Chapter 22

Commentary::

To be complete, bend. Here, the term “complete” also refers to our natural state or condition. Our condition without contrivance “bends” or adapts, but in doing so, does not change. Bent then straight, hollow then full, exhausted then renewed means that, in the flow of life, though conditions vary, our inner or true nature, our natural condition, is unchanging. When we feel this is not the case, that our basic nature has been overwhelmed, this confusion is called “excess.” Excess is confusion. Confusion, in this case, is a temporary outward focus guided by the misapprehension of a world which, in some very important sense, does not truly exist apart from our subjective thoughts and feelings. It is the world that zuowang “forgets” yet does not “reject.”

Adepts “hold to the One,” applying the natural state to all under Heaven. If zuowang was to become complete (holding to One), it would mean a constant sense of forgetfulness. We would be confident in the variation or impermanence of the “world/self” dichotomy. This sense of Natural State unifies all phenomena and does not busy itself with the distinctions and actions of ordering and reordering the “world” according to “self.”

What is the feeling sense of naturalness? Selfless, therefore luminous; unassertive, yet effective; making no claims efficient, without the vanity of enduring influence.

By not struggling, competition does not arise. Struggle is compulsion. It dis-sipates. The ancient saying, “To be complete, bend” is no idle remark. True completion is return. The natural condition, the experience of the Adepts, is Qi, a sort of flowing Time and Space rather than a fixed or solid state of “correct.” As in the first statement between “this and that” (and indeed, through “this and that”), constancy simply exists-constancy of Qi. Complete is bent, because true completion includes and demonstrates every sort of shape.

Footnotes::