Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 37 — Doing Nothing, Leaving Nothing Undone
The Tao acts not, yet nothing is left undone
The Tao does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. If rulers could hold it, the ten thousand things would transform of themselves. Transformed yet desiring action — restrained by the uncarved block of namelessness.
Source context
- Theme
- non-action (wu-wei) as the ground of all arising — Tao perpetually does nothing yet nothing is left undone
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — Brahman as niṣkriyaIn Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is actionless (niṣkriya) yet the substratum of all manifestation, a structural parallel to the Tao's simultaneous non-doing and all-encompassing efficacy.
- Buddhist — śūnyatā and dependent originationBuddhist śūnyatā posits that phenomena arise through interdependent conditions without a self-acting agent, exhibiting cross-tradition congruence with wu-wei as productive non-interference.
- Neoplatonism — the One and emanationPlotinus describes the One as beyond all activity yet the source from which Nous and Soul emanate, structurally congruent with the Tao that does nothing yet produces the ten thousand things.
Chapter 37
The Tao in its regular course does nothing (for the sake of doing it), and so there is nothing which it does not do.
If princes and kings were able to maintain it, all things would of themselves be transformed by them.
If this transformation became to me an object of desire, I would express the desire by the nameless simplicity.
Simplicity without a name Is free from all external aim. With no desire, at rest and still, All things go right as of their will.