Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 34 — The Great Tao Flows
All things turn to it, yet it claims no mastery
The great Tao flows everywhere, left and right. The ten thousand things depend on it for life, and it does not refuse them. It clothes and feeds the ten thousand things and does not claim to be their master.
Source context
- Theme
- the Tao's great pervasiveness: acting without self-assertion, nourishing all things without claiming lordship
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — niṣkāma karmaThe Bhagavad Gītā's doctrine of action without attachment to fruit (niṣkāma karma) presents a structural parallel to Chapter 34's image of the Tao accomplishing all things while refusing to name itself great.
- Christian mysticism — kenosisThe patristic and Rhineland-mystical concept of kenosis — divine self-emptying as the ground of creative power — shows cross-tradition congruence with the Tao's refusal to claim dominion over what it sustains.
- Kabbalah — tzimtzumThe Lurianic concept of tzimtzum, in which the Infinite withdraws to make room for creation, exhibits cross-tradition congruence with the Tao's non-possessive sustaining of all ten-thousand things.
Chapter 34
All-pervading is the Great Tao! It may be found on the left hand and on the right.
All things depend on it for their production, which it gives to them, not one refusing obedience to it. When its work is accomplished, it does not claim the name of having done it. It clothes all things as with a garment, and makes no assumption of being their lord;--it may be named in the smallest things. All things return (to their root and disappear), and do not know that it is it which presides over their doing so;--it may be named in the greatest things.
Hence the sage is able (in the same way) to accomplish his great achievements. It is through his not making himself great that he can accomplish them.