Tao Te Ching · 70 of 81

Chapter 70

My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise; but there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise them.

Insight

My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise; but there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise them. Read this carefully, because it's a confession buried in the middle of the book. Lao Tzu is not saying his teaching is hard. He's saying it's so simple it can't be received. The mind, hungry for sophisticated answers, slides off anything this plain. This is also what every contemplative tradition reports: the basic instructions are short and have always been short. The trouble is in following them, not in understanding them.TTC's self-aware difficulty trope: see also chs. 41 ('the highest scholar, hearing about the Tao, exerts himself to practice it; the lowest, hearing, laughs at it'). Standard mystical-tradition observation about the simplicity-resistance problem.

There is an originating and all-comprehending (principle) in my words, and an authoritative law for the things (which I enforce). It is because they do not know these, that men do not know me.

They who know me are few, and I am on that account (the more) to be prized. It is thus that the sage wears (a poor garb of) hair cloth, while he carries his (signet of) jade in his bosom.