Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 80 — The Small State
Neighboring states in sight; people grow old without visiting
Let the state be small with few people; let weapons and tools exist but go unused; let people regard death as serious and not migrate. Boats and carriages, weapons and armor — present but not used. Let people return to knotted-cord writing. Let them relish their food, find beauty in their clothes, peace in their homes, joy in their customs. Though neighboring states are in sight, the people grow old and die without visiting.
Source context
- Theme
- voluntary smallness of polity, sufficiency of local life, and the ideal of minimal movement and self-containment
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Daoist cosmology (internal)Chapter 80 enacts the Daoist principle of wu-wei at the social scale: the small state with few people lives in accordance with Tao precisely by not striving outward, mirroring the cosmological teaching that returns (fu) to the root are intrinsic to the Tao's movement.
- Stoic autarkeiaThe Stoic ideal of self-sufficiency (autarkeia) in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius presents a cross-tradition congruence with Chapter 80's image of a community that has tools but does not use them, locating freedom in restraint rather than expansion.
- Vedantic vairagya (non-attachment to outward movement)The Vedantic discipline of vairagya — non-attachment to worldly acquisition and travel — presents a cross-tradition congruence with the chapter's celebration of people who, though they might wander, remain at home and do not seek other lands.
Chapter 80
In a little state with a small population, I would so order it, that, though there were individuals with the abilities of ten or a hundred men, there should be no employment of them; I would make the people, while looking on death as a grievous thing, yet not remove elsewhere (to avoid it).
Though they had boats and carriages, they should have no occasion to ride in them; though they had buff coats and sharp weapons, they should have no occasion to don or use them.
I would make the people return to the use of knotted cords (instead of the written characters).
They should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment.
There should be a neighbouring state within sight, and the voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us, but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not have any intercourse with it.