Tao Te Now - Chapter 7

The Tao Has Nothing at Stake — Chapter 7 of the Tao Te Ching

Chapter 7 asks a question most people never think to ask: why does the Tao work the way it does?

The answer Lao Tzu gives is this: the Tao is inexhaustible because it has no desires for itself. It holds everything and sustains everything because it spends nothing on maintaining its own position. No agenda. No reputation to protect. Nothing at stake.

In this episode, Kit Mann works through what that means for an actual person living an actual life. The second stanza of Chapter 7 is one of the most compressed passages in the Tao Te Ching: the Master stays behind and ends up ahead, detaches from everything and becomes one with it, lets go of herself and is perfectly fulfilled. This episode looks at why those lines are true, not just poetic, and what they point to in daily life.

The conversation covers the hidden cost of self-maintenance, the difference between holding something and clutching it, and why the fulfillment most people are looking for tends to be sitting underneath the thing they are working so hard to protect.

Part of the Tao Te Now series, a chapter by chapter reading of Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching in plain language for people living ordinary lives.