Commentary on the Nine Enneads of Part I: «Christ the Eternal Tao»

Chapter 1

Line 3:

The Primal Essence

As shown in Parts II and III, God can be known through his Uncreated Energies, which can be perceived by the spiritual eyes as Light and can be experienced as Divine Grace (in Chinese, Teh); but in His Essence God is wholly unknowable. This teaching was expressed most eloquently in the fourth century A.D. by St. Gregory Nazianzen, whose spirit ascended to heavenly mysteries. Taking up the image of Moses on Mount Sinai, St. Gregory describes what was revealed to him:

«What is this that has happened to me, O friends, and initiates, and fellow-lovers of the truth? I was running to lay hold on God, and thus I went up into the mount, and drew aside the curtain of the cloud, and entered away from matter and from material things, and as far as I could I withdrew within myself. And then when I looked up, I scarce saw the back parts of God; although I was sheltered by the Rock, the Word that was made flesh for us. And when I looked a little closer, I saw, not the Primal and unmingled Essence, known to Itself – to the Trinity, I mean; not that which abides within the first veil, and is hidden by the Cherubim; but only that which at last even reaches to us. And that is, as far as I can learn, the Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Glory, which is manifested amongst creatures, which It has produced and governs. For these are the Back Parts of God, which He leaves behind Him, as tokens of Himself like the shadows and reflection of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because we cannot look at the sun itself, for by its unmixed light it is too strong for our power of perception».⁷⁹²

Lao Tzu also spoke of the Essence of the Word (Tao) as being un​knowable, beyond the darkness of incomprehensibility:

Dark and dim, within is the Essence.

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 21, Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

Commenting on this passage of Lao Tzu, the eleventh-century Chinese writer Su Ch’e says: «The Tao has no form. Only when it changes into Teh does it have an expression. Hence Teh is the Tao’s visual aspect. The Tao... remains in the dark unseen».⁷⁹³

Line 9:

the Ancient Sage

«Lao Tzu» literally means «Old Master» or «Old Sage».

Lines 12–13:

There is no name whereby the Primal Essence can be named,

Neither in this age nor in the age to come.

This statement of the great mystical writer St. Gregory Palamas († A.D. 1359) defines the way of apophatic or negative theology. While cataphatic or positive theology proceeds by affirmations, apophatic theology proceeds by negations. A primary source of apophatic teaching is found in the Areopagitica – mystical works written in the tradition of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and dated to the fifth century A.D. Basing himself on these works, Vladimir Lossky explains the way of apophaticism as follows:

«All knowledge has as its object that which is. Now God is beyond all that exists. In order to approach Him it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to Him, that is to say, all that which is. If in seeing God one can know what one sees, then one has not seen God in Himself but something intelligible, something which is inferior to Him. It is by unknowing (agnosia) that one may know Him Who is above every possible object of knowledge. Proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior degrees of being to the highest, by progressively setting aside all that can be known, in order to draw near to the Unknown in the darkness of absolute ignorance».⁷⁹⁴

Hence the ancient Christian writers say that, although we can apply to God such terms as Essence, Being, Mind or Thought, we must under​stand that, ultimately, He is beyond all these. St. John Damascene († A.D. 750) writes: «All that we can state affirmatively about God does not show His Essence, but only what relates to His Essence. And, if you should ever speak of good, or justice, or wisdom, or something else of the sort, you will not be describing the Essence of God, but only things relating to His Essence».⁷⁹⁵

Line 31:

Finally, we call Him Mind or Thought...

When referring to God the Father, some ancient Christian writers use the term Mind, others use Thought. In the present work, we have usually referred to Him as «Mind».

Lines 45–48:

Thus the essence that can be conceived of as essence is not the Primal Essence, etc.

An echo of the first line of the Tao Teh Ching, which is an expression of apophatic theology: «The Tao that can be spoken of [literally, the Tao that can be ‘Taoed’] is not the eternal Tao».

Chapter 2

Line 2:

So did the Primal Mind utter the Primal Word (Logos).

The concept or name «Word» we find in its exalted significance many times in the books of the Old Testament. Such are the expressions of the Psalter: «Forever, O Lord, Your Word abides in heaven» (Psalm 118:89); «He sent forth His Word and He healed them» (Psalm 106:20) – a verse which refers to the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt; «By the Word of the Lord were the heavens established» (Psalm 32:6). The author of the Wisdom of Solomon writes: «Your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne» (Wisdom 18:15–16).⁷⁹⁶

With the help of this Divine name, the ancient Christian teachers attempted to explain the mystery of the relationship of God the Son to God the Father, as in the teaching of St. Dionysius of Alexandria which is set forth later in this chapter.

Line 8:

«From the Womb... before the morning star have I begotten You. (Psalm 109– Septuagint)

The existence of the Son rests in the very Essence of God the Father. King David the Prophet uses the expression regarding the Son: «From the womb... have I begotten You» – from the Womb, that is, from the Essence of the Father. Similarly, the Apostle John writes: «The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father» (John 1:18), here referring to the Father’s Essence as a bosom.

By means of the word «begotten», the existence of the Son is shown to be above any kind of creatureliness, above everything created. An existence which comes from the Essence of God can only be Divine and eternal. That which is begotten is always of the same essence as the one that begets. But that which is created and made is of another, lower essence, and is external with relation to the Creator.

Line 11:

Born before heaven and earth...

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 25)

In using the word «born» (sên ) rather than «made», Lao Tzu was, like the Prophet David, foreshadowing the Christian revelation of the Divine begetting of God the Son.

The Son was begotten before the creation of heaven and earth. Created things are made at a certain time. But the Son, coming directly from the Essence of the Father, was begotten outside time, in eternity. In other words, there was a time when created things did not exist, but there was never a time when the only begotten Son did not exist.

Christ Himself referred to His eternal begetting when He called Himself «the only begotten Son of God» (John 3:18); and He spoke of His eternal existence when He said, «Before Abraham was, I AM», and, «Father... You loved me before the foundation of the world» (John 8:58; 17:24).

Lines 14–29:

Mind does not exist without word, Nor word without Mind, etc.

St. John Damascene, in speaking of the relation of the Son to the Father, contemplates various ways in which a word is related to a mind:

«A word is the natural movement of the mind, by which the mind moves and thinks and reasons, as if it were the light and radiance of the mind. And again, a word is that integral thought which is spoken in the heart. Still again, there is the spoken word which is the messenger of the mind».⁷⁹⁷

Chapter 3

Line 2:

So does the Primal Action proceed from the Primal Mind.

The revelation of the procession of the Holy Spirit («Primal Action») from God the Father («Primal Mind») comes from the words of Christ: «Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father» (John 15:26). Like the Divine be​getting of the Son, the Divine procession of the Holy Spirit occurs from all eternity, outside time.

Line 8:

So does the Primal Breath rest in the Primal Word.

This line points to the mystical relationship between the Holy Spirit («Primal Breath») and the Son («Primal Word»). God the Father told St. John the Baptist: «The one on Whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He Who baptizes with the Holy Spirit» (John 1:33). When baptizing Christ, St. John saw that «the Spirit descended from heaven like a dove and abode upon Him». According to St. Gregory Palamas, this temporal event is a reflection of an eternal relationship; for the Spirit, «going forth from the Father in a movement we can neither see nor understand», abides or «comes to rest» in the Son. St. John Damascene also says: «We believe... in the Holy Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son».

Applying this teaching to the contemporary Christian world, which is often characterized by either wild emotions or dry theories, the Romanian writer Fr. Dumitru Staniloae († 1993) writes:

«The presence of Christ is always marked by the Spirit resting upon Him, and the presence of the Spirit means the presence of Christ upon Whom He rests.... Therefore, there is no knowledge or experience of Christ apart from the Spirit, nor is there any experience of the Spirit by Himself in isolation.... The Spirit is the means and the intensity of all knowledge of the transcendent Godhead, and Christ as the Logos is the structured content of that knowledge. Where the content is wanting, the soul becomes lost in its own structures, in an inconsistent and disordered enthusiasm, and this has indeed happened with so many anarchical ‘experiences’ and so many enthusiastic but destructive currents within Christianity, which cannot be said ever to have possessed the Holy Spirit truly if it is true that the Holy Spirit is not present apart from Christ. Moreover, where the Spirit is absent as the means by which we come to the living knowledge of Christ, Christ becomes the object of a frigid theoretical science, of definitions put together from memorized citations and formulae».⁷⁹⁸

Line 16:

The Breath of the Primal Mind is like a wind.

In John 3:8, Christ compares the Holy Spirit to the wind.

Chapter 4

Line 2:

The Mind, Word and Breath were One...

The analogy of the Holy Trinity as Mind (or Thought), Word and Breath (or Action) has been used by teachers of the authentic Christian tradition throughout history, and notably in recent times by the nineteenth-century Russian visionary St. John of Kronstadt.

Lines 4–5:

The Oneness of these Persons is a mystery

Whose vastness cannot be comprehended by even the highest spirits.

The mystery of the Holy Trinity, since it has to do with the Essence of God, is ultimately incomprehensible not only to human beings, but to angels as well. St. Gregory Nazianzen says that it would be impossible to speak of God's Essence «even if you were a Moses and a god to Pharaoh, even if you were caught up like Paul to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words, even if you were raised above them both and exalted to angelic or archangelic place and dignity. For though a thing be all heavenly, or above heaven, and far higher in nature and nearer to God than we, yet it is farther distant from God, and from the complete comprehension of His Essence, than it is lifted above our complex and lowly and earthward-sinking composition».⁷⁹⁹

Lines 11–12:

Not only did They have this love,

They are this love.

For, as the Apostle John says, «God is love» (1 John 4:8).

Line 20:

Sent by the Mind as the Messenger to the world...

Just as the spoken word is a messenger of the mind, so is the Son the Messenger of the Father (see the commentary on chapter 2, lines 14–29).

Chapter 5

Line 24:

This is the perfect love, the original unity, the original harmony, the final mystery

To which no human thought has ever succeeded in rising.

Cut off from the world, alone with God in the forest, St. Gregory Nazianzen was one who went beyond all human thought in beholding the Light of the One Triadic God. In one of his mystical poems he writes: «From the day whereon I renounced the things of the world to consecrate my soul to luminous and heavenly contemplation, when the supreme intelligence carried me hence to set me down far from all that pertains to the flesh, to hide me in the secret places of the heavenly tabernacle; from that day my eyes have been blinded by the Light of the Trinity, Whose brightness surpasses all that the mind can conceive; for from a throne high exalted the Trinity pours upon all, the ineffable radiance common to the Three. This is the source of all that is here below, separated by time from the things on high.... From that day forth I was dead to the world and the world was dead to me».⁸⁰⁰

Chapter 6

Line 4:

They dwelt in the Darkness that was before darkness...

The former Darkness is that of the Divine Incomprehensibility, as in apophatic theology; the latter darkness is the physical darkness that came into being when light was created.

Line 7:

By Thinking which is beyond thought, the Primal Essence creates.

«God», says St. John Damascene, «contemplated all things before their existence, formulating them in His Mind; and each being received its existence at a particular moment, according to His eternal thought and will».⁸⁰¹

Lines 10–11:

with these two hands of the Mind,

Thought becomes deed.

St. Basil the Great († A.D. 379), when speaking of the creation of the angels, traces the manifestation of the Three Persons in the work of the creation in the following way: «In the creation, consider first the primordial cause of all that has been made – this is the Father; then the operating cause – which is the Son; and the perfecting cause – the Holy Spirit: so that it is by the will of the Father that the heavenly spirits are, by the operation of the Son that they come into existence, and by the presence of the Spirit that they are made perfect».⁸⁰²

Chapter 7

Line 8:

the Pre-eternal Word

St. Isidore of Pelusium († A.D. 435) defines eternity as follows: «Eternity is ever-existent life, and this concept is applied usually to the one unoriginate nature, in which everything is always one and the same. The concept of immortality, on the other hand, can be ascribed to one who has been brought into being and does not die, as, for example, an angel or a soul. Eternal in its precise meaning belongs to the Divine Essence, which is why it is applied usually only to the Worshipful and Reigning Trinity».

In this regard even more expressive is the phrase «the Pre-eternal God», which is used in Eastern Orthodox liturgical poetry.⁸⁰³

Lines 9–10:

All things, then, were made by the Word,

And without Him was not anything made that was made...

These lines from the Gospel of John refer to the Word as being the «operating cause» in the act of creation (see the commentary on chapter 6). The Apostle Paul gives the same teaching. Referring to Christ, he writes: «For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominions, or Principalities, or Powers. All things were created by Him, and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things subsist» (Colossians 1:16–17).

Following from this teaching, in traditional iconography it is always Jesus Christ – the Word and Son of God – Who is shown performing the act of creation. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, which shows God the Father as the «operating cause» of the creation, is thus a departure from traditional iconography and teaching.

Lines 13–14:

Of numbers so vast that if their names should be written every one,

Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

(cf. John 21:25)

According to a tradition handed down from the Apostle John’s disciple Prochorus, these lines at the end of John’s Gospel refer not merely to the deeds which Jesus Christ performed while on earth in the flesh, but to all the deeds that He – as the Pre-eternal Word of God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe – performed since time began.

Lines 19–20:

The Mind spoke, calling upon the Pre-eternal Counsel – the Word and the Breath –

Saying, «Let us make man».

In the creation of man, the Father, Son and Spirit are represented in Scripture as saying, «Let us make man», whereas in all the other acts of creation God only says, «Let there be light», «Let the earth bring forth living creatures», etc. (Genesis 1:3–26). It is as if, in the creation of mankind alone, the Holy Trinity consulted within Itself before creating, which indicates that the human race was to be a special creation, distinct from the others, having a higher purpose in the world. The «consultation» of the Holy Trinity is called by St. John Damascene the «eternal and unchanging Counsel of God».

Lines 21–22:

And through the Breath of Heaven entering into man’s nostrils,

Man became a living soul.

(cf. Genesis 2:7)

Physical breath is an expression of the soul. According to the ancient Christian teachers, only those beings which have breath have souls; and only man, having received the breath of life from the mouth of God Himself (in the figurative expression of Genesis 2:7), has an immortal spirit, meant to dwell with God forever.

Chapter 9

Line 1:

«I am the Way», said the Pre-eternal Word.

(John 14:6)

Following from these words of Christ, St. John Damascene calls God «the Way and the outstretched guiding Hand to them that are drawn to Him».⁸⁰⁴ Likewise, St. Maximus the Confessor writes: «The Logos of God called Himself the Way; and those who travel on this way He presents, purified from every stain, to God the Father».⁸⁰⁵

Line 5–6:

«The movement of the Way consists in returning, Returning to the Source».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 40)

Only the first of these lines is actually from the Tao Teh Ching. The words «to the Source» were added in brackets by Gi-ming Shien in his translation, in order to bring out the metaphysical meaning behind Lao Tzus words.

Line 9:

For «no one goes to the Mind except through the Word». (cf. John 14:6)

The Son or Word of God, being the «operating cause» by which all things come forth from the will of the Father in the act of creation, is also the operating cause by which the creation is to return to the Father in the act of redemption. In the words of St. Athanasius the Great († A.D. 373): «The renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it at the first».⁸⁰⁶

Chapter 10

Lines 4–6:

They found Him in living beings, in mountain crags and flowing streams, in seas and winds.

He was not these things,

But He spoke in these things, guiding them.

St. John Damascene explains: «Through nature the knowledge of the existence of God has been revealed to all people. The very creation of its harmony and ordering proclaims the majesty of the Divine Nature».⁸⁰⁷

Chapter 11

Line 4:

Not having seen Him, but only His traces...

Wang Pang, in his eleventh-century commentary on the Tao Teh Ching, says of the Tao: «All we see are its traces.... It can’t be described».⁸⁰⁸

Lines 16–17:

If the seed is preserved whole, nothing will come from it.

Only if it dies will it give life.

Foretelling His own crucifixion and resurrection, Christ said: «Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit» (John 12:24).

Chapter 12

Lines 19–25:

For the Sage, the Way dwelt in the Darkness of Incomprehensibility,

Yet He was not that Darkness;

The Way dwelt beyond all being,

Yet He was not non-being;

The Way emptied Himself,

Yet He was not emptiness.

He was not an eternal void...

In Part II (see pp. 240–41) we have quoted Gi-ming Shien to show that, in the Tao Teh Ching, «nothingness» refers to spontaneity and self-forgetting, not to nihilism and non-being. «The Tao remains in the realm of existence», says Gi-ming, and thus is not to be equated with non-being. This teaching is echoed by the eighth-century Chinese sage Lü Yen: «Those obstructed by nothingness, clinging one-sidedly to this principle, sit blankly to clear away sense objects and think that the Way is therein. Though they speak of nothingness, this is really not the Way. Those obstructed by emptiness cling to this partial principle.... They vainly talk of empty emptiness, and emptiness is not voided, so it be​comes nihilistic emptiness».⁸⁰⁹

By going deeply into oneself, one can have an experience of eternal non-being, but it is a grave error to regard this as the Absolute, as God or the Tao. Archimandrite Sophrony writes:

«He is deluded who endeavors to divest himself mentally of all that is transitory and relative in order to cross some invisible threshold, to realize his eternal origin, his identity with the Source of all that exists; in order to return and merge with Him, the nameless, trans-personal Absolute. Such exercises have enabled many to rise to supra-rational contemplation of being; to experience a certain mystical trepidation; to know the state of silence of the mind, when the mind goes beyond the boundaries of time and space. In suchlike states man may feel the peacefulness of being withdrawn from continually changing phenomena of the visible world; may even have a certain experience of eternity. But the God of Truth, the Living God, is not in all this. It is man’s own beauty, created in the image of God, that is being contemplated and seen as Divinity, whereas he himself still continues within the confines of his creatureliness. This is a vastly important concern. The tragedy of the matter lies in the fact that man sees a mirage which, in his longing for eternal life, he mistakes for a genuine oasis.... This movement into the depths of his own being is nothing else but attraction towards the non-being from which we were called by the will of the Creator».⁸¹⁰

The error of taking this as a true experience of God is seen in the fact that the same experience can be had through hallucinogenic drugs. For further teachings of Archimandrite Sophrony on mistaking the «darkness of divestiture» or the light of onés spirit for God or the Tao, see Part II, pp. 327– 29.

Line 43:

«Is the Way a Child of something else?» the Sage asked...

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 4)

It is interesting that Lao Tzu should ask this question, since the Way is indeed the Child of the Father-Mind.

Certain teachers of Christian antiquity have used the following formula when speaking of the Father, Son and Spirit: The Spirit is God within us, the Son is God with us, and the Father is God above and beyond us. In order for us to know the Father/Mind beyond us, we must first be shown Him by the Son/Word with us – for, as Christ said, «No one comes to the Father but by Me» (John 14:6). Lao Tzu had glimpsed the Word as the principle of order and purpose which permeates all things: but the Word, not having taken flesh, had not yet revealed Himself as a Personal Absolute, nor had He «shown us the Father» (cf. John 14:9) as a Personal Absolute. Even the ancient Hebrews had not dared to call God by the intimate, personal name of Father; but this was precisely the name that Christ told His disciples to use when addressing God.

Judging from his rhetorical question, «Is the Way a Child of something else?» it seems that Lao Tzu, in intuiting the presence of the Word in nature, had also come to ponder the possibility of the existence of the Mind. Christ said, «He who has seen me has seen the Father» (John 14:9), for the Word and the Mind are of one Essence.

Chapter 14

Lines 5–6:

Before the Way came into the world,

The restless world groaned for His coming.

According to St. Maximus the Confessor, it was the Divinely ap​pointed function of the first man to unite in himself the whole of creation. Having attained to perfect union with God, he was to grant this state of union to the creation. After man’s fall from his original appointment, the creation fell with him into a state marked by corruption; and yet still it longed to fulfill its original designation – to be united with God through man. Thus, the Apostle Paul bears witness that «the whole creation groans and travails together until now» (Romans 8:22).

Since the task which was given to man was not fulfilled by Adam, it is in the work of Christ, the second Adam, that we can see what was originally meant to be.

Lines 25–29:

Therefore did the various forms that were made groan for their Maker

To restore the lost one to the Way...

And thus regain the Original Harmony.

Through the coming of the Word, it is possible for man to fulfill his Divine appointment: to be united with God and to gather together in his love the whole cosmos, regaining the original harmony that had been lost at the fall.

The Russian term for a monastic saint, prepodobny, literally means «in the original likeness»; that is, one who has attained the likeness of Adam in Paradise. The Lives of Orthodox Christian monastic saints of all lands tell of ascetics who have fulfilled man’s original designation, being a link between God and the cosmos, and gathering the creation together in their love. One story is found in the Life of St. Paul of Obnora († A.D. 1429), who lived in the remote forests of the Russian North, praying ceaselessly and purifying his mind. One day another hermit who was living in the same area went to him and saw in the forest a wondrous sight. According to the saint’s Life: «A flock of birds surrounded the marvelous anchorite; little birds perched on the Elder’s head and shoulders, and he fed them by hand. Nearby stood a bear, awaiting his food from the saint; foxes, rabbits and other beasts ran about, without any enmity among themselves and not fearing the bear. Behold the life of innocent Adam in Eden, the lordship of man over creation, which together with us groans because of our fall and thirsts to be delivered into ‘the liberty of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21)».⁸¹¹

Line 52:

The Way always seeks the lowest place.

For a discussion of the meaning of «the lowest place», see the commentary on chapter 36.

Chapter 15

Line 1:

«The Valley and the Spirit do not die»...

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 6)

The «Valley» is an image often employed by Lao Tzu to symbolize a state of self-emptying that remains ever full. As water empties itself into the lowest place, the nadir of the valley, so do the Tao and its followers seek the lowest place of humility and voluntary weakness, wherein is their strength.⁸¹²

Lines 4–6:

«this gate shall be shut», said the Ancient Prophet.

«It shall not be opened, and no one shall pass through it; For the Lord shall enter by it».

The Prophet Ezekiel writes of his vision: «And the Lord said to me: This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall pass through it; for the Lord God of Israel shall enter by it, and it shall be shut» (Ezekiel 44:2– Septuagint).

The ancient Holy Fathers have regarded this as a prophecy of the birth of God from a virgin, and also of the ever-virginity of Mary. Thus the liturgical poetry of the Eastern Church often refers to «the closed gateway of the Virgin».

Line 14:

Who had lived, unknown, in silence and purity in the Great Temple...

This account of the Virgin Mary’s childhood is found in the Protevangelion of James from the Apocryphal New Testament (published in English in The Lost Books of the Bible), which serves as a basis for Eastern Orthodox Church services to the Virgin Mary throughout the year».⁸¹³

According to the Protevangelion, Mary was consecrated to the Lord by her parents at the age of three, at which time she went to live in the temple of Jerusalem. The High Priest Zachariah – future father of St. John the Baptist – received her and set her to dwell in the Holy of Ho​lies: the high place of the temple where only priests were allowed to go, and that at only certain times of the year. In the Holy of Holies she was fed by the hand of an angel. She remained in the temple until the age of twelve, when Zachariah betrothed her to the aged Joseph.

Lines 35–36:

Because she had returned to the state of the uncarved block, the pristine simplicity,

She became the «mountain unhewn by the hand of man», Whom the Ancient Prophet had foretold.

The «uncarved block» is Lao Tzu’s symbol for the state of simplicity and oneness with the Creator and the creation, which man possessed in the beginning. The «mountain unhewn by the hand of man» refers to the Old Testament image (Daniel 2:34–35) of «the stone cut out of a mountain by no human hand», which the ancient Christian teachers saw as another prophecy of Christ’s birth from a Virgin, i.e., a birth without human seed. This symbol forms the basis of the icon of the Mother of God on p. 450 of this book.

Chapter 16

Lines 1–2:

«Water... dwells in lowly places that all disdain, and so it is like the Way». (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 8 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

Wu Ch’eng, a thirteenth-century commentator on the Tao Teh Ching writes: «Among those who follow the Tao, the best are like water: content to be on the bottom and, thus, free from blame. Most people hate being on the bottom and compete to be on the top. And when people compete, someone is maligned».⁸¹⁴

Chapter 17

Lines 3, 5:

The Way creates, but does not demand for itself...

Controls, but without compulsion.

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 51 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

According to Christian mystical theology, the Creator-Logos has given to each created thing its own indwelling logos, its own inner essence or principle, which makes that thing distinctively itself, and which at the same time directs that thing towards its end – God. The Creator-Logos, drawing all things into unity, makes of the universe a harmonious and integrated «cosmos». He draws all things to Himself (cf. John 12:32), yet He controls without compulsion, directing each thing naturally, according to its own logos. As St. Maximus the Confessor writes: «The Origin and Cause of created beings has, as Truth, conquered all things naturally and has drawn their activity to Himself».⁸¹⁵

As followers of the Creator-Logos, it is our task to discern the logos dwelling in each thing and to bring it out. If we are to guide we must do so naturally, without compelling, not acting according to appearances or opinions, but according to the inner essence of each thing. This is especially true of our dealings with other human beings, who, despite an often misleading outer covering, have within themselves this inner principle which tends toward God.

St. Maximus the Confessor (A.D. 580–662), whose writings occupy more space than any other in The Philokalia, is one of the greatest fountainheads of Eastern Orthodox mystical theology. His metaphysical in​sights have been referred to extensively in the nine enneads of Part I.

Line 16:

He called Himself rather «the least in the Kingdom of Heaven» and «the Son of Man».

According to St. Theophan the Recluse and the ancient Holy Fathers, when Christ speaks of «he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven», He is referring, in His humility and self-abasement, to Himself.

Christ calls Himself «Son of Man» about eighty times in the four Gospels.

Chapter 19

This chapter describes the Sermon on the Mount. If one goes to the Holy Land today, one can still see the place on the Sea of Galilee where this sermon was given, looking much the same as it did in Christ’s time. On one side of the hill is a sloping meadow where the people gathered to hear the words that Christ spoke at the beginning of His public ministry.

Line 10:

«Blessed are the meek»...

(Matthew 5:5)

In the Old Testament it is said that Moses «was very meek, above all the men who were upon the face of the earth» (Numbers 12:3). The fact that this powerful prophet and deliverer should be called meek indicates that godly meekness does not in any way mean spinelessness. Rather, it is the quality of being emptied of selfishness, which enables one to be filled with the power of God and thereby remain invincible in spirit.

Chapter 20

Lines 6–13:

«Superior virtue is unconscious of its virtue.

Hence it is virtuous.

Inferior virtue is conscious of its virtue,

Hence it is not virtuous».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 38 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

Once a monk asked the great desert father, St. Macarius of Egypt († A.D. 390), «How can one be poor in spirit, especially when one is inwardly conscious that he is a changed man, and has made progress, and has come to a knowledge and understanding which he did not possess before?»

Macarius answered: «Until a man acquires these things and makes progress, he is not poor in spirit, but thinks highly of himself; but when he comes to this understanding and point of progress, Grace itself teaches him to be poor in spirit, which means that a man being righteous and chosen of God does not esteem himself to be anything, but holds his soul in abasement and disregard, as if he knew nothing and had nothing, even though he knows and has. And such a thought becomes as it were a part of nature and rooted in a man’s mind. Do you not see how our forefather Abraham, elect as he was, described himself as ‘dust and ashes’ (Genesis 18:27); and David, anointed to be king, had God with him, and yet what does he say? ‘I am a worm and not a man, a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people’ (Psalm 21:6)».⁸¹⁶

In teaching His disciples this «superior virtue that is unconscious of its virtue», Christ told His disciples: «When you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do’» (Luke 17:10).

Chapter 21

Line 13:

He came not to the healthy, but to the sick...

When the Pharisees were scandalized by Christ eating with publicans and sinners, Christ said to them, «Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick» (Matthew 9:12). Here, of course, he meant not physical, but spiritual and moral sickness.

Lines 15–16:

Therefore the good, the righteous, the beautiful, the healthy and the rich Railed at Him, smote Him, and cast Him out as evil.

The Wisdom of Solomon lays bare the thoughts of the seemingly righteous who are jealous of the truly righteous person: «The ungodly, reasoning within themselves not aright, said: let us oppress the righteous man.... He was made to reprove our thoughts; he is grievous for us even to behold, for his life is not like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits. He abstains from our ways as from filthiness; he pronounces the end of the just to be blessed» (Wisdom 2:1, 10, 14–17).

Lines 17–18:

For He was a reproach to their seeming goodness, Turning it on its head.

In apostolic times, Christians were accused of «turning the world upside down» with the revolutionary teachings of Christ (Acts 17:6).

Line 20:

to raise them to the true goodness of their original nature.

St. Maximus the Confessor writes about how we have corrupted our true human nature, made in the image of God, and about what it means to be restored to it:

«The self-love and cleverness of people, alienating them from each other, have cut our single human nature into many fragments. They have so extended the insensibility which they introduced into our nature and which now dominates it, that our nature, divided in will and purpose, fights against itself. Thus anyone who has succeeded by sound judgment and nobility of intelligence in resolving this anomalous state of our nature has shown mercy to himself prior to showing it to others; for he has molded his will and purpose in conformity to nature, and through them he has advanced toward God by means of nature; he has revealed in him​self what it means to be ‘in the image [of God]’ and shown how excellently in the beginning God created our nature in His likeness and as a pure copy of His own goodness, and how He made our nature one with itself in every way – peaceable, free from strife and faction, bound to God and to itself by love, making us cleave to God with desire and to each other with mutual affection».⁸¹⁷

Lines 22–25:

«Why do you call me good?

There is none good, save one»:

That is, His Father – the Mind –

Who existed with Him from pre-eternity.

(cf. Luke 18:19)

According to St. Gregory Nazianzen, Christ said this to the rich young ruler who called him «Good Master» because the ruler was testifying to His goodness while viewing Him as a mere man. Perfect good​ness, Christ is saying, belongs to God alone, while human goodness is only relative.

This same teaching is found in Lao Tzu. Gi-ming Shien writes: «Objective universal value is to be preferred in judgment to the relative value of private opinion. Absolute value can only be judged in relation to the One or Being....

Lao Tzu denies the particular value as illusory fantasy and seeks rather the value of the absolute or the whole One. He said: ‘When all the world recognizes the beauty of the beautiful then it turns to ugliness. When they recognize the good of the good, it ceases to be good’ (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 2). The particular recognition destroys the universal state in which objective value was held». (See the complete quote of Gi-ming on pp. 500–501.)

Chapter 22

Line 6:

And the poor fishermen caught the universe in their nets.

This line is inspired by the Eastern Orthodox troparion hymn for the Feast of Pentecost:

Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, Who hast made the fishermen [i.e., the Apostles] most wise, by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, and thereby having caught the universe. O Lover of mankind, glory to Thee!

Chapter 24

Although the Logos, as Lao Tzu says, has no beginning or end (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 14), He is both the Beginning (or «Original Principle» – Tao Teh Ching, ch. 52) and the End of all created things.

The teaching of Christ the Logos as the End of all things is profound and mysterious. As stated in the commentary on chapter 17 above, each created thing has its own logos: its own inner essence or principle. The logos of each thing is an «idea» of God, according to which it comes into existence at a certain time and place, and in a certain form, and according to which it develops. It is each thing’s point of contact with God, and at the same time the end toward which it tends. God has produced in His creatures the love that makes them tend towards Himself, drawing them to their fulfillment.

The ideas or logoi of individual things are contained within the higher or more general ideas, as are species within a genus. The whole is contained in the Creator-Logos, the unifying Cosmic Principle. Therefore, when we seek to penetrate into the inner essences or principles (logoi or «words») of created things, we are led finally to knowledge of the Word, the «operating cause» and at the same time the End of all things.

The Logos is the Beginning of all things because from Him flow the creative outpourings, the particular logoi of creatures. He is the End of all things because He is the center toward which all created beings tend. This is the mystical meaning behind His words: «I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending» (Revelation 1:8).

This understanding also sheds light on the nature of Lao Tzu’s teaching. The Ancient Sage, in contemplating the inner essences of created beings and seeking to penetrate into their end – their logoi – was led naturally to intuitive knowledge of the Logos. In chapter 52 of the Tao Teh Ching, he writes:

Having found the mother, we know the child; Knowing the child, we then observe the mother. (Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

St. Maximus the Confessor explains it this way: «He who does not limit his perception of the nature of visible things to what his senses alone can observe, but wisely with his spirit searches after the essence which lies within every creature, also finds God; for from the manifest magnificence of created beings he learns Who is the Cause of their being».⁸¹⁸

Line 24:

For at the End, where I am...

Before His final passion, Christ prayed for his disciples: «Father, I will that they also, whom You have given me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which You have given me» (John 17:24).

Chapter 26

Lines 2–9:

«The multitude are joyful and merry...

I alone seem to have lost everything».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 20)

Some modern scholars claim that Lao Tzu wrote these lines only as a figurative device – if indeed he existed at all! The Chinese tradition, however, maintains that the lines are both literal and autobiographical. We prefer to adhere to the living tradition, since it comes from human experience and the common suffering of a people, whereas the theories of modern scholars often come from abstract speculation. Anyone who has at least a little experience of following the Way cannot doubt that the author of the Tao Teh Ching must have experienced exactly what he described in these lines: out of place in worldly society, and cut off from fleeting earthly happiness by virtue of his being «different». Lao Tzu concludes the lines, however, by saying that his very «difference» from others is at the same time the source of his consolation; for he draws his sustenance, not from outward things as do others, but from the Source of all things, the Tao.

Chapter 28

This chapter describes Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday).

Lines 2–3:

«He who is conscious of honor and glory,

Yet keeps to disgrace,

Resembles the Valley of the World».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 28 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

«Everyone wants to be first», says Chuang Tzu, «while I alone want to be last: which means to endure the world’s disgrace».

Chapter 29

Line 5:

The Way left the City and descended into the Valley of the World.

That is, Christ leaves Jerusalem and descends into the Kedron Valley, which lies between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Here the literal valley is compared with Lao Tzu’s symbolic Valley of self-emptying; for Christ, leaving Jerusalem after His triumphal entry into it, descends on the path to His final abasement and humiliation.

Lines 9–10:

And now the duplicitous one, pretending to return His love,

Betrays Him with a kiss.

Betrayal by a hypocritical friend is much more dangerous than an attack by an enemy, as Bishop Augustinos of Florina, Greece, writes: A hypocrite is a person who appears to be someone’s best friend, gains his confidence, and then deceives and uses him terribly. That kind of harm cannot be done by an enemy. You can see and protect yourself from an enemy, but not a hypocrite».⁸¹⁹

Line 15:

The duplicitous one delivered the Simple One to death...

Judas was a hypocrite, and therefore his eye was not «single» (Matthew 6:22). He was divided in soul; hence, he is here called «duplicitous», which comes from the Latin duplex, meaning «twofold». Christ, on the other hand, was wholly simple, for in God there is no division (see chapter 79).

Lines 19–20:

He being Himself the Way on which He trod, The Way of return to pristine Simplicity.

When Lao Tzu spoke of returning to pristine Simplicity (line 4), he was referring to the logoi of created beings drawing closer to their End, the simple and undivided Logos.

Chapter 30

Lines 9–10:

Long ago, in the beginning,

He had been abandoned by man in the Garden...

That is, when man cut himself off from God through eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

Line 20:

Not willing to watch with Him one hour.

Even Christ’s Apostles could not stay awake for one hour in the Gar​den of Gethsemane, to keep watch with Him in his time of temptation when He was about to be delivered to death (Matthew 26:40).

Chapter 31

Line 10:

The darkness has no power of itself...

St. Diadochus of Photiki, a fifth-century Father of The Philokalia, ex​plains: «Evil does not exist by nature, nor is any man naturally evil, for God made nothing that was not good. When in the desire of his heart someone conceives and gives form to what in reality has no existence, then what he desires begins to exist. We should therefore turn our attention away from the inclination to evil and concentrate it on the remembrance of God; for good, which exists by nature, is more powerful than our inclination to evil. The one has existence while the other does not, except when we give it existence through our actions».⁸²⁰

Chapter 32

The revelation of Christ presents itself to us in the form of antinomies, which form, as it were, a cross for human thought. As the End or point of convergence of the universe, the Logos stands at the midpoint of the contraries, uniting and overcoming them in Himself, just as a cross intersects two lines. Thus, the balancing or uniting of opposites forms a constant theme of both the theology and liturgical poetry of the ancient Christian tradition. It is also a constant theme of the Tao Teh Ching, which foreshadows that tradition, as in

Everything carries the Yin at its back and the Yang in front;

Through the union of the pervading principles it reaches harmony.

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 42 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

In the present chapter, the antinomic form of Christian liturgical poetry is employed in order to show how the strife of the contraries is overcome by Christ’s law of love.

Lines 3–4:

He took the sentence of death

In order to abolish the sentence of death.

St. Maximus the Confessor expresses this as follows: «The Lord demonstrated His equity and justice when in His self-abasement He submitted deliberately to the sentence to which what is passible in hu​man nature is subject, and made that sentence a weapon for the destruction of sin and death».⁸²¹

Chapter 34

Lines 12–13:

«If it were not laughed at», said the Ancient Sage,

«It would not be the Way».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 41 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

«The message of the Cross», writes the Apostle Paul, «is foolishness to those who are perishing; but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.... If anyone among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.... We are fools for Christ’s sake» (1Corinthians 1:18, 3:18–19; 4:10). From early Christian times there have been many such «fools for Christ» who have kept their virtue and otherworldly wisdom hidden in God. Bishop Nikodim of Belgorod, a twentieth-century martyr, writes: «There are people who are mocked by all, despised by all, who are sometimes abhorred by even the most lost person. Homeless, destitute, wretched in appearance, tormented by hunger and thirst, they wan​der amidst cold and self-satisfied people. Cold, hunger, eternal mockeries, contempt and complete loneliness – this is the lot of these people. The world considers them mad, stupid, pathetic people who have neither reason nor shame. Only the simple soul of the believers among the people regards them with compassion and calls them ‘little blessed ones,’ God’s people; and the rare, tender and noble heart will feel the greatness of spirit in them and the unearthly beauty of their souls. These are the fools for Christ».⁸²²

Though not usually as striking as the «fools for Christ», the ancient Chinese sages were known to hide their virtue in the same way. Lao Tzu writes of himself:

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.

I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.

Other men are clear and bright,

But I alone am dim and weak.

Other men are sharp and clever,

But I alone am dull and stupid.

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 20 – Feng and English, trans.)

The Chinese commentator Lu Hui-ch’ing (eleventh century A.D.) says further, «The sage wears an embarrassed, foolish expression and seldom shows anyone his great and noble virtue».⁸²³

Chapter 35

Lines 11–13:

I thirst for the one lost sheep

Who has departed from the Way,

For I have loved him.

By «one lost sheep» is meant mankind as a whole. This image is de​rived from Christ’s parable: «If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?» (Matthew 18:12).

According to the teaching of the ancient Holy Fathers, the «ninety nine» sheep are the angelic hosts, while the one sheep is mankind. The Son of God came from heaven to earth to seek out and save the one sheep that had gone astray («departed from the Way»).

Lines 14–17:

He who had once been my friend,

With whom I had once held sweet converse in the Garden, Has nailed me to a Tree,

Like unto the Tree of the Garden from which he plucked the fruit.

By «my friend» is again meant the whole of mankind. Each human being, possessing the quality of personhood and being made in the image of God, contains within himself the whole universe. Therefore, when Adam fell into corruption, he brought all of creation into corruption with him. And when Christ, Who is called the Second Adam, suffered and died innocently, He did so for the whole human race, and ultimately for all of creation.

Interestingly, the vehicle of the fall and that of the redemption is the same: a tree. St. John Damascene writes: «Since death came by a tree, it was necessary for life and the resurrection to be bestowed by a tree». In Eastern Orthodox liturgical poetry the Cross is frequently called «the Tree».

Lines 18–19:

But greater love has no man than this:

That a man lay down his life for his friend. (cf. John 15:13)

When Christ said this (the original reads «friends»), He was speaking of laying down His life for His disciples. «No longer do I call you servants», He told them, «for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you» (John 15:15).

Chapter 36

Line 6:

the humble and weak shall be exalted.

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 66)

Su Ch’e (eleventh century A.D.) comments on this teaching of Lao Tzu: «The sage doesn't try to be above or in front of others. But when he finds himself below or behind others, the Tao can’t help but lift him up and push him forward».⁸²⁴

Line 11:

Lower me to the lowest point, says the Way.

«The lowest point» or «lowest place», to which we have referred frequently in this text, corresponds to the Chinese word wu. This term occurs countless times in the Tao Teh Ching, and always in a highly charged context. Usually it is translated as «nothingness» or «emptiness».

This «emptiness» was discussed at length by the young Fr. Seraphim Rose (then known as Eugene Rose) in an essay he wrote for his master’s degree in Oriental languages, «Emptiness and Fullness in the Lao Tzu». Following from the teaching of Gi-ming Shien, Fr. Seraphim explains that the «nothingness» or «emptiness» that Lao Tzu values is not a lack or a «blank», nor does it represent an extreme or an exhaustion. In the words of Lu Hui-ch’ing, the above-mentioned commentator on the Tao Teh Ching, «What is meant here by emptiness is not total emptiness but the absence of fullness. And what is meant by stillness is not complete stillness but everything returning unconsciously [spontaneously] to its roots».⁸²⁵Fr. Seraphim indicates that, for Lao Tzu, «nothingness» (wu) is the «point of convergence», the «midpoint» where the minimum or «minim point» has been attained in humility and self-forgetting. «This understanding of wu», he writes, «allows us to approach another celebrated passage [of the Tao Teh Ching] from a new angle. The usual understanding of the opening lines of chapter 11 is, as in Waley,

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the wheel depends.

But we might now translate this more concretely as

Thirty spokes join in a single hub,

And it is just in this, its minim point, that the use of the carriage lies.

«Here wu is the single, smallest point, the point of convergence of the spokes, which is the "axis’ upon which the wheel turns and the carriage moves.⁸²⁶

Also in chapter 11 of the Tao Teh Ching, Lao Tzu says that the wu of a vessel (the space inside) is what is most «useful» in it, and similarly the wu of a house (its doors and windows). Here wu is used to denote empty space, but it is not nonexistent, it is not a «nothing», for it is «used». As Fr. Seraphim writes: «It is what exists on the very ‘tip’ of existence, a something just verging on ’nothing.’ It is the very ‘least’ thing that can be spoken of at all».

Christ, it will be remembered, called Himself «the least in the Kingdom of Heaven», and in His parables He likened the Kingdom of Heaven to the «least» thing that can be spoken of: «a grain of mustard seed which... is less than all the seeds that are upon the earth» (Mark 4:31), and «leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal» (Luke 13:21).

Christ, as the Way, occupies the wu of the universe: not in the standard meaning of «nothingness» as «blankness», but in the meaning that Lao Tzu gives it, as the «minim point» or «least place». Christ lowers Himself, empties Himself, in poverty of spirit and unlimited self-giving. In this, as we have said, lies His unlimited power.

If Lao Tzu’s wheel of thirty spokes can be seen as a metaphor of the universe, then Christ the Tao or Logos can be seen as being at the hub of that universe. This corresponds with the Christian understanding of the Logos as the center or midpoint to which all of the logoi of creatures tend. Being at the midpoint, He is also at the lowest point. (See Part II p. 271.)

Chapter 39

Lines 3–4:

When desire is curtailed at the nadir of the Valley,

One sees all that is and moves beneath the surface.

The nadir of the Valley refers to wu as it appears in the Tao Teh Ching (see the commentary on chapter 36). This is the «minim point» or «midpoint» that the Tao occupies.

As we have seen in the commentary on chapter 15, Lao Tzu uses the image of the Valley to represent self-emptying; and hence it conveys the idea of wu. The Valley, of course, converges at its nadir, its minim point.

Another image that Lao Tzu uses to convey the same idea is that of the ridgepole of a roof. The ridgepole is the roof’s point of convergence, its minim point; and the roof itself can be seen as a kind of inverted valley. In chapter 58 of the Tao Teh Ching we read:

Calamity is what good fortune leans against;

Good fortune is what calamity rests upon.

Who knows their ridgepole?

(Fr. Seraphim Rose, trans.)

When one attains to the minim point or ridgepole through curtailing selfish desires, one no longer fears calamity or craves for good fortune, but now for the first time one understands them both.

Commenting on Lao Tzu’s image of the ridgepole, Fr. Seraphim Rose writes: «There could scarcely be a more vivid image than this for expressing the relationship between the contraries in Lao Tzu’s thought: they cannot be conceived apart from each other, and the key to understanding them lies in neither extreme, but in their juncture».⁸²⁷

Line 5:

Dead men see everything.

Those who have overcome their passions, curtailing their desire for created things, are given to see beyond sensible realities and into the inner essences (logoi) of things, including their fellow human beings. «Only a soul which has been delivered from the passions», writes St. Maximus, «can without error contemplate created beings».⁸²⁸

Lines 22–23:

And at last, in this sorrow,

There is perfect freedom.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta expresses it this way: «This is the surrender: to

accept to be cut to pieces, and yet every piece belongs to God. You are free then».

Chapter 41

Lines 9–10:

Follow me, says the Way,

Down into the deep pools of the Valley...

Once more we have used Lao Tzu’s symbol of the Valley. The «deep pools» represent the lowest place or minim point of the Valley, the point of complete self-abandonment to the Way. The image of deep pools also employs Lao Tzu’s symbol of water, which «is like the Tao» (see chapter 16).

Lines 11–12:

Where the water ever empties itself,

Is ever emptied, yet ever full.

In chapter 4 of the Tao Teh Ching we read:

The Tao appears to be emptiness, so its function seems insufficient;

But, fathomless, it seems to be the source of all things.

(Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

And in chapter 45:

Great fullness is as if deplete;

Yet in its use it is not exhausted.

(Fr. Seraphim Rose, trans.)

Line 16:

Emptied, you will be ever full.

Discussing the relationship between emptiness and fullness in the Tao Teh Ching, Fr. Seraphim Rose writes:

«We must ask what happens once one has reached the point of ‘con​-vergence’, the ‘minim.’ The answer has already been given: one proceeds to the ‘maximal’; when one has ‘expired,’ it remains only for him to ‘in​spire’; the end of ‘emptiness’ is ‘fullness.’

«Yet ‘fullness’ is of two kinds for Lao Tzu; there is the true fullness arrived at through the ‘minim,’ and there is the fullness of excess, which leads to exhaustion. «Those who possess this Tao do not try to fill themselves to the brim’ (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 15)....

«Lao Tzu takes a dim view of excessive ‘filling,’ but he approves of the right sort. »The valley, by obtaining the One, is filled’ (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 39). For, "if a thing is hollow, it will be filled» (ch. 22). The right kind of ‘filling’ is the ‘great filling’ that Lao Tzu praises in chapter 45....»

Finally, Fr. Seraphim asks how it is possible to attain a state of being «ever full»:

«Is the ‘sage’ – the man who, through attaining the ‘minim’, has gained everything – beyond all change? Does he, having become ‘full’, never again become ‘empty’? This could not be, for the world Lao Tzu describes is one of constant change. But since his ‘fullness,’ unlike that of the ‘multitudes,’ is not an extreme, but a moderate one – it seems, in​deed, as though ‘empty’ (ch. 45) – he will not come to catastrophe. He will ‘turn back’ before the extreme and ‘converge’ in the ‘minim’».⁸²⁹

Chapter 43

Line 3:

Because you cannot see the end.

On the metaphysical meaning of «the end», see the commentary on chapter 24.

Chapter 44

Lines 18–19:

up the valley path:

We reach the flatland...

Once we have found the Way in the «deep pools of the Valley», we seek to share the water with the thirsty ones on the «flatland». For «he who believes on me», says the Way, «out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water» (John 7:38).

Line 31–32:

I have opened the mysterious gate to you.

In the first chapter of the Tao Teh Ching, the Tao is called the «gate to all mystery». With His self-emptying on the Cross, the Word of God opened to mankind this mysterious gate – the gate to Paradise and the heavenly realm – for the first time since the primordial fall.

Lines 33–34:

Enter into my joy,

You who have tasted my pain.

St. Maximus the Confessor teaches on the mystery of suffering with God: «If God suffers in the flesh when He is made man, should we not rejoice when we suffer, for we have God to share our sufferings? This shared suffering confers the kingdom on us. For he spoke truly who said, "If we suffer with Him, then we shall also be glorified with Him’ (Romans 8:17)».⁸³⁰

Lines 41–42:

Taste incorruption,

You who have lain in the grave with me.

«He who knows the mystery of the Cross and Tomb», says St. Maximus, «knows also the essential principles of all things».

Chapter 45

Lines 14, 16:

A little child does not calculate....

Soft and yielding like water, his mind is therefore boundless.

One of Lao Tzu’s favorite images is that of the «infant». As Fr. Seraphim explains: «The Tao, and he who is in accord with it, are pliant, supple, fluent, like an infant, like water».⁸³¹

Line 17:

Spontaneous, he accepts without thought the Course that all things follow.

Gi-ming Shien identifies Lao Tzu’s goal of wu (the minim point of self-emptying) with spontaneity. Just as our internal organs function without our thinking about them, and just as we breathe without being aware of it, so does the person in accord with the Tao act without calculation and without desire («non-action»). Gi-ming calls this a kind of transcendent «forgetfulness». Such is the spontaneity of which Christ spoke: «The kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed upon the ground; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knows not how. For the earth brings forth fruit of itself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come» (Mark 4:26–29).

Spontaneity is characterized by not prying into unnecessary questions and seeking useless knowledge. Lao Tzu says, «When spiritual intelligence is apprehended then human wisdom may be discarded» (ch. 10); and elsewhere he says that «the sage... causes people to be without knowledge and desire» (ch. 3). St. Macarius of Egypt expresses a similar idea, using – like Lao Tzu – the image of an infant:

«Eat as much bread as you find, and leave the wide earth to pursue its way; go to the brink of the river, and drink as much as you need, and pass on, and seek not to know whence it comes, or how it flows. Do your best to have your foot cured, or the disease of your eye, that you may see the light of the sun, but do not inquire how much light the sun has, or in what sign it rises. Take that which is given for your use. Why do you go off to the hills and try to discover how many wild asses and other beasts dwell there? The babe, when it comes to its mother's breast, takes the milk and thrives; it does not search for the root and wellspring from which it flows so. It sucks the milk, and empties the whole measure; and another hour passes – the breasts fill up. The babe knows nothing of it, nor the mother either, although the supply proceeds from all her members».⁸³²

Chapter 47

Lines 3–7:

«The stiff and unbending is the disciple of death», said the Ancient Sage.

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and the strong will fall.

The soft and weak will overcome».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 76)

Commenting on this passage of Lao Tzu, Fr. Seraphim Rose writes: «The ‘strong,’ the ‘firm,’ and the ‘stiff’: three attributes of the powerful that are yet overcome by the ’weak’ and ‘soft.’ The reason is clear: they are tense and unyielding; powerful for a while, they cannot stay thus always, They have reached their extreme. Their ‘contraversion’ [turning about from one opposite to another] is near at hand».⁸³³

Lines 8–9:

If a painful experience comes upon a humble soul.

She bends and thus remains whole.

Fr. Seraphim further points out that the image of «bending» has to do, once more, with the «point of convergence» or minim point of self-emptying that is Lao Tzu’s goal – for the act of bending, while it issues in duality, springs from a single point. For example, when a piece of paper is folded in half, its fold becomes its point of convergence. And if water were to fall on that paper, it would flow down into the fold, which has become its minim point: a point or abyss of humility.

Lines 13–15:

Thus she goes on her way,

Untroubled, undepressed, in complete peace of mind, Having no cause to get angry or to anger anyone.

The sixth-century desert father, Abba Dorotheus, whose teachings form the basis of this chapter, tells the following story to illustrate:

«Once the holy elder, Abba Naum, was ill and his brother, instead of honey, poured linseed oil over his food – pernicious stuff that it is. Nevertheless the elder said nothing but ate it in silence and even took a second helping to satisfy his need, without blaming his brother or saying that he had done it maliciously. Not only did he say nothing, he was not annoyed with him even in thought. And then the brother learned what he had done and began to lament over it saying, ‘O Father, I have murdered you! And you have put this sin upon me because you said nothing!’ How meekly he replied, ‘Don’t be troubled, my son. If the Lord wished me to eat honey He would have made you put honey on it,’ and he immediately confided the matter to God. What has it to do with God, venerable elder? The brother made a mistake and you say, ‘If God wished.’ What has it to do with God? And he insists, ‘Yes! If God had wanted me to eat honey, the brother would have put honey on.’ The fact that the elder was so sick that day that he could take no food did not make him angry with his brother, but he referred the whole thing to God; and the elder was quite right to say, ‘If God had wanted me to eat honey He would even have changed the oil into honey.’

«But we, for each little thing, go and accuse our neighbor and blame him as if he were maliciously going against his conscience. And if we hear a word we straightaway distort its meaning and say, ‘If he did not in​tend to annoy me he would not have said it....’ We leave God Who grants us occasions of this kind to purify us from our sins and we run after our neighbor crying, ‘Why did you say this to me? Why did you do this to me?’ And whereas we would be able to reap great profit from things of this kind, we bring just the opposite on ourselves, being un​aware that everything happens by the foreknowledge of God for the benefit of each of us».⁸³⁴

The spiritual attitude of the elder of this story – that of accepting everything as God’s providence – has its parallel in the Tao Teh Ching, in the images of pliancy, yielding and bending that Lao Tzu frequently employs.

Line 26:

For nothing is more powerful than lowliness.

This teaching of Abba Dorotheus finds expression in the writings of Dostoyevsky, here speaking through the character of Elder Zosima:

«At some thoughts a man stands perplexed, above all at the sight of human sin, and he wonders whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide: ‘I will combat it by humble love.’ If you resolve on that once for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it».⁸³⁵

Chapter 51

Line 19:

The spirit of forgiveness is the spirit of the Way.

Richard Wurmbrand († 2001), a Romanian-Jewish Christian pastor who endured fourteen years of torture in communist prisons, told many stories of the superhuman power of forgiveness exhibited by fellow prisoners who were followers of the Way:

«I have seen Christians in communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonsful of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold, and praying with fervor for the communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ, which was shed into our hearts.

«Afterward, the communists who had tortured us came to prison, too. Under communism, communists, and even communist rulers, are put in prison almost as often as their adversaries. Now the tortured and the torturer were in the same cell. And while the non-Christians showed hatred toward their former inquisitors and beat them, Christians took their defense, even at the risk of being beaten themselves and accused of being accomplices with communism. I have seen Christians giving away their last slice of bread (we had at that time one slice a week) and the medicine which could save their lives to a sick communist torturer, who was now a fellow-prisoner....

«A Christian was sentenced to death. Before being executed, he was allowed to see his wife. His last words to his wife were, ‘You must know that I die loving those who kill me. They don’t know what they do and my last request of you is to love them, too. Don’t have bitterness in your heart because they kill your beloved one. We will meet in heaven.’»⁸³⁶

Chapter 52

Lines 1–2:

When one blames others, there is contention; When one finds one’s own faults, there is peace.

The Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian († A.D. 372), which is read repeatedly during Great Lent in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, expresses this truth: «Grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother».

Abba Dorotheus relates an incident from his monastery to show what perpetual agitation arises when we set about blaming others. It is not difficult to see ourselves in the two brothers he describes:

«There came to me once two brothers who were always rowing, and the elder was saying about the younger, ‘I arrange for him to do something and he gets distressed, and so I get distressed, thinking that if he had faith and love towards me he would accept what I tell him with complete confidence.’ And the younger was saying, ‘Excuse me, reverend father, but he does not speak to me with the fear of God, but rather as someone who wants to give orders. I reckon that this is why my heart has not full confidence.’ Impress on your minds that each blames the other and neither blames himself, but both of them are getting upset with one another, and although they are begging each other’s pardon, they both remain unconvinced. One says, ‘He does not show me deference and, therefore, I am not convinced’; and the other says, ‘Since he will not have complete confidence in my love until I show him deference, I, for my part, do not have complete confidence in him.’ My God, do you see how ridiculous it is? Do you see their perverse way of thinking? God knows how sorry I am about this.... Each of them had to throw the blame on the other, but what they really ought to do is just the opposite. The first ought to say: I speak with presumption and therefore God does not give my brother confidence in me. And the other ought to be thinking: My brother gives me commands with humility and love but I am unruly and have not the fear of God. Neither of them found that way and blamed himself, but each of them vexed the other.

«Don’t you see that this is why we make no progress, why we find we have not been helped towards it? We remain all the time against one another, grinding one another down. But each considers himself right and excuses himself, as I was saying, all the while keeping none of the commandments yet expecting his neighbor to keep the lot!»

Chapter 53

This chapter is based on the teaching of Elder Sampson Sievers († 1979), a man well equipped to speak on the subject of forgiveness.

In 1917 Elder Sampson became a novice monk in a monastery near St. Petersburg, and in 1919 he was arrested by the communist secret po​lice. That same year he was shot in a mass execution. «Firing squads were executing prisoners», he related several years later. «A commissar led us into some kind of building, and from there we were loaded onto wagons with window grates. It wasn’t frightening to me at all, I was not alone. Someone was with me, some kind of power. A certain ray of joy. When they placed me against the wall, I was absolutely peaceful – this meant that it must happen this way, because He was watching over me. He allowed this to take place, which means that it was necessary. For I was born not unto destruction but for eternal salvation. Never throughout my whole life did I judge anyone, even those who did the shooting, but I excused them and justified what they did. They were fulfilling orders, their obligations. What they were ordered to do, they did. They did not have the courage to say, ‘No, I will not!’ That is their only fault. But the Lord will take away their guilt because no one had enlightened them.

«They fired their guns ten to fifteen paces away from me. There were six or seven men. I became hot. The bullets hit me in the arm, in the chest».

Elder Sampson was then thrown into a common grave. His fellow monks came to take away his body, and, in pulling it out from under the mass of corpses, they discovered that he was still breathing. They brought him to his mother, who nursed him back to health. In 1929 he was arrested again and sent to the Gulag. Altogether, he spent nearly twenty years in the concentration camp system. In his later years he served as a spiritual father to countless people, being loving yet demanding with his spiritual children, digging deeply in order to root out enmity and egoism.

The Elder became especially tough when one of his spiritual children would refuse to forgive someone, even for some petty annoyance. «I think», he said, «I’ve always concluded: this means that they still have not gotten the point, that the whole secret, that all the salt of Christianity lies in this: to forgive, to excuse, to justify, not to know, not to remember evil.

«He who does not want to forgive, to excuse, to justify consciously, intentionally... that person closes himself to eternal life before God, and even more so in the present life. He is turned away and not heard by God».⁸³⁷

Chapter 55

Line 17:

Finding the one wounded nature common to all...

Wang Pi (third century A.D.) teaches: «The sage penetrates the nature and condition of others. Hence he responds to them without force and follows them without effort. He eliminates whatever misleads or confuses them. Hence their minds become clear, and each realizes his own nature».⁸³⁸

Chapter 60

Lines 7–9:

«And who is my neighbor?» the Way was asked.

Our neighbor is whomever the Way puts before us: Insider or outcast...

When confronted with the commandment, «Love your neighbor», a lawyer tried to justify himself by asking Christ, «Who is my neighbor?» He thought that «neighbor» signified his immediate relations, kinsmen, ethnic brothers or co-religionists, which meant that he would not have to love those outside his own circle. Christ answered the lawyer’s question with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A certain man, He said, lay dying, but the most respected leaders of his own religion passed him by. Only a Samaritan – who was considered a heretic and an outcast – had compassion on him and helped him. Thus it was an outsider who proved to be the man’s neighbor, showing love even on one who considered him an enemy. «Go», said Christ to the lawyer, «and do thou likewise» (Luke 10:29–37).

Lines 19–21:

Love for neighbor, then, is love for all equally, And equally with ourselves.

If our love is selective and conditional, we have not yet prepared ourselves for eternity, for among the spirits of heaven there abides one love, love for all equally. (See Elder Ambrose’s vision of eternity on pp. 404–6.)

Chapter 61

In this chapter we have once more drawn from the teaching of Abba Dorotheus. Here is indicated the crucial difference between «preliminary fear» and «perfect fear» of God, which explains such seemingly contradictory Scriptural passages as «By fear of the Lord every man turns away from evil» (Proverbs 16:6) and «Perfect love casts out fear» (1 John 4:18), Setting forth this teaching in more detail, Abba Dorotheus writes:

«There are, as St. Basil says, three states through which we can be pleasing to God. The first, that of fearing punishment; this makes us acceptable and we are in the state of slaves. The second, the state of servants working for wages, fulfilling orders for our own advantage and, by doing so, earning our wages. The third is the state of sons, where we strive for the highest good. For a son, when he comes to maturity, does his father’s will not for fear of being beaten, nor to receive a reward from him, but because he knows he is loved. He loves and honors his father, and is convinced that all his father possesses is his own. Such a man is worthy to hear, ‘You are no longer a slave, but a son, an heir of God through Christ.’ As we said, he no longer fears God with that preliminary fear, but really loves Him».⁸³⁹

Chapter 64

Lines 25–29:

There are two kinds of pain:

Pain of the senses –

An absence of the object of the body’s desire;

And pain of the soul –

An absence of the object of the soul’s desire.

In speaking here of the soul, we mean the one inward being of man, the highest part of which is the spirit (see Part II, pp. 276–79). The soul, since it contains man’s eternal spirit, has an innate desire for its Creator. When man is cut off from his Creator, his soul’s desire is not met, and thus he experiences spiritual pain – an internal, moral suffering, a gnawing emptiness. This pain manifests itself in anxiety, worry, fear, depression, anger, rage, etc.

Chapter 65

Line 21:

«Control of the passions by will is called strength».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 55 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

Through control of the passions, we are given insight into the essence of things; and, conversely, this insight helps us to control our passions. Such was the experience of Lao Tzu, Socrates, and other pre-Christian sages, and such is the experience of followers of the Way after His coming in the flesh. St. Maximus the Confessor writes:

«Every spirit caught up by God cuts off simultaneously both the energy of the passions and the uncouth jostle of thoughts. In addition to this it also puts an end to the licentious misuse of the senses. For the passions, brought triumphantly into subjection by the higher forms of contemplation, are destroyed by the sublime vision of nature».⁸⁴⁰

Line 35:

The true End and fulfillment of desire.

Since man is meant for nothing less than union with God, desire for the Uncreated is the only desire that he should have. Desire for created things is unworthy of man and his exalted calling, and therefore it must end in discontent.

Chapter 66

The ideas in this chapter come from a manuscript of Fr. Seraphim Rose, written shortly after he became a Christian, and discovered and published only after his death. Fr. Seraphim wrote these ideas in the form of an «Answer» to the character of Ivan in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In Ivan, Fr. Seraphim saw the man that he himself had once been: an overly intellectual Western man who tries to understand everything with his mind, and therefore ends in doubting, in atheism. Ivan tried vainly to find an intelligible explanation by which to reconcile himself to suffering; but, as Fr. Seraphim tells him, one’s suffering can only be reconciled by loving surrender to Him Who voluntarily surrendered Himself on the Cross, Who suffered for us and with us, but Who, unlike us, suffered as an absolute innocent.⁸⁴¹

Chapter 67

Even after fourteen years of unspeakable tortures, Richard Wurmbrand could write: «The prison years did not seem too long for me, for I discovered, alone in my cell, that beyond belief and love there is a delight in God: a deep and extraordinary ecstasy of happiness that is like nothing in this world. And when I came out of jail I was like someone who comes down from a mountaintop where he has seen for miles around the peace and beauty of the countryside, and now returns to the plain».⁸⁴²

Chapter 70

Lines 10–12:

Without offenses, humility has not been tested.

Without adversities, true love has not been tested.

Without afflictions, virtue has not been tested.

Lin Xian-gao (1924-), a Chinese Christian pastor who endured twenty-one years in communist prisons for his faith, says the following: «A Christian who has not suffered is a child without training. Such Christians cannot receive or understand the fullness of God’s blessing. They know the Lord only as an acquaintance rather than as an intimate heavenly Father».⁸⁴³

Chapter 72

Lines 1–2:

His concern is not with the ideas of men;

Nor with their classes, or states, or nations, or warring factions

Classes and states are man-made entities, not ontological realities. This was realized by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag slave-labor camps, where sorrow and suffering forced him to penetrate into the core of his existence. «Gradually», he wrote, «it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every human heart – and then through all human hearts.... And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains... an unuprooted small corner of evil».⁸⁴⁴

Line 17:

this water we call joy...

That is, the water which is «like the Way» in that it is yielding and always seeks the lowest place. In the underground recesses of humility and self-abandonment, into which Christ the Way empties Himself, we find the source of all joy, and out of us shall flow «rivers of living water» (John 7:38).

This image is continued in the succeeding chapter.

Chapter 73

Line 21:

Unless you change your mind.

The Greek word for «repentance», metanoia, means «to change the mind» (i.e., higher mind or spirit). About this, see pp. 286–87.

Line 22:

Unless you abandon the path of avarice, sensual pleasure, and self-exaltation.

In The Philokalia, St. Mark the Ascetic (fifth century A.D.) writes: «All vice is caused by self-esteem and sensual pleasure; you cannot overcome passion without hating them. ‘Avarice is the root of all evil’ (1 Timothy 6:10); but avarice is clearly a product of these two components.

«The spirit is made blind by these three passions: avarice, self-esteem and sensual pleasure. These three passions on their own dull spiritual knowledge and faith, the foster-brothers of our nature. It is because of them that wrath, anger, war, murder and all other evils have such power over mankind. Because of them we are commanded not to love ‘the world’ and ‘the things that are in the world’ (1 John 2:15); not so that we should hate God’s creation through lack of discernment, but so that we should eliminate the occasions for these three passions».⁸⁴⁵

Chapter 75

Lines 32–33:

Having the freedom of choice.

One chooses freedom from choice.

The fact that we are always faced with the necessity of choice, says St. Maximus, is evidence of our imperfection, for if we were perfect we would do, immediately and naturally, that which accords with the Way. We go forward gropingly, and often do what is against our true nature. The closer we align ourselves with the Way, however, the less our «free will» will have to be employed, for we will act spontaneously from our true nature which was created to follow the Way.⁸⁴⁶

Lu Hui-ch’ing, commenting on chapter 38 of the Tao Teh Ching, writes:

«Higher Kindness is kindness without effort to be kind. Kind​ness is simply a gift».⁸⁴⁷

Chapter 77

Line 3:

The Way is not found by those who seek after wonders...

Fr. Seraphim Rose said: «It is not first of all miracles which reveal God to men, but something about God that is revealed to a heart that is ready for it. This is what is meant by a ‘burning heart,’ by which the two disciples [on the road to Emmaus] had contact with God Who came in the flesh (Luke, ch. 24)».⁸⁴⁸

The modern-day miracle-worker Archbishop John Maximovitch († 1966) once healed a dying woman for whom the doctors had given up hope. When she came to his church later to be baptized because of the healing, he refused to do it. He believed that one should follow Christ not because of miracles, but because of love, out of a «burning heart».⁸⁴⁹

Line 5:

The Way is not found among those who seek after communion with spirits...

The Russian ascetic and prophet St. Ignatius Brianchaninov († 1867) writes: «The idea that there is anything especially important in the sensuous perception of spirits is a mistaken one. Sensuous perception without spiritual perception does not provide a proper understanding of spirits; it provides only a superficial understanding of them. Very easily it can provide the most mistaken conceptions, and this indeed is what is most often provided to the inexperienced and to those infected with vainglory and self-esteem....

«Those who see spirits, even holy angels, sensuously should not have any fancies about themselves: this perception alone, in itself, is no testimony whatever of the merit of the perceivers. Not only depraved men are capable of this, but even irrational animals».⁸⁵⁰

Chapter 79

Lines 1–5:

«The essence of the Way», said the Ancient Sage,

«Is supremely true:

Within is the evidence.

From the beginning until now its name has remained,

And it contains all Truth».

(Tao Teh Ching, ch. 21 – Gi-ming Shien, trans.)

Some Western spokesmen of ancient Chinese philosophy, striving to justify their own moral and intellectual dilettantism, have given Westerners the impression that this philosophy is, at its core, relativistic. It takes a genuine transmitter of the Chinese tradition like Gi-ming Shien to cut through this false representation and reveal the tradition in its simplicity and practicality, founded on clear belief in Absolute Truth. In Gi-ming’s elucidation of it, the philosophy of ancient China closely resembles that of ancient Greece, especially of Plato. In upholding a standard of Absolute Truth, both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Chinese prepared mankind for the incarnation of Truth in the Person of Jesus Christ.

In Chinese philosophy, Gi-ming affirms, «objective universal value is to be preferred in judgment to the relative value of private opinion. Absolute value can only be judged in relation to the One or Being. The One embraces and comprehends all things; its relation gives to each its true value. Only in this absolute view can objective value be measured.

«When we leave the absolute and become entangled in the private judgment of subjective value then we are in relative value. Here we come into the sense of Protagoras’ measure when he said, ‘A thing seems green to one and blue to another, large to one and small to another, good to me and harmful to him. Consequently there is no objective truth and only the individual is the measure of truth. How many individuals are there? That is how many truths there will be. There is no objective truth at all.’ That is the limitation of understanding which encompasses particular judgment.

«Lao Tzu denies the particular value as illusory fantasy and seeks rather the value of the absolute or the whole One. He said: ‘When all the world recognizes the beauty of the beautiful then it turns to ugliness. When they recognize the good of the good, it ceases to be good’ (Tao Teh Ching, ch. 2). The particular recognition destroys the universal state in which objective value was held.

«We catch a similar view in Plato: ‘The beautiful which is manifest in the sensible world is only relative beauty – that is, when compared with ugly things; they are not beautiful when we compare them with more beautiful things. They are fair today, foul tomorrow; fair at one place, or in one relation, or in one point of view, or to one person, foul under different circumstances and in the judgment of other persons. Hence everything in the world of phenomenal beauty is relative, fleeting and uncertain. But the idea of beauty is everlasting, without beginning and without end; without diminution and without decay; invariable, immutable and absolute. It is beautiful at all times, in all its relations, and from all points of view. It is not merely a notion, neither is it purely individual knowledge, but it is an eternal reality’ (Symposium).

«Here is distinguished real objective value from the fantasy. The real wisdom which philosophy professes to love must of course base itself upon the objective universe and not upon private limitations of a universe of discourse. The merely relative is for entertainment, not for un​derstanding».⁸⁵¹

Line 27:

For He said, «I am Truth».

In seeking the Truth, St. Augustine once asked, «Is Truth therefore nothing because it is not diffused through space finite and infinite?» – and the Truth answered him from afar, «Yet verily, I AM that I AM». Beholding the glory of Him Who is Truth, Augustine could only utter: «O Truth Who art Eternity! and Love Who art Truth! and Eternity Who art Love!»⁸⁵²

Chapter 80

Lines 7–8:

In the Way, there is a reversal,

A circle of return...

As Fr. Seraphim Rose points out in his essay «Emptiness and Full​ness in the Lao Tzu», there are three words in the Tao Teh Ching which are usually translated as «return»: 1) fan (pran in the Old Chinese pronunciation),which means to «turn about» from one opposite to another; 2) fu (byok),which means to «turn back» to a lower, earlier or more primitive state; and 3) kwei (kwyed),which means to «converge» in a place of rest, to «come home». The motion of kwei can be depicted as a tending toward a single point at the center of a circle: toward a state of simplicity and stillness in which the tension of the contraries is harmonized. In this final «circle of return», one no longer «turns about» endlessly from one extreme to the other, but rather «turns back» from the extreme in order to «converge» in the center. Fr. Seraphim identifies this center as wu: the «minim point» of self-emptying which we have discussed earlier.⁸⁵³

Line 10:

And each person, a universe.

«You are a world within a world», says St. Nilus of Ancyra († A.D. 430): «Look within yourself, and see there the whole creation. Do not look at exterior things but turn all your attention to that which lies within. Gather together your whole mind within the noetic treasure-house of your soul, and make ready for the Lord a shrine free from all images».

St. Nicodemus of Mount Athos († 1809) elucidates this teaching in more detail: «God has placed man to be a sort of macrocosmos – a ‘greater world’ within the small one. He is indeed a greater world by virtue of the multitude of powers that he possesses, especially the powers of rea​son, of spirit, and of will, which this great and visible world does not have. This is why St. Gregory Nazianzen again stated that ‘God has placed this second cosmos (i.e., man) to be upon earth as a great world within a small one.’ Even when man is compared with the invisible world of the angels, again he is called a ‘great world,’ while the invisible world is by comparison small. Man includes in his world both the visible and the invisible, while the angelic world does not include the elements of the visible world.... Man as cosmos draws the two ends of the upper and lower world together and thus reveals that the Creator of both is one».⁸⁵⁴

Chapter 81

Line 13:

The sole Bridegroom.

In his parables, Christ calls Himself the Bridegroom, meaning the Bridegroom of the human soul.

Richard Wurmbrand tells a moving story of how, when in a Romanian prison, he prayed to Christ as the Bridegroom of his soul. One day – it was Good Friday – he was put in the carcer for having written «Jesus» on the cell wall. The carcer was a cupboard built into a wall, just high enough to stand in and twenty inches square, with a few small air​holes and one hole for food to be pushed through. All the sides of the cupboard were studded with steel spikes, so that only by standing rigidly upright could one avoid impalement.

When Wurmbrand would collapse from muscle fatigue, lacerating himself on the spikes, the guards would let him out for a rest, then put him back in. In that suffocating darkness, he began to repeat a short prayer which he composed at that moment: «Jesus, dear Bridegroom of my soul, I love you».

«The quiet beating of a loving heart is a music that carries far», Wurmbrand writes, «so I said this phrase to the same rhythm. At first I seemed to hear the devil sneering, ‘You love Him, and He lets you suffer. If He’s all-powerful, why doesn’t He take you out of the carcer?’ I continued to say quietly, ‘Jesus, dear Bridegroom of my soul, I love you’. In a short time... I had ceased to think.

«Later I was often to practice this detachment in bad moments. Jesus says in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, ‘For in such an hour as you think not the Son of Man comes.’ This has been my experience of Him. Don’t think, and Christ will come, taking you by surprise».⁸⁵⁵

Unknown artist of the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960–1279), Strange Peaks and Myriad Trees.