Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
- The TTC wants us to know that something that's well-established can't be uprooted, and that something that's held strongly can't be taken from us.
- If this is the case, then our descendants will celebrate it forever.
- We wonder what this "thing" is.
- Does the TTC mean a person's relationship with the Tao?
- Is it saying that if we have a strong spiritual foundation, no one can take it away from us?
- Seems likely.
- Now we get a passage about how you can spread the way of the Tao.
- First, you can cultivate it in yourself, then in your family, then in your community, then your in country, and then in the world.
- So if you live with the Tao, it slowly spreads from you to everybody around you and goes further and further.
- You don't have to go out and evangelize.
- Next, we're told that you can see the Tao of others through yourself, of other families through your family, of other communities through your community.
- Could this be another way of encouraging you to establish a firm, personal relationship with the Tao, and to let that that radiate outward?
- The chapter ends by telling us to observe the world with the world.
- But how do we know that the world is?
- Easy.
- It's just another part of the Tao like everything else.
- If we have that strong spiritual foundation, we can see it for what it is.