Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 61 — The Great State as Low Ground
Yielding wins what striving cannot
A great state is like the downward flow in which all the world meets — the female of the world. The female overcomes the male through stillness, taking the low position. By taking the low position, the great state wins the small; by taking the low position, the small state wins the great.
Source context
- Theme
- receptive lowness as the condition of great-heartedness and political mastery
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedantic humility (vinaya)The Vedantic virtue of vinaya — self-effacement as prerequisite for receiving higher knowledge — mirrors Chapter 61's teaching that the great state prevails precisely by placing itself below, exhibiting cross-tradition congruence in the structural role of receptive lowness as a condition of expanded influence.
- Aristotelian magnanimity (megalopsychia)Aristotle's magnanimous person knows when to yield and when to lead; Chapter 61's model of the great state that wins through stillness and descent shows cross-tradition congruence with this structural coupling of genuine greatness and deliberate self-subordination.
- Sufi concept of fana (self-annihilation)Sufi fana — the annihilation of the ego-self as the mode of receiving divine influx — parallels Chapter 61's principle that lowering oneself is the mechanism by which the greater draws the lesser into union, exhibiting cross-tradition congruence at the level of receptive ontology.
Chapter 61
What makes a great state is its being (like) a low-lying, down- flowing (stream);--it becomes the centre to which tend (all the small states) under heaven.
(To illustrate from) the case of all females:--the female always overcomes the male by her stillness. Stillness may be considered (a sort of) abasement.
Thus it is that a great state, by condescending to small states, gains them for itself; and that small states, by abasing themselves to a great state, win it over to them. In the one case the abasement leads to gaining adherents, in the other case to procuring favour.
The great state only wishes to unite men together and nourish them; a small state only wishes to be received by, and to serve, the other. Each gets what it desires, but the great state must learn to abase itself.