Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
- Heaven and Earth are totally unbiased, says the TTC.
- Makes sense, right? If a meteor slams into the Earth, it doesn't exactly care who or what it slams into. You could be super-nice or super-mean, and you still might get squished.
- The sages take a cue from the Heaven and Earth and also think of people without bias.
- In a famous line, the TTC tells us that the sages "regard people as straw dogs" (5.4).
- Chinese history bomb: Back in the day, the Chinese used dog figurines made of straw in rituals. After the rituals, they ditched the straw dogs because they had no more meaning.
- So the cynical way to interpret this line of the TTC is that people don't matter.
- But another way of looking at it, which seems more in line with everything else, is that we should recognize that we only inhabit our physical bodies for a little while before everything we're made of goes on to become something else.
- We're all just a part of the Tao, man!
- Next, we're told that the space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows, which is a thing blacksmiths used to use to blow air into their fires.
- So even though the space between Heaven and Earth might look empty, it's always fanning the flames of creation.
- This chapter also stresses the idea that too many words cause failure.
- Nothing compares to silence.
- Could this mean that talking too much doesn't allow us to recognize the Tao?