...that difficulty and ease produce the one (the idea of) the other....

Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching as translated by James Legge, 1891

Hmm! I am really flying through the Tao but I need to pull back and go back a little...spend some time on each verse...slow it down so I am not so much interpreting it but feeling it. 

The second verse is all about opposites or contrast...how there are two sides of the same coin maybe...one allowing the other to be (if only mentally and conceptually). 

So as we talked about struggles, challenges and problems we need to see that difficulty gives birth to ease and ease give birth to challenge.  (Of course it is believed that the Tao was written in the period of yin-yang in China which would speak to this idea of duality being non duality.)  I have often mentioned how life gives us contrasting ropes of circumstance and experience on which to weave our tapestry. One type of rope  allows the other to be seen, felt, experienced etc ...creating texture to our lives. We maybe shouldn't judge one as being good or bad...just being...just springing up and not resisting Life by declining to show self.

Of course, all the things used as examples in this verse involve a certain judgment or interpretation, don't they? : Beauty and ugliness, skillful and unskilled, existence and non-existence (takes me back to the Buddhist idea of birth and non-birth), difficulty and ease, height and lowness, notes and tones in music, behind and before etc).  All of this involves a certain interpretation, doesn't it?  What  you may consider beautiful, I may see as ugly.  What a 7 foot you deems as short, a five foot 4 inch me might see as tall. 

For some reason, Shakespeare's line from Hamlet came back to me instantly as I read this verse. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Act II, Scene 2)

So maybe that is why the verse goes on to say that the sage manages all his affairs without doing anything.  Without judging, interpreting   or resisting Life. He just is and things just are. I take that because of a lack of judgment  he is wise and able to serve not because of busy work but because of presence.  He doesn't have to get lost in doing.  Most importantly, he teaches without words, without  concepts.  What he teaches goes beyond knowledge, without a need to own or possess all the things that 'spring up', without expecting any reward or recognition.

True teaching, true leading goes beyond the judgments of duality. Seeing them yes, understanding how they come to be ...yes...but not seeking to be recognized for this knowledge. 

Hmmm!

Interesting. All is well.