Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 70 — My Words Are Easy to Understand
Yet no one can practise them
My words are easy to understand and easy to practise, yet no one in the world can understand or practise them. My words have an ancestor; my deeds have a master. Because they do not understand, they do not know me. Those who know me are few; those who follow me are honored. The sage wears coarse cloth, hides jade in his bosom.
Source context
- Theme
- inaccessibility of the sage's teaching to those without inner readiness
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Platonic esotericismPlato's distinction between exoteric and esoteric discourse — that the highest teachings are grasped only by the few who bear the requisite inner constitution — offers structural cross-tradition congruence with the Laozi's claim that his words are easy to know yet rarely understood.
- Upanishadic transmission doctrineThe Upanishadic insistence that brahmavidyā is transmitted only to the qualified adhikārin parallels the Laozi's identification of a sage-lineage whose wisdom remains opaque to the uninitiated majority.
- Sufi concept of sirr (secret)The Sufi doctrine of sirr — the innermost secret carried by the master that cannot be communicated to the unprepared — shows structural cross-tradition congruence with the Laozi's image of the sage who wears coarse cloth but conceals jade.
Chapter 70
My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise; but there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise them.
There is an originating and all-comprehending (principle) in my words, and an authoritative law for the things (which I enforce). It is because they do not know these, that men do not know me.
They who know me are few, and I am on that account (the more) to be prized. It is thus that the sage wears (a poor garb of) hair cloth, while he carries his (signet of) jade in his bosom.