Tao Te Ching 5

The Tao doesn’t take sides; it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable.
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Jesus taught that God “causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.” Similarly, he told us not to judge others. What meaning can that injunction have if it doesn’t mean that we’re not to judge the good and the evil we believe we see in others?

The Tao, like God, gives birth, in a manner of speaking, to all things. All things come from it and all things return to it. When we pass judgment on people and things we give birth to the concepts of good and evil. That which I call good, someone else calls evil. That which I call evil, someone else calls good. There is only a child’s handful of things that all of us call good or evil. Perhaps that handful is all we need to remember.

In the second line above, the Tao Te Ching introduces us to its paradoxical nature and to the Eastern concept of emptiness. This isn’t emptiness as we think of it – rather, it’s a paradoxical emptiness, one that contains everything.

In this example, if a bellows were not empty, it would be of no use. As we expand a bellows we expand its capacity for emptiness and in so doing we increase its capability. The Tao invites us to expand our capacity and capability in similar manner.

One of the things we need to “empty” ourselves of is our judgment of the good and evil we believe we see in others. Those judgments, along with myriad other concepts, assessments, opinions, ideas and views, fill our “bellows”, leaving no space for it to function as intended. To the extent that we “empty” ourselves, we will increase our clarity, capacity and capability.