Tao Te Ching Ch. 4: Emptiness

Fascism & Taoism & Neoliberalism, oh my!

Emptiness carries a negative connotation in western culture. Someone saying, ‘I feel empty inside,’ suggests that they are lacking in their humanity, that they are living without purpose, perhaps depressed or apathetic. Being empty means being useless, and all that is considered good and desirable in the west is a correction to this emptiness. Empty time must be filled with projects, hobbies, and side hustles. An empty mind must be filled with knowledge and stimulation. An empty heart indicates something deeply wrong with one’s spiritual and emotional health. We are conditioned to avoid emptiness at all costs, indeed to fear emptiness.

When we fear emptiness, we do not create a culture of wholeness, but of excess. We fill our lives with consumer goods, immediacy, superficiality, and hyperactivity. And we are left, ironically, depleted and exhausted. In Byung-Chul Han’s book The Burnout Society, he writes, ‘Life has never been as fleeting as it is today. Not just human life, but the world in general is becoming radically fleeting. Nothing promises duration or substance.’¹ The book argues that our focus on productivity and positivity (“you can do anything you set your mind to!”) creates a willing self-exploitation in which, because we are sold on the lie of meritocracy, we are willing to grind, bleed, and sacrifice in order to achieve “success.” We are told that the meritocratic competition is freedom, that the free market rewards those who are most deserving, but as Marx wrote, ‘it is not individuals who are set free by free competition; it is, rather, capital which is set free.’² This was true in Marx’s time, but essentially becomes law under neoliberalism, in which the state removes any and all barriers that might limit the free movement of capital.

Marx’s prophecy of a proletarian revolution creating a classless, moneyless society is even more difficult to achieve under neoliberalism. Because of its inherent hyper-individualism and what Byung-Chul Han calls the ‘violence of positivity’, we turn our aggression against ourselves rather than systems of power and oppression, meaning we are ‘not inclined to revolution so much as depression.’³

So what is the answer to the Burnout Society? Byung-Chul Han says that contemplation and inactivity are a good start.⁴ The capitalist structure is not going anywhere until we learn how to see things clearly. ‘Learning to see means “getting your eyes used to calm, to patience, to letting things come to you”— that is, making yourself capable of deep and contemplative attention, casting a long and slow gaze.’⁵

In the vita contemplativa, we don’t turn away from conflict or political engagement. Rather, we use our state of contemplation to consider the best way forward. ‘The vita contemplativa is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens. Instead, it offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli.’

In other words, emptiness.

Lao Tzu writes in verse #22 of the Tao Te Ching, ‘be empty to be full,’ a paradoxical statement on its surface. But understanding this paradox is the key to understanding emptiness, so let’s dive in using verse #4.

The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.

Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.

Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.
Whose child? born
before the gods.

Verse #4 Analysis

The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.

Verse #3 touched on emptying one’s mind to allow effortless action [wu wei], as well as emptying oneself of desire, but here we see that the tao itself is empty. But what is the benefit of being empty, anyways?

When Lao Tzu writes, ‘be empty to be full,’ (Verse #22) he is saying that only when one empties oneself can they find wholeness. If you are always full—of activity, of business, of stimulation—you leave no room for anything else to enter. Later in the verse he writes ‘to be whole is to return.’ This reminds me of Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, where her fictional revolutionary leader Odo said, ‘To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.’ The first part of this quote gets at the anarchist philosophy of being a part of something larger than yourself, but the aspect of return is the more Taoism-influenced bit (Verse #14: ‘The return to the root is peace.’ Verse #40: ‘Return is how the Way moves.’) Only when one bends can one be straight, only when they wear themselves out can they be renewed, only when they empty themselves can they be full. All of these statements (paraphrased from Verse 22) imply return.

Return also drives anarchism and communism. Early humans existed in form of primitive communism; there was no class, no money, no state, and rewards were shared. Now that humans have advanced to a state of abundance driven by technology, communism is driven by the desire to return to the pre-civilization society in which everyone has food, shelter, and safety; a return to the tao, if you will. But I digress.

Verse #4 also made me think of another thing that returns/cycles: water. Water fills the container of emptiness, but like the deep sea (and the tao) it could never be used up. Verse #8 says that water ‘goes right to the low loathsome places, and so finds the way.’ Water is elusive and has no shape of its own; it takes the form of its container. The way is empty and ancestral to the ten thousand things (aka the material world). But water gives life to the ten thousand things. So our universe would be cold and lifeless without the life-giving aspects of water.

One’s mind in meditation is, at its best, one of emptiness. An empty mind does not mean that one concentrates their mind to block thoughts, a common beginner mistake that I made, but rather, one allows thoughts to come and go in perfect indifference. When one’s mind is empty, it does not hold on to anything. It does not assign plusses or minuses to thoughts or emotions, but instead it simply watches. Verse #16 says, ‘Empty yourself of everything. / Let the mind become still. / The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.’⁶ The ten thousand things, birthed from the tao, rise and fall with the breath in meditation, and the self watches this sequence and their subsequent return. Verse #4 continues:

Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.

In typical Lao Tzu fashion, we are presented with some seeming paradoxes, or at least oppositions. Gia-fu Feng’s translation is more instructive. He writes: ‘Blunt the sharpness, / Untangle the knot, / Soften the glare, / Merge with dust.’ Let’s take one line at a time.

“Sharpness” or “edge” can be thought of as similar to cunning or cleverness. We see this with more clarity in Verse #20: ‘Others are sharp and clever, But I alone am dull and stupid.’ Cleverness and cunning are tied to deceit for Lao Tzu, and he thinks we would be better off removing such pretense.

“Loosing bond or “Untangle the knot” suggests to me that one should avoid overcomplicating things. Le Guin echoes this language in Verse #12: ‘Trying to get rich ties people in knots.’ Being tied in a knot is being in a state of tension. We are constantly being pulled in different directions by the past and the future, depression from past events and anxiety of the future. To be at peace, to be one with the tao, is to loosen the temporal tension and find the loose and flowing present. An untangled knot is just a piece of rope, and a piece of rope is like the tao; it is flexible and can be twisted and pulled by external forces without ever losing its character.

“Soften the glare” is particularly interesting when you think about the use of light in Eastern vs. Western art. Western art is often lit dramatically, emanating from a single source, such as the divine light of an angel which blinds from above, or the below painting by Vermeer whose light source is ‘the immanence of the world and of things.’⁷ The light in western art is one of presence, which draws your attention to particular bright objects (the white of the girl’s clothing, her pale skin, the shining jewelry, the balance)

Woman Holding a Balance, Johannes Vermeer (1663)

Eastern art, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. It is an art style of absence.

Their backgrounds are an evenly lit matt white. The figures seem to be there only to bring out the white of the paper. Earth and sky, mountains and water, flow into each other, creating a hovering landscape of emptiness. The light in the pictures is also directionless. It suffuses the landscape in a mood of absence.⁸

Unknown source

These three lines (which by the way, all imply return) are followed by the most opaque and enigmatic line thus far, ‘the way is the dust of the way.’ Interestingly, this stanza is repeated almost word-for-word by Le Guin in Verse #56, with one additional line added:

blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
be one with the dust of the way.
So you come to the deep sameness.

‘The dust of the way.’ Now what the fuck does that mean? I’ve been putting off this post because I don’t feel like I have a good interpretation. Perhaps he is saying that because dust is ever-present, it is more eternal than a sharp edge or a knot or a bright light. Additionally, seeing the cosmic overtones of this verse, it is interesting to think of it in the context of stardust, though of course this would not have been Lao Tzu’s intention. I don’t know, honestly. Drop a comment and let me know your interpretation.

Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.

Le Guin takes some liberties here. Rather than ‘hidden’ and ‘ever-present’ (of the other translations) she says ‘quiet’ and ‘likely to endure.’ I have already written on the enduring, eternal nature of the tao, so let’s talk about ‘quiet,’ a quality that I have come to deeply appreciate living in a hectic city full of noise. Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Silence:

All the wonders of life are already here. They’re calling you. If you can listen to them, you will be able to stop running. What you need, what we all need, is silence. Stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. Then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply.

I struggled to be able to quiet my mind when I moved to Hong Kong last year, and it made me deeply anxious and overwhelmed. The noise of my apartment building is cacophonous and unceasing, and no solace is found on the busy steets. I would search for silence at the beach or in nature, with varying degrees of success, but I found myself unable to escape the noise. It took a long while, but I have slowly adapted to be able to not let the noise bother me as much, to appreciate the rare moments of quiet, but realize that even the beach karaoke or the neighbor maniacally laughing at his video games, or the chatter of busy trails are merely an extension of human life. Focusing on the fact that these sounds are simply humans enjoying life opened up the ability for the noise to float in and out of my consciousness with less of an effect on my peace.

Whose child? born
before the gods.

Le Guin wraps up by repeating the mystery of Tao’s origins. As the forefather of the gods, the tao precedes all things of this world, even the universe itself. The final words of verse #4 inspire a deep sense of wonder and sublimity.

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In my analysis of verse #2, I asserted that our existence right now is one of disharmony with the tao.

At the cosmic scale, humanity’s entire existence is a grain of sand, and the industrial age is perhaps an individual molecule within this grain of sand. I think that the Tao and its harmony and balance could be the true nature of reality. But right now? How could anyone say this is hamonious?

Even since writing that post, the threat of fascism has only grown more tangible and terrifying. But what I think is missing from the discourse is an acknowledgment that fascism is caused by neoliberal capitalism, by its culture of excess and individualism. As Prahbat Patnaik writes in the Boston Review, ‘The neofascist assault on democracy is a last-ditch effort on the part of neoliberal capitalism to rescue itself from crisis.’⁹

Mussolini and Hitler both came into power with the blessing of big business. They were prototypical strongmen capable of advancing the interests of capital through sheer power and repression (sound familiar?). Now, businesses and institutions everywhere are capitulating to Trump’s demands. Businesses are removing diversity initiatives, universities are selling out their students to ICE, law firms are allowing Trump to bully them into defending only those he deems worthy. Understand that this is not an accident. This is capital taking the path of least resistance. It is therefore up to us to make sure that they feel resistance in other ways.

The Taoist solution of emptiness is, I believe, an effective method for combatting neoliberalism, but it cannot be the only solution. At this moment when there is energy behind political engagement, if we’re organized and educated, this is can be capitalism’s dying breath. But if we’re passive and ignorant, something much worse will follow it.

I think a lot of white liberals say that want to change the world, but really they are comfortable preserving the status quo. Perhaps it takes a threat like this to realize that the even those privileged few are not safe under the status quo.

I am not saying you need to be a communist or a Marxist, but capitalism is well on the way to destroying itself, and if we want to create something better afterwards, we need to start an earnest discussion about the alternatives.

Sorry if this post was kind of all over the place. I have found it almost impossible to separate any writing I do from politics, and though I tried to relate the two realms of influence (individual liberation and societal liberation), it still feels a bit messy. Anyways, peace, love, and stay safe.

1. Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, p. 26

2. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 650

3. Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, p. 7

4. This does not stand in opposition to organizing, community engagement, or any form of social revolution, but rather complements it. Le Guin wrote in The Dispossessed, “the revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing.”

5. Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, p. 21. This passage also quotes Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings

6. Gia-fu Feng translation

7. Byung-Chul Han, Absence, p. 36

8. Byung-Chul Han, Absence, 37

9. Why Neoliberalism Needs Neofascists by Prahbat Patnaik, Boston Review.