Chapter 4 The Great Virtue of Water: Beginning with Laozi's "The Highest Good Is Like Water"

1. Why Does Daoism Use Water as a Metaphor for the Way$39

Among all pre-Qin thinkers, it is Laozi whose apprehension of water runs deepest and whose discourse on it is most refined. And the Yushui solar term, as the moment within the yearly sequence when "water" becomes newly active and nourishes all things, is precisely the best occasion for us to revisit Laozi's philosophy of water.

Chapter Eight of the Laozi (Daodejing) declares: "The highest good is like water. Water excels in benefiting the ten thousand things without contending, and dwells in places that people disdain—thus it comes close to the Way."

These sixteen characters are the greatest tribute to water in the history of Chinese thought. The highest good is like water. Water excels at nourishing all things yet does not contend with them; it settles in the low places that everyone disdains—and so it comes closest to the Way.

Why should Laozi use water as a metaphor for the highest good, for the Way itself$40 This is a question worth asking again and again. We must savor, character by character, the layered depths contained within these sixteen characters.

"Excels in benefiting the ten thousand things"—water moistens and nourishes every form of life between Heaven and Earth. During the Yushui season, this is displayed to the fullest: once the spring rain falls, parched earth is moistened, dormant seeds begin to germinate, withered yellow plants turn green once more. Everything water does is the work of "benefiting the ten thousand things"—it gives, it nourishes, it brings to completion. This is precisely the fundamental character of the Way: the Way generates and nurtures the ten thousand things without claiming them as its own; water nourishes the ten thousand things without demanding return.

"Without contending"—these three characters are the most crucial of all. Water nourishes the ten thousand things, yet never contends with them for credit, for gain, or for position. It seeps silently into the soil, quietly merges into plants and trees, and then rises away in vapor, leaving no trace. It never says, "This tree was raised by me," or "This crop was brought to fruition by me." This character of "accomplishing the task yet not dwelling in it" is, in Laozi's mind, the highest virtue of all. Rain water nourishing all things is exactly as Laozi says in Chapter Two: "The ten thousand things arise, yet it does not turn them away; it generates them, yet does not possess them; it acts, yet does not presume upon its action; it accomplishes its task, yet does not dwell upon it." Spring rain rouses the ten thousand things into being, yet claims no credit, possesses nothing, and withdraws in silence—this is precisely the bearing of the Way.

"Dwells in places that people disdain"—water always flows downward, settling in the low places that no one wishes to occupy. All the world strives to climb upward, yet water alone is content to remain lowest. And it is precisely this character of contentment with lowliness that makes water "king of the hundred valleys." Laozi says in Chapter Sixty-Six: "The reason the rivers and seas are able to be king of the hundred valleys is that they excel at lying below them, and so they are able to be king of the hundred valleys." The rivers and seas are able to become the destination (king) toward which a thousand streams converge precisely because they excel at occupying the lowest position—they place themselves lowest of all, and so every stream of water flows toward them. What a profound dialectic this is: because it is content to be lowest, it becomes the greatest; because it does not contend, nothing under Heaven can contend with it.

"Thus it comes close to the Way"—thus water comes closest of all things to the Way. Note the character "close" here—"nearly," "approaching"—rather than "equal to." Water is not yet the Way itself, but among all things between Heaven and Earth, it most resembles the Way. Thus, to understand that ineffable Way, the best path is to observe water, to apprehend water directly. And the Yushui solar term is precisely the moment when Heaven and Earth display this living textbook called "water" before us in its most vivid form.

2. The Yielding Overcomes the Unyielding: The Philosophy of Water's Power

Water is not only a symbol of "goodness," but also a symbol of "power"—yet it is a unique kind of power, one that overcomes the hard through softness, overcomes the strong through weakness.

Chapter Seventy-Eight of the Laozi declares: "Nothing under Heaven is softer or weaker than water, and yet in attacking the hard and strong, nothing can surpass it, for there is nothing that can replace it. That the weak overcomes the strong, and the soft overcomes the hard—this the whole world knows, yet none can put it into practice."

Nothing under Heaven is softer or weaker than water, yet in overcoming what is hard and strong, nothing surpasses it, for nothing can take its place. That the weak can overcome the strong, that the soft can overcome the hard—this truth no one under Heaven fails to know, and yet no one can truly carry it out.

What a profound and counterintuitive insight this is! In the eyes of the world, water is the softest, weakest thing there is—strike it with your fist and it offers no resistance, yielding instantly; cut it with a blade and it closes back together at once, unscathed. It appears weak, passive, powerless. And yet it is precisely this seemingly softest and weakest of things that can bore through stone, breach a dike, and move a mountain. A dripping drop wears through stone not through force but through persistence; a flood moves mountains not through hardness but through vastness. Water, through its utmost softness, accomplishes a power that even the utmost hardness cannot attain.

Why can softness overcome hardness$41 Laozi's insight lies here: what is hard and strong is rigid, finite, and destined eventually to break; what is soft and weak is supple, boundless, and ceaselessly self-renewing. Chapter Seventy-Six of the Laozi says: "When a person is alive, their body is soft and yielding; when dead, it becomes hard and rigid. When plants and trees are alive, they are soft and tender; when dead, they become withered and dry. Thus the hard and strong belong to the company of death, and the soft and weak belong to the company of life." A living person's body is soft; once dead, it stiffens. Plants and trees, while alive, are tender; once dead, they wither and dry. Thus the hard belong to the category of death, and the soft belong to the category of life.

To apprehend this insight through the lens of the Yushui solar term is especially profound. The water of winter is hard—it freezes into ice, rigid, brittle, and lifeless. During the Yushui season, temperatures rise, and that rigid ice melts once more into soft water—this is precisely the transformation from "the hard and strong" (the company of death) into "the soft and weak" (the company of life). The hardness of ice is death; the softness of water is life. The Yushui solar term marks the moment water revives from a death-like rigidity into a life-like softness. Thus the "water" of Yushui is a soft, weak water, a water of life, a water that harbors boundless vitality precisely through its softness and weakness.

3. The "Trustworthiness" and "Levelness" of Water

Water possesses two further qualities that the ancients particularly prized: "trustworthiness" (xin) and "levelness" (ping).

Let us speak first of "trustworthiness." Water possesses an exceedingly precious trait: it always honestly follows its own nature. It invariably flows downward, without exception; it takes the shape of a square vessel when square, and of a round vessel when round, never resisting the shape of its container; it flows when it should flow, and stops when it should stop, never affecting or contriving. This absolute, exceptionless "constancy" is water's "trustworthiness." From this quality of water, the ancients saw the highest model of "sincerity and trustworthiness"—among all things between Heaven and Earth, none keeps faith more perfectly than water.

Now let us speak of "levelness." As noted earlier, Master Xu Shen said, "Water is 'level.'" Water's "levelness" is one of its most marvelous properties: no matter how a vessel is tilted, no matter how uneven the terrain, the surface of water always tends toward absolute horizontality. From this property, the ancients distilled the concepts of "fairness," "law," and "standard." That later ages used "water-level" as a metaphor for straightness and evenness, "plumb-line and marking cord" as a metaphor for law, and "holding a bowl of water perfectly level" as a metaphor for impartiality—all of this traces back to this physical nature of water.

Why are these two qualities so important$42 Because they elevate "water" from a mere natural substance to a moral exemplar. Water's "trustworthiness" teaches people to be honest and constant; water's "levelness" teaches people to be fair and impartial. During the Yushui season, when we see the spring rain fall evenly upon every inch of the earth—favoring neither the noble peony nor scorning the lowly weed, giving no extra drop to the rich, nor withholding any from the poor—we can apprehend the expansive fairness embodied in water's "levelness." The very idiom "rain and dew shared equally" (yulu junzhan) is itself the plainest tribute to water's fairness. And this quality of "rain and dew shared equally" became, in later ages, precisely the basis for using rain as a metaphor for the sovereign's grace and virtue—the ideal ruler's beneficence ought to be bestowed, like the spring rain, fairly, universally, and without partiality, upon every last subject under Heaven.

4. Master Guan on Water: The Origin of the Ten Thousand Things

If Laozi saw in water the "Way" and "virtue," then Master Guan saw in water "the origin of the ten thousand things."

The "Water and Earth" chapter of the Guanzi states: "Water is the blood and qi of the earth, flowing through it as through sinews and veins—thus it is said that water possesses within itself every substance." And: "Water is the origin of the ten thousand things, the ancestral home of all that lives, the source from which beauty and ugliness, worthiness and unworthiness, foolishness and wisdom, mediocrity and excellence are all produced."

Master Guan says that water is the blood and qi of the earth, flowing just as blood flows through the sinews and veins, and thus it is said that water possesses within itself the root of every substance. Water is the origin of the ten thousand things, the dwelling place ("ancestral home") of all life, the very source from which every quality—beauty and ugliness, worthiness and unworthiness, foolishness and wisdom, mediocrity and excellence—is produced.

This is an exceedingly bold proposition: water is not only the material origin of the ten thousand things, but even the root of all moral character. Why did Master Guan hold such a view$43 Because, in his eyes, water is the standard by which all things are measured, the essence by which every matter of right and wrong, gain and loss, is judged. The "Water and Earth" chapter even holds that the quality of water in different places determines the differing character of the people who live there—the beauty or ugliness of the water bears upon the worthiness or unworthiness of the people. This "water-and-soil determinism," though it may seem overly simplistic to us today, reflects a profound intuition of the ancients: that water is the fundamental force that shapes the ten thousand things—including human beings. This intuition elevates water from a mere substance into a shaping power nearly equivalent to "the hand of creation" itself.

Linking Master Guan's insight to the Yushui solar term, we can understand why this solar term—marking the moment "water" becomes active once more—occupies so important a place in the spiritual world of the ancients. The Yushui solar term is the moment when "the origin of the ten thousand things" begins flowing again, exerting anew its power to shape all things. Once the spring rain falls, water—that "ancestral home of all that lives"—begins the most important work of its entire year: gestating, nourishing, and shaping every form of life about to sprout between Heaven and Earth. In this sense, the Yushui solar term is nothing less than the resurrection day of "the origin of the ten thousand things."