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Introduction

This verse lends itself to a political commentary and has been interpreted accordingly. When rulers are obsessed with their projects instead of taking care of the people, things get bad for the small-folk, which means things get bad for the leaders. The last verse’s exposition on confusion around boundary setting, when read as a commentary on legal structures in government, would support this interpretation. 

But the final lines of this verse fail to bring this political logic to a satisfactory conclusion.

Fortunately, the same line does use a structure that makes perfect sense according to Daoist principles. When I examined the other lines, I found several key governance-like terms that serve as internal, alchemical metaphors. As always, the commentary follows the structural logic revealed through meditative living. 

Translation

A person’s hunger,
  Is because the taxes on food are high.
This is how there is hunger.

Common people’s disorder,
  Is because their superior is too active.
This is how the superior doesn’t regulate them.

Death’s warp is caused by
    prioritizing the pursuit of becoming
This is how death is woven.

Indeed! Only those who
  allow Yin to give rise to Yang
Are capable of cherishing becoming. 

Commentary

A person’s hunger,
  is because the taxes on consumption are high.
This is how there is hunger. 

Being hungry because consumption has a cost ties directly into the Nei Dan (Daoist inner alchemy) teaching that we are born with a full reservoir of vital life essence (精, jīng). Through our psycho-emotional confusion, entanglement with sense desires, poor diet, out-of-Integrity actions, and loss of conscious connection with the Dao, this essence is thrown out of balance and depleted. 

Consuming our essence without taking time to replenish it leaves us feeling “hungry.” Yes, this can manifest as an insatiable appetite (for food as well as other sensory pleasures). But that is just the confused way that we go about addressing our internal hollowness, depression, and anxiety, which arise when we are disconnected from the Dao. 

Common people’s disorder,
  Is because their superior is too active.
This is how the superior doesn’t regulate the people.

“Common people” in this context refers to anyone whose Spirit, their “Superior,” is more wrapped up in external phenomena than attentive to internal harmony, and thus Integrity. “The People” refers to our multiplicity of personas and experiences that we use to navigate all the different roles we play in our lives. In other words, “the people” are our conditioned patterns of meaning-making and reactivity. (For a quick reference to essential metaphors, see the end of this post).

Essentially, when our Spirit is too busy going out and not “yoked to the center,” it lacks the capacity to act as the mediator for our experience. Without its influence, “the people” end up having free rein to exert themselves over our behavior, and we experience significant inner turmoil as a result of their ongoing competition.  

Death’s warp is caused by
    prioritizing the pursuit of becoming
This is how death is woven.

Warp** threads are the lengthwise, structural threads in the weaving of fabric. In a tapestry, they become hidden as the weft threads are woven through them to create the picture. The very foundation of life, one that we are grateful to leave invisible as we weave our tapestry, is our mortality. By ignoring how mortality forces us to run toward the external world, we allow short-sightedness to dominate our perspective. This short-sightedness enables us to live with abandon, with all its ensuing pros and cons. And, almost all religions, spiritual teachings, and philosophies that promise inner peace require us to face this existential crisis. 

Should you take up a deep meditative practice, you will eventually encounter teachings and experiences that talk about dying on your cushion. Seeking “death” is the means to peace. It can be a terrifying experience, but the method, purpose, and benefit are all straightforward. The method involves pulling our senses back into our own body, reversing the direction of our conscious outflows of energy. The purpose of doing this is so that our limited, self-referencing experience is interrupted. The benefit is that the cosmic oneness of the Dao, consciousness, God, whatever, can be directly perceived. 

Without abandoning becoming, it is impossible to “die” into pure being.

Without dying into being, we remain caught up in the rat race of becoming.

Indeed! Only those who
  allow Yin to give rise to Yang
Are capable of cherishing becoming. 

Because we burn ourselves out running from one thing to another. When we are yang without yin, we are never fully aware of where we are or where we are going. That type of frantic running about depletes our essence and turns the process of becoming, the gift of life, into a burden. 

Once again, (y)in-action—being with What Is as a basis for the becoming of What Must Be—is at the center of the conversation. The absolute commitment to radically accept the current experience with surrender to its appropriateness is our yin capacity. 

Cultivating “This!” is critical to a life well-lived.

This is a good time for a quick reminder that this text uses several different terms for people. They are:

• Person (人, rén), which frequently refers to the experience of personhood, or an ego.
• People (民, mín), which often fits our internal multiplicity of personas or the different phenomena we experience. 
• Body (身, shēn), which refers to our physical body and/or a self-reflexive position. 
• Ordinary People (百姓, bǎixìng), which refers to non-Weavers of the Way.
• The Wise (圣人, shèngrén), which refers to Weavers of the Way. 

It’s also important to recall that in inner alchemy, there are three centers:

• Upper (上, shàng) is the home of yang forces and the treasure of Spirit, i.e., Illuminating Consciousness (神, shén)

• Middle (中, zhōng) is the home of the harmonizing treasure of Breath (炁, qì)
• Lower (下, xià) is the home of yin forces and the treasure of Essence (精, jīng)

**In the received commentaries, a critical character (巠, jīng) was treated as a scribal error and replaced with numerous variants that force-fit the political/moralistic Confucian attitude into the Daoist text. Following Lin Yiguang’s WenYuan《文源》I retain it as an early variant for (经, jīng), which has a broad semantic range related to: warp, weave, thread, tangle, etc.