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Translation and Commentary by Nina


	Dao De Jing Chapter 26 What's heavy can act as a base for what's lighter. Calmness can act as a controlling influence over impetuosity. A business person finds it quite natural to move about lightly all day long seeing to his affairs without letting his heavy briefcase out of his sight. Even if he's surrounded by officials in a courthouse he can be comfortable, and his sense of confidence seems to shine through. How could a king with ten thousand chariots be able to maintain a lightness in his body throughout the whole world? If he takes things lightly he'd lose his roots. If he's impetuous he'd lose control. Commentary: 26 ~ Don't lose your roots. -What's heavy can act as a base for what's lighter. A tree has to have large stable roots implanted in the soil in order to survive. And yet the leaves of a tree dance and swirl in the breeze collecting nutrients from the air. Both the roots and the leaves serve a purpose. In order to dance and swirl like the leaves of a tree we each have to be anchored in some way to a base. -Calmness can act as a controlling influence over impetuosity. The base we can anchor to is a sense of calmness, and that calmness prevents us from acting so impetuously that we'd lose ourselves completely in whatever happened to come our way. -A business person finds it quite natural to move about lightly all day long seeing to his affairs without letting his heavy briefcase out of his sight. -Even if he's surrounded by officials in a courthouse he can be comfortable, and his sense of confidence seems to shine through. As an analogy, a business person has gotten to the point where it's second nature for him to keep an eye on his briefcase. As long as he knows his base is in tact, he can move freely with whatever he's doing. -How could a king with ten thousand chariots be able to maintain a lightness in his body throughout the whole world? -If he takes things lightly he'd lose his roots. -If he's impetuous he'd lose control. In ancient China, a powerful king had many chariots. The chariots were used to carry troops into battle, and the more chariots a king had, the more he was assured of a victory. The king is able to move freely throughout the world because he has his chariots as his base. -When he is light he then loses his roots. -When he is impetuous he then loses control. Here's the caveat (or warning). You have to remember that if you get too caught up in your lightness (dancing), you might lose sight of your roots (stability). If you become too impetuous (following every whim) you might lose control (cause yourself harm). There's no reason to deny yourself the enjoyment of dancing, or to deny yourself the enjoyment of equilibrium. A tree naturally has both roots and leaves. It can't survive without both. Neither can people. Dao Is Open Site Map \| BY: Nina \| Guodian Laozi \| DDJ Concordance \| Comparisons \| From the DIO Forum \| BY: Bao Pu \| By: Joshua \| Who was Laozi \| \| Return Home \| Laozi's Dao De Jing \| Your Dao De Jing \| Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) \| Links \| Meditation \| Dao (Tao) is Open Forum \| Book List \| Other Stuff \|