When Taoists speak about balance and harmony, they mean something different than what Westerners understand. They do not mean symmetry, proportion or equality. Nor do they mean stability, permanence or predictability.
Indeed, the Taoist concept of balance and harmony means, first and foremost, alignment with natural law. It means that, if we let things operate naturally, our actions will produce certain consequences automatically.
For Taoists, balance and harmony do not necessarily mean “beneficial” and “healthy.” No, they just mean that, if we leave the Tao alone, it will produce consequences in accordance with natural law. It is irrelevant whether we like those consequences or not. What counts is that they are generated automatically.
Lao-Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching as a guideline to those who wish to understand natural law. If we accept the principle that the universe is governed by natural law, we’ll see harmony and balance in events that other people may categorize as setbacks. We will learn to look at the whole picture, even when everyone else refuses to do so.
A carefully designed Japanese garden is harmonious and balanced, but so is a storm, a financial loss, or a bodily injury. The Tao Te Ching teaches us to find balance and harmony in unusual places, and I can say the same of the writings of Yang-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu.
Natural law as objective
It takes lots of intellectual and ethical training until we are able to see balance and harmony everywhere. The Taoists don’t expect bad actions to produce good consequences, nor do they expect the opposite. Natural law is implacable, and we will be better off if we accept and understand its power.
In this respect, the Tao Te Ching is the direct opposite of positive thinking. Lao-Tzu expected the Tao to work on every occasion, irrespective of our personal wishes. He regarded the Tao as objective, eternal and immutable, and the purpose of his insights is to help us align our actions with the Tao.
In contrast, Emile Coue (1857-1926), the French pharmacist that discovered positive thinking, made experiments that prove that human motivation can change the course of events. I refer to the books written by Emile Coue where he explained how a strong desire to heal can accelerate the healing process.
If Coue was right, even partially right, does it mean that the Tao Te Ching is wrong? If Coue viewed balance and harmony primarily as the outcome of human motivation and action, does it mean that we should reject the Taoist objective conception of natural law?
No, because the Tao Te Ching’s conception of harmony and balance already includes human desires and actions. Lao-Tzu already took them into account in his philosophy. His idea of the natural law encompasses storms, rain and floods as much as it encompasses human motivation and auto-suggestion.
Lao-Tzu did not need to wait for Emile Coue to figure out that human action plays an important role in natural law, but he discarded all magical or supernatural aspects. He would have quickly dismissed the claim that thoughts are facts, or that our sheer desire and motivation can shape the course of events.
Taoism and positive thinking
Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching explains how human action is, for better or for worse, incorporated in the Taoist conception of balance and harmony. If we perform the correct action at the beginning of the chain of events, the outcome should be good; but if we fail to do so, the outcome should be detrimental.
What does Lao-Tzu say in Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching? He recommends that we address problems while they are still small. His advice makes sense. If we put it into practice, we’ll be able to put out fires easily and prevent them from spreading.
The fact that initiative and promptness tend to increase the effectiveness of our actions is part of natural law. Lao-Tzu was simply enunciating what he had witnessed himself. Sickness is more easily cured when it is mild. A piece of furniture is more easily repaired when it is only slightly damaged.
If we wait too long, the problem will have grown, until one day, it becomes impossible to solve. When sickness affects our vital organs, it is hard to cure. When a piece of furniture breaks apart, it might prove impossible to put it back in one piece.
Lao-Tzu’s message covers all alternatives: if we take action, we will achieve one type of balance and harmony; and if we refrain from taking action, we will arrive at a different type of balance and harmony. One way or the other, the Tao always works.
The role of motivation
How would Lao-Tzu have reacted to the discovery made by Emile Coue in his pharmacy in Nancy, France? He would have accepted at face value the claim from Coue that suggestion can help patients recover faster because, essentially, the principle is nothing but a variation of Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching.
When Coue painted a mental picture of health recovery to his patients, he was encouraging them to follow their treatment day after day. For instance, to take their medication or follow a certain type of diet. No wonder that, as a result, those patients recovered their health faster.
Unsurprisingly, Coue reported scant or much slower healing in patients that had failed to implement the treatment. They did not have sufficient motivation to do what’s needed steadily. No wonder that their inconsistent, negligent behaviour prevented them from healing.
Lao-Tzu would not have seen any signs of positive thinking in the workings of the Tao. Nor would he have categorized the recovered patients as balanced and harmonious, and the others as unbalanced and disharmonious.
Emile Coue made an interesting discovery, but it is not new in terms of causality. Already for twenty-five centuries, Taoists have been viewing human action as part of the normal cause- and-effect scheme, leading to beneficial balance and harmony when the right action is taken, or to a different type of balance and harmony when the wrong action takes place.
If you want to apply effective ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Asymmetry: The shortcut to success when success seems impossible.”