Tao Te Ching, Chapter 41: The Three Types Who Hear the Tao
What Is the Dao?
From ancient times to the present, sages have each held to their own views, yet none has ever congealed into the single correct answer. And yet all interpretations seem to share one hidden motive: to puncture sham of the common sense and common sensibility, and to return to humanity those questions obscured by what is taken for granted. For this reason, every teaching about the Dao or truth, when first spread, is almost invariably met with public contempt and ridicule. It offends the prejudices by which people live securely. The louder the laughter, the deeper it has pierced. But seeds of thought grow by themselves in the long river of time, causing the radiance of enlightenment and awareness to slowly light up the earth. True wisdom will in the end receive the admiration it deserves, and guide people to see the truth of the world.
Laozi expressed this meaning in his Dao De Jing:
Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Dao, earnestly carry it into practice.
Scholars of the middle class, when they have heard about it, seem now to keep it and now to lose it.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard about it, laugh greatly at it. If it were not laughed at, it would not be fit to be the Dao.
The same Dao is heard, but what mirrored are the different attitudes toward life. Practice is the manifestation of sudden awakening; doubt is the sprouting of spiritual nature; laughter is obstinate self-affirmation.
The face of truth is indeed sometimes paradoxical. No wonder it meets with such treatment. Utter brightness, like darkness, leaves one seeing nothing. Plain truths are obscured by layer upon layer of desire, are hard to perceive. Laozi says, “the bright Dao seems dark; the advancing Dao seems to retreat.” The supreme Dao is not complicated. Truth lacking complex packaging and ornate embellishment appears so plain that it is hard to believe that this is the truth of the world. Yet Laozi reveals the secret in one phrase: if it is not laughed at, it is not the Dao! The laughter of the lowest class, instead, confirmation of truth. What the masses can immediately affirm is mostly a passing fashion, not an enduring principle. True depth is in no hurry to win approval through defense, and it only waits for qualified listeners and, in listening, sows its seeds.
The world we inhabit has long taken a path of ever greater complexity and precision. A complex and precise world seeks to discipline every individual within its body into a cell with a unified consciousness. As cells, the better disciplined we are, the more conservative our minds become. The stronger our demand for standard answers, the thinner our capacity to embrace multiple possibilities. The spectrum of right and wrong, good and bad, is compressed ever narrower in rigidified thinking. The obsessive, arrogant attachment to “this has its right and wrong” makes mockery and avoidance of other opinions the tone of the age. As individuals, we can sometimes barely maintain the appearance of the middling class, “seem now to keep it and now to lose it” wavering between truth and self. As a group, we seem to have drawn closer and closer to the visage of the lowest class, dissolving with laughter all profundity that cannot be immediately cashed in.
The way out may not lie in whether we accept some new interpretation of truth, but in listening itself. An attitude of inclusive listening and thinking is itself already a force for change, regardless of whether we ultimately accept the content of this discourse on the Dao. The content of a discourse on the Dao points to knowledge, while the attitude of listening and thinking points to noble character and wisdom. Here, let us open our hearts and minds, and touch wisdom from time immemorial and enlighten our own minds amid the deep sedimentation of history and culture.
