Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 15 — The Ancient Masters
Cautious as one crossing a stream in winter
The ancient adepts — subtle, mysterious, profound beyond knowing — described only by what they resembled. They emptied themselves and so could be renewed.
Source context
- Theme
- qualities of the ancient initiate: cautious, penetrating, yielding, receptive, and deliberately obscure
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Daoist initiate typologyChapter 15 enumerates the character-marks of the ancient masters — hesitant as one crossing winter ice, alert as one surrounded by danger, yielding as melting ice, blank as uncarved wood — as a portrait of the adept who has transcended conceptual fixation.
- Vedantic viveka / vairagya doctrineThe Daoist emphasis on deliberate cloudedness and non-assertion exhibits cross-tradition congruence with the Vedantic pairing of discernment (viveka) and dispassion (vairagya), whereby the realized knower withholds self-display precisely because inner clarity is complete.
- Zen ox-herding phenomenologyThe final image of turbid water becoming clear through stillness parallels Zen's 'return to the marketplace' stage, in which the adept appears ordinary while inwardly undisturbed — a structural correspondence in the depiction of post-initiation comportment.
- Neoplatonic hesychasm / apophatic mysticismThe insistence that the ancient master does not seek fullness but remains incomplete exhibits cross-tradition congruence with the apophatic strand in Plotinian and later Christian Neoplatonism, where the soul that has touched the One refrains from asserting conceptual closure.
Chapter 15
The skilful masters (of the Tao) in old times, with a subtle and exquisite penetration, comprehended its mysteries, and were deep (also) so as to elude men's knowledge. As they were thus beyond men's knowledge, I will make an effort to describe of what sort they appeared to be.
Shrinking looked they like those who wade through a stream in winter; irresolute like those who are afraid of all around them; grave like a guest (in awe of his host); evanescent like ice that is melting away; unpretentious like wood that has not been fashioned into anything; vacant like a valley, and dull like muddy water.
Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear. Who can secure the condition of rest? Let movement go on, and the condition of rest will gradually arise.
They who preserve this method of the Tao do not wish to be full (of themselves). It is through their not being full of themselves that they can afford to seem worn and not appear new and complete.