Tao Te Ching · 47 of 81

Chapter 47

Without going outside his door, one understands (all that takes place) under the sky; without looking out from his window, one sees the Tao of Heaven. The farther that one goes out (from himself), the less he knows.

Insight

This sounds anti-empirical until you notice what kind of knowing he's pointing at. He's not saying you can learn geography from your couch. He's saying that the deepest things — what you actually are, why you suffer, what would constitute your peace — can't be solved by going somewhere else. Most people travel to escape themselves and discover at the destination that they brought themselves along. Augustine wrote, 'Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new... you were within me, and I was outside, and there I sought you' (Confessions 10.27). The thing you're looking for is closer than wherever you'd go to find it.Augustine, Confessions 10.27.38. TTC ch. 47 / Augustine parallel on inwardness: Henri de Lubac, 'Catholicism' (1947); Bede Griffiths, 'The Marriage of East and West.'

Therefore the sages got their knowledge without travelling; gave their (right) names to things without seeing them; and accomplished their ends without any purpose of doing so.