Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 49 — The Sage's Heart
The sage has no fixed mind; he takes the heart of the people as his heart
The sage has no fixed mind of his own; he takes the heart of the people as his heart. To the good he is good; to the not-good he is also good — this is true goodness. To the faithful he is faithful; to the unfaithful he is also faithful — this is true faithfulness.
Source context
- Theme
- the sage's heart as mirror — holding no fixed mind, taking the people's mind as one's own
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — nirguna BrahmanThe sage's complete inner openness in Chapter 49 shows cross-tradition congruence with the Vedantic notion of the jnani who has dissolved personal volition into pure witnessing awareness (sakshi), retaining no private standpoint.
- Christian mysticism — kenosisThe emptying of fixed selfhood so that all others' minds become one's own parallels the kenotic emptying described in Philippians 2:7 and elaborated by Meister Eckhart as Abgeschiedenheit (detachment).
- Zen Buddhism — mushinThe Taoist sage's mirror-like receptivity to the people shows cross-tradition congruence with the Zen principle of mushin (no-fixed-mind), in which spontaneous responsiveness arises precisely because no personal viewpoint is retained.
Chapter 49
The sage has no invariable mind of his own; he makes the mind of the people his mind.
To those who are good (to me), I am good; and to those who are not good (to me), I am also good;--and thus (all) get to be good. To those who are sincere (with me), I am sincere; and to those who are not sincere (with me), I am also sincere;--and thus (all) get to be sincere.
The sage has in the world an appearance of indecision, and keeps his mind in a state of indifference to all. The people all keep their eyes and ears directed to him, and he deals with them all as his children.