Tao Te Ching Verse 47: Knowing the Tao

The Tao Te Ching for Everyday Living

Tao Te Ching Verse 47

translated by Ellen Marie Chen
Without stepping out the door,
Know the world.
Without looking out the window,
See the Tao of Heaven.
The farther one comes out,
The less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without traveling,
Understands things without seeing them,
Accomplishes without work.
Photo by ANIRUDH on Unsplash
Staying Inside
Lao Tzu says we don’t need to leave the house to know what’s going on. He says we don’t need to peer outside the windows to know the Tao. My short time in Brazil and the wonderful things I experienced seem to be defying that, don’t they? Only maybe not. Maybe Lao Tzu is talking about volition and desire here instead of actual actions.

Let’s imagine that the house and windows are our corporeal forms. Let’s also imagine that we who are inside our dwellings are just our consciousness. So now, the verse reads a little different: To know what’s going on outside of me, I don’t need to leave my body. To know the Tao, I don’t need to look outside. Nope, to know the Tao, I need to look inside, don’t I? Let’s extend a little bit. Perhaps the house in this verse is the satisfaction of our corporeal senses. And looking out the window is the lie we tell ourselves that we don’t have everything we need to grow into harmony with the Tao.

I think the main takeaway from the first part of the verse is that in order to move into Harmony with the Tao, we don’t need anything external to ourselves. In fact, those external things are actually distractors. We talked about Abandoning Desires in the last verse - perhaps desires are those external things that we keep looking for that ultimately don’t hold the answers.

So literally staying inside the house and not venturing out? Sure, that’s fine. Venturing off and experiencing the beauty of a people and language, customs and ways of life? Sure, that’s fine, too.
To me, It’s setting aside the belief that I must go outside myself to experience the Tao. That’s my interpretation of what Lao Tzu is speaking about here.