The superior man/woman,
when obliged to govern the world,
will find that it is best to do nothing.

In doing nothing,
he can abide
in his/her true given nature.
Hence one who honors the world
as he honors his own person
can be entrusted with government.

One who loves the world
as he loves his own body can have the world
entrusted to him.

If the superior man
keeps his five organs from misuse
and does not flaunt his power of seeing and hearing,
then, staying still as the dead,
he will emerge
like the dragon.

The thunder of his words
will resound while
he remains silent.

Moving unseen like a spirit,
   he is aligned with heaven.
      While he/she is unperturbed and does nothing,
         all are drawn to him.

How could he then be occupied
with governing the world?

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou trans. by Hyun Hochmann, Yang Guorong, Letting Be and Letting Stand

Chance, the wild, the whimsy of fortune too often determines who finds him or herself a leader. We are thrown into the world. Chance and serendipity always has a seat at the game-table of life. Often a decision-maker is not gifted by temperament, nor equipped by experience for the role which fate assigns them. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote.

Could this passage, chapter 11 of the Zhuangzi be the pivot point of the Taoist writer’s viewpoint? It is much too late to ask the writer, and if we could, perhaps he’d smile and reply, “What do you think?” These lines treat what makes a person qualified to exercise responsibility for others, on behalf of an organization, a town, a country or for the world.

The rule of thumb, the deep understanding: everything is related to everything else without exception. What is your given essential nature? That is, what temperament have you inherited from your parents, and they, from your grandparent’s genes? In addition what about the neighborhood where you grew up, the grammar school you attended, and those teachers who contributed to your adult self, – do you have a feeling for those aspects of yourself? Then your education opportunities, those you paid tuition for, and those that came by the ‘experience’ which life serves up, how have those contributed? (I know this becomes complicated) What I mean to say: Do you honor the person that you essentially are? Do you have a clue? Have you been too busy for that?

The writer proposes: anyone qualified to exercise judgment on behalf of others has a delicate and mindful respect for their own selves, the self that’s at home in the body! Learning love-of-self = learning love of the world.

Everything is reciprocal to everything.

Saying “no” to misuse and abuse, satisfied to remain within one’s essential self, – is the hallmark of a leader.

Just abide and in due time – “emerge like the dragon.”