Introduction

This verse mirrors the first by highlighting that the Dao is both beyond description and exactly within whatever we might want to describe. Also, like the first verse, it puts two opposing modes, fusion (yin) and separation (yang), into their proper relationship.

In this worldview of meditative living, Perfected Integrity is only available when our lived experience freely harmonizes yin and yang. Yin is a wordless knowing of the energetic essence unifying all that is. Yang is the capacity to name and organize those aspects of experience so we can engage in our environment as individuals.

Translation

The Dao constantly undoes names.
It is raw but refined.

Heaven and Earth dare not
consider themselves greater.
If Leaders preserve the Dao,
all things will host themselves.

Heaven and Earth in harmony
is like a gift of sweet rain.
Without laws and decrees
people treat each other equally.

The origin is built
by having names.

Naming is already existing.
Knowledge of this process
prevents it from causing harm.

For example:
The Dao is in Creation
like a stream
is in the rivers and oceans.

Commentary

The Dao constantly undoes names.
It is raw but refined.

Whenever we look with truly opened eyes, all we see is the interplay of energetic forces. The language we use to describe our reality is always inadequate. It is inadequate because what we really experience is so primal that it is ambiguous beyond capture while, at the same time, being so specific that any words are vague.

Exploring our use of language in relation to concepts and concepts in relation to reality is rather abstract. Here is a more concrete thought experiment.

Take a moment to think about a table. What kind of table is it? How many people does it sit, or is it made of columns and rows? What shape is it? What is it made of? What color is it? Is it a dining table, a laboratory table, or some other kind?

If you happen to have the chance, ask someone else to close their eyes and describe a table to you. With similar life experiences, the descriptions may approximate one another. The longer you talk about it, the more different your respective tables will turn out to be. Yet, somehow, we would all recognize the other person as describing a table. Our descriptions for the table can be pages long and highly refined, yet still not capture every detail. Yet, at the same time, each new detail that adds precision to our experience of a table separates our experience further from everyone else’s.

What a table is has nothing to do with being called a table or how we describe it. The thing itself is more raw, more primal, than any refinement. It’s just something that we use in a certain way. If we all agreed that the thing we used as a table was to be called a waffle, and we all knew that, then we would eat our meals at the waffle.

The thing itself wouldn’t be changed at all. Studying other languages can really drive this home. The same thing we call a table is known as a “zhuōzi” in Mandarin, “mesa” in Spanish, etc. Yet the essence of the table, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it, is recognizable in any culture that uses elevated flat spaces to gather, eat, or work.

Heaven and Earth dare not
consider themselves greater.
If Leaders preserve the Dao
all things will host themselves.

This stanza is relatively straightforward, except whatever “all things will host themselves” might mean. I’d like to offer two perspectives on one meaning of this line. (For a refresher on who the Leader is, see verse 16 and verse 30)

In my understanding of Chinese culture, there are precise requirements for what it means to be a good host and a good guest. In short, good hosts provide for all of their guests’ needs, and good guests make a good show of enjoying their host’s hospitality. To host ourselves is to simultaneously meet all of our own needs and enjoy having our needs met.

Another potential connection is that this is a precursor to later Chinese spiritual teachings that use the guest and host as metaphors for states of consciousness. The “host” energy is the essential, wordless, interconnected, still nature of things (Earth). The “guest” energies are the active, transient objects of experience (Heaven). A Leader that preserves the Dao enables all things (the guests) to recognize that they are an emergent, arbitrary, and temporary part of their container (host).

Heaven and Earth in harmony
is like a gift of sweet rain.
Without laws and decrees,
people treat each other equally.

Sweet rain is the rain that falls everywhere, indiscriminately, nourishing and supporting life wherever it is. When Heaven and Earth are in harmony, this is the result.

This means that people don’t need rules and laws to be good people. See verse 18 for a commentary on this concept. For more on the notion of “spontaneous integrity,” see verses 12, 16, 17, 21, 23, and 26.

The origin is built
by having names.

This stanza is a slightly restructured version of a line in the first verse: “The act of naming gives birth to all things.” As we study Weaving the Way further, we may discover a different relationship to this concept.

Various aspects of Eastern and Western philosophy and practical magic come to mind. Such as notions of Logos (the creative word), Mantra (mind-tuning through sound), true name notions in shamanism and other esoteric Abrahamic practices (Kabbalah, Qabalah, Sufism, Solomonic Magic, Enochian Magic). In Daoism, talismans are created based on a “true image/name” that bestows power on their creator or carrier. Japanese folklore holds that spirits will do anything to keep their name a secret, and discovering their names gives you control over them.

Identifying individual components of our reality and naming them literally “speaks them into being” when they were only vague, swirling concepts. Words as sources of creative power is a topic beyond this commentary, so I’ll just stop here.

Naming is already existing.
Knowledge of this process
prevents it from causing harm.

Whether we use conventional language or not, we generate specific concepts that structure and organize our reality. The capacity to know “this” from “that” is present to some degree in all life. Homo sapiens naming superpower entices us to drink the kool-aid of our intelligence. When we become intoxicated by intellect, it becomes a capacity that veils the Dao from us, leading to the development of all sorts of problems. By taking the time to understand how naming works, its role, and its arbitrariness, it can be kept in its lanes as a helpful skill instead of a reality replacement.

For example:
The Dao is in Creation
like a stream
is in the rivers and oceans.

When we see the ocean, we don’t typically see all the individual riverlets and raindrops that constitute it. However, that doesn’t make it less accurate that all these smaller bodies of water feed the ocean. Likewise, standing at the edge of the Mississippi or any other great river, it’s simple to forget the more primitive, smaller tributaries that infuse their waters.

Weaving the Way in Perfected Integrity means recognizing that the miracle of flowing energy is a singular primordial substance combining and separating in infinite ways. On this ever-changing sea, we slice and dice the waves in a dynamic interplay of life, which simultaneously impacts the characteristics of those waves. Attuning to this reality moment-by-moment enables harmonious coexistence within ourselves and the world around us.