百倍；
jué shèng qì zhì, mín lì bǎi bèi;
Cut off sageliness, throw away cleverness, and the people will gain a hundredfold;
絕仁棄義，民復孝慈；
jué rén qì yì, mín fù xiào cí;
cut off kindness, throw away righteousness, and the people will again love their parents and their children;
絕巧棄利，盜賊無有。
jué qiǎo qì lì, dào zéi wú yǒu.
cut off cunning, throw away profit, and there will be no thieves.
此三者以為文不足，
cǐ sān zhě yǐ wéi wén bù zú,
These three are only outward patterns, and not enough;
故令有所屬：
gù lìng yǒu suǒ zhǔ:
so let there be something to hold on to:
見素抱樸，
xiàn sù bào pǔ,
show the undyed silk, hold the uncarved block;
少私寡欲。
shǎo sī guǎ yù.
think less of yourself, and want little.
The words
raw silk, undyed and white; plain
Silk as the worm spun it, before it is dyed any colour. Its partner in the line is 樸, the uncarved block, which you met in chapter 15: wood before it is cut. Two pictures of the same thing: what you are before anything is added.
a pattern; decoration; writing, culture
Originally a pattern, like tattoo marks or the lines on a shell, and later writing and all of culture. "Outward patterns" are what is put on the surface. The chapter's complaint is not that the virtues are bad, but that, preached and displayed, they become decoration.
private, one's own; selfish
Grain (禾) and a sign meaning "self": the grain you keep for yourself. 少私, "less self", is not hating yourself. It is thinking a little less about yourself.
Sitting with it
This chapter sounds outrageous at first. Throw away sageliness and cleverness? Throw away kindness and righteousness? Weren't those the very things wise people taught?
They were, and that is the point. In Laozi's time, the schools of Confucius and others were teaching these virtues everywhere: rules of conduct, the proper forms of respect, lessons in being good. The Tao Te Ching looks at all this teaching and says: the more you talk about goodness, the more you lose it. When a family has to be taught to love its children, something has already gone wrong. When love is natural, nobody needs the word.
It's a little like a forest. Nobody had to teach the trees to grow. Once the forest is cut down, you need gardeners, and rules about gardening, and prizes for the best garden. The rules are not bad. They are what you need after the forest is gone.
The book's hope is to go back behind the rules to what they were trying to protect. Take away the show of wisdom, and people's lives get better. Take away the preaching of kindness, and real love comes back, between parents and children. Take away the cleverness and the chase for profit, and there is nothing worth stealing.
But Laozi knows that "throw away" is not enough on its own; you need something to hold. So the chapter ends with four simple words of practice. Show the plain silk. Be what you are, without dyeing it. Hold the uncarved block. Keep your simplicity. Less self. Few desires.
One honest note. In the oldest copy of this chapter, written on the bamboo strips found at Guodian, the line about kindness and righteousness is not there. In its place is a line against falseness and scheming.1 Perhaps the attack on the Confucian virtues was sharpened later, as the two schools grew apart. Either way, the four words at the end are the same.
A practice
Today, do one kind thing in the plainest way you can: no explanation, no lesson attached, no "I just wanted to...".
Just the thing itself, undyed.
To carry
見素抱樸
xiàn sù bào pǔ
Show the undyed silk; hold the uncarved block.
Sources
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Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation (Cornell East Asia Program, 2012). ↩