Verse 33: To Know Oneself

Verse Thirty-Three
To know others is wisdom;
To know oneself is acuity.
To conquer others is power;
To conquer oneself is strength.
To know contentment is to have wealth.

To act resolutely is to have purpose.
To stay one's ground is to be enduring.
To die and yet not be forgotten is to be long-lived.
~ Roger Ames and David Hall translation ~

It's amazing how much time and energy we each spend trying to understand others, while almost neglecting the person we tend to understand the least -- ourselves.

For me, the first key message of today's verse is for each of us to quit trying to tell other people how to think, behave and live their lives. The only people truly qualified to proffer such advice are those few sages who have been able to strip away the ego and live a life in the supreme rhythms of Tao. Since most of us don't come close to this ideal, who in the heck gave us the authority or wisdom to serve as the morality gestapo?

Rather than focus on the thought and behavior of others, we each need to hone in on who we are and how we set ourselves away from the oneness of life. As John Lash explains it,

You are the Tao. Everything that is true for the Tao is true for you. If you can look withing yourself, see the principles upon which your life moves, examine your fears, locate your strengths and weaknesses, then you will be able to understand how the universe works. The ego finds it hard to take such an experience. But this experience is required if we are ever to have the self-knowledge that will allow us to work upon those aspects of ourselves that keep us from the fullest development of our nature.

The other aspect of today's verse I'd like to touch on has to do with the concept of immortality. While many belief systems have posited that this essence called the soul goes somewhere to live forever, the Ames and Hall translation suggests that immortality is nothing more than the memory of a person in the collective consciousness.

In other words, if we lead lives the benefit the overall community, then what becomes immortal is our legacy -- our thoughts and deeds live on in the hearts of others.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.