Verse 38: The Sham of Premeditated Morality

Verse Thirty-Eight
People with integrity
don't even think about it.
That's how you can tell
they have integrity.
Other people talk about
how much integrity they have,
when they really don't have much.
If any.

Truly powerful people
don't do anything,
but they get the job done.
Other people are always busy
doing something,
but nothing ever gets done.

When kind people act,
they do so without thinking about it.
When the just act,
they're always sure
they're doing the right thing.
But when the righteous act,
and nobody reacts,
they try to force everyone
to do things their way.

If you're not in touch with Tao,
at least you can still have integrity.
If you don't have integrity,
there's always kindness.
If you don't have kindness,
there's always justice.
If you don't have justice,
all you have left is righteousness.

Righteousness is an pale imitation
of true faith and loyalty,
and always leads to trouble.
If you've already made up your mind,
you don't know the first thing about Tao,
and you never will.

The Masters pay attention
to what's beneath the surface.
They'll look at a tree's leaves,
but eat the fruit.
They turn all that down,
so they can accept this.
~ Ron Hogan rendition ~

Over the last 24 hours I've written quite a bit about the topic of morality. For me, this verse only underscores the chief points I've been trying to get across. At this stage, I'll let Roger Ames and David Hall express it more eloquently than I have!

For the Daoist, premeditated morality is a sham. Preassigned responses are forced and, because coercion only serves to diminish the creative possibilities of the situation, they are dehumanizing. Even in the cultivation of one's own character, efforts to excel according to stipulated behaviors only compromise one's natural moral proclivities, and will not do the job. There is a fundamental distinction to be made between actions that are inspired by and conduce to the formation of character, and those that are little more than an external show of proper conduct.

The other point I will raise in connection with Christianity, in specific, is that doing the right thing or not doing the wrong thing always is motivated by the desire of the ego to earn a reward (life in heaven) or to escape punishment (life in hell). So, while we are urged to behave morally to appease God, our every action truly is based on purely selfish motivations!

This is why the view of morality in Taoism is so strikingly different. Rather than conducting ourselves based on arbitrary external rules, the Taoist ideal is to move beyond the ego to behave seamlessly with the life process as it unfolds before us -- to do what is correct, not by thinking what the correct move SHOULD be, but to do it without thinking or conceptualizing at all.

Clouds don't bring forth the rain after trying to ascertain if said action is moral or not. A lion doesn't need to go to a church or holy book to figure out if it's okay to kill a gazelle for the next meal. A river doesn't have to weigh moral options as to whether or not it should flow downstream.

By moving beyond ego, we too can flow with the stream of life.

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