Compassion

    Little Dragon, at Wanderer Amongst Strangers, directs our attention to passage 67 of the Tao Te Ching.  We find there reflections on compassion.  Here are a couple of excerpts from the Hinton translation:

There are three treasures
I hold and nurture:
The first is called compassion,
the second economy
and the third never daring to lead all beneath heaven.
.....
Courage comes of compassion...
....
To overcome, attack with compassion.
To stand firm, defend with compassion.
Whatever heaven sustains
it shelters with compassion.

     For a bit of contrast, here is that last part from the Hendricks translation:

If with compassion you attack, then you'll win;
If you defend, then you'll stand firm.
When Heaven's about to establish him,
It's as though he surrounds him with the protective wall of compassion.

    Little Dragon uses this passage to remind us of the importance of acting in the world with compassion:

As we can see, from the quote above, compassion is not a wishy-washy, cuddly thing in the Taoist perspective. It is dynamic; you can both attack and defend with it. Taoist compassion does not stand by and say that 'it's all for the best, in the best of all possible worlds' and do nothing. Being compassionate does not mean that we stand there feeling sorry for people, although empathy and sympathy do have roles to play.

   Beyond being good personal advice, this also reminds us of something about Taoist philosophy.  Not long ago, Dror Poleg, of Danwei, contributed to an earlier post here on the apparent immorality of Taoism.  His point, drawing on passage 5 of the TTC, was to emphasize the notion that "Heaven and Earth are Inhumane," treating the "ten thousand things like straw dogs."  I pushed back against this line of thinking, but I did not bring passage 67 into the conversation. When we do consider that passage's thoughts on compassion, we get a fuller view of Taoist morality.

    One way to put these two seemingly contradictory chapters together - one suggesting that human moral convictions are meaningless in an inhumane world, and the other saying that we should act with compassion in the world - is to notice the different objects of each observation.  In passage 5, the object is "Heaven and Earth," they are inhumane - i.e. resistant to transformation based upon our notions of good and evil - and are thus held up as models of sorts for the "sage."  Passage 67 is more personal.  It begins with reference to "my Tao," and includes references to "I" and "him" and "he."  The scale here is more intimate, more immediate. 

   When we hold these two chapters next to each other, we might come up with this synthesis: in our concrete and tangible every day lives, as we "dwell in the ordinary" social and material stuff that directly and tangibly surrounds us, we should strive to act with compassion.  To reach a bit beyond these two passages - and invoke the notion of "Te" or "Integrity" - that compassion should be build upon the recognition that each thing has its unique place in Way and "moves as one and the same" with every other thing.   

     When we try to generalize to humanity as a whole, or some other such grandiose category - "society," "world," "civilization" - that is when the inevitability of inhumanity becomes apparent.

    Taoism, then, is offering us a personal morality based upon a preference for compassionate action.  It does not presume that the "way of mankind" will then be completely transformed into a paradise.  Taoism recognizes that many people will "adore twisty paths," and act in ways not in keeping with Way.  But that is not a call to accept and reproduce inhumanity in our own personal lives.  Quite the contrary, both the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu suggest the possibility of human improvement.  Why would the authors have written these books if not out of the belief that, while perhaps not saving the world, they could encourage the ethical betterment of some number of individuals?

    A Taoist morality has certain limits, but also a certain clarity: act with compassion and don't expect to transform all of the inhumanity under heaven.

Comments

[Little Dragon]

I agree wholeheartedly with this post, although I think that, perhaps, I have a slight difference of interpretation of 5 and its' discussion of 'straw dogs'. I don't believe that this goes against compassion or that Taoism is immoral. So often we hear people cry "everyone's against me", "it's not fair". What Chapter 5 tells us is that the universe, heaven & earth, don't care enough about us to make life either fair or unfair. It is not that the universe is immoral, rather that its' concerns are greater than our small, rather limited existences. Therefore, it's how circumstances have piled up, rather than anything personal. This does not, as you so clearly state, preempt us as individuals acting with compassion. The universe is beyond our complete understanding, therefore we must deal with reality as it is and with each other as we are.