ChiDragon

The Milau Bridge in France.....???

No, not her. It is you that are not so hung up........

Let Nature take its course.

凝神调息，调息凝神, 八个字，就是下手工夫 凝神调息: Concentrate to regulate the breathing 调息凝神: Regulate the breathing to concentrate 八个字: These eight characters 就是下手工夫: Is where you begin to put your effort. 凝神: to concentrate; concentration 调息: to regulate the breathing 工夫: Effort; time and effort 功夫: Martial arts

1. There is no argument here. It was only a figure of speech for the purpose of De. 2. If one follows the principle of Tao, as you said, has De already. Is there a need to embrace Virtue...??? Actually, what it was saying is if you want De, you embrace Tao. If you like to translate De as "power", go right ahead; but then you will have lots of explaining to do to convince others.

Line 6, as you have it, Tao was doing all those virtuous things. Line 10 says it was the credit that was given to Tao for what Tao had done. PS.... De was even modified to say it is "Profound De" to indicate that was the virtue of Tao.

The Virtue, here, means Tao's virtue( the Virtue of Tao).

Where in the DDJ....???

The De may have its own power, but the TTC was not talking about its power. The virtuous merit of De was in Lao Tze's main philosophy. However, Lao Tze would have had called it "power" instead of "De". Thus "Power" is out of the question.

The philosophy behind the "Human follows Earth" is that Earth dictates human to take a path from point A to point B. It doesn't matter how human get there. As long one lives on Earth, one will be dominated by Earth. If one wants to take a shortcut by building a bridge, but it was still under the dictatorship of Mother Earth.

The Tao Te Ching, itself, is self explanatory if one read it real carefully. It is a matter of comprehension. Indeed, the Tao Te Ching does not need a second opinion to say what it is. Edited to add: I am flattered and respect your opinion. However, I didn't see any significant value that was contributed to the argument.

人法地 地法天 天法道 道法自然 Human follows Earth Earth follows Heaven Heaven follows Tao Tao follows Naturalness A place of tranquility integrated with Nature. It's time to meditate(靜坐) to capture the source of Chi.

地法天 Earth follows Heaven

順其自然 Follow the trail of naturalness

Nature took its course

大道自然 萬物隨緣 The great Tao is Spontaneous Let all things follow her path