Lao Tzu - Tumblr Posts

“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”

—Lao Tzu

“Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.”

—Lao Tzu

“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”

—Lao Tzu

“The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covets praise, yet cannot avoid its rewards in honors.”

—Lao Tzu

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

—Lao Tzu

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” —Lao Tzu

This reminds me to keep trusting the unknown, trusting the process and keep on learning/exploring. Stay curious and trust your higher self to guide you. The magic is always happens when we’re not expecting it to.

“Silence is a source of great strength.”

—Lao Tzu

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Rabindranath Tagore

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.

Lao Tzu

It is fascinating how the element of water attracts us, it is a part of us and we are part of a whole.

Anyone who doesn't want to recognise this has never really wanted to understand nature.

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Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Lao Tzu

Introductions and Context

I first read Lao Tzu’s Dao De Jing pretty soon after starting college. My mother bought me a beautiful hardbound copy of Dr. Ralph Alan Dale’s translation from Barnes & Noble and I finished it quickly within the month. My subsequent readings have been slower, more sporadic, and often in small selections. I think I was just a bit too young to really “get” anything out of the book when I started, and ended up with an admittedly superficial knowledge and understanding of how Daoism is supposed to work.

The other night, on a whim, I decided to pull out my old copy again and give it another one of my random readings, much like I would a book of poetry or an anthology of short stories. I wasn’t really intending to do much with it, to be perfectly honest. But as I read on, late into the night and early into the morning, something felt distinctly different. I felt like the intention behind the words was just a bit clearer, like I could see how it was supposed to work after all. It wasn’t any kind of Enlightenment, by any means; Lao Tzu is a notoriously difficult writer to understand. But you could say it was definitely some sort of start.

That’s what brings us to this blog. I want to use this as a place to discuss and exchange ideas about Daoism, what it’s about and how it works and whether it’s really worth it at all. It’s my own personal expression of the philosophy, to write and explore what the words mean, to put out my ideas and interpretations, then have them challenged and explored by others in turn. I browsed around Tumblr for a bit looking at the “daoism” and “taoism” tags, and I couldn’t really find the sort of interpretive dialogue I was looking for. I’d like for this blog to be a hub for that sort of thing.

Tumblr is also an interesting spot for experimenting with Daoist philosophy, as the Reblog tool seems to be a perfect mechanism for “teaching without teaching.” If I write something that resonates with you, please reblog it and share it with others and encourage them to do the same. It is my belief that this sort of behavior, by simply exploring the Dao on our own, while being watched and hopefully emulated by others, is way that we can both spread the principles of Daoism without actively campaigning to have it taught from every corner of the planet.

So what qualifies me to engage in this endeavor, exactly? Well, to be perfectly honest, absolutely nothing. I’m a mostly normal guy, with normal interests in films and music and art and such. I’m not a scholar and I’m not a monk by any stretch of the imagination. I’m definitely not the perfect Daoist. I’m just one person who is looking to explore the Path, and I have a lot of ideas I’d like to talk about. Hopefully by doing that exploring here, I’ll meet other like-minded individuals and we can all learn and grow together. This is, I believe, the main intention of the Dao.

Defining the Dao (for Left-Brained People)

Literally translated, “dao” means something like path or road. But in the philosophical sense, it gets much more complicated. Technically, the Dao is something that shouldn’t be able to be defined, and Laozi is deliberately vague when describing what it is and what it means. This is just my own interpretation of how to explain the concept, based on my reading of the Dao De Jing and my own meandering experience.

For more left-brain oriented people, those that interpret things based on logic and reasoning, I think it’s helpful to think of the Dao as a sort of natural progression of things in the universe. Like leaving an ice cube on a hot sidewalk or the natural decaying of a radioactive element, it has a definite order of procession that continues on and on. The first objection then, would be that the Dao is not nearly as predictable or constant as the melting of frozen water. But what if it was? One of the central tenants to Daoism is to find your place within the Dao, to follow your own path as naturally as a river flows down the path of least resistance.

I suppose a better analogy would be to compare the Dao to the force of gravity. It’s always there, constantly tugging at our soles to remind us that it’s there, and is more or less inescapable. But we still can (and do) fight against its influence, like the first birds looking to take to the skies. Plenty of us manage to go quite far fighting off their natural inclinations, gaining wealth or power or other rewards. But isn’t it so tiring to stay airborne for so long, constantly struggling against the insistent pull towards the ground? The Dao is within your own thoughts, your subconscious pulls towards your natural desires. You can fight against them all you like, but that doesn’t make them go away. In fact, I would say the more we struggle against what is natural to us, the more those thoughts will make themselves known.

The ultimate goal of Daoism is for everyone to follow their own desires, for everyone to live naturally within the world. Hippy-sounding sentiments aside, we humans are social creatures that generally try to avoid conflict with others. Should we all live openly and honestly about our desires and relationships to others, perhaps a world without conflict might begin to emerge. I’m not so naïve as to say we can be fully free of all kinds of conflict, but I’m simply providing an ideal, a picture of “How Things Should Be.” After all, if everyone did the job they wanted to do instead of the job they felt forced into, a happier and more productive society seems only natural.

And idealized utopias aside, on the personal level this should be the happiest and most fulfilling way to live our lives. The old saying goes “If you do what you love, then you’ll never work a day in your life.” People are more productive doing jobs they enjoy, and are more innovative pursuing jobs they’re passionate about. To find your place in the Dao, I think the best place to start is with your career and the path that you want to define you for the majority of your life.

Thoughts on Opposites

In regards to bomjumaku's article on the cross, here are my musings on duality and unity.

From a purely Daoist perspective, there aren't really any opposites or duality. Such things are just convenient labels for us humans, but have no meaning in respect to the actual Path. Everything just is as it exists within the Dao, thus eliminating the imperfect descriptions of whether things are Good or Evil, Light or Dark, Yin or Yang. Yes, even the infamous Daoist symbol of the Yin-Yang is simply the best attempt of our ancestors to define the state of Being Unified. To follow their own analogy, it should really be simply one plain circle of gray, or maybe purple, something completely different from Black and White. This is known as the Wuji, the ultimate or empty circle. But because just a plain circle looks really dumb and doesn't explain anything, the originators did the best they could to teach the concept better without actually teaching it (but of course, by doing that, they are still teaching it after all).

So we come to the Yin-Yang. I get the feeling from television and the internet that a lot of people use it without actually knowing what it means. So if you get it or already understood it, congratulations! For everyone else, here's the basic rundown. Do you see how there's a black dot and a white dot in the opposite-colored field? This isn't just for aesthetics, it means that nothing is pure on either side. Nothing is totally dark, and nothing is totally light. A lot of people like to deal in absolutes, especially in popular media, but nothing is actually that simple or clear. To try and talk about history or politics this way is to invite disaster and often prevents us from discussing things honestly or fairly. Rorschach was wrong (and yet somehow still right), and we're all supposed to understand that by the end of Watchmen. This is part of what makes him such an interesting character, and I think a big reason why he's the fan favorite. For someone who sees things completely in Right and Wrong, he himself is all mixed up and conflicted, lost in his own gray area that drives him crazy. If we really want to be able to exist in peace and have conversations about Big Important Things, we must accept that things simply are as they are, and will never be wholly good or wholly bad.

Now, let's take another look at the Yin-Yang. Do you notice how those two fields of black and white aren't actually rigid against each other? There isn't just a straight line separating the two halves; the curve represents the two sides flowing into each other, one after the other in a constant flow. This, to me, indicates the illusion of thinking of the two as separate entities or concepts. They are both part of the greater whole, unified as a single entity. This is what the Wuji represents, a single essence that simply is. Contained within it, of course, is the system of Yin and Yang, but the main point is to recognize that it's not a dual duel between the two, but a partnership. People like to talk about how Yin represents the Feminine and how Yang represents to Masculine, but to me this is missing the point. The two simply exist in harmony with each other, and you cannot have one without the other, as they are a single unit.

Of course, this won't stop people from using it as a convenient Chinese cure-all for symbolism, and it certainly won't stop people from using it as a label for any given two-part analogy. And that's okay, because duality labels are still convenient and useful for us. But we do all need to recognize that the duality is an illusion. The concept of opposites is only true in strictest of languages, where something is either Good or Ungood. But for everything else, it's better to think of things in terms of different (and often completely non-polarized) qualities. Like Pathik says, separations are illusions.

Defining the Dao (for Right-Brained People)

A while back I posted my attempts to explain the Dao in a manner that would be helpful for those who are more logically-inclined. I feel like the world has become more left-brained in recent years, what with the popularity of the internet and the ease of sharing information around the world and such. This isn’t a bad thing, simply an observation. But since I’m not solely left-brained (like everyone else in the world), I thought it would be good to post a follow-up for more intuitively-minded folks. This is actually much easier, since it allows me to post my thoughts in fuzzy vagaries, using the meandering analogies I’ve thought up over the years.

So what is the Dao then? In my previous post, I talked about how it’s a lot like gravity: always around us, encouraging us to take the path of least resistance down the mountain. This is a somewhat simple analogy to understand, but I feel that it implies that following the Path requires no effort, no input or agency from us in our lives. We still need to actually walk down the mountain, as opposed to simply falling over on the side of the road and laying there until the end of eternity.

It might be beneficial to think of the Dao as sort of like the rhythm of the Universe, a constant beat resonating through our lives to keep us on the same page as everything else. But it’s not like a marching band’s rhythm, where there is a single conductor and everyone is moving in lockstep with everyone in pursuit of some grander design (perhaps this would be a monotheistic interpretation of the Dao?). Rather, I think of it more like a big music jam session that we’re all apart of at the same time. There’s a single rhythm filling the room that we’re all in on, one that we’re all playing to completely by feel and improvisation. Some people are out of sorts with the group, whether because they haven’t caught the beat yet or because they don’t want to play along with everybody else. But for the people all playing together in harmony, truly wonderful and beautiful music can be made. Some folks will play louder, some softer, some will play out grand and intricate solos, and some will just be keeping a steady accompaniment.

The most important thing to remember is that it works best if we’re all playing with each other instead of against each other.

Daoism as Religion

I am not a religious person. I do not consider myself spiritual. To be honest, I’m not sure I consider myself to be particularly faithful (in the religious/spiritual sense, I’m not a cheater!). Is this against Daoism?

I don’t believe so. True Daoism isn’t really a religion, in any sense of the word. There are no deities, no rituals, not even really a code of conduct. It isn’t the same as Zen or Shinto or any of the other East Asian spiritual traditions that it is so commonly associated with in the modern world. Daoism is, quite simply, a guide on how to live one’s life without the stress and worry that came with the alternatives of Laozi’s age, namely Confucianism and Buddhism. Like many famous old texts, there is even debate on whether the old man wrote it himself, or if he existed at all (but that’s a story for another time, I think). So how did Daoism get to be associated with religion at all?

Well, here’s where things get complicated, and the issue of labeling what is and what isn’t Daoism can be problematic. Somewhere deep in China’s long and storied history, the religions of the land needed to be categorized, and Daoism, being an odd sort of duck, was lumped together with many of the shamanistic folk practices of the common people. From here we see the rise of institutionalized Daoism, with churches and rituals and all the trappings of what we would call a spiritual tradition.

But if you look at the core of the book, of the themes it encourages, this is against the very nature of the Path. It is unnecessary for the people of the world to organize groups or schools around the concepts of individual exploration, and perhaps even detrimental to the act of discovering the Path for oneself. The story goes that Laozi was hesitant to even write the book, as it creates a structure in and of itself. The conundrum is understandable, especially looking back at what’s happened over the last couple thousand years.

I believe that true Daosim, in order to focus on the core idea of letting all discover and walk their own way along the Path, should avoid this sort of idolatry. This includes venerating the old man and the book, to avoid being a Lao-ist, as it were. It’s great to have the teachings there, don’t get me wrong, but as I mentioned earlier, the authorship is under a healthy discussion as it should be, and we should look at the teachings as less a strict code, and more like guidelines, really. If there’s any sort of faith to Daoism, it would be the faith that the Path is leading us all somewhere better than where we currently are, or that everyone will eventually find their way to it and then things will be good. But that faith isn’t necessary to living your own life in accordance with your own personal Dao.

Just as a disclaimer, in no way am I saying that religion shouldn’t exist, or that the religious schools of Daoism are bad or harmful. Things turned out the way they did for a reason, this is part of the Path. Obviously, religion does a great deal of both help and harm to peoples’ lives, and this is the way I believe it is supposed to be. What I’m saying is that Daoism exists separate from wherever people choose to place their faith, and can complement or contrast with any personal spiritual belief you may have.

Bartending as Daoism

So one of my day jobs is that I work as a bartender for a nice local wine and beer lounge in the city. I had to miss last week's shift because of a meeting I had to attend, and coming back today I felt incredibly clumsy and awkward from just that little break.

But as I got back into the swing of things, I found myself floating through the bar almost instinctively. My hands knew where all the bottles were, how we were doing on snacks, how often to check on patrons, and so on. It was pretty busy for a Sunday night, but somewhere during the shift I came to the realization that bartending is a rather perfect example of Daoism in action. It requires a pretty focused mindfulness of the present moment as the bar fills up. You can't plan too far ahead and you can't focus much on past mistakes. You've got to keep your attention on the patrons you have in front of you, and making sure they're happy at that exact moment. The "now" moment is constantly there, and without proper training or perspective, it can be pretty overwhelming to deal with everything. But with the right mindset and practice, I felt like I was just able to move and flow with everyone in the bar at the same time. Making sure drinks are going there, bills are going here, glasses ready to be dried, tables to be cleaned, on and on there's always something to do. And with a sort of effortless effort (I can speak in paradoxes too!), you're able to just surrender yourself to the moment and keep the pace.

I have a feeling at least a few of you also have had this sort of experience with your own work. I think it's a mistake when people call this sort of thing "mindless," as anything that requires your hands to move or your brain to function must involve your mind being active on some level. Feel free to submit your own stories about being within the present moment at work, I'm sure we could all learn from each other's experiences. 

An intriguing video about gender roles, violence, and rite of passage. Let's break it down as such, with a Daoist lens.

Being a member of modern society, the idea that men specifically have a duty to either impress others (males or females) with displays of masculinity is a bit disappointing to me. The fact that this video focuses so much on the self-imposed trials of Men not only illuminates the prevalence of this idea, but reinforces it. Are there truly no examples of female proving grounds? Or is it enough that they wed a man and bear his children? I do not believe that the Path particularly cares what sort of genitalia you possess; we all walk along it regardless of what our bodies look like.

Violence, on the other hand, is quite relevant to the Dao. It is, has been, and always will be an integral part of the human experience. We can choose to either ignore this, as the narrator (and the series as a whole) have implied, or we can recognize it and moderate it within our society. It takes place either in the form of athletic sports or violent rituals or actual combat, and there's a reason it has never left our societies. Rejecting it as a part of our identities would be as foolish as denying ourselves music or art; it is in our nature to fight. You might watch the stories presented and think the people and practices barbaric, but what defines barbarism? How does the absence of such violence in your life make you more civilized? In fact, it is more than likely that violence has simply taken a different form in your activities, making the line between civilized and barbaric essentially arbitrary.

With that said, however, the reason and cause behind violence in our lives becomes much more important. Once we accept that violence will exist as a part of our culture whether we want it or not, identifying the true nature of that violence is what allows us to create a harmonious state with it. More specifically, the idea that a group needs to express violence in order to prove themselves worthy of their peers is the most trouble I have with the episode. We are worthy enough to be ourselves, and should be judged by our own merits. None of the groups shown are in a state of war, and none are auditioning to be soldiers. Their performance in pseudo-combat is less about their actual skill and more like a quick way to discover traits about their character under duress. This is indeed useful, but a society following the Dao would need no such test, which is a second-handed way to learning one's true nature. A person's actions should be judged by how they live their normal everyday life, not by arranging circumstances around them to force them to act differently. The necessity to seek admiration and praise, to run from failure, to take oneself out of their actual reality so that they might be more than themselves in a different set of rules; these are indicative of an unstable base of persona. If we accept who we are without the need for others to approve us, then we can exist and perform as the person we choose to be.

This is not to say that the practices themselves are not beneficial to those that participate. The rigors of physical training, the tempering of combat, the satisfaction of executing a flawless gameplan or adapting to an unexpected setback; these are all incredibly useful and healthy for people to have, especially with violence being such an ingrained part of our nature. But they should be sought out and practiced by our own personal choices along the Path, not because they are needed to gain social status. If a people forge themselves to be stronger and sharper than they were before by their own choices, success and social status will follow.

Drugs and Daoism

I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with the use of drugs themselves, from a purely abstract perspective. In reality, there are a number of ethical, political, and physical issues with taking any mind-altering substance, depending on where it came from, how it got here, and what it can do to your body. But assuming that it’s a fair-trade product that isn’t supporting an evil empire and doesn’t have any extremely dangerous side-effects at the dosage standard, I see nothing wrong with their use. This is why I go out and have drinks every so often with friends, or why I drink coffee on an early (or late) workday. Like anything else in our lives, moderation and living well is the key to staying in line with the Dao.

But the problems start when we move out of moderation, when these substances become necessary for us to function, when we depend on a dose to keep us going. I believe that over-medication has taken a lot of people in my country off their Path, both from the established pharmaceutical industry and from the recreational drug culture. People look for something that can make them feel better without taking the time and effort needed to understand what they are trying to feel better from.

Imagine that your room has gotten quite messy, as rooms tend to do over the course of our lives. The bed is unmade, the laundry has piled up, papers and pens and old receipts have been strewn about everywhere. Things are in quite a state of disarray. However, you decide not to take the time to sort through things, to organize them and put things back in their proper place, to maybe even come up with a more efficient system of keeping things nice and neat for longer, but instead you rent a newfangled cleaning and organizing robot to pick everything up for you. It saves you a bunch of hassle, and things seem at least a little bit nicer than before. But the robot doesn’t know you and doesn’t know how you operate on a day-to-day basis, so things aren’t organized in a way that actually is easy for you to find and get access to. After all, the robot’s only parameters are to make the room clean, not convenient. And since you haven’t actually learned anything from tidying things up yourself, I would bet that the room is going to get cluttered again pretty quickly. So you rent the robot again, and again, and again; each time inevitably going back to the messiness of before, or even making things worse as you constantly fight against the robot’s way of cleaning your room.

This is what happens when you try to medicate yourself with drugs. They push us out of alignment with the Dao, and the more we use them, the more out of sync we will be. If we really want to set our messy room back in order, we need to do it ourselves. We can get help from our family and friends, even help from the occasional robot now and then, but ultimately it is something that needs to be by our own hand.

(via Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness)

A scientific argument for Daoism? It's worth watching, and like most TED talks, only 20 minutes long. There are a couple things I'd like to talk about, and it's best if you watch the video first.

Essentially, the research and the data show that happiness is not only created in our own minds, but it is the same whether it is generated internally or externally. This confirms the words of both the Dalai Lama and Shakespeare, that a state of happiness is truly dependent on your individual self.

So this begs the question, what causes unhappiness? Why don't people just choose to be happy all the time? Dan Gilbert hints at this a bit, but I'll just state it outright: people are generally unhappy because the world around them has told them to be unhappy, and they believe it. When we desire things that we don't really need, when we attach ourselves to things that are fleeting, when we look out for satisfaction on the horizon instead of on our very own doorstep; these are all ways that people outside of ourselves have taken us away from the Path, and it's really up to us to get back on it. The first step, of course, is to turn away from the illusions that our lives have been saturated with.

No, growing older will not be so terrible.

No, you are not as ugly as you think.

No, you do not need to become wealthy and powerful.

These are lies that have been sold to us since the day we were born, essentially to keep society in a state of perpetual unhappiness, so that they may continue to go out and buy and put money in other peoples' pockets.

But we can see past these illusions, and we can accept reality for what it is. As the science shows, by accepting what cannot be changed, we can actually choose to be happy with what we have.

Now, this can lead to some troubling implications, I must admit. Loki, the supervillain conqueror from The Avengers, describes this quite clearly, that "Freedom is life's great lie." So if the data show that people are indeed happier without the freedom of choice, does this mean that Loki is right? That humans crave subjugation and authority?

This is the real puzzle of the Dao. Trying to strike the balance between actively following your Path and yet still yielding to its flow. In the extreme sense, one could argue that the research indicates yes, humans are sheep that must be corralled and controlled, and that we will find our greatest happiness in this state. But I see a different indication. As the video shows, we will always choose to be able to choose, as it were, even if that choice (whether we know it or not) will lead us to unhappiness. It is in our nature to accept and even create happiness in the face of uncontrollable circumstances, but it is also our nature to choose our own destiny. This is what I mean when I say we must actually walk down the mountain instead of just lying down on the side of the road. We are meant to find our own way through this world, even if that means not walking along it all the time. It's a bit tricky to explain, but I would say that people that are not walking along their true Path are doing so for a reason, that perhaps they are not on their Path so that they can find and choose it for themselves further on. You could even argue that in the grand scheme of the Universe, those who fight against their Path are actually still in line with the larger Path of the cosmos. But perhaps this is getting a bit too distant to see clearly. I would say that even if people choose Unhappiness over Happiness, it is their choice to make, and that they either will or will not choose to follow a Path to Happiness in the future (we are assuming, of course, that Daoism is meant for people to find Happiness). The most we can or should do is to choose Happiness for ourselves and see if others take note. Of those that take note, see if some ask how. Of those that ask how, see if some understand. And of those that understand, I believe that all will change their choice.

Daoism and Change

I had a lovely conversation with a dear friend of mine tonight, mostly regarding our old theater group in college and how's it's changed. I honestly think that one of the most beautiful (and frustrating) things about life is that it's always changing, every day and every moment. It's one of those things in the universe that never changes, as the saying goes. But we shouldn't fear or resist this change, no more than you should try and fight the force of gravity or the rhythm of your band (remember those analogies?). Nostalgia is one of the biggest selling points of popular culture these days, and it's not that hard to understand why. People want to feel safe, they want to remember the past without all the grimy little details that made it complicated and real. People want to embrace this illusion, but that's really all that it is.

Rather than that, I try to encourage people to embrace life both as it is and as it was. If we are going to indulge in a trip down memory lane, I believe the past deserves the respect of accuracy, not the glossed-over SFW version. Real life is always messy and nuanced, and we should never ever forget that, lest we start to gloss over the present in the same way.

But even more importantly than remembering and reliving the past accurately, we should always remember to keep the focus on the current living moment. As I stated at the beginning, the world is constantly changing all around us, and there's not a thing we can really do about it. That's why the most important thing in a Daoist's toolbox is the ability to Adapt. One needs to be willing and able to flow with the changes that happen as they happen, looking at the options as they come and finding the one most in line with your best path. This means looking past all the illusions and nostalgia our experiences have been coated with, this means opening up and seeing things as they truly are (or at least as close as you can muster). By doing this, change won't be so frightening after all.

Truth and Arrogance

No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.

When I was a child, I thought this was an issue of pride, of "face" as we say in Chinese culture. That the emperor was a divine symbol of the Chinese people, that to bow in submission to a conqueror would do nothing but forfeit the soul of the kingdom to shame. Perhaps this is still partly true. After all, it's not as if other lives would be spared had the emperor chosen to humiliate himself, while much (if not all) of the respect and faith placed in him by the people would have been lost. Perhaps the emperor had already recognized that Shan Yu had returned with little more than a hunting party, not even capable of conquering a single city, much less all of China.

But there's more to it than simply putting on a strong face, I think. There's that line that's tossed around in films constantly, "We do not negotiate with terrorists." To negotiate means to recognize the other party as at least some kind of equal. And while this may or may not be true in the case of real-life issues of terrorists, in the context of Disney's Mulan I believe it's more a question of universal truths. Shan Yu, having taken the castle by storm and cornered the emperor, asks not for a display of equality, but for submission, to prove his worth as a mighty warrior and conquering lord. But what authority does the emperor recognize in Shan Yu? A powerful leader and dangerous foe, of course, but these things mean little to him. Threatening his life means little as well in the grand scheme of the universe, a truth which eludes Shan Yu to the end.

A telling reversal occurs at the finale when the emperor bows to Mulan, heroine of the day and savior of China. He bows to her before her wisdom, her tenacity, and her virtue. These are things he recognizes as worthy of his respect and humility. The mountain, it would seem, will only bow when it has something greater than itself to bow to.