Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
- This one gives us a laundry list of advice.
- We've got to be in touch with both our masculine and feminine sides, the TTC tells us.
- On that note, we've got to be the "watercourse of the world" (28.2).
- That's the place where the energy of everything meets.
- As we have been in other chapters, we're next advised to try to be like babies, who exist in a simple, open state.
- We're to hold onto the white and the black, both sides of the Tao that are represented by the yin-yang. (Fess up: you know at least one person with a yin-yang tattoo, don't you?)
- We also have to be honorable and humble.
- Repeating another image from earlier, the TTC tells us we need to be simple like plain wood.
- The TTC points out that when plain wood splits it can be made into tools.
- We figure this is a metaphor for the way a person who finds simplicity can make themselves useful.
- According to the TTC, sages can use their simplicity to be leaders and unite the greater whole.