Chapter 5: Nature

The Tao Te Ching: Warnings and Invitations

Nature is unkind:
It treats the creation like sacrificial straw-dogs.
The Sage is unkind:
He treats the people like sacrificial straw-dogs.

How the universe is like a bellows!
Empty, yet it gives a supply that never fails;
The more it is worked, the more it brings forth.

By many words is wit exhausted.
Rather, therefore, hold to the core.

Standing at a graveside, the birds are still singing. The traffic moves. Somewhere a lawn mower starts. The world did not pause. Did not lower its voice. Did not acknowledge that something irreplaceable just left it. And in that moment, if we are honest, we feel something older than grief. The recognition that the universe was never keeping the same account we were.

Laotse names what most teachers soften. Nature is unkind.