The Agile Tao

Lao Tzu Refactored

Peter Merel
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For Gigi & Riley
Contents

Open Sample 1

Appendix 2. Glossagraphy 2

Part 1: Flow 4

Part 2: Agility 24

Part 3: Harmony 51

Explanations 78

Open Sample 96
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1
Appendix 2. Glossagraphy
Here’s a summary of critical word choices. Note that these are not
always applied consistently; where context opposes them I’ve gone
with best fit.

P’u
Uncarved wood, a state of awareness without distinctions. You
may think of zen satori or Inception’s “pure unreconstructed
dream space”.
Sheng-ren
Agility / The agile. A way of being focused on harmonious co-
evolution rather than hope and fear for the self.
Tao
Life as a fractal, non-local continuum underpinning the sur-
face of mind. The universal metaphor for Gaia and Panspermia.
Te Evolution as a process of mutual benefit and interdependence
between people and nature.
Tian
Mind, a surface of awareness generated by the interplay of form
and information. Traditionally translated as “Heaven”
Wan-Wu
The world constructed of patterns and distinctions - in many
translations this is “The ten thousand things”
Wu-wei
Self-organization or autopoiesis, the self-sustaining relation-
ship of living forms that itself constitutes a living form.
Tian-xia
Nature regarded as a co-evolving whole rather than a com-
posite of individual creatures. Traditonally “The Earth” or “all
under Heaven”.

2
Appendix 2. Glossagraphy 3

Ming
Contentment, not as self-satisfaction but as the experience of
being in the right place at the right time
Part 1: Flow

4
Part 1: Flow 5

1. Mind (i)

Life is not the breath in your lungs,

Nor mind the thoughts in your head;
Mind is the course of all thoughts,
And life, its source.
Thought represents form;
Form expresses thought;
Each generating the other
In waves on the surface of mind.
Beneath the surface,
Formless and silent,
Boundless and liquid,
Dream dreams with no dreamer.
Part 1: Flow 6

2. Cycles (ii)

Beauty fades and love dies

Because all forms are cycles.
Chaos evolves pattern,
Whole breaks apart,
Hope breeds fear,
Weakness supports strength,
Growth feeds decay,
After becomes before.
As all forms cycle, agility takes no form
But harmony with the ebb and flow of forms.
It anticipates forms without commanding them,
Accepts them without controlling them,
Adapts them without constraining them.
Part 1: Flow 7

3. Form and Function (xi/x)

Thirty spokes meet at a hub;

On an axle we turn the wheel.
Clay is spun into a vessel;
At its lip we sip the cup.
Bricks are stacked around a chimney;
By its hearth we warm our bones.
Each form that encloses
Functions by its opening.
Agility opens life to change,
Accepting its control,
Adapting its constraints
To the form of harmony.
Part 1: Flow 8

4. Harmony (iv/vi/vii/v)

Evolving and revolving,

Life can’t be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
Nor the source of thought
Be plumbed by thought.
Reflecting and responding,
Mind adapts all flesh.
Rippling and refracting,
None breach its shining surface.
Splitting and merging,
Nature follows all paths.
Ranging beyond reach,
None span its winding delta.
Pulsing at root and lung,
Harmony connects all needs;
For what one treats as waste
Another thirsts and breathes.
Part 1: Flow 9

5. Now (xiv)

Watched but can’t be seen - it’s behind vision;

Listened but can’t be heard - it’s beyond sound;
Grasped but can’t be held - it’s beneath touch;
Felt but can’t be known - it’s before understanding.
In its rising there’s no light,
And its setting no darkness,
A tissue between awareness
And what cannot occur;
Its image, nothing,
Its name, silence,
Its body, emptiness.
Follow it, it has no back,
Meet it, it has no face.
Neither moment nor memory,
It is the current in nature’s tide.
Part 1: Flow 10

6. Joining (xvi)

Open yourself completely;

Embrace the living silence.
Nature will rise and move.
Watch it return to rest,
All the flourishing forms
Returning to their source.
Nature’s tide is ceaseless,
A cycle of decaying and becoming.
Contentment comes by accepting it;
Struggle, by opposing it.
Accepting nature’s tide yields balance and calm,
Joining your life to all life
Until, as yours ends,
Nothing is wasted.
Part 1: Flow 11

7. Formless (xxv)

Formless, life has gone on forever.

Forever surpassing everywhere,
Life became yourself.
Of brimming chaos,
Outer darkness,
And ceaseless change,
Nature made your cradle.
As life is endless,
Mind is endless,
And nature is endless,
You are endless.
You’re formed of nature,
Nature of mind,
Mind of life,
And life of the formless.
Part 1: Flow 12

8. Self (xiii/x)

Becoming and decaying generate hope and fear,

And thereby self.
Without self,
To whom could they occur?
Self may acquire the world,
But agility accepts the world;
Joining your form to others,
Seeing their needs as yours,
Until your life bears fruit
And your thoughts take form in their lives.
Part 1: Flow 13

9. Awake (lii)

As nature is the mother of mind

All we know of her are her children.
Leave the children to embrace their mother;
Still your thoughts to open your mind.
The play of thoughts
Filling your mind
Keeps it closed.
Slow your breathing;
Seal your memories;
Attend your senses;
Embrace the formless;
Find the focus of nothing;
Follow silence to its source.
As you fall awake,
Thoughts cease to trouble you.
Part 1: Flow 14

10. Inner Light (lxxi/xlvii)

Without opening the door

You know what’s outside;
Without opening your eyes
You know the colour of the sky.
The less you know, the more you experience.
Agility senses without recalling,
Perceives without recognizing,
Responds without reacting.
As blindness is not sensing sensation.
Recognition is sensing without sensation.
As the sighted perceive the blind,
The agile perceive their own blindness.
Part 1: Flow 15

11. Purpose (xxxiv)

Nature’s tide ebbs and flows,

Destroying and creating,
Shaping everything,
Demanding nothing.
It creates forms to no plan
So it seems careless,
And destroys forms for no reason
So it seems ruthless.
The agile don’t worry about nature’s purpose
But adapting each other to its tide.
Part 1: Flow 16

12. Adaptation (xlv/xxii)

Nature possesses neither limit nor end

Nor beginning nor center.
Its constant is adaptation
With neither meaning nor outcome.
So an agile business profits no one
More than it profits everyone.
Agile work achieves nothing
But makes all work easier.
Agile manners are gentle,
Agile ideas, simple,
Agile words, genuine.
Bending to straighten,
Emptying to fill,
Failing to learn,
Sharing to gain,
Suffering to heal,
The agile adapt to nature,
Their form to the flow of forms.
Part 1: Flow 17

13. Bureaucracy (xviii/xix)

When people ignore nature’s tide

Culture and cults appear
And law and lawyers,
And politics.
As natural relations break apart,
Businesses become competitive;
As people learn to compete
Owners and managers turn up.
If we could end ownership and competition,
Natural relations might return;
Cancel law and politics,
People might share and prosper;
Ignore bureaucrats and aristocrats,
Corruption and conspiracy might end.
Yet treating symptoms is not a cure;
Real remedies treat causes.
Speak honestly and act gently;
Forgive debts and calm fears;
Break habits and simplify plans.
Part 1: Flow 18

14. Simplicity (xx)

All preaching and prayer,

Pomp and ceremony,
Honour and blame,
Blessing and cursing,
Holiness and heresy
Means nothing to me.
People worship and sacrifice in high temples
While I’m like a baby before it learns to smile,
Believing nothing and following no-one.
People pray for good fortune and long life,
Where I prefer riddles and stories.
They’re determined and sure,
Where I’m playful and patient.
They’re cunning and connected,
Where I’m open and free
As a wave rolling over the ocean.
They bustle with purpose
Where I take it easy
And wonder why they worry
As I suck at nature’s breast.
Part 1: Flow 19

15. Deprivation (xl/xli)

Mind functions to represent

And nature to adapt.
Forests are adaptations of seeds
And seeds of dust.
Deprivation drives adaptation:
Contentment is born of struggle;
Community of loneliness;
Rebellion of bondage;
Liberty of tyranny;
Victory of retreat;
Invention of scarcity;
And fire in darkness.
Part 1: Flow 20

16. Yielding (xlii/lxxvi)

Life bears form,

Form bears thought,
Thought and form generate mind,
And mind connects all natural forms,
Decaying and becoming,
Adapting each to each other.
New shoots sprout, soft and supple,
From fallen trees, withered and dry.
So agility fosters autonomy and alignment
In the place of command and control
For autonomy and alignment increase mutual benefit
Where command and control reduce it.
As a sapless oak splits and rots,
Bureaucracies compete and corrupt,
So the hard and mighty lie beneath the ground
While the gentle and yielding dance on the breeze above.
Part 1: Flow 21

17. Nature (li)

Forms exchange and propagate nourishment,

Not by law, but by nature.
As life takes a form
Nature nourishes it,
Joining it to other forms,
Until evolution changes it.
Nature feeds, parents, teaches,
Employs, matures, decays and consumes it.
Like nature, the agile:
Profit without competition,
Join without conquest,
And share without repayment.
Part 1: Flow 22

18. Water (lxxviii)

Nothing is so soft and adaptable as water

Overwhelming the rigid and fixed
Because they cannot control it.
The soft dissolves the rigid
And the yielding overflows the fixed;
Everyone knows that’s how water works
Yet few grasp its benefit.
The agile share water to prepare the earth
To grow and multiply grain
So none go hungry
And none hoard it.
Part 1: Flow 23
Part 2: Agility

24
Part 2: Agility 25

19. Mindset (xv)

Agility is practical, not mystical -

A way of working, not a state of grace.
Listening as if crossing thin ice,
Testing as if surrounded by danger,
Learning as in a strange land,
Simplifying as thawing snow,
Integrating as the deep woods,
Leading as the river valley,
Innovating as the spring silt.
Imagine the ice solid or the stream clear,
Stop to plan your way ahead,
Ignore what moves underfoot;
You fall and disappear.
Part 2: Agility 26

20. Embracing Change (xxiii)

Natural forms change without cease.

Strong winds don’t last long;
Nor heavy rain.
As nature’s forms change, so must ours.
Accepting change, we lead change
And we are buoyed on nature’s tide.
Anchored to form we succumb to change
And the tide drags us under.
Part 2: Agility 27

21. The End Of Agility (lxvii)

People love to talk about agility

And that may be all there is to it,
Yet there are three values
Agility represents and the agile express:
Compassion, openness, and discipline.
Compassion generates courage,
Openness, learning,
And discipline, flexibility,
Courage without a warm heart,
Learning without an open mind,
Or flexibility without a coiled spine,
Spell the end of agility.
Part 2: Agility 28

22. Collaboration (xii/iii)

Agility builds collaboration, not competition;

Feeds interdependence, not dependence;
Empties peoples’ mouths to fill their bellies;
Softens their hearts to strengthen their bones.
It controls politics by not delegating responsibility;
Bureaucracy by not leaving decisions to managers;
Inequity by not giving privileges to owners.
Agility decentralizes ownership and leadership
So those who provide them can’t exploit them;
When no one can take advantage,
Harmony remains.
Part 2: Agility 29

23. Out Of Control (xxix)

You can’t control nature no matter what you do

Because nature will always adapt;
Improve one thing and another fails;
Control one and another slides.
So some lead while others follow;
Some shine, others fade;
Some grow strong, others weaken;
Some get where they’re going
And others fall by the way.
Agility only controls the desire
To possess, exploit, and compete.
Part 2: Agility 30

24. Like Water (v/viii/vii)

Agility, like water,

Fathoms the deep,
Dissolves the rigid,
Shares warmth,
Eases friction,
Fills opportunity,
And speeds flow.
As water treats all forms the same,
The agile treat all people the same.
As water flows where it isn’t blocked,
The agile don’t struggle with people.
But seek channels of mutual benefit,
Discarding old forms to discover better ones,
And benefiting without competing.
Part 2: Agility 31

25. Discipline (xxii/xxiv)

Boasting loses respect;

Flaunting loses trust;
Demanding loses support;
Attacking loses balance;
Reacting loses opportunity.
These behaviours are wasteful and self-indulgent,
Generating competition and struggle;
So the agile avoid them.
Without vanity, no one can mock them;
Without pride, no one can defame them;
Without greed, no one can corrupt them;
Without anger, no one can upset them;
Without reaction, no one can predict them.
Part 2: Agility 32

26. Leaders (xvii/xxxvii)

The best leaders are barely known by their subjects;

The next are loved and praised;
The next feared;
The next despised.
With no trust with their people,
Their people have no trust in them.
As nature does nothing but adapt,
Great leaders lead by adaptation,
Neglecting no one
Controlling no one,
And taking no side.
People only prosper under such leadership
By adapting to each other.
When such leaders achieve their purpose,
Their people see it as their own.
Part 2: Agility 33

27. Shaping Wood (xxvii)

A great explorer leaves no trail unmapped;

A great teacher no question unanswered;
A great detective no fact unexplained;
A great watchman no threat unchecked;
A great tailor no thread unravelled.
So the agile account for everyone
And neglect no one.
Accepting all, neglecting none,
They account for the weakest.
The strong must guide the weak
For the weak are the source of their strength.
If the strong are careless and neglect the weak,
Chaos results no matter how clever they are.
This is their method of adaptation:
As wood is shaped, it becomes a tool;
As a person is served, they become a servant;
So a great carpenter leaves no wood uncarved.
Part 2: Agility 34

28. Servant Leadership (lxvi)

A stream leads a valley by flowing beneath it.

So, to lead people, attend to their needs
And help them supply them.
The agile lead without authority
And govern without force:
People support agility to feel themselves supported
So the agile never lose their support.
Part 2: Agility 35

29. The Captain (xxvi)

A great captain tirelessly guides his ship at sea

So that, safe in port, he may lose it in sleep.
So calm is the master of haste
And care the path to ease.
The captain of a great ship
Does not treat it like a pleasure boat
Acting carelessly or hastily.
Without care he loses his bearings at sea;
Without calm he loses the trust of the crew.
The great captain doesn’t lead his ship like a jade figurehead
But steadies her like a stone keel.
Part 2: Agility 36

30. Humility (lxx)

The more your life seems different to theirs,

The more your people feel you don’t value them
Where the more you seem to have in common,
The more the community supports you.
When a leader’s words and actions serve community,
Revealing neither strategy nor purpose,
No one will oppose them.
This is the purpose of humility.
The agile wear plain clothes;
Only their hearts glitter.
Part 2: Agility 37

31. Virtue (lxxxi/lvi)

Beauty is seldom honest,

Because honesty isn’t beautiful.
Honour seldom compromises
Because compromise isn’t honourable.
Enlightenment seldom answers
Because answers don’t enlighten.
The agile don’t explain themselves
When explanation doesn’t serve harmony.
They reserve their words and judgements
To ease differences and calm disagreements.
This reduces their distance
And helps their people organise themselves.
So a person’s love and hate,
Power or poverty,
Honour or disgrace,
Don’t matter to them.
They prize the virtue inside honour.
Part 2: Agility 38

32. Enough (ix/xii)

As you temper a sword to the sharpest, it shatters;

Fill a cup to the brim, it spills;
Hoard food, it spoils;
Exert power, it corrupts.
As too much light blinds,
Too much sound deafens,
Too much flavour disgusts,
Too much talk confuses,
So too much power overbalances.
The agile say enough when they have enough
And prosper by sharing the wealth.
Part 2: Agility 39

33. Soft Governance (lvii)

When governance is gentle and informal

People behave with kindness and honesty.
But when it’s efficient and severe
They grow discontented and deceitful.
The more rules and taboos,
The more secretive the people;
The more guards and soldiers,
The more fearful;
The more castles and fiefs,
The more rebellious;
The more fines and taxes,
The more corrupt.
The agile govern through harmony,
Helping people work together in peace
With no law but to secure trust;
No tax but to promote trade;
And no goal but mutual benefit.
Part 2: Agility 40

34. Preparation (lxiii)

As bumper harvests come from a handful of seeds.

All great things have simple beginnings.
So to avert great calamities, deal with root causes;
Fix little problems and correct small mistakes.
Anticipate difficulty to prevent it.
As an oak grows from an acorn,
Failing a few disappoints the many.
It’s easier to promise than to deliver;
And taking things lightly makes them difficult.
Start with the basics.
Deter rebellion by sharing food,
Violence by sharing trust,
And fear by sharing understanding.
Part 2: Agility 41

35. Learning (xlviii/xli)

The agile learn whenever they can,

Students when they must,
Children when they laugh;
Who doesn’t laugh
Doesn’t learn.
Learning makes things more complex
So agility must continually simplify,
Seeking a state of harmony
Where nothing remains to be done
To adapt each to each other.
The less you learn,
The more you have to do.
Part 2: Agility 42

36. Readiness (lxiv a)

A tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a slender shoot;

A wall greater than an army can breach starts with a clod of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one’s feet.
Still things are easily grasped;
Distant things easily foreseen;
Simple things easily scattered;
Brittle things easily shattered.
Anticipating problems before they occur
Creates order before confusion can occur.
Part 2: Agility 43

37. Peace (lxiv b/lxxix)

Who interferes, spoils;

Who presses, loses;
People often fail on the verge of success.
Therefore, to avoid catastrophe,
Prepare for peace as for war.
When conflict is resolved
Harsh feelings remain;
Anticipate and forgive them.
Don’t avenge wrongs or demand rights
But prefer relationship to repayment.
Though nature strikes no bargains,
It pays adaptation.
Part 2: Agility 44

38. Bargains (xliv)

Some sell their lives for a story,

Some for a pay-day,
And some to win a game.
Noble causes come at great cost,
And glorious victories, great suffering.
Only harmony comes for free.
To stop when you have enough,
And retire before battle begins,
Incurs neither debt nor dishonour
But yields a long life.
Part 2: Agility 45

39. Suckers (lviii)

Joy comes from sorrow;

Sorrow starts in joy;
No one knows the reasons;
And no one has the answers.
All plans end in surprise,
And all sure things lose,
Making everyone a sucker in the end.
So be straight but discreet,
Firm but gracious,
Shrewd but forgiving,
Brave but careful.
Part 2: Agility 46

40. Death (lxxiii)

The brave and careless fall

Where the brave and careful fall back;
Though no one knows how things will end,
It’s best to prepare for the worst.
Death doesn’t attack, but all surrender to it;
It doesn’t ask, but all answer to it;
Doesn’t invite, but all journey to it;
Doesn’t plan, but all end in it.
Death’s net spreads thin and threadbare,
Yet none escape it.
Part 2: Agility 47

41. Tigers and Rhinos (l)

Birth inevitably leads to death.

Some bear in turn, some kill in turn,
And some die from struggling to live.
The agile won’t appear as
Prey to the tiger,
Predator to the rhino,
Or foe to the warrior.
So the tiger sees no place in them for its claws,
Nor the rhino for its horn,
Nor the warrior for his weapons,
Nor the ground for their grave.
Part 2: Agility 48

42. The Golden Rule (xlix)

Agility treats everyone as they do family,

And each with compassion.
The agile are fair to the fair,
And also to the unfair;
Because that’s fairness.
They keep trust with the trustworthy,
And also the untrustworthy;
Because that’s trustworthy.
They adapt to those with harmony,
And also without;
Because that’s harmony.
No matter what anyone says or seems,
They treat them the same.
Part 2: Agility 49

43. Mutual Benefit (xxxiii)

Where soldiers follow orders

The agile follow harmony.
Where philosophers develop understanding;
The agile develop awareness.
Where princes control empires;
The agile control desire.
Where heroes defend their homeland;
The agile survive their homeland.
The agile care less about profit
Than increasing mutual benefit;
Investing in others and partaking with them.
As nature flourishes where it doesn’t struggle
The agile adapt without competing.
Part 2: Agility 50
Part 3: Harmony

51
Part 3: Harmony 52

44. Horses (xlvi/lxiv b)

When people live in harmony

Horses carry fertilizer through their fields;
When people fall from harmony
Horses carry soldiers through their streets.
There’s no worse loss than losing peace,
No worse waste than waging war,
No worse defeat than defending dirt.
To fertilize harmony,
Make it easy to take it easy.
Part 3: Harmony 53

45. Bureaucracy (xxxviii/liv a)

Disrupt nature and harmony remains.

Lose harmony and trust remains.
Break trust and justice remains.
Corrupt justice and bureaucracy remains.
Harmony doesn’t inspire fear;
Those without it do.
It doesn’t serve or compromise itself;
Those without it will.
As trust serves harmony without compromise,
Justice compromises it to serve it,
And bureaucracy compromises it to serve itself.
Part 3: Harmony 54

46. Fruit and Flowers (xxxviii/liv b)

Fear is as hard to uproot

As faith is to dispel.
So each generation
Transmits it to the next.
Fear knits justice and trust
Into a matrix of struggle.
With faith in the flower of harmony,
The root of its control.
Harmony roots in trust, not faith,
Yields fruit, not flowers,
Plants the one and plows the other.
Part 3: Harmony 55

47. Revolution (lxxv/lxviii/lxxiv)

When you take away their liberties, some resist;

When you take away their children, some rebel;
But when you take their food, you face revolution.
Your police may bully and jailers torture
And soldiers slaughter and leaders enslave,
But when people starve
They lose their fear.
When those whose lives don’t count
Outnumber those who count only their own,
And people lose fear,
Force no longer controls them.
Governing by force
Is like cutting wood instead of a carpenter;
A good way to lose your fingers.
Part 3: Harmony 56

48. The Bow (lxxvii)

Harmony is like drawing a bow:

As the top lowers the bottom rises;
As the gap reduces, the middle increases.
Sharing what you don’t use draws the bow.
Harmony provides more than people need,
And stores more than they take,
Sharing and storing to prevent starvation.
When power hoards wealth,
Increasing the gap to tighten its grip
That’s like aiming your bow at the sun.
Part 3: Harmony 57

49. Trust (lxviii/liii)

Trust is the finest weapon and strongest defence.

To gain peoples’ cooperation, build trust among them;
To keep the peace, trust should surround you like a fortress.
With just this small understanding
You follow harmony like a main road
And never risk losing your way.
Though following a main road is easy
People delight in the scenic route.
As palaces rise,
Fields turn to weeds
And granaries empty.
Wearing fine armor,
Bearing sharp swords,
Gorging on food and drink,
Employing politicians and prostitutes -
Are detours leading away from peace.
Part 3: Harmony 58

50. Warfare (xxx)

Even the strongest leader should avoid violence

Because it has a habit of returning;
Thorns and weeds follow the path of an army
And lean years, a great war.
The leader of a mighty force is best advised
To achieve nothing more than to govern it:
Not to celebrate its victories,
Nor glory, boast or pride in it;
To do only as required by necessity,
Not by vengeance.
For even the greatest force will weaken with time
And then its violence will return, and kill it.
Part 3: Harmony 59

51. Weapons (xxxi)

A weapon may deter, but cannot redress.

So agility uses weapons in defence,
Calmly, with tact,
Without vengeance.
Armies generate fear, not peace
So agile leaders don’t advance them;
A leader’s purpose is to build harmony;
An army’s, to destroy it.
The glory of war means harming people,
And those who glory in harm won’t value harmony.
So invading your neighbors is your tragedy,
And their conquest, a rehearsal for your funeral.
Part 3: Harmony 60

52. Reserve (lxix/xlii)

There is a saying among soldiers:

It’s easier to lose a yard than take an inch.
That way you deploy troops without supplying them,
Bring weapons to bear without exposing them,
Engage the foe without invading them,
And exhaust their strength without wasting yours.
Invading your opponent reduces any advantage you possess;
When equal forces are opposed, victory comes by making peace.
Facing overwhelming force,
The path to victory begins with surrender. XXX
Part 3: Harmony 61

53. Surrender (xlii/xliii)

There is a secret to conquest

Generation upon generation learn to their sorrow:
Conquest doesn’t secure peace.
No one seeks grief, fear or hatred,
But these are all the rewards of conquest.
There is also a secret to surrender:
Without effort, needing no breach to enter,
Ideas subvert the strongest force
As invasion without bloodshed
By thought without form
Passes beneath the conquerer’s notice.
Part 3: Harmony 62

54. Subversion (xlv/xxxvi/lxix)

As spring thaws ice,

And autumn quenches drought,
So service subverts power.
To overthrow someone, first support them;
To take from someone, first supply them;
To control their power, first channel it;
To stop their influence, first transmit it.
These are the secrets of subversion:
As a fish should not rise from its depths;
A sword should not leave its scabbard;
Nor a host neglect their guests.
Part 3: Harmony 63

55. Tact (lix)

A nation must be governed gently

As you’d cook a delicate fish.
Using tact to keep trust.
Tact makes agreement easy,
And easy agreement builds harmonious relations.
With sufficient harmony, secrets fall away
And trust fills peoples’ hearts.
When trust takes hold in the heart, it endures:
Deeply rooted and firmly established.
This is the path of far sight and long life.
Part 3: Harmony 64

56. Government (lxxii)

Where it doesn’t restrict freedom or demand payment,

People happily submit to governance
As those who don’t fear leaders
Naturally support them.
So agile government is best:
Honoured without tribute,
Celebrated without ceremony,
And served without servants.
As people live for their children
They will always support those who support them.
Part 3: Harmony 65

57. Mutual Benefit (lxi)

As maidens attract suitors,

Markets attracts traders
For their mutual benefit.
Opening its markets to smaller players
The greater gains their supply.
Opening its markets to bigger players
The smaller gains their support.
The great supports and shelters the small;
The small supplies and strengthens the great;
So to gain the benefit of a marriage,
Each must serve the needs of the other.
Part 3: Harmony 66

58. Heaven (xxxix)

Priests say everything’s perfect in heaven;

The sky is clear,
The ground sure,
The mountains snow-capped,
The rivers full,
The soil fertile,
And the king almighty.
Yet the sky must darken
For, without rain,
The ground cracks,
The mountains brown,
The rivers stop,
The soil blows,
The people starve,
And the king falls.
Part 3: Harmony 67

59. Control (xxxix/xxxii)

As priests depend on disciples,

And kings on peasants,
Each claim they’re wiser,
Nobler, and closer to heaven,
To keep people under their control.
If power really could bargain with heaven,
All nature would follow its commands
And a sweet rain would fall,
Effortlessly slaking its every thirst. XXX
Part 3: Harmony 68

60. Power (xxxix/xxxii)

Power controls only systems of forms

And all forms are temporary.
As life has no true form
No one can control it.
Agility doesn’t worry about power,
But helps people join together
Like streams into a river
And rivers into the sea.
Part 3: Harmony 69

61. Joining (liv)

As marriage joins people to each other;

Family joins generations to each other;
Community joins families to each other;
Culture joins communities to each other;
And nature joins cultures to each other.
As harmony starts within one person,
It grows fertile in a family,
Infectious in a community,
Abiding in a culture,
And complete in nature.
So, to cultivate harmony,
Join culture to nature.
Part 3: Harmony 70

62. Cultivation (xxviii)

Accept power without wielding it

To open paths of trust
And multiply the seeds of peace.
Keep secrets without creating them
To secure channels of trust
And multiply the roots of peace.
Know politics without playing it
To spread the reach of trust
And multiply the harvest of peace.
Part 3: Harmony 71

63. In The Womb (lv)

Living in harmony
Is like a child in the womb.
Fear and envy can’t poison you;
Politics and power can’t prey on you;
Calm, relaxed, unhurried,
Independent but never lonely,
Energetic, never tired,
You’re bathed in love and filled with peace.
Harmony generates calm and contentment
Helping even the great and powerful
Through age, loneliness, illness and loss.
Part 3: Harmony 72

64. Worship (xxi/xxxv)

Without melody, voice, art or flavour,

Harmony yields kindness, health, community and peace.
No matter how fine the music and wine, a party soon ends
But harmony costs nothing, satisfies everyone and never runs out.
Harmony worships life;
Not life as a spirit with form and intent
But life as the tide of nature;
Formless but transforming all forms;
Unchanging but generating all change.
As life has neither shape nor plan
You worship it by being here and now.
Part 3: Harmony 73

65. A Gift (lxii)

Fine speeches are made by corrupt men,

Who do great deeds for their own gain.
Why then punish corruption?
And when someone rises to power
Why celebrate them with games and feasts?
It’s better to offer them harmony.
Even the tyrant values harmony.
It calms his heart
And salves his conscience.
Harmony with nature
Lifts his spirits
And eases his suffering.
So it makes the most welcome gift.
Part 3: Harmony 74

66. Empowering Harmony (lx)

Accepting harmony,
Even tyrants lose their capacity for harm.
It’s not that they lose their power,
But their power doesn’t disrupt mutual benefit.
When power doesn’t oppress people,
Agility need not trouble about it.
When power and agility cause each other no trouble,
They’re in harmony too.
Part 3: Harmony 75

67. Simplicity (lxv)

The greatest leaders in history

Didn’t promote harmony,
But helped people live at ease.
Harmony wants only contentment,
Values only the commonplace,
Teaches only common sense.
XXX
Part 3: Harmony 76

68. Simplicity (lxv)

To lead people into harmony

Reward mutual benefit
So they don’t compete with each other.
Don’t make harmony some great objective
Because struggle makes it harder to develop
And weakens people where trust strengthens them.
Establishing a community of simplicity and trust
Generates a culture of profound harmony.
Such cultures run deep and range far,
Because they adapt to nature.
Part 3: Harmony 77

69. Community (lxxx)

Keep your community small and its systems simple;

Learn science and engineering, but don’t depend on them;
And keep weapons, but keep them hidden.
Sail boats and ride horses, but not far;
Teach art and mathematics,
And study history so you don’t repeat it.
Grow your own food and make your own clothes;
Build snug homes and share your festivals;
Dwell within cock-crow of your neighbors,
But don’t interfere with them.
Explanations

78
Explanations 79

Before The Tao

When open country was commonplace, there was always some-

where else to go. The streams were sweet, game plentiful, and
fences rare. Hunting and gathering reliably fed a multitude of small
tribes.
As the tribes settled into villages, domestication, agriculture and
literacy evolved. Cycles of trade between tribes enabled transmis-
sion of ideas across great distances. One day a man we call Confu-
cius injected the meme of ancestor worship into these cycles.
Common ancestry joined villages into kingdoms into nations. As
these began to hem eachother in, tyranny and warfare spread.
Splintered families rebuilt sacked cities. Dispossessed orphans mourned
simpler times. Sold slaves dreamt of green hamlets beside gentle
streams.
These dreams echoed back and forth between China and India,
stories of a harmonious community forever on the other side of the
mountains. This book was began then, but really it’s the product of
hundreds of generations of editors each using their experiences of
their times to reinterpret it.
My part started with a paper at the first Agile conference, XP2000,
in Sardinia in the year the Agile Alliance began.
Explanations 80

The Agile Empire

Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film “Network” presents an inspiring vi-

sion:

” There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no third

worlds. There is no West. There is no democracy. There is
only one holistic system of systems, a college of corporations
inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business.
Our children will live to see that perfect world in which there’s
no war and famine, oppression or brutality: one vast and ecu-
menical holding company for whom all men will work to serve
a common profit in which all men hold a share of stock.

In 2011, two researchers at Credit Suisse surveyed ownership of 35

million corporations worldwide and found Chayefsky’s college of
corporations had come to pass. The companies in their study were
all owned by a cartel of 14,000. The cartel was controlled by a kernel
just 143. Within that cabal, each owned the majority of the others’
stock.
That’s the natural outcome of laissez-faire capitalism, not an evil
design of some conspiracy of masterminds. The 1% of the 1% don’t
pull the strings. They delegate control of the system to accountants,
lawyers and engineers who seldom require any direction to main-
tain it.
As technology accelerates, however, and demand for new products
and services outstrips that for old, the system evolves. Even conser-
vative corporations must compete, and the command and control
machines of Chayefsky’s day can’t keep up with decentralised, self-
directing streams of small, autonomous teams.
The pattern of these streams, each supplied by the great ecosys-
tem of open source tools, isn’t unlike the hunter-gatherer tribes
Explanations 81

supplied by the primal forest ecosystems. Only learning has sup-

planted reproduction as the motive force. Such “Agile Organisa-
tions” provide commercial advantages by learning faster.
The flow of learnings multiplies workflow, which in turn multiplies
the flow of value to market. It also reduces friction costs of waste,
opportunity and quality while increasing return on investment.
Inevitably, as corporate ownership centralises, corporate control of
the means of production decentralises. This is an invisible revolu-
tion.
The Agile revolution has infected even the central 143 corporate
college with a kind of humanism. Liberty in entrepreneurship;
equality in open source; fraternity in collaborative teams. Agility
inexorably transforms hierarchies of command and control into
holarchies of mutual benefit.
In the coming 3D-printed artificially-intelligent free-solar aug-
mented-reality world our children may indeed see the means of
production fully distributed, in the form of a block-chained uni-
versal basic income, as their share of Chayefsky’s common stock.
That perfect world with no war, famine, oppression or brutality may
result. Though history teaches skepticism.
Explanations 82

What does it mean to be Agile?

Curiously, the peak body of the revolution, the “Agile Alliance”,

never defined the meaning of the word. It’s only a shibboleth that
teams shouldn’t “do Agile” but “be Agile”.
Pragmatically, being Agile prefers the values and principles of the
Agile Manifesto over blindly following some specific framework of
practices. Decisions about practices should devolve to the individ-
ual teams doing the work, with team-members sharing account-
ability for metrics over delegating them to Confucian hierarchies
of elder managers.
“Holarchy” is a word coined by Arthur Koestler in 1967 to describe
organisation through patterns of collaboration among peers rather
than delegation to accountable managers. At the scale of a corpora-
tion, being Agile requires a holarchy of teams to continuously self-
align to optimise the throughput and impact of its products on its
markets.
Individuals with enthusiasm for Agile also identify themselves as
“being Agile”. The Agile Manifesto implies a way of life beyond the
professional though the Manifesto doesn’t talk about individual
ways of being. In a Confucian mode it talks about things to do and
gives principles for doing them.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working systems over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

The Manifesto doesn’t espouse cultural revolution at all. Agile teams

still must function within top-down hierarchical regimes of com-
mand and control management and cost accounting. If the Mani-
festo had opposed that explicitly, it would never have succeeded.
Explanations 83

Some prominent exponents of Agile culture have focused on this

idea of Agile inside bureaucracy. “Scaling Agile” sees hierarchies
of traditional managers delegate accountability for metrics to “cer-
tified masters” with “safety” the rallying cry for regressive com-
mand and control. Teams that organize by these tenets retain very
little practical Agility, and their products are outcompeted by those
of teams who do.
The Agile Tao may take a liberty in framing the meaning of being
Agile in terms of Taoism, but clearly it is not alone in taking lib-
erties. Indeed we can regard the development of Taoism as a long
series of liberties.
Explanations 84

Lao Tzu Wasn’t Chinese

The central Taoist book, the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, didn’t origi-
nate with one person in one time and place. It accreted over many
centuries after its author was invented by the itinerant Chinese
satirist Chuang Tzu.
Though Taoism as a religion reveres Lao Tzu as its founder and
Wikipedia has a page on him that speaks of his historicity at some
length, sinologists generally agree he never existed. Archaeology
shows the Tao Te Ching evolving over a cycle of transmissions
between India and China, with considerable if circumstantial evi-
dence that many of its ideas originate elsewhere.
The oldest edition of the text, unearthed in 1993 at Guo Tian in
Hubei province, pre-dates paper and silk. It’s carved on bamboo
slips tied together with string. Lacking most of the substance of the
later editions, these slips may have been cherry-picked to fit the
political sensitivities of the time. Most likely, however, they are all
the Lao Tzu there was back then.
We can’t tell what the original poem meant to its first readers be-
cause dictionaries weren’t invented until centuries later, and deal
with definitions used in agricultural contracts, not philosophical
language. Chinese dynastic purges destroyed most of the other
books of those times. Only the religious interpretation of Lao Tzu
saved it from the flames.
Evolution of the text came through its propagation by manual
transcription. Without printing presses, transmission from scribe
to scribe caused duplications, revisions and omissions each genera-
tion had to reconcile with the culture of its own time. Confabulation
with different religious ideas altered the subtext and broadened the
interpretation of the words without documentation. Comparing Ma
Wang Tui and Fu I editions of the Tao show the poem in flux.
We don’t know how far back this game of Chinese Whispers may
Explanations 85

go. In the 1990s, Pennsylvania University Professor Victor Mair,

translating the silk edition of Lao Tzu from Ma Wang Tui, discovered
philological relations between the Tao Te Ching and the Sanskrit
Bhagavad Gita, the core text of Yoga. He concluded that either
the one derived directly from the other or the two from some lost
common ancestor, possibly in a language alien to both.
Mair subsequently investigated of the Tarim Basin mummies, re-
mains of a tall, pale-skinned, ginger-headed people who appeared
in China at the time of the introduction of horse-riding and metal-
lurgy about 3,000 BCE. Their incursion raises the distinct possibility
of Western contributions to Lao Tzu.
In any case, as these sources of the poem aren’t confined to China,
Chinese speakers enjoy no special insight into its interpretation.
We can’t properly regard it as representing only some ancient
philosophy, either. It’s inextricably linked with development of our
modern, Western civilization.
Explanations 86

A Tao for our Time

The most influential European translation of Lao Tzu is seldom

recognized as Lao Tzu. The 17th century “Monadology” of Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz was inspired by editions of the Tao Te Ching trans-
lated by the first Jesuit missions to China. It informed Leibniz’s
luminary development of the mathematical continuum and his
construction of the binary number system which he incorporated
into the first mechanical computers.
These developments found their way to Russia by way of the cur-
riculum of the Academy of Vienna. This curriculum was salvaged
from the defamed and fading Leibniz by Peter the Great after the
Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Under Peter it became
the basis of the famed Russian capability in higher mathematics.
In the West Leibniz’s binary system eventually led to Turing and
Von Neumann’s invention of the first electronic computers, and so
the information revolution and global Internet.
In a different strand, Lao Tzu formed the base of Chinese Ch’an
Buddhism through reinterpretation by Bodhidharma. Ch’an is best
known in the West by its Japanese name, Zen, which profoundly
influenced all Japanese culture from archery to tea. The problems of
translating Lao Tzu into Japanese led to the Zen practice of “Koans”,
irrational riddles whose frustrated contemplation informs the Zen
path to enlightenment.
Glosses of Tao and Zen in 20th century Kung Fu and Bushido cin-
ema have been reinterpreted into Lucas’s Force, the Wachowski’s
Matrix, the Coens’ Dude, and the unreconstructed dream space of
the Nolans’ Inception. The Tao wove still another thread through
20th century popular music in the psychedelic tradition pioneered
by The Beatles and The Grateful Dead.
Western culture would be unrecognizable without the influence of
this little book. As postmodernism holds that reinterpretation of a
Explanations 87

translation has the effect of a new work even when it merely quotes
the words of other translators, isolating the historical influence of
the Tao Te Ching on the Agile movement is like trying to separate
broth from soup.
Explanations 88

The Book Of Riddles

Silk tears, string rots, bamboo slips are jumbled, copyists make
errors and new dynasties burn the libraries of the old. Many modern
features of the Tao Te Ching were only added for religious reasons,
but the survival of the work to the present day probably owes a debt
to these same features. This includes its ordering into 81 chapters.
Each pictograph of the Chinese evolved dozens of meanings in a
process that makes it a hugely complex puzzle box. So Lao Tzu is
referred to in China as “The Book Of Riddles” and first-time readers
find translations by respectable scholars still wildly disagree with
one another. This surprise leads some to attempt new translations
themselves, and the viral cycle continues.
In 1990 an infection with this virus led me to undertake an in-
formal collaboration with a panel of academic sinologists for the
Australian National University’s taoism-l mailing list. The “GNL”
project was my attempt to establish a modern consensus meaning
of the work by integrating all the popular English translations
into a stocktake of lessons learned. This idea was controversial
but succeeded to the extent that Chinapage, for over a decade the
most popular English language Chinese website, adopted GNL as its
official English translation.
As the Internet grew I saw the GNL spawn sites, apps and forums
that took its interpretation far from what I’d originally had in mind.
Perhaps the most influential was its reinterpretation as “The Dude
De Ching” after The Big Lebowski. Reading Oliver Benjamin’s ode
to “The Fucking Toe” I realized my first approach was mistaken
in its basic intent, and stronger medicine still would be needed to
answer the riddles.
Professor Mair’s realization of the relationship between the Gita
and the Tao, as well as the discovery of the abbreviated nature of the
early Guo Tian text, provide all the license we need to stop taking
the poem as a sacred legacy and dare instead to refactor it.
Explanations 89

Refactoring The Tao

Though ancient Chinese bears a more distant relation to modern

Chinese than Latin to Italian, most translations treat the language
as stable over time. If the bulk of the puzzles in Lao Tzu are artefacts
of interpolation, copying errors, misunderstandings and commen-
taries folded in by mistake, no translation has given the book what
it really needs: a proper refactoring.
Leibniz’s transmission means we can think of the Tao Te Ching
as the ur-text of all modern software engineering. “Refactoring”
is the software engineer’s term for the process of improving the
design of an existing text to simplify its design while keeping its
effect intact.
Without refactoring, software inevitably decays over time. In the
process of codebase growth and maintenance, programmers create
unnecessary redundancies and interdependencies. Eventually it
becomes so tangled and expensive to maintain that its owners are
obliged to junk it and rewrite their system from scratch. Or else
freeze the code as a legacy, building new services on top of it like
Schliemann’s Troy.
Sinologists likewise regard the Chinese text of Lao Tzu as such
a legacy. Naive translations, including the GNL, imagine its chal-
lenges can be met by refining word choices and scansion, as if
solving a jigsaw by polishing the pieces but leaving them scattered
across the floor. This ignores the context of transmission of the
work. The real problem isn’t translation but integration.
Refactoring iteratively fixes “smells” in the code through a contin-
uous series of small improvements. Reconciling fragments and du-
plications, stepping back to sketch the relationship of composites
to patterns, explicating cycles of dependency, testing the meaning
and backtracking when combinations don’t fit, continuing iter-
atively and impartially until a simple whole emerges with each
element in its place.
Explanations 90

To refactor the Tao Te Ching I’ve proceeded along these lines:

Non-sequiturs
One stanza doesn’t follow from the previous one. Perhaps
strings tying together one of the bamboo slat editions perished
and it was hastily reconstructed, or perhaps there was some
numerological reason for a transposition. Therefore, search
for stanzas that logically lead into and out of the non-sequitur,
and cut and paste those that best fit. Examine the flow of the
text before and after the cut, and if that’s non-sequitur then
reconsider.
Duplicates
The Chinese seems identical or nearly identical from one line
to the next. Therefore, look at the flow of the stanza to figure
out what it’s trying to say in context. Remember that each
pictograph admits many meanings, so specialize or generalize
those of duplicate terms so the relation to the others adds value
to the whole.
Fragments
A short chapter doesn’t complete an idea. Therefore, look
for other fragments that combine with this one to make a
complete chapter. Also seek non-sequitur stanzas that may
be broken out of long chapters without losing meaning, and
recombined with this fragment to discover meaning.
Doggerel
The dictionary meanings provide insufficient significance to
make anything more than a Hallmark style platitude. There-
fore, examine the etymology of the word in context and the
visual form of the pictograph to help determine more specific
meanings. For example in all other translations chapter 67
concerns three virtues - compassion, frugality and humility.
This conveys little of significance. The etymology, however,
reveals the first as the compassion of parent for child, the
second as husbandry, hence to do with families or tribes, and
the third from respect of people for heaven. Applying these
Explanations 91

concretely provides the bridge for the flow of the poem from
chapter XX to chapter YY.
Glosses
In context the existing translation takes excessive liberties or
there’s no reasonable correspondence between the Chinese
and idiomatic English. Therefore, do over, paying more atten-
tion to the context of use revealed by progress on the poem as a
whole. Remember Chuang Tzu’s parable of Cook Ding. It is best
to take a gloss to bits, let it gently fall apart, then see what it’s
telling you about how it wants to come together. This is what
Kent Beck called “listening to the code”.
Lost In Translation
As the earliest dictionaries came long after the Lao Tzu, dictio-
nary definitions of words in the text should be treated with at
least a little skepticism. Therefore, if there is a word that really
gums up the works in numerous places, look at context of use
to find a better translation. Examine the effect of such a novel
translation throughout the rest of the poem. If it breaks too
many other things, it’s not good.

The result isn’t the only plausible refactoring of Lao Tzu. It has what
software engineers call “opinionated” design, reflecting a specific
context and intent. And so does any translation, and by this explicit
process of refactoring the Agile Tao has obtained virtues found in
no other edition.
For a start, it’s simple. Clean, direct and unambiguous, unadorned
by new age mysticism or oriental stylization. It is, nevertheless, in
word for word correspondence with the received texts and makes
no unjustified addition to them. To verify the correspondence, two
appendicies are provided: the original GNL and a literalist rework-
ing of it to support the key translation choices.
This work is endebted to all the sources of the GNL, especially
Robert G. Henricks’ and Victor Mair’s translations of the Ma Wang
Tui texts. The second appendix further relies upon Bradford Hatcher’s
2009 transliteration, “Tao Te Ching Word By Word”, which lists
Explanations 92

all philologically plausible modern Chinese alternatives for each

pictograph of Fu I, Guo Tian and Ma Wang Tui texts.
By intent, all the fragments of the poem fit neatly together here.
For the first time a modern reader can understand the plan of the
poem just as there’s a whole pot in the shards of a smashed vase.
Explanations 93

Killing The Sage

There is a famous koan, “If you find Buddha on the road, kill him”.
While Buddhists may appear worshipful, their Buddha is not in
the name, image, identity, story or likeness of the Buddha. The
moment these representations are kept up they become an obstacle
to Buddhist enlightenment, not its embodiment.
They serve the purpose of communication; once their meaning is
expressed they should be discarded or the meaning is lost. A Zen
Buddhist might say that the meaning should be discarded too.
Translations of Lao Tzu, on the other hand, are lousy with sages,
masters, superior men, wise men and enlightened beings, all terms
deriving from the Chinese “sheng ren”, which is literally “the lively
ones”.
Rendering this as if it meant some illustrious and inaccessible old
man takes away its intent. In context it’s clear that sheng ren isn’t
a person of historical pre-eminence and rare gifts, but an ordinary
person, you and I when we’re at our most adaptable and most awake.
It’s pragmatic, a way for people to get along and work together.
With this change in perspective Lao Tzu becomes a pattern-lan-
guage for people to live and work together in harmony. In the
pragmatic context of the “lively ones”, harmony becomes the “Te”
of the poem’s title. Although traditionally translated as power or
virtue, there’s plentiful context in the poem to back this choice.
In keeping with the engineering tradition therefore we have “the
Agile” or “Agility” instead of “The Sage” for sheng ren. This trans-
lation makes the poem an explanation of the way Agile mindset
generates harmony by embracing change.
Explanations 94

What is Tao?

Most English editions of Lao Tzu translate Tao as “The Way”. In-
deed that’s so common that any other choice may be regarded as
heresy. Academic philology supports this choice even though it
makes the poetry clumsy throughout. “The Way” makes the first
line of the first chapter of Lao Tzu read, literally, “The Way that can
be Way-ed isn’t really the Way”. No translator can be satisfied with
that when the whole poem depends on it.
I worried this word choice like a kid tonguing a wobbly tooth. Until
one cool autumn day in 2004 beneath a golden rain tree in the
donkey paddock of my teahouse in the rainforest in Limpinwood,
Australia …
A golden rain tree loses all its flowers in just a few days. As I curried
Josephine the donkey the bees bothered the blossoms and petals
floated down around us like great yellow snowflakes.
I suddenly saw these flowers we trampled into mud weren’t dying
so much as transforming to feed next spring’s buds. They were
moments in a cycle interconnecting our tree and all the trees of our
little valley, and on deeper timeframes not just trees but the hills
beneath them carved by roots and lichen into veins for mist and
wind.
Dig your fingers into the soil and twine them with worms and fungi.
Wake to the hum of a city as people interleave their lives. Watch
the night sky churn with more stars than grains of sand on all the
beaches of Earth. See Lao Tzu evolving through its generations of
hands and ears as a living fractal, the surface of life describing
itself.
Not life as the lives we live, nor the abstract distinction between
flowering buds and fertile loam, but a physical fundamental flowing
on every scale from quantum correlations at the tips of blades of
grass in Josephine’s paddock to billions of galaxies whirling above
Explanations 95

us as we bathed in the shadows of flowers.

Peter Merel
Sydney, 2017.
Open Sample
This sample includes the main body the Agile Tao, but not its
appendicies and commentaries. These are available for purchase at
http://leanpub.com/agiletao.
Why buy it before it’s finished? Your purchase supports its com-
pletion and entitles you to download all electronic versions of the
book as soon as they’re available. Plus it enables you to contribute
feedback that’s vital for the quality of the work.
This sample of the book is provided under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
For inquiries regarding commercial licenses email Peter Merel.

BY-NC-SA

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