Verse 70: So easy to understand and practice!

The Great Integrity is so easy to understand, and so easy to practice. Yet it is not understood. Nor is it practiced. It is not understood because people's heads are filled with 10,000 trivia and rationalizations, leaving no space for anything else.

It is not practiced because people are kept busy, though bored, with the 10,000 corruptions and miseries that leave no time for the Three Treasures.

The Great Integrity is so ancient, as old as the universe itself! How can we expect people to remember it after so many millennia of repression?

That is why sages dress in rags while they wear the Three Treasures deep inside their hearts.

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Commentary: Lao Tzu point out here that although the Great Integrity is easy to understand and to practice, it is neither understood nor practiced. It is not understood because for so many millennia our heads have been filled with artificial trivia and rationalizations, with no room for knowing the natural world.

It is not practiced because most of us are so caught up in all kinds of unproductive, superficial, and unfulfilling activities. Many are busily carrying out corrupt or misery producing actions or are the victims of such actions.

Lao Tzu also reminds us that a further difficulty in understanding and practicing the Great Integrity is that it has been repressed for thousands of years. How can we expect people to remember it after so many millennia of repression?

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So. we need to be open to this, be aware, awake to it, recognize it, acknowledge it, and then we will be able to discover what is truly, covered deep inside the cobwebs....empty the heads.... create much space to know the natural world of being human. Practice.

no more victims of our own repression, no more of busily carrying out corrupt actions which produces misery. stop it. and be productive, true and deep, and carry out fulfilling activities. Notice repression when it happens, be aware of it...focus actions on understanding the natural world around and within.

Dao De Jing (Do Duck Gyoung): Verse 71 Healing the Mind

Academia confuses knowledge with knowing.

Most everyone applauds the memorization

of the 10,000 trivia.

Beware! These schooled addictions

are not just myths --

They are a form of mental illness.

Any fragment of the mind,

divorced from heart, spirit, human community,

and from the primal reality of the universe,

is an abomination of the Great Integrity.

Let us prepare for the Great Integrity

by cleansing ourselves of all these cobwebs

of cluttered fragments

that paralyze the mind.

in this way we will function

as our own holistic physicians.

Commentary

Although the main intent of this verse is kept intact, some liberties have been taken in the translation to clarify why Lao Tzu identifies the memorization of "facts", not only as violations of the Great Integrity, but as a form of mental illness. We need to be our own holistic physicians to heal our fragmented minds so they can join our hearts, spirits, human communities and primal reality in the Great Integrity.

--from Tao Te Ching: A New Translation & Commentary

by Ralph Alan Dale, 2004 Barnes & Noble Books