Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 58 — Cycling of Fortune
Fortune is the lurking-place of disaster
When government is dull, the people are honest; when government is sharp, the people are crafty. Disaster is what fortune leans on; fortune is what disaster hides within. Who can know the end? There is no fixed correctness. The sage is square but does not cut, sharp but does not pierce, straight but not extreme, luminous but not dazzling.
Source context
- Theme
- governance through non-interference and the cyclical reversal of fortune and virtue
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Daoist principle of wu-weiChapter 58's teaching that lenient, non-intrusive governance produces flourishing while rigid control produces its opposite structurally parallels the Daoist doctrine of wu-wei, in which action aligned with the Tao's own non-forcing character is the most efficacious.
- Vedantic concept of maya and the pairs of oppositesThe chapter's insistence that fortune and misfortune, good and ill, perpetually transform into one another shows cross-tradition congruence with the Vedantic teaching on dvandva (pairs of opposites) as the constitutive structure of phenomenal existence.
- Aristotelian doctrine of the meanChapter 58's portrait of the sage who is sharp without cutting, honest without wounding, and upright without imposing shows cross-tradition congruence with Aristotle's account of virtuous action as the mean between excess and deficiency.
Chapter 58
The government that seems the most unwise, Oft goodness to the people best supplies; That which is meddling, touching everything, Will work but ill, and disappointment bring.
Misery!--happiness is to be found by its side! Happiness!--misery lurks beneath it! Who knows what either will come to in the end?
Shall we then dispense with correction? The (method of) correction shall by a turn become distortion, and the good in it shall by a turn become evil. The delusion of the people (on this point) has indeed subsisted for a long time.
Therefore the sage is (like) a square which cuts no one (with its angles); (like) a corner which injures no one (with its sharpness). He is straightforward, but allows himself no license; he is bright, but does not dazzle.