Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 8 — Highest Good Like Water
Water benefits all yet contends not
The supreme good resembles water: nourishing without striving, dwelling in places others disdain. In place of contention is the heart of the Tao.
Source context
- Theme
- water as image of supreme good: non-contention, beneficence, and dwelling in lowly places
- Soul-faculty
- Sentient Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- VedantaThe Vedantic ideal of the sage who, like water, bestows benefit without grasping (nishkama karma in the Bhagavad Gita) shows cross-tradition congruence with Laozi's water-virtue as effortless beneficence.
- Greek philosophy (Heraclitus / Thales)Thales' identification of water as the primal arche and Heraclitean flux share structural congruence with Chapter 8's depiction of water as the most potent and adaptable of principles.
- KabbalahThe Kabbalistic sefirah Chesed (loving-kindness that flows downward and outward without resistance) displays cross-tradition congruence with the Daoist valorisation of water's downward, non-contentious movement.
Chapter 8
The highest excellence is like (that of) water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving (to the contrary), the low place which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to (that of) the Tao.
The excellence of a residence is in (the suitability of) the place; that of the mind is in abysmal stillness; that of associations is in their being with the virtuous; that of government is in its securing good order; that of (the conduct of) affairs is in its ability; and that of (the initiation of) any movement is in its timeliness.
And when (one with the highest excellence) does not wrangle (about his low position), no one finds fault with him.