Forty-Two - Harmony
The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
They achieve harmony by combining these forces.
The notion of balance is one common in most bodies of wisdom. I believe this is our first meeting with yin-yang, at least by name; the ideas have been there throughout, of course. Whether we describe them as feminine and masculine the moon and the sun, shady and sunny, or passive and active, I think even in western culture we are familiar with these concepts of complementary opposition. I like the idea of thinking of these as process rather than state. In truth, we are always experiencing the interplay of these forces rather than existing in some static composition of the two. Somehow, Lao Tsu tells us, the ten thousand things may achieve harmony through this interplay.
Perhaps we can take the teaching of the final stanza to be the outcome of discord when the harmony of the second stanza is not achieved. As Lao Tsu says, “A violent man will die a violent death!” Never believe a man who would say, “We will go to war to achieve a lasting peace.” The morons who believed George W. Bush when he said we needed a war in Iraq to fight terrorism should have heard and taken to heart Lao Tsu’s teaching. I imagine these assholes call themselves Christians, as well. Could you imagine Jesus of Nazareth saying he would go to war to achieve peace? I imagine Jesus was the kind of guy Lao Tsu had in mind when he prefaced his teaching by saying, “What others teach, I also teach.”