Chapter 37

Chapter 37

The highest good is not to seek to do good,
but to allow yourself to become it.
The ordinary person seeks to do good things,
and finds that they can not do them continually.

The Master does not force virtue on others,
thus she is able to accomplish her task.
The ordinary person who uses force,
will find that they accomplish nothing.

The kind person acts from the heart,
and accomplishes a multitude of things.
The righteous person acts out of pity,
yet leaves many things undone.
The moral person will act out of duty,
and when no one will respond
will roll up his sleeves and use force.

When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos.

Our basic understandings are not from the Tao
because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.
The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.
She dwells in the Tao,
and not with the things that hide it.
This is how she increases in wisdom.

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“The highest good is not to seek to do good, but to allow yourself to become it.”

There are multiple ways of interpreting the above quote.

First of all, what does it mean to seek to do good?

When a bad person tries to do good which is against his nature, we spontaneously feel that it is unnatural and labored (even though we may be occasionally fooled by exceptionally smart psychopaths deluding us into believing that they are good people). If you consciously do something good instead of becoming a good person, people will generally feel that something about the way you act is not quite right. People in general as well as the socially inept or naïve children are good detectors. Then how can we become good? Note the above English translation of the quote. You should “allow” yourself to become that. (I do not know whether these English translations are entirely accurate and correspond to the original Chinese texts one by one) In other words, you only have to look inside yourself. Every person, unless he is born a biological psychopath, has the potentiality to act good. Even the wicked people can become good if they “fake” it for a long time (this statement may be contradicted by one of the verses in the above chapter). Or even the good people can become wicked without continued discipline or under bad influences. Think about the method actors and see how they become crazy when they act being badass. They tried to look inside of the maniacs and absorbed some of their evil tendencies and by doing so disrupted their inner peace and harmony.

If you become a good person, you do not even need to check whether you are doing good because your behaviors will take care of themselves. They will be carried out spontaneously without your knowing doing them. In other words, you will have become an “autopilot” in terms of the good deeds you are doing.