Goodness Tastes Good to the Sage (Tao Te Ching 24)
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24
Stand on tiptoes
and you’ll be unsteady.
Strike a pose
and you can’t walk very far.
Grandstand, and folks will realize
that you’re insincere.
Be pushy, and you’ll never get ahead.
Brag about yourself and you’ll lose street cred.
Seek fame, and your legacy won’t last.
Students of the Tao find this nonsense to be as
unappetizing as food left out after a wild party.
To them it’s nauseating.
Therefore, a Tao surfer
doesn’t get caught up
in these unsavory distractions.
Reflection
As is often the case, Lao Tzu turns to concrete, everyday illustrations to convey general principles of the Tao. Permit us to then take it back to a larger generalization about life, striving, and even spirituality. Religious traditions, both Eastern and Western, tend to start with a kernel of great potency. They then try to harness and contain that potency in ritual, spiritual practices, architecture, and texts. Granted, without these external components, we might be in danger of losing touch with that inner reality. Nevertheless, to confuse the external forms with the inner reality can distract us from the potency we need to navigate this life well.
To illustrate this, consider the widespread and ancient practice of pilgrimage. This is of course one of the four pillars of Islam. The great Indian emperor Ashoka (c. 268 – c. 232 BCE) went on a 256 day pilgrimage of Buddhist sites. In 2019, 336,591 pilgrims visited Santiago de Compostela. Even when the actual destination has dubious historical or miraculous credibility, the act itself can give the wayfarers a taste of something transcendent. However, most people will find that being in a constant state of pilgrimage misses the original point, which is to gain an insight to help with daily existence (even if that is semi-nomadic which is groovy).
Or, consider the practice of fasting. It can provide cleansing, time for reflection, and perspective. But fasting nonstop would deplete our vital energy. Similarly, a person who spends hours in prayer or meditation can ponder the best direction their life ought to take. But they won’t get very far if they don’t eventually get up and head out in that direction.
Why would anyone stay just with these extraordinary practices? Sometimes, it’s simply because they are enjoyable and produce emotional benefits that the practitioner doesn’t want to lose. This is understandable. At other times though, it’s because the practitioner has accidentally confused looking spiritual with cultivating true spirituality. And so long as our spirituality is just a show for others to behold, we are stuck on our path.
The idea of striking a pose in the second line might make better sense if you think of a martial artist in a common movie trope: a Kung Fu master does a bunch of fancy moves just before his opponent pulls out a gun and blows him away. In this case, posing is not as helpful as moving forward and attacking (or moving back to get out of the way).
In all of this, we find a reinforcement of the idea that a sage or shen ren will be a person who is authentic and demonstrates genuine, rather than surface-level virtue. The final stanza explains how this comes to be possible. Instead of mustering up a bunch of willpower to do the right thing, the Sage discovers that the right thing tastes better but the silly distractions of life taste terrible. It’s not that the Sage wants but learns to resist shiny, ephemeral things in this life. It’s that the Sage sees them for the counterfeit goods they are in the first place.