He who, being a man, remains a woman, will become an universal channel.
As an universal channel the eternal virtue will never forsake him. He will re-become a child.
He who, being in the light, remains in obscurity, will become an universal model.
As an universal model the eternal virtue will not pass him by. He will go back to the all-perfect.
He who, being glorious, continues in humility, will become an universal valley.
As an universal valley the eternal virtue will fill him. He will revert to the first essence.
This first essence is that which, being differentiated, gives rise to innumerable vessels of life.
A wise man, by embracing it, becomes the wisest of governors.
A liberal government is that which neither disregards nor hurts anyone.
Translation: Walter Gorn Old, 1904 (public domain)
Sit With This
In which pair — strong and soft, bright and obscure, glory and lowliness — are you living only on the prized side, and what would it be like to know your strength there and yet rest, for once, in the quiet half?
A Practice
Pick one place today where you usually perform the strong, bright, winning version of yourself. Knowing full well you could, choose the low road instead — yield the point, stay in the background, take the unglamorous task. Notice the relief, underneath the resistance, of not having to be impressive.
Ask About This Verse the Verse Guide is coming
The Institute is preparing the Verse Guide — a careful study companion that will let you ask questions about this verse and explore its characters, its history, and its practice. It is being built slowly and deliberately, with human review at every step, because getting the tradition right matters more to us than shipping fast.
Join the Institute to be among the first invited when it opens.
Join for Early Access
Western Commentary
The verse moves in a steady, repeating rhythm, the same shape three times over: know the strong, bright, glorious half of yourself fully — and then keep, on purpose, to its opposite, the yielding and obscure and lowly one. Each time you are asked to hold the prized half and then dwell in the unprized, and each time the same thing comes back to you: you become a channel the whole world runs through, and revert, the verse says, to the first essence — the single original material out of which every separate thing was later made.
Much in us wants to live entirely on the bright side of every pair — all strength and no softness, all shine and no shadow, all winning and no low place. The yielding, the quiet, the unglamorous get treated as conditions to climb out of as fast as possible. The verse does not ask you to surrender your strength; each line begins by knowing it. It asks something more demanding: to hold a power and its opposite at the same time, and then to make your home in the humble side. Wholeness here is not choosing the impressive half. It is being large enough to contain both halves, and settled enough to live in the quiet one.
The other way has a cost you can feel in the body — the steady drain of having to be strong, bright, and winning at every hour, never permitted the low ground. The verse points to the relief on the far side of that performance. Knowing you could assert yourself, and choosing not to. Knowing you could shine, and letting someone else. Becoming the valley that everything flows down into, precisely because it is willing to be the lowest place. Underneath the roles a person gets shaped into, there is an older and simpler self — the one that was there before the world taught which half of each pair to want. The verse is a way back toward it.
It would be easy to read this as a counsel of weakness or self-erasure, as if the instruction were to be feeble and dim and disgraced. But look again at how each line opens: it begins with the strength, the light, the glory, fully named. The power is acknowledged in full — you are not asked to lack it, only to be free of the constant need to display it. The first essence the verse keeps returning to is not a smaller thing than the finished vessel; it is the whole, undivided material that every vessel was cut down from. Returning to it does not make a person less. It makes them, again, all of themselves — and from that wholeness, the verse adds, one governs gently, with no need to disregard or injure anyone at all.