Tao Te Ching
"Heaven, Earth, and Man" calligraphy by Chögyam Trungpa
Natural Hierarchy
“Natural Hierarchy” is at the core of Chögyam Trungpa’s political philosophy. Without the clarity of this principle, he thought the fundamental quality of democracy quickly becomes lost and corrupted. Based on the indivisibility of basic goodness, the natural world, and the hierarchy within ourselves; it appreciates true democracy while criticizing the tendency to conflate equality with an ego-centric individualism that denies the reality of our diversity in skills, intelligence, and realization.
The neo-Confucian political approach confuses the common tendency of power corrupting and creating economic and political divisions by applying the principles of leadership and power to everyone. The lowest level person in an organization has their own high place within their family. The lowest level person in a family or living alone in a society has the same leadership issues when dealing with themselves.
From a Darwinian perspective, survival of our species depends on two contradictory qualities: on one side, a conservatism that preserves, protects, and stabilizes society; on the other side, an innovative, creative, and sometimes radical approach that welcomes change. The conflict between these two approaches led Marshall McLuhan to comment that "All new technologies require a war"—cultural if not physical. And since evolution rarely confronts a need for rapid, radical change; humans most often inherit conservative genes and only infrequently the more creative propensity.
This genetic influence to keep things the same explains why most of our most wise and perceptive forefathers were ridiculed, banished, jailed, or even killed. This strong, conservative force led to the caste system in India, the class system in Great Britain, and the various forms of aristocracy around the world. While historically this rigid conservatism served us well for the majority of the human experience, it prevents or at least inhibits our ability to meet the challenges of this constantly and radically changing modern world.
Purely as a theory, it's easy to argue for Rule by Aristocracy as best. People can be trained by birth in all the best ways of policy and government. Already wealthy and powerful, they shouldn't be susceptible to bribery and other types of corruption. In the real world, however, enough is never enough and the wealthy most often only want more wealth, more power and privilege. China may have had more success with this but it seems to have dramatically failed every time tried in the West. For example, the English House of Lords who—throughout the 19th century—stridently opposed every attempt to improve the educational, financial, or status of the lower classes.
The English Empire could be a good example of how this dynamic can play out on a global, political scale. England's rigid class structure created a strong and efficient foundation for the industrialization that took England to the peaks of world influence and power. People taught to accept without challenge their born place in the world easily fit into the rigid drudgery of factory work. As more and more technological automation developed however, the need for more flexible creativity arose and England's class fixations brought the empire down.
Quotes (81)
“Each new dawn is a miracle; each new sky fills with beauty. Their testimony speaks to the whole world and reaches to the ends of the earth.”
“Those who govern with virtue are like the North Star, which remains in its place while the myriad stars revolve around it.”
“It is impossible to withdraw from the world and associate with birds and beasts that have no affinity with us. The disorder that prevails is what requires my efforts. If right principles ruled through the kingdom, there would be no necessity for me to change its state.”
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
“When rulers don't exploit them, the people naturally grow rich, when the rulers don't manipulate them, the people naturally become civilized.”
“Know the other and know oneself,
Then victory is not in danger.
Know earth and know heaven,
Then victory can be complete.”
“The laws of men derive from the divine law, which is whole and single, which penetrates as it will to satisfy human purposes, but is mightier than any law know to men.”
“just because a man happens to be rich and eminent or pleasant-featured and attractive, he will not necessarily turn out to be wise and alert when placed in office... this will lead to ruin.”
“know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves… The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Those who labor with their mind-and-hearts govern others; those who labor with their strength are governed by others. Those who are governed provide for others, those who govern are provided for by others.”
“Sages… treat the people as if they were their children. Thus, the whole world wants them for their leaders. The people never grow tired of them because sages don’t struggle against them. Everyone struggles against something but no one struggles against those who don’t struggle against anything.”
“If our deeds don’t influence others, we should look into ourselves and cultivate a greater goodness.”
“It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.”
“Invoke the characteristics of the people you admire most and adopt their manners, speech, and behavior as your own. There is nothing false in this. We all carry the seeds of greatness within us, but we need an image as a point of focus in order that they may sprout.”
“Dogs own space and cats own time. Kings travel from place to place like a cat but want to own those places like a dog. It's why there are wars.”
“O fool, know yourself. It is not a matter of meditation, or concentration… the diversity of existence is but a form of thought.”
“When someone uses laws to restrict the world, might to compel it, knowledge to silence it, and majesty to impress it, there are always those who don’t follow. When someone rules by means of the Tao, the world follows without thinking.”
“If there is transgression of the hierarchy, it is a matter of the secular law of the chieftains.”
“We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each others's hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace, and happiness.”
“Nature is the highest good and the highest excellence lies in accepting the laws of Nature completely.”
“The sovereign without the small man suffers from hunger; the small man without the sovereign lives in chaos.”
“Even animals know what to do when commanded but only the wise know when not told.”
“If you become a man who realizes that the Buddha and his follower Bodhidharma are your own servants, you may leave off studying and work for humanity... If you are dependent on any of its methods, you are an ignorant insect.”
“Without army, no king; without revenues, no army; without taxes, no revenue; without agriculture, no taxes; without just government, no agriculture”
“Above all things, good policy is to prevent treasuries and monies in a state from being gathered into a few hands.”
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—which is but an artificial man.”
“The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.”
“As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.”
“Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.”
“Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.”
“Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor... Government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind,”
“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.”
“by nature and from the first, it is not justice that rules on earth but force... Justice is in itself powerless. To draw this over to the side of justice, so that by means of force justice rules—that is the problem of statecraft.”
“Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch… He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorized it.”
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.”
“The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national Land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other.”
“The aristocrats always failed every time they had their chance... From the first moment that we catch sight of it in history, it is a failure. Class privilege became class prejudice; inherited power creates a thirst for acquiring more power; nobility of birth has no connection with spiritual nobility.”
“Civilization is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables are the things of first importance, there is the height of civilization”
“I always knew that I was two people—One was the son of my parents who went to school and was less intelligent attentive hard-working, decent, and clean than many other boys The other was grown up—old in fact—skeptical, misrustful, remote from the world of men, men but close to nature, the earth, the sun, the moon, the weather, all living creatures, and above all close to the night, to dreams, and whatever 'God' worked directly in him.”
“That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as desired... He is an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit.”
“Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
“He must have pitied [men] in order to have created woman and favored her with such grace that she leads us to paradise along the surest and shortest of roads. Woman is more powerful than prayer, fasting, and—forgive me, Lord—even than virtue.”
“All men are created unequal... Politics is the art of compromise between the classes”
“Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.”
“Either the world will be governed according to the ideas of modern democracy and the weight of any decision will result in favor of the numerically stronger races, or the world will be dominated in accordance with the laws of the natural order of force, and then it is the peoples of brutal will who will conquer.”
“Traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete.”
“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”
“Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics.”
“It is high time that we stop thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom.”
“We who say that we believe in democracy… committed to the proposition that all men shall be free cannot admit that ordinary people cannot have a good education… The aim of education is wisdom and each must have the chance to become as wise as he can.”
“There have been countless political revolutions and other upheavals in the course of history but their final outcome has always been to recreate communities of a few hundred to a few thousand people in which everyone knew his or her place in the social order of things and accepted, willingly or under duress, the local rules of the game.”
“Animals do feel like us, also joy, love, fear and pain but they cannot grasp the spoken word. It is our obligation to take their part and continue to resist the people who profit by them, who slaughter them and who torture them.”
“the destruction of traditional hierarchies and orders of social life... deprived great numbers of men of social and emotional security, produced the notorious phenomena of alienation, spiritual homelessness, and growing anomie”
“spontaneous knowledge that existed before scientific knowledge and serves only as a crude imitation or explanation of what nature does naturally. One does not need to learn knowledge from science; it is enough to learn (that is imitate) nature.”
“Seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, challenge them, and unless a justification… dismantle to increase the scope of human freedom.”
“From the divine right of kings through the deadly teachings of Hitler and Mao to the mumbojumbo of economists, government by theory has done endless ill.”
“You have to make order, you have to make distinctions, but you also have to know when to stop before you’ve lost the whole in the multiplicity of parts.”
“If we only use our strength to help ourselves, we will automatically make hierarchies to prevent others in a subtle way from being equal. As a result of this style in which those on top try to keep others down, everyone's mind becomes heavy.”
“Although almost all our attention goes toward the surface, the form of government; the deep importance and influence has much less to do with the description, the name - much more to with integrity of the people involved.”
“It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.”
“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.”
“In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.”
“Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government… Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern. The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.”
“The Buddhist idea of a politician is not so much one of a con man or of a businessman who wins favor with everybody, but someone who simply does what is necessary… having a sense of responsibility to society.”
“Democracy is built on the attitude that I speak out for myself, the invincible me… but that approach doesn’t work.”
“We are hierarchical animals. Sweep one hierarchy away, and another will take its place, perhaps less palatable than the first.”
“Marxism is a flight from the magic of the person and the mystique of hierarchy. It distorts the character of western culture, which is based on the charismatic power of person. Marxism can work only in pre-industrial societies of homogeneous populations. Raise the standard of living, and the rainbow riot of individualism will break out. Personality and art, which Marxism fears and censors, rebound from every effort to oppress them.”
“every single civilization including this western world, was brought into being from a sacred place to serve a sacred purpose. And when that purpose is forgotten… the fundamental balance and harmony of its existence become disrupted”
“Social hierarchy can assume many forms, and in every human society it seems to find one… the deeply human hunger for status and the seemingly universal presence of hierarchy… it becomes doubtful that any truly egalitarian human society has ever existed… Is inequality indeed, as Darwin suggested, a prerequisite for economic or political advancement?”
“our need for hierarchies is linked to food and protection… the ones who were lucky enough to be built like linebackers would get to eat first… So to solve the problem, we evolved into hierarchical animals.”
“Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.”
“Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.”
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