Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 77 — Heaven's Way
Like the bending of a bow
Heaven's Way is like the bending of a bow: the high end is pulled down, the low end raised; what is excess is reduced, what is deficient supplemented. Heaven's Way reduces excess and supplements deficiency. Humanity's way is otherwise: reducing the deficient to supplement the excessive. Only one who has the Tao can offer his surplus to the world.
Source context
- Theme
- leveling of excess and supply of deficiency as the operative principle of heaven's way
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Daoist cosmology (Tao Te Ching, ch. 77)The bow-string image — high end pressed down, low end raised — articulates the Tao's self-correcting redistribution, contrasted with the human tendency to take from the deficient and add to the surplus.
- Vedantic karma-yoga (Bhagavad Gita VI)Cross-tradition congruence appears in the Gita's instruction to act without claiming the fruit of action; the sage of ch. 77 acts without possessing, accomplishes without dwelling in the accomplishment.
- Kabbalistic tzimtzum (Lurianic Kabbalah)The divine self-contraction (tzimtzum) by which Ein Sof withdraws to make room for finite existence structurally parallels the Tao's leveling movement that empties what is full to fill what is empty.
Chapter 77
May not the Way (or Tao) of Heaven be compared to the (method
of) bending a bow? The (part of the bow) which was high is brought low, and what was low is raised up. (So Heaven) diminishes where there is superabundance, and supplements where there is deficiency.
It is the Way of Heaven to diminish superabundance, and to supplement deficiency. It is not so with the way of man. He takes away from those who have not enough to add to his own superabundance.
Who can take his own superabundance and therewith serve all under heaven? Only he who is in possession of the Tao!
Therefore the (ruling) sage acts without claiming the results as his; he achieves his merit and does not rest (arrogantly) in it:--he does not wish to display his superiority.