The sage has no invariable mind of his own; he makes the mind of the people his mind. To those who are good (to me), I am good; and to those who are not good (to me), I am also good;--and thus (all) get to be good. To those who are sincere (with me), I am sincere; and to those who are not sincere (with me), I am also sincere;--and thus (all) get to be sincere. The sage has in the world an appearance of indecision, and keeps his mind in a state of indifference to all. The people all keep their eyes and ears directed to him, and he deals with them all as his children.
The sage doesn't cling to fixed opinions or demand that others match his preferences. Instead, he mirrors back goodness and sincerity to everyone—not as manipulation, but as a natural response that calls forth those qualities in others. By releasing the need to control or judge, he becomes a steady center around which people naturally orient themselves, like children who trust a parent's openness rather than his certainty.
We live in an age of hardened positions and performed certainty, where holding firm opinions feels like integrity and flexibility looks like weakness. Yet this chapter suggests the opposite: that our rigidity—our insistence that others change before we extend goodness—creates the very division we fear. The noise of modern life grows louder partly because so few are willing to meet others without conditions, to hold their own views lightly enough to see what's actually true in front of them. In a fractured world, this kind of non-defensive presence becomes subversive and healing.
Today, notice one moment where you're tempted to withhold goodness until someone 'deserves' it or agrees with you—and try something different. Meet that person or situation with sincerity anyway, without abandoning your own truth. See what happens when you release the need to convince and simply remain present.
Synoptical Studies in Chinese Character.
Handbook of the Swatow Dialect.
Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. Translated from the Chinese. With copious Notes.
Two Chinese Poems: The San Tzŭ Ching, or the Trimetrical Classic; and the Ch'ien Tzŭ Wên, or Thousand Character Essay. Metrically translated.
From Swatow to Canton: An Overland Journey.
A Glossary of Reference, on Subjects connected with the Far East. 2nd Edition.
The Remains of Lao Tzŭ. Hong Kong: 1886.
FOOTNOTES: Pronounce Chwongdza.
In the modern province of An-hui.
Hence he is often spoken of in the book language as "Ch'i-yüan."
Pronounce Lowdza. The low as in allow. See p. vii.
Of an imaginative character, in keeping with the visionary teachings of his master.
See chs. xxxi, xxix, and x, respectively.
The second of these personages is doubtless identical, though the name is differently written, with the Kêng Sang Ch'u of ch. xxiii. The identity of the first name has not been satisfactorily settled.
See p. 17.
This last clause is based upon a famous passage in the Lun Yü:—The perfect man is not a mere...
The companion passage is a bibliographic residue—footnotes, titles, scholarly apparatus—pointing to the textual transmission of Taoist teaching across centuries and languages. It embodies the teaching through *method* rather than doctrine: knowledge passes through many hands, gets translated, annotated, disputed, yet the living current persists. The fragmentation itself is the message—the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, yet here it is, named again and again, in different tongues and formats.
We live in an age of infinite citation and documentation, yet the companion reminds us that transmission is never pristine. Every footnote, every translation choice, every scholarly debate is how wisdom actually moves through the world—not as a perfect transmission but as a living, messy, often contradictory conversation. The very incompleteness of the passage mirrors how we encounter truth today: fragmented across platforms, languages, and interpretations, requiring us to listen beneath the noise.
(95) The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
Heraclitus names the same condition as the companion: the waking share one logos (the common world, the teaching), but each person turns inward into private interpretation. The footnotes and textual variants in the companion are not failures of transmission—they are the proof that the teaching lives in the waking world, contested and alive, rather than sealed in a single authorized version.
All three point to a teaching that does not depend on uniform belief or perfect doctrinal clarity. The sage (Tao Te Ching) makes the people's mind his mind; the textual tradition (Chuang Tzu companion) survives through translation and variation; the waking (Heraclitus) share one world but know it differently. Each teaches that the Way works *through* diversity, not despite it.
Heraclitus insists on the *logos*—a rational, common fire that binds the waking. The Taoist texts dissolve that confidence in rational unity, teaching instead through emptiness and non-striving. Heraclitus sees strength in the shared logos; the Tao sees freedom in releasing the need for everyone to see the same thing.
When you encounter conflicting advice or interpretations today—in a meeting, a conversation, a text—pause and ask: Am I trying to make everyone see it my way, or can I trust that different minds perceiving the same situation might each be waking?