Chapter 2

It is tempting to think that the way we describe the world is natural. This things is yellow, that one is red. This is heavy, that is light. This is beautiful, that is ugly. That is evil, this is good.

No matter how natural such descriptions might seem, they are not of nature: they are of us. They are our attempts to categorize the ten thousands things so that we might understand them. But the ten thousand things are but passing forms; here one moment, gone the next. And our understanding of such things is no less fleeting.

There are no absolutes in nature. Nothing is ever fully one thing to the exclusion of its opposite. Within the deepest night lies the promise of dawn, within the brightest summer the seeds of winter. To think of things in absolutes is the wrong perspective.

To think in terms of difficult or easy, high or low, before or after, is to lock your way of thinking, of seeing things, into the world of the ten thousand things. When you detach yourself from that passing world and make your thoughts one with the Tao, such distinctions become meaningless. In such a state, you can observe the dance of the passing ten thousand things without being affected. As Mitchell puts it:

Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go.

The master, always present in this state, doesn’t interact directly with the passing world as most of us do. They move within the Tao, and action in the temporal plane flows from that. Thus, though the master might be teaching, they are not really speaking: they teach within the Tao, and words are uttered within this world as a consequence. Though the master may hold one of the ten thousand things, they know it to be fleeting and don’t hold on to it.

Lin translated the final lesson of this chapter thus:

They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away

Because the master acts within the eternal Tao, their actions have true meaning. They do not dwell on passing glory. And yet, because they are not concerned with it, succes follows their every action.