Chapter 3

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

Fairly clear in this translation. When people value material things above all else, stealing is inevitable. When some people are raised too high above the "common" folk, those folk feel as if there's nothing they can do, either to defend themselves or to better themselves. Tam Gibbs' version is slightly different:

Not honouring men of worth keeps the people from competing;
Not wanting rare things keeps the people from thievery;
Not showing off desirous objects keeps the hearts of the people from disaster.

Now I'm curious about the translation, as there's quite a bit of difference between "competing" (fighting in the Red Pine version) and "feeling powerless." It's an unhappy situation either way. Perhaps "powerless" would be better rendered as "desperate," since desperation might just lead to competition or fighting.


The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.


The library on ISU's campus embodies the imbalance in western culture perfectly. It appears that the ground-level, the foundation, is ephemeral, barely there, smaller than the level above, and it becomes more and more massive the higher from the ground you get. It reminds me of the overemphasis on mental development, of filling the mind to overflowing, until the head is so full that the body can no longer support it. People fill their minds without ever developing their bodies. Physical prowess is almost worshiped, because so few people can be bothered to develop it. It's like building a house on "three rocks and a beer can."* Might work for a while, but eventually things are going to start collapsing.

Tam Gibbs' version is more explicitly physical (and Red Pine's is almost identical):
That is why the Sage governs himself by relaxing the mind, reinforcing the abdomen, gentling the will, strengthening the bones.


He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

My interpretation of "lose" would be "see in a different light" or "lose our preconceptions of." More on the Buddhist side we might add "lose our attachments to." Gibbs and Pine have something more like "hesitation" rather than confusion, which makes more sense to me. Creating a moment's pause before acting

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

They say that if one were to shorten the Cheng Manch'ing form, one could shorten it to "Grasp Sparrow's Tail," roughly the first 13 moves. One could shorten it further to just the five wrist changes. One could shorten it still further to just wuji: standing "doing nothing." Anyone who can simply stand there, doing nothing, mind empty and still, no effort, has no need of the rest of the form. I, however, am not there yet.