Here is the final instment of Tom Bisio's Dao De Jing meditation guide.
Dao De Jing as a guide to Daoist Meditation Part 9
By Tom Bisio, Internal Arts International October, 2026
This is the ninth part of a series of posts. Although the analysis of these chapters leans heavily on He Shang Gong’s (Ho Shang Kung) commentary on the text, He Shang Gong’s chapter headings read like instructions or guideposts for the practice of Daoist meditation, a bit like a “how to” book. In this post we look at Chapter 27: On the Use of Cleverness.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Dao De Jing quotes are from Ho-Shang-Kung’s Commentary on Lao-Tse, translated and annotated by Eduard Erkes. Switzerland: Press of Artibus Asiae Ascona (First published in Journal Artibus Saiae 1950). I highly recommend this translation and commentary if you can obtain a copy.
This is the final installment of the series of posts on the Dao De Jing & Daoist Meditation. There is more to say on this subject, so further commentary on the Dao De Jing & Daoist Meditation will be part of our online course on Daoist Dissolving Meditation due to come out later this year.
Dao De Jing Chapter 27: On the Use of Cleverness
Who walks well leaves neither rut nor track.
Who talks well receives neither blame nor reproach.
Who counts well needs no abacus.
Who closes well needs no bolts and bars, and one cannot open.
Who ties well needs no knotted cords, and one is nevertheless not able to untie.
Therefore the saint always benignly saves men.
Therefore there are no rejected men.
Always benignly he saves the creatures.
This is called conforming to the light.
Therefore the good man is the teacher of the bad man.
The bad man is the tool of the good man.
If one does not revere one’s teacher,
if one does not love one’s tool,
though wise, one is very confused.
This is called mysterious.
The first five lines of this chapter elaborate a similar theme to previous passages, that the person cultivating carefully guards his or her energies and keeps focus on inner unity. When he walks, he leaves no trace of his passing. The skillful traveler follows the natural path of things, without forcing his way through obstacles or stepping on other travelers. This is reminiscent of the line in Chapter 26 – Therefore the saint walks about the whole day and does not separate from quietude & gravity. Even when he travels far the saint does not give into distractions and emotions that pull him away from his True Nature. Although one must “walk through life” exposed to many things that can pull us one way or another, it is important to hold onto the essentials, one’s fundamental essence. Similarly, being skilled in speech means one chooses words carefully, and does not use words to reproach others or highlight their faults, because this can cause resentment and contention which block the natural movement and changes.
Counting does not require an abacus or a calculator because, as He Shang Gong points out, when one counts one need not go beyond one – beyond one’s own inner unity. Hence there is nothing to calculate and nothing to plan. He does not make many calculations therefore he needs no abacus and is nevertheless able to know.[1] Dan Reid renders this as: Those who are excellent at finding a strategy to attain the Dao simply guard Oneness within and do not shift from it. Their strategies are not numerous, and so they do not use counting devices to know them all.[2]
“Closing well” means to guard the energies and spirits within, not letting them slip out to follow one’s desires. He Shang Gong refers to this as retaining one’s “semen” (sexual energies). Closing oneself to desire thereby protects the spirit. This occurs naturally by holding onto unity and is not like attempting to retain the spirits and energies with bolts and locks – external mental and physical constructs that are unnatural and therefore bound to fail or be circumvented.
In cultivating, one does not need knots and ropes to bind up the mind and its doings. The Heart-Mind naturally stays focused inside, it does not need to be controlled or dictated to by the “cords and bindings” of others, or even by the traces (writings) of former sages. These bindings are easily untied. By connecting the Dao to daily affairs, it effortlessly becomes tied to the Heart-Mind. This also applies to dealing with others. The sage-like person doesn’t bind others to him by force or other constraints, instead relationships with others unfold because one proceeds from a place of inner unity and stillness, without trying to make others conform to one behavior or another.
This is similar to Wang Bi’s commentary on Chapter 49 in which he says: free of the need to hide or respond none will fail to act in accord with his innate tendencies.[3] The next section of this chapter (Chapter 27) which speaks about the saint saving others and rejecting no one is also similar to a section of Dao De Jing Chapter 49:
To those who are excellent, I am excellent
To those who are not excellent, I am also excellent
This is the virtue [De] of Excellence
To those who are sincere, I am sincere
To those who are not sincere, I am also sincere[4]
By saving and guarding one’s internal energies one rediscovers and unifies one’s True Nature (Xing) and life force (Ming). This inner unity reinvigorates life, so one is able to treat all things equally and reject nothing. The Saint does not despise the stone nor esteem the jade. He regards them as though they were one and the same.[5] Treating all things equally eliminates the delusion of good and bad and allows one to use one’s energies to transform.
The saint always benignly saves his own life and perhaps by his example the lives of others by faithfully being himself and conforming to the changes in the world around him. Because he does not judge, and therefore accepts all points of view, he or she can work with the spirits and with others without forcing them to become something they are not, so nothing and no one is rejected, because nothing and no one is good or bad. Because the worthy and resourceful are not exalted and because there are no honors or accolades, there is no contention and distraction. Because the sage keeps himself from desires nothing and no one is rejected. This is called maintaining the light.
The next lines, referring to good and bad men, take us back to Dao De Jing Chapter 2 in which Lao Zi points out that calling things good or bad is relative. As opposites are dependent on each other, such distinctions are not only nuanced, they also get in the way of self-cultivation by creating division, friction and blockage of the unfolding transformation by fixing things one way or another.
The last four lines of Chapter 27 at first seem a bit confusing:
If one does not revere one’s teacher,
if one does not love one’s tool,
though wise, one is very confused.
This is called mysterious.
Previously Lao Zi seemed to say that one should not follow others or use others, but here even in He Shang Gong’s commentary we are told that if one has no one to instruct, though they may think themselves wise, they are in fact confused. However, if we think of the unity of the Dao as the teacher and the tool as the body and its energies, then we return to the meaning of the text and self-cultivation. Knowing lots of facts is not wisdom, but confusion. Focusing the energies in silence and quiet allows one to penetrate the mysterious Dao, the unitary, nameless and formless basis of reality.
The ideas of Guo Xiang can aid our understanding of these passages. Guo Xiang (252–312), one of the most famous commentators on the Zhuangzi, felt that this “reality” of the Dao is expressed as a process he calls “lone transformation” (duha), a kind of self-transformation in which all things are responsible for their own creation and for the set of relationships that exist between themselves and the rest of the world. Our self-transformation was and is at each moment conditioned by all the self-transformations coming before us and we in turn condition all the self-transformations that come after us.[6]
Guo describes things as having a “rightness” in and of themselves. In this rightness they interact perfectly, much like the various organs of the body working harmoniously, the self-rightness of the interaction expressed by the total forgetting of each other’s existence. This is the opposite of cognitive self-valuation and following or imitating others, or their traces, but rather forgetting them and remaining different. Guo holds that since all other things are held to be the conditions of the existence of any given thing, this thing is not dependent on any particular one of them, but rather on any of them, and hence on no thing in particular. Each effect is then conceived of as synthesizing all the causes that condition it, which will be seen as partially analogous to the sage’s forgetting of the otherness of the things he encounters and “follows along with.”[7]
Rather than encouraging us to disengage from the world and become hermits, we must become engaged with the world around us, but not because of a continuous state of existence that we share with people and things around us, rather, it is because of a continuous act of creation that at its core makes us responsible for the world and its proper maintenance.[8]
Notes:
[1] Ho-Shang-Kung’s Commentary on Lao-Tse, translated and annotated by Eduard Erkes. Switzerland: Press of Artibus Asiae Ascona (First published in Journal Artibus Saiae 1950) p. 56.
[2] The Ho-Shang Kung Commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, Dan G. Reid, trans. (Montreal: Center Ring Publishing, 2015) p. 136.
[3] The Classic of the Way and Virtue Tao-Te-Ching of Lao Zi as interpreted by Wang Bi, Richard John Lynn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) p.144-46.
[4] The Ho-Shang Kung Commentary on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, Dan G. Reid, trans p.193-94.
[5] Ho-Shang-Kung’s Commentary on Lao-Tse, translated and annotated by Eduard Erkes. Switzerland: Press of Artibus Asiae Ascona (First published in Journal Artibus Saiae 1950) p.56-57.
[6] “Guo Xiang (c. 252 – 312 C.E.)” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://iep.utm.edu/guoxiang/)
[7] The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang, Brook Ziporyn, (United States: State University of New York Press, 2012) p. 20
[8] Guo Xiang (c. 252 – 312 C.E.)” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://iep.utm.edu/guoxiang/)
