Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 10 — Embracing the One
Holding body and soul in unity
Can you embrace the One and not let go? Can you make your breath soft as an infant's? Cleanse the inner vision, give birth without possessing, act without expecting — this is mysterious virtue (xuán dé).
Source context
- Theme
- integration of vital force, soul-cultivation, and wu-wei governance through sustained inner unification
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — prana and atmanChapter 10's injunction to carry the hun and po souls in unified embrace while nurturing the vital breath shows cross-tradition congruence with Vedantic discipline of pranic regulation as prerequisite for atman-realization.
- Yoga — pratyahara and dharanaThe directive to concentrate and soften until one achieves infant-like suppleness parallels the yogic stages of sense-withdrawal and inner fixation described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.
- Kabbalah — devekut and ayinThe Taoist ideal of acting without possessiveness or self-assertion shows cross-tradition congruence with the Kabbalistic concept of devekut, clinging to the divine through self-nullification (ayin).
Chapter 10
When the intelligent and animal souls are held together in one embrace, they can be kept from separating. When one gives undivided attention to the (vital) breath, and brings it to the utmost degree of pliancy, he can become as a (tender) babe. When he has cleansed away the most mysterious sights (of his imagination), he can become without a flaw.
In loving the people and ruling the state, cannot he proceed without any (purpose of) action? In the opening and shutting of his gates of heaven, cannot he do so as a female bird? While his intelligence reaches in every direction, cannot he (appear to) be without knowledge?
(The Tao) produces (all things) and nourishes them; it produces them and does not claim them as its own; it does all, and yet does not boast of it; it presides over all, and yet does not control them. This is what is called 'The mysterious Quality' (of the Tao).