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Title: Tao Te Ching Author: Lao Tzu Date: c. 500 BCE Language: en Topics: Taoism, philosophy, proto-anarchism Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2020 from http://www.sfhunyuan.com/images/TAO_TE_CHING_-_LE_GUIN_edition.pdf Notes: English Translation by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 1997.
For A. L. K. and J. P. S.
The Tao Te Ching was probably written about twenty-five hundred years
ago, perhaps by a man called Lao Tzu, who may have lived at about the
same time as Confucius. Nothing about it is certain except that itâs
Chinese, and very old, and speaks to people everywhere as if it had been
written yesterday.
The first Tao Te Ching I ever saw was the Paul Carus edition of 1898,
bound in yellow cloth stamped with blue and red Chinese designs and
characters. It was a venerable object of mystery, which I soon
investigated, and found more fascinating inside than out. The book was
my fatherâs; he read in it often. Once I saw him making notes from it
and asked what he was doing.
He said he was marking which chapters heâd like to have read at his
funeral.
We did read those chapters at his memorial service.
I have the book, now ninety-eight years old and further ornamented with
red binding-tape to hold the back on, and have marked which chapters Iâd
like to have read at my funeral. In the Notes, I explain why I was so
lucky to discover Lao Tzu in that particular edition. Here I will only
say that I was lucky to discover him so young, so that I could live with
his book my whole life long.
I also discuss other aspects of my version in the Notesâthe how of it.
Here I want to state very briefly the why of it.
The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define
poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of
language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its
terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their
net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty
is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good
authority.
Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a
vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist âsage,â his
masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded,
in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a
present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking
esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I
would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for
twenty-five hundred years.
It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen,
kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing.
Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is also the
deepest spring.
âUrsula K. Le Guin
The way you can go
isnât the real way.
The name you can say
isnât the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
nameâs the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees whatâs hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.[1]
Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
Thatâs why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.
The things of this world
exist, they are;
you canât refuse them.
To bear and not to own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.[2]
Not praising the praiseworthy
keeps people uncompetitive.
Not prizing rare treasures
keeps people from stealing.
Not looking at the desirable
keeps the mind quiet.
So the wise soul
governing people
would empty their minds,
fill their bellies,
weaken their wishes,
strengthen their bones,
keep people unknowing,
unwanting,
keep the ones who do know
from doing anything.
When you do not-doing,
nothingâs out of order.[3]
The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.
Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.
Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.
Whose child? born
before the gods.[4]
Heaven and earth arenât humane.
To them the ten thousand things
are straw dogs.
Wise souls arenât humane.[5]
To them the hundred families
are straw dogs.
Heaven and earth
act as a bellows:
Empty yet structured,
it moves, inexhaustibly giving.
The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.
The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.
Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.
Heaven will last,
earth will endure.
How can they last so long?
They donât exist for themselves
and so can go on and on.
So wise souls
leaving self behind
move forward,
and setting self aside
stay centered.
Why let the self go?
To keep what the soul needs.
True goodness
is like water.[6]
Waterâs good
for everything.
It doesnât compete.
It goes right
to the low loathsome places,
and so finds the way.
For a house,
the good thing is level ground.
In thinking,
depth is good.
The good of giving is magnanimity;
of speaking, honesty;
of government, order.
The good of work is skill,
and of action, timing.
No competition,
so no blame.
Brim-fill the bowl,
itâll spill over.
Keep sharpening the blade,
youâll soon blunt it.
Nobody can protect
a house full of gold and jade.
Wealth, status, pride,
are their own ruin.
To do good, work well, and lie low
is the way of the blessing.
Can you keep your soul in its body,
hold fast to the one,
and so learn to be whole?
Can you center your energy,
be soft, tender,
and so learn to be a baby?
Can you keep the deep water still and clear,
so it reflects without blurring?
Can you love people and run things,
and do so by not doing?
Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven,
can you be like a bird with her nestlings?
Piercing bright through the cosmos,
can you know by not knowing?
To give birth, to nourish,
to bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to lead and not to rule:
this is mysterious power.[7]
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isnât
is where itâs useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the potâs not
is where itâs useful.[8]
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isnât,
thereâs room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isnât.
The five colors
blind our eyes.
The five notes
deafen our ears.
The five flavors
dull our taste.
Racing, chasing, hunting,
drives people crazy.
Trying to get rich
ties people in knots.
So the wise soul
watches with the inner
not the outward eye,
letting that go,
keeping this.
To be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.
What does that mean,
to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favor debases:
we fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
What does that mean,
to take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because Iâm a body;
if I werenât a body,
how could I suffer?
So people who set their bodily good
before the public good
could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.[9]
Look at it: nothing to see.
Call it colorless.
Listen to it: nothing to hear.
Call it soundless.
Reach for it: nothing to hold.
Call it intangible.
Triply undifferentiated,
it merges into oneness,
not bright above,
not dark below.
Never, oh! never
can it be named.
It reverts, it returns
to unbeing.
Call it the form of the unformed,
the image of no image.
Call it unthinkable thought.
Face it: no face.
Follow it: no end.
Holding fast to the old Way,
we can live in the present.
Mindful of the ancient beginnings,
we hold the thread of the Tao.
Once upon a time
people who knew the Way
were subtle, spiritual, mysterious, penetrating,
unfathomable.
Since theyâre inexplicable
I can only say what they seemed like:
Cautious, oh yes, as if wading through a winter river.
Alert, as if afraid of the neighbors.
Polite and quiet, like houseguests.
Elusive, like melting ice.
Blank, like uncut wood.
Empty, like valleys.
Mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water.[10]
Who can by stillness, little by little
make what is troubled grow clear?
Who can by movement, little by little
make what is still grow quick?
To follow the Way
is not to need fulfillment.
Unfulfilled, one may live on
needing no renewal.
Be completely empty. Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
sink homeward,
returning to the root.
The return to the root
is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be,
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Without it, ruin, disorder.
To know what endures
is to be openhearted,
magnanimous,
regal,
blessed,
following the Tao,
the way that endures forever.
The body comes to its ending,
but there is nothing to fear.[11]
True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are the leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them, those they despise.
To give no trust
is to get no trust.
When the workâs done right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.[12]
In the degradation of the great way
come benevolence and righteousness.
With the exaltation of learning and prudence
comes immense hypocrisy.
The disordered family
is full of dutiful children and parents.
The disordered society
is full of loyal patriots.
Stop being holy, forget being prudent,
itâll be a hundred times better for everyone.
Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous,
people will remember what family feeling is.
Stop planning, forget making a profit,
there wonât be any thieves and robbers.
But even these three rules
neednât be followed; what works reliably
is to know the raw silk,
hold the uncut wood.
Need little,
want less.
Forget the rules.
Be untroubled.[13]
How much difference between yes and no?
What difference between good and bad?[14]
What the people fear
must be feared.
O desolation!
Not yet, not yet has it reached its limit!
Everybodyâs cheerful,
cheerful as if at a party,
or climbing a tower in springtime.
And here I sit unmoved,
clueless, like a child,
a baby too young to smile.
Forlorn, forlorn.
Like a homeless person.
Most people have plenty.
Iâm the one thatâs poor,
a fool right through.
Ignorant, ignorant.
Most people are so bright.
Iâm the one thatâs dull.
Most people are so keen.
I donât have the answers.
Oh, Iâm desolate, at sea,
adrift, without harbor.
Everybody has something to do.
Iâm the clumsy one, out of place.
Iâm the different one,
for my food
is the milk of the mother.[15]
The greatest power is the gift
of following the Way alone.
How the Way does things
is hard to grasp, elusive.
Elusive, yes, hard to grasp,
yet there are thoughts in it.
Hard to grasp, yes, elusive,
yet there are things in it.
Hard to make out, yes, and obscure,
yet there is spirit in it,
veritable spirit.
There is certainty in it.
From long, long ago till now
it has kept its name.
So it saw
the beginning of everything.
How do I know
anything about the beginning?
By this.[16]
Be broken to be whole.
Twist to be straight.
Be empty to be full.
Wear out to be renewed.
Have little and gain much.
Have much and get confused.
So wise souls hold to the one,
and test all things against it.
Not showing themselves,
they shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
theyâre self-evident.
Not praising themselves,
theyâre accomplished.
Not competing,
they have in all the world no competitor.
What they used to say in the old days,
âBe broken to be whole,â
was that mistaken?
Truly, to be whole
is to return.
Nature doesnât make long speeches.
A whirlwind doesnât last all morning.
A cloudburst doesnât last all day.
Who makes the wind and rain?
Heaven and earth do.
If heaven and earth donât go on and on,
certainly people donât need to.
The people who work with Tao
are Tao people,
they belong to the Way.
People who work with power
belong to power.
People who work with loss
belong to whatâs lost.
Give yourself to the Way
and youâll be at home on the Way.
Give yourself to power
and youâll be at home in power.
Give yourself to loss
and when youâre lost youâll be at home.
To give no trust
is to get no trust.
You canât keep standing on tiptoe
or walk in leaps and bounds.
You canât shine by showing off
or get ahead by pushing.
Self-satisfied people do no good,
self-promoters never grow up.
Such stuff is to the Tao
as garbage is to food
or a tumor to the body,
hateful.
The follower of the Way
avoids it.
There is something[17]
that contains everything.
Before heaven and earth
it is.
Oh, it is still, unbodied,
all on its own, unchanging,
all-pervading,
ever-moving.
So it can act as the mother
of all things.
Not knowing its real name,
we only call it the Way.
If it must be named,
let its name be Great.
Greatness means going on,
going on means going far,
and going far means turning back.
So they say: âThe Way is great,
heaven is great,
earth is great,
and humankind is great;
four greatnesses in the world,
and humanity is one of them.â
People follow earth,
earth follows heaven,
heaven follows the Way,
the Way follows what is.[18]
Heavy is the root of light.[19]
Still is the master of moving.[20]
So wise souls make their daily march
with the heavy baggage wagon.
Only when safe
in a solid, quiet house
do they lay care aside.
How can a lord of ten thousand chariots
let his own person
weigh less in the balance than his land?
Lightness will lose him his foundation,
movement will lose him his mastery.
Good walkers leave no track.
Good talkers donât stammer.
Good counters donât use their fingers.
The best doorâs unlocked and unopened.
The best knotâs not in a rope and canât be untied.
So wise souls are good at caring for people,
never turning their back on anyone.
Theyâre good at looking after things,
never turning their back on anything.
Thereâs a light hidden here.
Good people teach people who arenât good yet;
the less good are the makings of the good.
Anyone who doesnât respect a teacher
or cherish a student
may be clever, but has gone astray.
Thereâs a deep mystery here.[21]
Knowing man
and staying woman,
be the riverbed of the world.
Being the worldâs riverbed
of eternal unfailing power
is to go back again to be newborn.
Knowing light
and staying dark,
be a pattern to the world.
Being the worldâs pattern
of eternal unerring power
is to go back again to boundlessness.
Knowing glory
and staying modest,
be the valley of the world.
Being the worldâs valley
of eternal inexhaustible power
is to go back again to the natural.
Natural wood is cut up
and made into useful things.
Wise souls are used
to make into leaders.
Just so, a great carving
is done without cutting.[22]
Those who think to win the world
by doing something to it,
I see them come to grief.
For the world is a sacred object.
Nothing is to be done to it.
To do anything to it is to damage it.
To seize it is to lose it.
Under heaven some things lead, some follow,
some blow hot, some cold,
some are strong, some weak,
some are fulfilled, some fail.
So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.[23]
A Taoist wouldnât advise a ruler
to use force of arms for conquest;
that tactic backfires.
Where the army marched
grow thorns and thistles.
After the war
come the bad harvests.
Good leaders prosper, thatâs all,
not presuming on victory.
They prosper without boasting,
or domineering, or arrogance,
prosper because they canât help it,
prosper without violence.[24]
Things flourish then perish.
Not the Way.
Whatâs not the Way
soon ends.[25]
Even the best weapon
is an unhappy tool,
hateful to living things.
So the follower of the Way
stays away from it.
Weapons are unhappy tools,
not chosen by thoughtful people,
to be used only when there is no choice,
and with a calm, still mind,
without enjoyment.
To enjoy using weapons
is to enjoy killing people,
and to enjoy killing people
is to lose your share in the common good.
It is right that the murder of many people
be mourned and lamented.
It is right that a victor in war
be received with funeral ceremonies.
The way goes on forever nameless.
Uncut wood, nothing important,
yet nobody under heaven
dare try to carve it.
If rulers and leaders could use it,
the ten thousand things
would gather in homage,
heaven and earth would drop sweet dew,
and people, without being ordered,
would be fair to one another.
To order, to govern,
is to begin naming;
when names proliferate
itâs time to stop.
If you know when to stop
youâre in no danger.[26]
The Way in the world
is as a stream to a valley,
a river to the sea.
Knowing other people is intelligence,
knowing yourself is wisdom.
Overcoming others takes strength,
overcoming yourself takes greatness.
Contentment is wealth.
Boldly pushing forward takes resolution.
Staying put keeps you in position.
To live till you die
is to live long enough.
The Great Way runs
to left, to right,
the ten thousand things
depending on it,
living on it,
accepted by it.
Doing its work,
it goes unnamed.
Clothing and feeding
the ten thousand things,
it lays no claim on them
and asks nothing of them.
Call it a small matter.
The ten thousand things
return to it,
though it lays no claim on them.
Call it great.
So the wise soul
without great doings
achieves greatness.
Hold fast to the great thought
and all the world will come to you,
harmless, peaceable, serene.
Walking around, we stop
for music, for food.
But if you taste the Way
itâs flat, insipid.
It looks like nothing much,
it sounds like nothing much.
And yet you canât get enough of it.
What seeks to shrink
must first have grown;
what seeks weakness
surely was strong.
What seeks its ruin
must first have risen;
what seeks to take
has surely given.
This is called the small dark light:
the soft, the weak prevail
over the hard, the strong.
Fish should stay underwater:
the real means of rule
should be kept dark.[27]
The Way never does anything,
and everything gets done.
If those in power could hold to the Way,
the ten thousand things
would look after themselves.
If even so they tried to act,
Iâd quiet them with the nameless,
the natural.
In the unnamed, in the unshapen,
is not wanting.
In not wanting is stillness.
In stillness all under heaven rests.[28]
Great power, not clinging to power,
has true power.
Lesser power, clinging to power,
lacks true power.
Great power, doing nothing,
has nothing to do.
Lesser power, doing nothing,
has an end in view.
The good the truly good do
has no end in view.
The right the very righteous do
has an end in view.
And those who act in true obedience to law
roll up their sleeves
and make the disobedient obey.
So: when we lose the Way we find power;
losing power we find goodness;
losing goodness we find righteousness;
losing righteousness weâre left with obedience.
Obedience to law is the dry husk
of loyalty and good faith.
Opinion is the barren flower of the Way,
the beginning of ignorance.
So great-minded people
abide in the kernel not the husk,
in the fruit not the flower,
letting the one go, keeping the other.[29]
Those who of old got to be whole:
Heaven through its wholeness is pure;
earth through its wholeness is steady;
spirit through its wholeness is potent;
the valley through its wholeness flows with rivers;
the ten thousand things through their wholeness live;
rulers through their wholeness have authority.
Their wholeness makes them what they are.
Without what makes it pure, heaven would disintegrate;
without what steadies it, earth would crack apart;
without what makes it potent, spirit would fail;
without what fills it, the valley would run dry;
without what quickens them, the ten thousand things would die;
without what authorizes them, rulers would fall.
The root of the noble is in the common,
the high stands on whatâs below.
Princes and kings call themselves
âorphans, widowers, beggars,â
to get themselves rooted in the dirt.
A multiplicity of riches
is poverty.
Jade is praised as precious,
but its strength is being stone.
Return is how the Way moves.
Weakness is how the Way works.
Heaven and earth and the ten thousand things
are born of being.
Being is born of nothing.
Thoughtful people hear about the Way
and try hard to follow it.
Ordinary people hear about the Way
and wander onto it and off it.
Thoughtless people hear about the Way
and make jokes about it.
It wouldnât be the Way
if there werenât jokes about it.
So they say:
The Wayâs brightness looks like darkness;
advancing on the Way feels like retreating;
the plain Way seems hard going.
The height of power seems a valley;
the amplest power seems not enough;
the firmest power seems feeble.
Perfect whiteness looks dirty.
The pure and simple looks chaotic.
The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is never finished.
The great tone is barely heard.
The great thought canât be thought.
The Way is hidden
in its namelessness.
But only the Way
begins, sustains, fulfills.
The Way bears one.
The one bears two.
The two bear three.
The three bear the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things
carry the yin on their shoulders
and hold in their arms the yang,
whose interplay of energy
makes harmony.[30]
People despise
orphans, widowers, outcasts.
Yet thatâs what kings and rulers call themselves.
Whatever you lose, youâve won.
Whatever you win, youâve lost.
What others teach, I say too:
violence and aggression
destroy themselves.
My teaching rests on that.
Whatâs softest in the world
rushes and runs
over whatâs hardest in the world.
The immaterial
enters
the impenetrable.
So I know the good in not doing.
The wordless teaching,
the profit in not doingâ
not many people understand it.
Which is nearer,
name or self?
Which is dearer,
self or wealth?
Which gives more pain,
loss or gain?
All you grasp will be thrown away.
All you hoard will be utterly lost.
Contentment keeps disgrace away.
Restraint keeps you out of danger
so you can go on for a long, long time.
Whatâs perfectly whole seems flawed,
but you can use it forever.
Whatâs perfectly full seems empty,
but you canât use it up.
True straightness looks crooked.
Great skill looks clumsy.
Real eloquence seems to stammer.
To be comfortable in the cold, keep moving;
to be comfortable in the heat, hold still;
to be comfortable in the world, stay calm and clear.
When the worldâs on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way,
they breed warhorses on the common.
The greatest evil: wanting more.
The worst luck: discontent.
Greedâs the curse of life.
To know enoughâs enough
is enough to know.
You donât have to go out the door
to know what goes on in the world.
You donât have to look out the window
to see the way of heaven.
The farther you go,
the less you know.
So the wise soul
doesnât go, but knows;
doesnât look, but sees;
doesnât do, but gets it done.[31]
Studying and learning daily you grow larger.
Following the Way daily you shrink.
You get smaller and smaller.
So you arrive at not doing.
You do nothing and nothingâs not done.
To run things,
donât fuss with them.
Nobody who fusses
is fit to run things.[32]
The wise have no mind of their own,
finding it in the minds
of ordinary people.
Theyâre good to good people
and theyâre good to bad people.
Power is goodness.
They trust people of good faith
and they trust people of bad faith.
Power is trust.
They mingle their life with the world,
they mix their mind up with the world.
Ordinary people look after them.[33]
Wise souls are children.[34]
To look for life
is to find death.
The thirteen organs of our living
are the thirteen organs of our dying.
Why are the organs of our life
where death enters us?
Because we hold too hard to living.
So Iâve heard
if you live in the right way,
when you cross country
you neednât fear to meet a mad bull or a tiger;
when youâre in a battle
you neednât fear the weapons.
The bull would find nowhere to jab its horns,
the tiger nowhere to stick its claws,
the sword nowhere for its point to go.
Why? Because thereâs nowhere in you
for death to enter.
The Way bears them;
power nurtures them;
their own being shapes them;
their own energy completes them.
And not one of the ten thousand things
fails to hold the Way sacred
or to obey its power.
Their reverence for the Way
and obedience to its power
are unforced and always natural.
For the Way gives them life;
its power nourishes them,
mothers and feeds them,
completes and matures them,
looks after them, protects them.
To have without possessing,
do without claiming,
lead without controlling:
this is mysterious power.
The beginning of everything
is the mother of everything.
Truly to know the mother
is to know her children,
and truly to know the children
is to turn back to the mother.
The body comes to its ending
but there is nothing to fear.
Close the openings,
shut the doors,
and to the end of life
nothing will trouble you.
Open the openings,
be busy with business,
and to the end of life
nothing can help you.
Insight sees the insignificant.
Strength knows how to yield.
Use the wayâs light, return to its insight,
and so keep from going too far.
Thatâs how to practice whatâs forever.[35]
If my mindâs modest,
I walk the great way.
Arrogance
is all I fear.
The great way is low and plain,
but people like shortcuts over the mountains.
The palace is full of splendor
and the fields are full of weeds
and the granaries are full of nothing.
People wearing ornaments and fancy clothes,
carrying weapons,
drinking a lot and eating a lot,
having a lot of things, a lot of money:
shameless thieves.
Surely their way
isnât the way.[36]
Well planted is not uprooted,
well kept is not lost.
The offerings of the generations
to the ancestors will not cease.
To follow the way yourself is real power.
To follow it in the family is abundant power.
To follow it in the community is steady power.
To follow it in the whole country is lasting power.
To follow it in the world is universal power.
So in myself I see what self is,
in my household I see what family is,
in my town I see what community is,
in my nation I see what a country is,
in the world I see what is under heaven.
How do I know the world is so?
By this.[37]
Being full of power
is like being a baby.[38]
Scorpions donât sting,
tigers donât attack,
eagles donât strike.
Soft bones, weak muscles,
but a firm grasp.
Ignorant of the intercourse
of man and woman,
yet the baby penis is erect.
True and perfect energy!
All day long screaming and crying,
but never getting hoarse.
True and perfect harmony!
To know harmony
is to know whatâs eternal.
To know whatâs eternal
is enlightenment.
Increase of life is full of portent:
the strong heart exhausts the vital breath.
The full-grown is on the edge of age.
Not the Way.
Whatâs not the Way soon dies.
Who knows
doesnât talk.
Who talks
doesnât know.
Closing the openings,
shutting doors,
blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
be one with the dust of the way.
So you come to the deep sameness.
Then you canât be controlled by love
or by rejection.
You canât be controlled by profit
or by loss.
You canât be controlled by praise
or by humiliation.
Then you have honor under heaven.
Run the country by doing whatâs expected.
Win the war by doing the unexpected.
Control the world by doing nothing.
How do I know that?
By this.[39]
The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world, the poorer people
get.
The more experts the country has
the more of a mess itâs in.
The more ingenious the skillful are,
the more monstrous their inventions.
The louder the call for law and order,
the more the thieves and con men multiply.[40]
So a wise leader might say:
I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.
I love to be quiet, and the people themselves find justice.
I donât do business, and the people prosper on their own.
I donât have wants, and the people themselves are uncut wood.[41]
When the governmentâs dull and confused,
the people are placid.
When the governmentâs sharp and keen,
the people are discontented.
Alas! misery lies under happiness,
and happiness sits on misery, alas!
Who knows where it will end?
Nothing is certain.[42]
The normal changes into the monstrous,
the fortunate into the unfortunate,
and our bewilderment
goes on and on.
And so the wise
shape without cutting,
square without sawing,
true without forcing.
They are the light that does not shine.[43]
In looking after your life and following the way,
gather spirit.
Gather spirit early,
and so redouble power,
and so become invulnerable.
Invulnerable, unlimited,
you can do what you like with material things.
But only if you hold to the Mother of things
will you do it for long.
Have deep roots, a strong trunk.
Live long by looking long.
Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.[44]
If you keep control by following the Way,
troubled spirits wonât act up.
They wonât lose their immaterial strength,
but they wonât harm people with it,
nor will wise souls come to harm.
And so, neither harming the other,
these powers will come together in unity.[45]
The polity of greatness
runs downhill like a river to the sea,
joining with everything,
woman to everything.
By stillness the woman
may always dominate the man,
lying quiet underneath him.
So a great country
submitting to small ones, dominates them;
so small countries,
submitting to a great one, dominate it.
Lie low to be on top,
be on top by lying low.
The way is the hearth and home
of the ten thousand things.
Good souls treasure it,
lost souls find shelter in it.
Fine words are for sale,
fine deeds go cheap;
even worthless people can get them.
So, at the coronation of the Son of Heaven
when the Three Ministers take office,
you might race out in a four-horse chariot
to offer a jade screen;
but wouldnât it be better to sit still
and let the Way be your offering?
Why was the Way honored
in the old days?
Wasnât it said:
Seek, youâll find it.
Hide, it will shelter you.
So it was honored under heaven.[46]
Do without doing.
Act without action.
Savor the flavorless.
Treat the small as large,
the few as many.
Meet injury
with the power of goodness.
Study the hard while itâs easy.
Do big things while theyâre small.
The hardest jobs in the world start out easy,
the great affairs of the world start small.
So the wise soul,
by never dealing with great things,
gets great things done.
Now, since taking things too lightly makes them worthless, and taking
things too easy makes them hard,
the wise soul,
by treating the easy as hard,
doesnât find anything hard.[47]
Itâs easy to keep hold of what hasnât stirred,
easy to plan what hasnât occurred.
Itâs easy to shatter delicate things,
easy to scatter little things.
Do things before they happen.
Get them straight before they get mixed up.
The tree you canât reach your arms around
grew from a tiny seedling.
The nine-story tower rises
from a heap of clay.
The ten-thousand-mile journey
begins beneath your foot.
Do, and do wrong;
Hold on, and lose.
Not doing, the wise soul
doesnât do it wrong,
and not holding on,
doesnât lose it.
(In all their undertakings,
itâs just as theyâre almost finished
that people go wrong.
Mind the end as the beginning,
then it wonât go wrong.)
Thatâs why the wise
want not to want,
care nothing for hard-won treasures,
learn not to be learned,
turn back to what people overlooked.
They go along with things as they are,
but donât presume to act.
Once upon a time
those who ruled according to the Way
didnât use it to make people knowing
but to keep them unknowing.[48]
People get hard to manage
when they know too much.
Whoever rules by intellect
is a curse upon the land.
Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it.
To understand these things
is to have a pattern and a model,
and to understand the pattern and the model
is mysterious power.[49]
Mysterious power
goes deep.
It reaches far.
It follows things back,
clear back to the great oneness.[50]
Lakes and rivers are lords of the hundred valleys.
Why? Because theyâll go lower.
So theyâre the lords of the hundred valleys.
Just so, a wise soul,
wanting to be above other people,
talks to them from below
and to guide them
follows them.
And so the wise soul
predominates without dominating,
and leads without misleading.
And people donât get tired
of enjoying and praising
one who, not competing,
has in all the world
no competitor.[51]
Everybody says my way is great
but improbable.
All greatness
is improbable.
Whatâs probable
is tedious and petty.[52]
I have three treasures.
I keep and treasure them.
The first, mercy,
the second, moderation,
the third, modesty.
If youâre merciful you can be brave,
if youâre moderate you can be generous,
and if you donât presume to lead
you can lead the high and mighty.
But to be brave without compassion,
or generous without self-restraint,
or to take the lead,
is fatal.
Compassion wins the battle
and holds the fort;
it is the bulwark set
around those heaven helps.[53]
The best captain doesnât rush in front.
The fiercest fighter doesnât bluster.
The big winner isnât competing.
The best boss takes a low footing.
This is the power of noncompetition.
This is the right use of ability.
To follow heavenâs lead
has always been the best way.
The expert in warfare says:
Rather than dare make the attack
Iâd take the attack;
rather than dare advance an inch
Iâd retreat a foot.
Itâs called marching without marching,
rolling up your sleeves without flexing your muscles, being armed
without weapons,
giving the attacker no opponent.
Nothingâs worse than attacking what yields.
To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.
So, when matched armies meet,
the one who comes to grief
is the true victor.[54]
My words are so easy to understand,
so easy to follow,
and yet nobody in the world
understands or follows them.
Words come from an ancestry,
deeds from a mastery:
when these are unknown, so am I.
In my obscurity
is my value.
Thatâs why the wise
wear their jade under common clothes.
To know without knowing is best.
Not knowing without knowing it is sick.
To be sick of sickness
is the only cure.
The wise arenât sick.
Theyâre sick of sickness,
so theyâre well.[55]
When we donât fear what we should fear
we are in fearful danger.
We ought not to live in narrow houses,
we ought not to do stupid work.
If we donât accept stupidity
we wonât act stupidly.
So, wise souls know but donât show themselves,
look after but donât prize themselves,
letting the one go, keeping the other.
Brave daring leads to death.
Brave caution leads to life.
The choice can be the right one
or the wrong one.
Who will interpret
the judgment of heaven?
Even the wise soul
finds it hard.
The way of heaven
doesnât compete
yet wins handily,
doesnât speak
yet answers fully,
doesnât summon
yet attracts.
It acts
perfectly easily.
The net of heaven
is vast, vast,
wide-meshed,
yet misses nothing.
When normal, decent people donât fear death,
how can you use death to frighten them?
Even when they have a normal fear of death,
who of us dare take and kill the one who doesnât?
When people are normal and decent and death-fearing, thereâs always an
executioner.
To take the place of that executioner
is to take the place of the great carpenter.
People who cut the great carpenterâs wood
seldom get off with their hands unhurt.[56]
People are starving.
The rich gobble taxes,
thatâs why people are starving.
People rebel.
The rich oppress them,
thatâs why people rebel.
People hold life cheap.
The rich make it too costly,
thatâs why people hold it cheap.
But those who donât live for the sake of living
are worth more than the wealth-seekers.[57]
Living people
are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and stiff.
The ten thousand things,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
Dead, theyâre dry and brittle.
So hardness and stiffness
go with death;
tenderness, softness,
go with life.
And the hard sword fails,
the stiff treeâs felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.[58]
The Way of heaven
is like a bow bent to shoot:
its top end brought down,
its lower end raised up.
It brings the high down,
lifts the low,
takes from those who have,
gives to those who have not.
Such is the Way of heaven,
taking from people who have,
giving to people who have not.
Not so the human way:
it takes from those who have not
to fill up those who have.
Who has enough to fill up everybody?
Only those who have the Way.
So the wise
do without claiming,
achieve without asserting,
wishing not to show their worth.
Nothing in the world
is as soft, as weak, as water;
nothing else can wear away
the hard, the strong,
and remain unaltered.
Soft overcomes hard,
weak overcomes strong.
Everybody knows it,
nobody uses the knowledge.
So the wise say:
By bearing common defilements
you become a sacrificer at the altar of earth;
by bearing common evils
you become a lord of the world.
Right words sound wrong.
After a great enmity is settled
some enmity always remains.
How to make peace?
Wise souls keep their part of the contract
and donât make demands on others.
People whose power is real fulfill their obligations; people whose power
is hollow insist on their claims.
The Way of heaven plays no favorites.
It stays with the good.[59]
Let there be a little country without many people.
Let them have tools that do the work of ten or a hundred, and never use
them.
Let them be mindful of death
and disinclined to long journeys.
Theyâd have ships and carriages,
but no place to go.
Theyâd have armor and weapons,
but no parades.
Instead of writing,
they might go back to using knotted cords.
Theyâd enjoy eating,
take pleasure in clothes,
be happy with their houses,
devoted to their customs.[60]
True words arenât charming,
charming words arenât true.
Good people arenât contentious,
contentious people arenât good.
People who know arenât learned,
learned people donât know.
Wise souls donât hoard;
the more they do for others the more they have,
the more they give the richer they are.
The Way of heaven profits without destroying.
Doing without outdoing
is the Way of the wise.
The next little country might be so close
the people could hear cocks crowing
and dogs barking there,
but theyâd get old and die
without ever having been there.
This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I
could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898
translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each
character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude
to him is unending.
To have the text thus made accessible was not only to have a Rosetta
Stone for the book itself, but also to have a touchstone for comparing
other English translations one with another. If I could focus on which
word the translators were interpreting, I could begin to understand why
they made the choice they did. I could compare various interpretations
and see why they varied so tremendously; could see how much explanation,
sometimes how much bias, was included in the translation; could discover
for myself that several English meanings might lead me back to the same
Chinese word. And, finally, for all my ignorance of the language, I
could gain an intuition of the style, the gait and cadence, of the
original, necessary to my ear and conscience if I was to try to
reproduce it in English.
Without the access to the text that the Carus edition gave me, I would
have been defeated by the differences among the translations, and could
never have thought of following them as guides towards a version of my
own. As it was, working from Carusâs text, I learned how to let them
lead me into it, always using their knowledge, their scholarship, their
decisions, as my light in darkness.
When you try to follow the Way, even if you wander off it all the time,
good things happen though you do not deserve them. My work on the Tao Te
Ching was very wandering indeed. I started in my twenties with a few
chapters.
Every decade or so Iâd do another bit, and tell myself Iâd sit down and
really get to it, some day. The undeserved good thing that happened was
that a true and genuine scholar of ancient Chinese and of Lao Tzu, Dr.
J. P. Seaton of the University of North Carolina, saw some of my
versions of bits of the Tao Te Ching (scurvily quoted without
attribution by myself). He reprinted them with honor, and asked me for
more. I do not think he knew what he was getting into.
Of his invaluable teaching, his encouragement, his generosity, I can say
only what Lao Tzu says at the end of the book:
Wise souls donât hoard;
the more they do for others the more they have,
the more they give the richer they are.
Though the Tao Te Ching has been translated into English very much more
often than any other Chinese classic, indeed almost overwhelmingly
often, it wasnât easy to get hold of more than a few of these versions
until quite recently.
Carusâs word-for-word Chinese-to-English was endlessly valuable to me,
but his actual translation wasnât very satisfactory. âReasonâ as a
translation of Tao did not ring true. I always looked at any translation
of the book I found and had a go at it. The language of some was so
obscure as to make me feel the book must be beyond Western
comprehension. (James Leggeâs version was one of these, though I did
find the title for a book of mine, The Lathe of Heaven, in Legge. Years
later, Joseph Needham, the great scholar of Chinese science and
technology, wrote to tell me in the kindest, most unreproachful fashion
that Legge was a bit off on that one; when Chuang Tzu was written the
lathe hadnât been invented.)
Listed roughly in the order of their usefulness to me, these are the
translations that I collected over the years and came to trust in one
way or another and to use as my exemplars and guides:
Paul Carus. Lao-Tzeâs Tao-Teh-King. Open Court Publishing Company, 1898.
The book has recently been republished, but the editors chose to omit
its unique and most valuable element, the character-by-character
romanization and translation.
Arthur Waley. The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao TĂȘ Ching and Its
Place in Chinese Thought. First published in 1958; I have the Grove
edition of 1968. Though Waleyâs translation is political where mine is
poetical, his broad and profound knowledge of Chinese thought and his
acutely sensitive tact as a translator were what I always turned to when
in doubt, always finding secure guidance and illumination.
Robert G. Henricks. Te-Tao Ching: Lao-Tzu, translated from the
Ma-wang-tui texts. Modern Library, 1993. It was exciting to find that
new texts had been discovered; it was exciting to find their first
English translation an outstanding work of scholarship, written in
plain, elegant language, as transparent to the original as it could be.
Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. Tao Te Ching. First published 1972; I have
the Vintage edition of 1989. Arising from a sympathetic and informed
understanding, this is literarily the most satisfying recent translation
I have found, terse, clear, and simple.
D. C. Lau. Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching. First published 1963; I have the
Penguin edition of 1971. A clear, deeply thoughtful translation, a most
valuable reference.
Lau has also translated the Ma wang tui text for Everymanâs Library
(Knopf, 1994).
Michael Lafargue. The Tao of the Tao Te Ching. State University of New
York Press, 1992.
Tam C. Gibbs and Man-jan Cheng. Lao-Tzu: âMy words are very easy to
understand.â North Atlantic Books, 1981.
These books, though somewhat quirky, each proved useful in casting a
different light on knotty bits and obscure places in the text and
suggesting alternative readings or word choices.
Witter Bynner. The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu. Capricorn Books,
1944.
In the dedication to his friend Kiang Kang-hu, Bynner quotes him: âIt is
impossible to translate it without an interpretation. Most of the
translations were based on the interpretations of commentators, but you
chiefly took its interpretation from your own insight ... so the
translation could be very close to the original text even without
knowledge of the words.â This is true of Bynnerâs very free, poetic
âAmerican Version,â and its truth helped give me the courage to work on
my own American Version fifty years later. I did not refer often to
Bynner while I worked, because his style is very different from mine and
his vivid language might have controlled my own rather than freeing it.
But I am most grateful to him.
I started out using translations by Stephen Mitchell and Chang
Chung-yuan, butfound them not useful. Since I began working seriously on
this version so many Tao Te Ching s have appeared or reappeared that one
begins to wonder if Lao Tzu has more translators than he has readers. I
have looked hopefully into many, but none of the new versions seems to
improve in any way on Waley, Henricks, Lau, or Feng-English, and many of
them blur the language into dullness and vagueness. Lao Tzu is
tough-minded. He is tender-minded. He is never, under any circumstances,
squashy-minded. By confusing mysticism with imprecision, such versions
betray the spirit of the book and its marvelously pungent, laconic,
beautiful language.[61]
For tao, I mostly use âWay,â sometimes âway,â depending on context.
âWayâ in my text always represents the character tao.
I consistently render the character te as âpower.â âVirtueâ ( virtus,
vertĂș) in its old sense of the inherent quality and strength of a thing
or person is far closer to the mark, but that sense is pretty well lost.
Applied obsessively to the virginity or monogamy of women, the word lost
its own virtue. When used of persons it now almost always has a smirk or
a sneer in it. This is a shame. Lao Tzuâs âPower is goodnessâ makes
precisely the identification we used to make in the word âvirtue.â
âPower,â on the other hand, is a powerful word, almost a mana-word for
us. It is also a very slippery one, with many connotations. To identify
it with goodness takes a special, Taoistic definition of it as a
property ofâthe virtue ofâthe Way.
The phrase tâien hsia, literally âunder heaven,â occurs many times
throughout the text. More often than not I render it as âthe world.â It
is often translatable as âthe Empireââwhich after all meant the world,
to Lao Tzuâs contemporaries. I avoid this, in order to avoid historical
specificity; but often tâien hsia indubitably means oneâs country, oneâs
land, as in chapter 26.
Elsewhere I call it the public good, the commonwealth, or the common
good, and sometimes I render it literally.
The phrase wan wuh, occurring very frequently, means the material world,
all beings, everything. I often use the traditional literal translation,
âthe ten thousand things,â because itâs lively and concrete, but at
times I say âeverythingâ or âthe things of this world.â
I use âwise soulâ or âthe wiseâ for the several words and phrases
usually rendered as Sage, Wise Man, Saint, Great Man, and so on, and I
avoid the pronoun usually associated with these terms. I wanted to make
a version that doesnât limit wisdom to males, and doesnât give the
impression that a follower of the Tao has to be a professional,
full-time Holier-than-Thou who lives up above snowline. Unimportant,
uneducated, untrained men and women can be wise souls. (I thought of
using mensch.)
With the same intention, I often use the plural pronoun where other
translations use the singular, to avoid unnecessary gendering and to
keep from suggesting the idea of uniqueness, singularity. I appreciate
the Chinese language for making such choices available.
Certain obscure passages and verses that change or obstruct the sense of
the poems may be seen as errors or interpolations by copyists. I decided
to eject some of them. My authority for doing so is nilâa poetâs
judgment that âthis doesnât belong here.â It takes nerve to drop a line
that Waley has left in. My version is openly dependent on the judgment
of the scholars. But my aim was to make aesthetic, intellectual, and
spiritual sense, and I felt that efforts to treat material extraneous to
the text as integral to it weaken its integrity. Anyhow, rejects are
discussed and printed in the commentary on the page with the poem, or in
the Notes.
The Titles of the Poems: Carus is one of the few translators to use
titles; they are in both his Chinese text and his translation. I follow
his version sometimes, and sometimes invent my own.
We now have two versions of the Tao Te Ching: the texts that have been
standard since the third century CE, and the Ma wang tui texts of the
mid-first century CE, not discovered till 1973. They differ in many
details, but in only one major respect: the order of the two books that
constitute the text.
The three words tao te ching, put into English without syntactical
connection, are âway power classic.â The usual interpretation gives the
meaning of this title as something on the order of âthe classic [text]
about the way and [its] power.â The two books are titled (in some
versions) Tao, âThe Way,â and Te, âThe Power.â (I personally find that
the poems do not consistently reflect that division of subject-matter.)
In the Ma wang tui, the Power comes before the Way.
I keep the standard order, in which tao precedes te, and the famous
stanza about the go-able way and the namable name is the first chapter,
not the thirty-eighth. Where there are differences in wording, I follow
sometimes the standard text, sometimes Robert G. Henricksâs translation
of the Ma wang tui, whichever seemed more useful.
Here, for the words in the third verse that I render âwhat it wants,â I
use the Ma wang tui text. The words in the standard text mean
boundaries, or limits, or outcomes. This version seems to follow more
comprehensibly from the preceding lines.
And yet the idea of what can be delimited or made manifest is relevant.
In the last verse, the two âwhose identity is mysteryâ may be understood
to be the hidden, the unnameable, the limitless vision of the freed
soulâand the manifest, the nameable, the field of vision limited by our
wants. But the endlessness of all that is, and the limitation of mortal
bodily life, are the same, and their sameness is the key to the door.
As I said above, in a few of the poems I leave out lines which I find
weaken the coherence of the text to the point that I believe them to be
a long-ago readerâs marginal notes which got incorporated in later
copyings. My authority for these omissions is strictly personal and
aesthetic. Here I omit the last two lines. Translations of them vary
greatly; my version is: Mere talk runs dry.
Best keep to the center.
There are times Lao Tzu sounds very like Henry David Thoreau, but Lao
Tzu was kinder. When Thoreau says to distrust any enterprise that
requires new clothes, I distrust him. He is macho, flaunting his
asceticism. Lao Tzu knows that getting all entangled with the external
keeps us from the eternal, but (see chapter 80) he also understands that
sometimes people like to get dressed up.
Tâien hsia, âunder heaven,â i.e. the Empire, or the world: here I render
it as âthe public good,â âthe commonwealth,â and âthe body politic.â
J. P. Seaton comments: âWhen Lao Tzu mentions âthe Empireâ or âall under
heaven,â he does so with the assumption that all his readers know that
it is a commonwealth where only the ruler who rules by virtue of virtue
alone is legitimate.â
Henricks considers these three chapters to belong together.
The last two lines of 19 are usually printed as the first two lines of
20, but Henricks thinks they belong here, and I follow him.
In 18, line 6, the words hsiao tzu are traditionally translated as
âfilial piety and paternal affection,â a Confucian ideal. In that
chapter Lao Tzu cites these dutiful families as a symptom of social
disorder. But in chapter 19, line 4, hsiao tzu appears as the good that
will result when people cease being moralistic. Unable to reconcile
these contradictory usages, and feeling that Lao Tzu was far more likely
to use Confucian language satirically than straightforwardly, I fudged
the translation in chapter 19, calling it âfamily feeling.â Evidently we
arenât the only society or generation to puzzle over what a family is
and ought to be.
Sometimes I translate the characters su and pâ u with such words as
simple, natural. Though the phrase âthe uncarved blockâ has become
familiar to many, yet metaphor may distance ideas and weaken a direct
statement. But sometimes, as here, I use the traditional metaphors,
because the context so clearly implies knowing something as an artist
knows her materials, keeping hold on something solid.
The standard texts ask whatâs the difference between wei and o, which
might be translated âyesâ and âyessir.â The Ma wang tui has wei and ho:
âyesâ and âno.â This is parallel with the next line (âgood and badâ in
the standard text, âbeautiful and uglyâ in the Ma wang tui). Hereâs a
case where the older text surely is correct, the later ones corrupt.
In the first two lines of the second verse, the Ma wang tui text is
perfectly clear: âA person whom everyone fears ought to be feared.â The
standard text is strange, obscure: âWhat the people fear must be
feared.â Yet the next lines follow from it as they donât from the Ma
wang tui; and after much pondering I followed the standard text.
In the second verse the word shih, âloss,â gives trouble to all the
translators. Waley calls it âthe reverse of the powerâ and âinefficacy,â
and Waleyâs interpretations are never to be ignored. All the same, I
decided to take it not as the opposite of the Way and the power, but as
a kind of shadow-Way. Identify yourself with loss, failure, the obscure,
the unpossessible, and youâll be at home even there.
My version of the first four lines of the second verse doesnât follow
any of the scholarly translations, and is quite unjustified, but at
least, unlike them, it makes sense without horrible verbal contortions.
In all the texts, the fourth verse reads:
So they say: âThe Way is great,
heaven is great,
earth is great,
and the king is great.
Four greatnesses in the world,
and the king is one of them.â
Yet in the next verse, which is the same series in reverse order,
instead of âthe kingâ itâs âthe peopleâ or âhumanity.â I think a
Confucian copyist slipped the king in. The king garbles the sense of the
poem and goes against the spirit of the book. I dethroned him.
The last words of the chapter, tzu jan, which I render âwhat is,â bear
many interpretations. Waley translates them as âthe Self-So,â glossing
them as âthe unconditionedâ or âwhat is so of itselfâ; Henricks, âwhat
is so on its ownâ; Lau, âthat which is naturally soâ; Gibbs-Cheng,
âNatureâ; Feng-English, âwhat is naturalâ; Lafargue, âthings as they
are.â I came out closest to Lafargue in this case.
I follow the Ma wang tui text for the third verse, which fits the theme
much better than the non-sequitur standard text, âAmid fine sights they
sit calm and aloof.â The syntax of the Ma wang tui also clarifies the
last verse, relating it to the last verse of chapter 13.
The first two lines of the third verse say that the not-good are the
tâzu: âthe capitalâ (Carus), or âthe chargeâ (Feng-English), or âthe
stock in tradeâ (Waley), or âthe raw materialâ (Henricks) of the good.
Lafargue has âthe less excellent are material for the excellent,â and
Gibbs-Cheng, âmediocre people have the potential to be good people.â The
latter two interpretations seemed the most useful to me. And so I call
these makings, this raw material, âa studentââsomebody learning to be or
know better.
The last lines of the second and third verses are translated in wildly
various ways; my âhidden lightâ and âdeep mysteryâ are justified if, as
I believe, Lao Tzu is signaling that his apparently simple statements
have complex implications and need thinking about. Of course, this is
true of everything in the book.
âThe naturalâ and ânatural woodâ are the same word, pâ u, which I talked
about in the note to chapter 19. Given the amount of cutting up and
carving that goes on in the last verse (which seems a kind of footnote
to the first three), we really seem to be talking about wood.
Chinese lends itself to puns, and this last verse is rife with them.
Waley says that châi (âuseful thingsâ) can mean âvesselsâ or âvassals,â
and chih can mean âcarvingâ or âgoverning.â A great government wouldnât
chop and hack at human nature, trying to make leaders out of sowâs ears.
But the paradox of the last two lines surely exceeds any single
interpretation.
The phrase tâien hsia occurs only in the first verse, where I translate
it âthe world.â I begin the second verse with the literal translation of
it, âunder heaven.â I wanted the phrase in the poem as a reminder that
the world of these extremesâof hot and cold, weakness and strength, gain
and lossâis the sacred object, the place under heaven.
I have omitted certain lines included by the translators who are my
sources and guides. In all the texts, the second verse begins:
A courteous person
in peacetime honors the left,
in wartime, the right.
And the last verse begins:
In celebrations the left is the place of honor,
in mourning the right is the place of honor:
so lesser officers stand on the left,
the generalissimo on the right,
just as they would at a funeral.
I consider these passages to be commentaries or marginal glosses that
got copied into the text. J. P. Seaton says, âWhat were once supports by
analogy to common ceremonial practice are now relevant only to the
historian.â Here they confuse the clear, powerful statement that
culminates in the last four lines. The confusion already existed when
the Ma wang tui version was written, and there seems to be no way of
sorting it out now except by radical surgery.
This chapter sounds like Polonius, incontrovertible but banal, until the
last verse, which is a doozer. Here are some other versions of the last
six words, Sss erh pu wang che shou:
Carus (word for word): â[Who] dies / yet / not / perishes, / the-one /
is-long-lived [immortal].â
Carusâs free translation: âOne who may die but does not perish has life
everlasting.â
Waley: âWhen one dies one is not lost; there is no other longevity.â
Feng-English: âTo die but not to perish is to be eternally present.â
Henricks: âTo die but not be forgottenâthatâs [true] long life.â
Bynner: âVitality cleaves to the marrow / Leaving death behind.â
Lafargue: âOne who dies and does not perish is truly long-lived.â
Gibbs-Cheng: âOne who dies yet still remains has longevity.â
Lau: âHe who lives out his days has had a long life.â
Under J. P. Seatonâs guidance I finally came to feel that I had a handle
on the line, and that Lauâs rendition was the most useful. One thing is
certain, Lao Tzu is not saying that immortality or even longevity is
desirable. The religion called Taoism has spent much imagination on ways
to prolong life interminably or gain immortality, and the mythologized
Lao Tzu was supposed to have run Methuselah a close race; but the Lao
Tzu who wrote this had no truck with such notions.
Wei mingâthis phrase in the first line of the second verse (and the
chapter title)âis tricky:
Carus (word for word): âthe secretâs / explanationâ; Carusâs free
translation: âexplanation [ i.e., enlightenment] of the secretâ
Feng-English: âperception of the nature of thingsâ
Gibbs-Cheng: âwonderfully minute and obscure, yet brilliantâ
Lafargue: âsubtle clarityâ
Henricks: âsubtle lightâ
Bynner: âa man with insightâ
Waley: âdimming oneâs lightâ
Ming is âlightâ or âenlightenment.â Waley explains that wei means
obscure because very small, and also obscure because dark. I use this
second meaning to make an oxymoron.
The words in the first verse I translate as âthe nameless, the naturalâ
and in the next verse as âthe unnamed, the unshapenâ are the same four
words: wu ming chih pâu; more literally, âthe naturalness of the
unnamed.â âThe unnamedâ is a key phrase in the first chapter and
elsewhere, as is ânot wanting,â âunwanting.â Pâu is the natural, the
uncut wood, or, as Waley glosses it here, âuncarved-wood quality.â
The series here is of familiar Confucian principles: jen, li, iââgood,
humane, human-hearted, altruisticâ; ârighteous, moral, ethicalâ; âlaws,
rites, rules, law and order.â But Lao Tzu reverses and subverts the
Confucian priorities.
Chien shih in the fourth verse is âpremature knowledgeâ in Carus and
âforeknowledgeâ in Lau, Henricks, and Waley (who explains it as part of
Confucian doctrine). Henricks interprets it as having âoneâs mind made
up before one enters a new situation about what is ârightâ and âwrongâ
and âproperâ and âacceptableâ and so on.â Prejudice, that is, or
opinion. Buddhists and Taoists agree in having a very low opinion of
opinion.
Yi, âone, the one, unity, singleness, integrity,â is here translated as
âwhole, wholeness.â
Waley explains the last two verses as comments on the first three, but
their relevance is pretty tenuous. The last verse is very difficult and
the translations are various and ingenious. Henricks reads the Ma wang
tui text of the first two lines of it as meaning âtoo many carriages is
the same as no carriage,â and I picked up on the idea of multiplicity as
opposed to the singleness or wholeness spoken of in the first verses.
The meaning of the lines about jade seems to be anybodyâs guess.
I moved the line about perfect whiteness down to keep the three lines
about power together, in parallel structure with the three lines about
the Way. In the last line of the second verse (and in chapters 21 and
35) I translate hsiang as âthought.â The word connotes âform, shape,
image, ideaâ Waley explains it as the form which is formless, the Tao
which canât be taoâd.
In the sixth line, does the word fu mean âcarry on oneâs backâ or âturn
oneâs back onâ? Lafargue is the only translator I found that made the
second choice. I donât follow him because I donât think the âten
thousand thingsâ would or can make the mistake of turning their backs on
the yin to embrace only yang. (But a great many of us do make that
mistake, which is why Lao Tzu keeps reminding us to value yin, the soft,
the dark, the weak, earth, water, the Mother, the Valley.)
Lafargueâs reading, however, lets the next stanza follow more
coherentlyâorphans, the bereaved, the outcast are what we turn our backs
on; winning is yang, losing is yin. Through loss we win....
The last stanza is uncharacteristic in its didactic tone and in
assimilating the teaching to a tradition. Lao Tzu usually cites âwhat
others teachâ only to dissociate himself from it. I was inclined to
dismiss it as a marginal note by someone who was teaching and annotating
the text. But J. P. Seaton, who does teach the text, persuaded me to
keep it in the body of the poem, saying, âItâs a message that for all
its flat moralism does connect Taoism to Confucianism and even to
Buddhism with a single solid threadâaverting a hundred holy wars, if
nothing else.â
The intense, succinct, beautiful language of the first verses of a poem
is sometimes followed by a verse or two in a more didactic tone, smaller
in scope, and far more prosaic. I believe some of these verses are
additions, comments, and examples, copied into the manuscripts so long
ago that they became holy writ. They usually have their own charm and
validity, butâas here, and in chapter 39 and other placesâthey bring a
tremendous statement down to a rather commonplace ending. But then, Lao
Tzu values the commonplace.
The last line, literally ânot do, yet accomplish,â is a direct statement
of one of the fundamental themes of the book. When I came up with a
slightly mealy version of it (âdoesnât do, but itâs doneâ) J. P. Seaton
reminded me that âdoing without doing is doing, not not doing.â
Shi (my âfuss,â Carusâs âdiplomacyâ) is translated by Lafargue as
âwork,â by Lau as âmeddling,â by Waley and Feng-English as
âinterference,â by Henricks as âconcern,â by Gibbs-Cheng as âact for
gain.â
Following some of Carusâs interpretations, the first lines of the third
verse might be read, âWise souls live in the world carefully, handling
it carefully, making their mind universal.â I canât make much sense of
any of the other versions except Henricksâs beautiful reading:
As for the Sageâs presence in the world, he is one with it.
And with the world he merges his mind.
Those who read shih yu san as âthirteen,â rather than as âthree out of
ten,â make better sense of the difficult first verse. The thirteen
âcompanions of lifeâ (Waley, Henricks), which I translate âorgans,â may
be physical, the limbs and passages and cavities of the bodyâor
physio/psychological, the emotions and sensations.
My âmad bullâ occurs variously as a rhinoceros and a wild buffalo. The
idea seems to be a big irritable animal with horns.
My âlive in the right wayâ is literally âtake care of your life,â or
âhold on to your life.â The context indicates care without anxiety,
holding without grasping. I read the poem as saying that if you can take
life as it comes, it doesnât come at you as your enemy. Lao Tzuâs
ânowhere for death to enterâ isnât a promise of invulnerability or
immortality; his concern is how to live rightly, how to âlive till you
die.â
The last two lines of the first verse are the same as the last two lines
of chapter 16. I wonder if some of these repetitions were insertions by
people studying and copying the book, who were reminded of one poem by
another and noted down the relevant lines. They are indeed relevant
here, but they donât fit with perfect inevitability, as they do in
chapter 16. This is of course a purely aesthetic judgment, subject to
destruction by scholarship at any moment.
Gibbs and Cheng, finding both the language and the message âdiscordant
with the teachings of Lao Tzu,â wonât even discuss this chapter. Waleyâs
reading saves it, but the listing âself, family, community, country,
empire/worldâ (a conventional series in ancient Chinese thought), and
the list of rules and results is uncharacteristically mechanical. Though
he uses many commonplaces, familiar phrases, rhymed sayings, and so on,
Lao Tzuâs thought and language are usually more unconventional and
unpredictable than this.
Another repetition: the first four lines of the second verse are the
same as the second verse of chapter 4. They carry a different weight
here. I vary my translation of them in the fourth line to make it
connect to the next.
Hsuan tâung, âthe deep samenessâ: hsuan is âdeepâ or âmysteriousâ; tâung
is variously translated âidentification,â âoneness,â âsameness,â
âmerging,â âleveling,â âassimilation.â It is an important theme, met
with before in chapter 49.
The phrase âHow do I know? By this,â has become a kind of tag by its
third repetition; but as Waley points out, it still implies intuitive
knowing, beyond reasonâknowing the way.
The words I translate âexpertsâ literally mean âsharp weapons,â but the
term implies âpundits, know-it-alls.â I was tempted to say âsmart
bombs,â which is too cute and topical, but which would certainly lead
neatly to the next lines.
Waley points out that words in the last verse, with such meanings as
âsquare, right, angular,â are typical Confucian virtues. Henricks
remarks that all these words and operations refer to carpentry. The
verse is about how to cut the uncut wood without cutting it.
Se, my âgather spirit,â is variously translated âfrugality,â
âmoderation,â ârestraint,â âbeing sparing,â or, by Waley, âlaying up a
store.â Evidently the core idea is that of saving.
The chapter is usually presented in the manual-for-princes mode. Waley
makes sense out of it by complex technical references; other versions
make only gleams of sense. To persuade or coerce it into the personal
mode meant a more radical interpretation than I usually dare attempt,
but Waleyâs reading, which points to the symbology of the breath ( châi)
and the âlong lookâ of the meditator, gave me the courage to try. Here
is a version closer to the conventional ones:
In controlling people and serving heaven
itâs best to go easy.
Going easy from the start
is to gather power from the start,
and gathered power keeps you safe.
Safe, you can do what you like.
Do what you like, the countryâs yours.
If you can make the countryâs Mother yours,
youâll last a long time.
Youâll have deep roots and a strong trunk.
The way to live long is to look long.
The first seven lines continue the themes of âsamenessâ or assimilation,
and of âbeing woman,â âbeing water,â the uses of yin. From there on, the
language goes flat, and may be interpolated commentary. Thereâs an even
feebler fourth verse:
A big country needs more people,
A small one needs more room.
Each can get what it needs,
but the big one needs to lie low.
Because the Ma wang tui texts are older, one longs to see them as more
authentic, less corrupt. But though they are invaluable in offering
variant readings, some of the variants may themselves be corruptions. In
this chapter, the Ma wang tui reads âSmall countries, submitting to a
great one, are dominated,â and in the next verse, âSome by lying low
stay on top, but some by lying low stay on the bottom.â Both versions
are truisms, but the Ma wang tui version isnât even a Taoistic truism.
The first and last verses hang together; the two middle verses are
difficult and rather incoherent. Waley says the enigmatic second verse
refers to sophists and sages who went about selling their âfine wordsâ
to the highest bidder, like our pop gurus and TV pundits.
I think the advice about being careful at the end of an undertaking was
added, perhaps to balance the advice that the right time to act is
before the beginning.
It confuses the argument a bit, and I put it in parentheses.
The line I give as âturn back to what people overlookedâ is rendered by
Lafargue as âturns back to the place all others have gone on fromâ;
Feng-English, âbrings men back to what they have lostâ; Henricks,
âreturns to what the masses have passed byâ; Waley, âturning all men
back to the things they have left behind.â Each version brings out a
different color in the line, like different lights on an opal.
A dictator and his censors might all too easily cite from this chapter.
A democrat might agree that the more people know, the harder they are
for a ruler to governâsince the more they know, the better they are at
governing themselves. Anyone might agree that an intellectual agenda
pursued without reality-checking is indeed a curse upon the land. From
the divine right of kings through the deadly teachings of Hitler and Mao
to the mumbojumbo of economists, government by theory has done endless
ill. But why is Lao Tzuâs alternative to it a people kept in ignorance?
What kind of ignorance? Ignorance of what? Lao Tzu may be signalling us
to ask such questions when he speaks of âunderstanding these things.â
Waley is my guide to the interpretation of the second verse, but I make
very free with the last two lines of it. If they arenât a rather vapid
statement that one should never underestimate oneâs foe, they must
follow from what went before and lead to the extraordinary last verse.
It all comes down to the last line and the word shwai. Carus translates
it as âthe weaker [the more compassionate],â and Bynner uses the word
âcompassion.â Waley translates it as âhe who does not delight in war,â
Henricks as âthe one who feels grief,â Gibbs-Cheng as âthe one stung by
grief,â Feng-English as âthe underdog,â Lafargue as âthe one in
mourning.â A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
I follow Henricks in choosing the Ma wang tui text, which has a double
negative in the second line. Most other texts have ânot knowing knowing
is sickness.â
I take the liberty of reading this chapter as a description of what we,
we ordinary people, should fear. The usual reading is in the
manual-for-princes mode. In that case âwhat should be fearedâ is the
ruler, the rightful authority, and the advice that follows is evidently
directed to that ruler. Itâs certainly what William Blake would have
told the oligarchs of the Industrial Revolution, who still control our
lives:
When people donât fear what should be feared
they are in fearful danger.
Donât make them live in narrow houses,
donât force them to do stupid work.
When theyâre not made stupid
they wonât act stupidly.
I follow the Ma wang tui text, but make very free with the word Henricks
renders as âconstant [in their behavior].â If I understand Henricksâ
version, it says that if people were consistent in behaving normally and
in fearing death, and if death were the penalty for abnormal behavior,
nobody would dare behave abnormally; and so there would be no executions
and no executioners.
But this is not the case; as Lao Tzu says, there are times when even
normal people lose their normal fear of death. So what is the poem
about? I read it as saying that since we are inconsistent both in our
behavior and in our fear of death, no person can rightfully take on the
role of executioner, and should leave the death penalty to the judgment
of heaven or nature.
To dismiss this Utopia as simply regressivist or anti-technological is
to miss an interesting point. These people have labor-saving machinery,
ships and land vehicles, weapons of offense and defense. They âhave them
and donât use them.â I interpret: they arenât used by them. Weâre used,
our lives shaped and controlled, by our machines, cars, planes,
weaponry, bulldozers, computers.
These Taoists donât surrender their power to their creations.
The eleventh line, however, is certainly regressive if it says knotted
cords are to replace written literature, history, mathematics, and so
on. It might be read as saying itâs best not to externalize all our
thinking and remembering (as we do in writing and reading), but to keep
it embodied, to think and remember with our bodies as well as our
verbalizing brains.
This last poem is self-reflexive, wrapping it all up tight in the first
verse, then opening out again to praise the undestructive, uncompetitive
generosity of the spirit that walks on the Way.
To my mind, the best reason for following the Ma wang tui text in
reversing the order of the books is that the whole thing ends with a
chapter (37) that provides a nobler conclusion than this one. But if you
reverse the order, chapter 1 turns up in the middle of the book, and I
simply cannot believe that thatâs right. That poem is a beginning. It is
the beginning.
[1] A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly
impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in
Borgesâs story: if you see it rightly, it contains everything.
[2] One of the things I read in this chapter is that values and beliefs
are not only culturally constructed but also part of the interplay of
yin and yang, the great reversals that maintain the living balance of
the world. To believe that our beliefs are permanent truths which
encompass reality is a sad arrogance. To let go of that belief is to
find safety.
[3] Over and over Lao Tzu says wei wu wei: Do not do. Doing not-doing.
To act without acting. Action by inaction. You do nothing yet it gets
done....
Itâs not a statement susceptible to logical interpretation, or even to a
syntactical translation into English; but itâs a concept that transforms
thought radically, that changes minds. The whole book is both an
explanation and a demonstration of it.
[4] Everything Lao Tzu says is elusive. The temptation is to grasp at
something tangible in the endlessly deceptive simplicity of the words.
Even some of his finest scholarly translators focus on positive ethical
or political values in the text, as if those were whatâs important in
it. And of course the religion called Taoism is full of gods, saints,
miracles, prayers, rules, methods for securing riches, power, longevity,
and so forthâall the stuff that Lao Tzu says leads us away from the Way.
In passages such as this one, I think it is the profound modesty of the
language that offers what so many people for so many centuries have
found in this book: a pure apprehension of the mystery of which we are
part.
[5] The âinhumanityâ of the wise soul doesnât mean cruelty. Cruelty is a
human characteristic. Heaven and earthâthat is, âNatureâ and its Wayâare
not humane, because they are not human. They are not kind; they are not
cruel: those are human attributes. You can only be kind or cruel if you
have, and cherish, a self. You canât even be indifferent if you arenât
different. Altruism is the other side of egoism. Followers of the Way,
like the forces of nature, act selflessly.
[6] A clear stream of water runs through this book, from poem to poem,
wearing down the indestructible, finding the way around everything that
obstructs the way. Good drinking water.
[7] Most of the scholars think this chapter is about meditation, its
techniques and fulfillments. The language is profoundly mystical, the
images are charged, rich in implications.
The last verse turns up in nearly the same words in other chapters;
there are several such ârefrainsâ throughout the book, identical or
similar lines repeated once or twice or three times.
[8] One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. Heâs
explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those
counterintuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly
double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan
simplicity, talking about pots.
[9] Lao Tzu, a mystic, demystifies political power.
Autocracy and oligarchy foster the beliefs that power is gained
magically and retained by sacrifice, and that powerful people are
genuinely superior to the powerless.
Lao Tzu does not see political power as magic. He sees rightful power as
earned and wrongful power as usurped. He does not see power as virtue,
but as the result of virtue. The democracies are founded on that view.
He sees sacrifice of self or others as a corruption of power, and power
as available to anybody who follows the Way. This is a radically
subversive attitude. No wonder anarchists and Taoists make good friends.
[10] In the first stanza we see the followers of the Way in ancient
times or illo tempore, remote and inaccessible; but the second stanza
brings them close and alive in a series of marvelous similes. (I am
particularly fond of the polite and quiet houseguests.) The images of
the valley and of uncut or uncarved wood will recur again and again.
[11] To those who will not admit morality without a deity to validate
it, or spirituality of which man is not the measure, the firmness of Lao
Tzuâs morality and the sweetness of his spiritual counsel must seem
incomprehensible, or illegitimate, or very troubling indeed.
[12] This invisible leader, who gets things done in such a way that
people think they did it all themselves, isnât one who manipulates
others from behind the scenes; just the opposite. Again, itâs a matter
of âdoing without doingâ: uncompetitive, unworried, trustful
accomplishment, power that is not force. An example or analogy might be
a very good teacher, or the truest voice in a group of singers.
[13] This chapter and the two before it may be read as a single movement
of thought.
âRaw silkâ and âuncut woodâ are images traditionally associated with the
characters su (simple, plain) and pâu (natural, honest).
[14] The difference between yes and no, good and bad, is something only
the âbrightâ people, the people with the answers, can understand. A poor
stupid Taoist canât make it out.
[15] This chapter is full of words like huang (wild, barren; famine),
tun (ignorant; chaotic), hun (dull, turbid), men (sad, puzzled, mute),
and hu (confused, obscured, vague). They configure chaos, confusion, a
âbewildernessâ in which the mind wanders without certainties, desolate,
silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way. It
canât be found in the superficial order imposed by positive and negative
opinions, the good/bad, yes/no moralizing that denies fear and ignores
mystery.
[16] Mysticism rises from and returns to the irreducible, unsayable
reality of âthis.â
âThisâ is the Way. This is the way.
[17] Iâd like to call the âsomethingâ of the first line a lumpâan
unshaped, undifferentiated lump, chaos, before the Word, before Form,
before Change. Inside it is time, space, everything; in the womb of the
Way.
[18] The last words of the chapter, tzu jan, I render as âwhat is.â I
was tempted to say, âThe Way follows itself,â because the Way is the way
things are; but that would reduce the significance of the words. They
remind us not to see the Way as a sovereignty or a domination, all
creative, all yang. The Way itself is a follower. Though it is before
everything, it follows what is.
[19] I take heaviness to be the root matters of daily life, the baggage
we bodily beings have to carry, such as food, drink, shelter, safety. If
you go charging too far ahead of the baggage wagon you may be cut off
from it; if you treat your body as unimportant you risk insanity or
inanity.
[20] The first two lines would make a nice motto for the practice of
Tâai Chi.
[21] The hidden light and the deep mystery seem to be signals, saying
âthink about thisââabout care for what seems unimportant. In a teacherâs
parental care for the insignificant student, and in a societyâs respect
for mothers, teachers, and other obscure people who educate, there is
indeed illumination and a profoundly human mystery. Having replaced
instinct with language, society, and culture, we are the only species
that depends on teaching and learning. We arenât human without them. In
them is true power. But are they the occupations of the rich and mighty?
[22] The simplicity of Lao Tzuâs language can present an almost
impenetrable density of meaning. The reversals and paradoxes in this
great poem are the oppositions of the yin and yangâmale/female,
light/dark, glory/modestyâbut the âknowing and beingâ of them, the
balancing act, results in neither stasis nor synthesis. The riverbed in
which power runs leads back, the patterns of power lead back, the valley
where power is contained leads backâto the forever new, endless,
straightforward way. Reversal, recurrence, are the movement, and yet the
movement is onward.
[23] For Lao Tzu, âmoderation in all thingsâ isnât just a bit of safe,
practical advice. To lose the sense of the sacredness of the world is a
mortal loss. To injure our world by excesses of greed and ingenuity is
to endanger our own sacredness.
[24] This first direct statement of Lao Tzuâs pacifism is connected in
thought to the previous poem and leads directly to the next.
[25] The last verse is enigmatic: âThings flourish then perishââHow can
this supremely natural sequence not be the Way? I offer my understanding
of it in the note on the page with chapter 55, where nearly the same
phrase occurs.
[26] The second verse connects the uncut, the uncarved, the unusable, to
the idea of the unnamed presented in the first chapter: ânameâs the
mother of the ten thousand things.â You have to make order, you have to
make distinctions, but you also have to know when to stop before youâve
lost the whole in the multiplicity of parts. The simplicity or
singleness of the Way is that of water, which always rejoins itself.
[27] Or, more literally, âthe Stateâs sharp weapons ought not to be
shown to the people.â This Machiavellian truism seems such an anticlimax
to the great theme stated in the first verses that I treat it as an
intrusion, perhaps a commentatorâs practical example of âthe small dark
light.â
[28] Here the themes of not doing and not wanting, the unnamed and the
unshapen, recur together in one pure legato. It is wonderful how by
negatives and privatives Lao Tzu gives a sense of serene, inexhaustible
fullness of being.
[29] A vast, dense argument in a minumum of words, this poem lays out
the Taoist values in steeply descending order: the Way and its power;
goodness (humane feeling); righteousness (morality); andâa very distant
lastâobedience (law and order). The word I render as âopinionâ can be
read as âknowing too soonâ: the mind obeying orders, judging before the
evidence is in, closed to fruitful perception and learning.
[30] Beginning with a pocket cosmology, this chapter demonstrates the
âinterplay of energyâ of yin and yang by showing how low and high,
winning and losing, destruction and self-destruction, reverse
themselves, each turning into its seeming opposite.
[31] We tend to expect great things from âseeing the worldâ and âgetting
experience.â A Roman poet remarked that travelers change their sky but
not their soul. Other poets, untraveled and inexperienced, Emily Brontë
and Emily Dickinson, prove Lao Tzuâs point: itâs the inner eye that
really sees the world.
[32] The word shi in the second stanza, my âfuss,â is troublesome to the
translators. Carusâs quite legitimate translation of it is âdiplomacy,â
which would give a stanza I like very much:
To run things,
be undiplomatic.
No diplomat
is fit to run things.
[33] The next to last line is usually read as saying that ordinary
people watch and listen to wise people. But Lao Tzu has already told us
that most of us wander on and off the Way and donât know a sage from a
sandpile. And surely the quiet Taoist is not a media pundit.
[34] Similarly, the last line is taken to mean that the wise treat
ordinary people like children. This is patronizing, and makes hash out
of the first verse. I read it to mean that the truly wise are looked
after (or looked upon) like children because theyâre trusting,
unprejudiced, and donât hold themselves above or apart from ordinary
life.
[35] This chapter on the themes of return and centering makes circles
within itself and throughout the book, returning to phrases from other
poems, turning them round the center. A center which is everywhere, a
circle whose circumference is infinite....
[36] So much for capitalism.
[37] I follow Waleyâs interpretation of this chapter. It is Tao that
plants and keeps; the various kinds of power belong to Tao; and finally
in myself I see the Tao of self, and so on.
[38] As a model for the Taoist, the baby is in many ways ideal: totally
unaltruistic, not interested in politics, business, or the proprieties,
weak, soft, and able to scream placidly for hours without wearing itself
out (its parents are another matter). The babyâs unawareness of
poisonous insects and carnivorous beasts means that such dangers simply
do not exist for it. (Again, its parents are a different case.)
As a metaphor of the Tao, the baby embodies the eternal beginning, the
ever-springing source. âWe come, trailing clouds of glory,â Wordsworth
says; and Hopkins, âThere lives the dearest freshness deep down things.â
No Peter Pan-ish refusal to grow up is involved, no hunt for the
fountain of youth. What is eternal is forever young, never grows old.
But we are not eternal.
It is in this sense that I understand how the natural, inevitable cycle
of youth, growth, mature vigor, age, and decay can be ânot the Way.â The
Way is more than the cycle of any individual life. We rise, flourish,
fail. The Way never fails. We are waves. It is the sea.
[39] A strong political statement of the central idea of wu wei, not
doing, inaction.
[40] My âmonstrousâ is literally ânew.â New is strange, and strange is
uncanny. New is bad. Lao Tzu is deeply and firmly against changing
things, particularly in the name of progress. He would make an Iowa
farmer look flighty. I donât think he is exactly anti-intellectual, but
he considers most uses of the intellect to be pernicious, and all plans
for improving things to be disastrous. Yet heâs not a pessimist. No
pessimist would say that people are able to look after themselves, be
just, and prosper on their own. No anarchist can be a pessimist.
[41] Uncut woodâhere likened to the human soulâthe uncut, unearned,
unshaped, unpolished, native, natural stuff is better than anything that
can be made out of it. Anything done to it deforms and lessens it. Its
potentiality is infinite. Its uses are trivial.
[42] In the first verse, the words âdull and confusedâ and âsharp and
keenâ are, as Waley points out, the words used in chapter 20 to describe
the Taoist and the non-Taoists.
[43] In the last verse most translators say the Taoist is square but
doesnât cut, shines but doesnât dazzle. Waley says that this misses the
point. The point is that Taoists gain their ends without the use of
means. That is indeed a light that does not shineâan idea that must be
pondered and brooded over. A small dark light.
[44] Thomas Jefferson would have liked the first stanza.
[45] âTroubled spiritsâ are kwei, ghosts, not bad in themselves but
dangerous if they possess you. Waley reads the second stanza as a
warning to believers in Realpolitik: a ruler âpossessedâ by power harms
both the people and his own soul. Taking it as counsel to the
individual, it might mean that wise souls neither indulge nor repress
the troubled spirits that may haunt them; rather, they let those
spiritual energies be part of the power they find along the way.
[46] I think the line of thought throughout the poem has to do with true
reward as opposed to dishonorable gain, true giving as opposed to fake
goods.
[47] Waley says that this charmingly complex chapter plays with two
proverbs. âRequite injuries with good deedsâ is the first. The word te,
here meaning goodness or good deeds, is the same word Lao Tzu uses for
the Power of the Way. (âPower is goodness,â he says in chapter 49.) So,
having neatly annexed the Golden Rule, he goes on to the proverb about
âtaking things too lightlyâ and plays paradox with it.
[48] Where shall we find a ruler wise enough to know what to teach and
what to withhold? âOnce upon a time,â maybe, in the days of myth and
legend, as a pattern, a model, an ideal?
[49] The knowledge and the ignorance or unknowing Lao Tzu speaks of may
or may not refer to what we think of as education. In the last stanza,
by power he evidently does not mean political power at all, but
something vastly different, a unity with the power of the Tao itself.
[50] This is a mystical statement about governmentâand in our minds
those two realms are worlds apart. I cannot make the leap between them.
I can only ponder it.
[51] One of the things I love in Lao Tzu is his good cheer, as in this
poem, which while giving good counsel is itself a praise and enjoyment
of the spirit of yin, the water-soul that yields, follows, eludes, and
leads on, dancing in the hundred valleys.
[52] The first two verses of this chapter are a joy to me.
[53] The three final verses are closely connected in thought to the next
two chapters, which may be read as a single meditation on mercy,
moderation, and modesty, on the use of strength, on victory and defeat.
[54] A piece of sound tactical advice (practiced by the martial arts,
such as Aikido, and by underground resistance and guerrilla forces),
which leads to a profound moral warning. The prize thrown away by the
aggressor is compassion. The yielder, the griever, the mourner, keeps
that prize. The game is loser take all.
[55] What you know without knowing you know it is the right kind of
knowledge. Any other kind (conviction, theory, dogmatic belief, opinion)
isnât the right kind, and if you donât know that, youâll lose the Way.
This chapter is an example of exactly what Lao Tzu was talking about in
the last oneâobscure clarity, well-concealed jade.
[56] To Lao Tzu, not to fear dying and not to fear killing are equally
unnatural and antisocial. Who are we to forestall the judgment of heaven
or nature, to usurp the role of âthe executionerâ? âThe Lord of
Slaughterâ is Waleyâs grand translation.
[57] How many hundreds of years ago was this book written? And yet still
this chapter must be written in the present tense.
[58] In an age when hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength,
and even the beauty of women is reduced nearly to the bone, I welcome
this reminder that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role
models, and that to be alive is to be vulnerable.
[59] This chapter is equally relevant to private relationships and to
political treaties. Its realistic morality is based on a mystical
perception of the fullness of the Way.
[60] Waley says this endearing and enduring vision âcan be understood in
the past, present, or future tense, as the reader desires.â This is
always true of the vision of the golden age, the humane society.
Christian or Cartesian dualism, the division of spirit or mind from the
material body and world, existed long before Christianity or Descartes
and was never limited to Western thought (though it is the âcrazinessâ
or âsicknessâ that many people under Western domination see in Western
civilization). Lao Tzu thinks the materialistic dualist, who tries to
ignore the body and live in the head, and the religious dualist, who
despises the body and lives for a reward in heaven, are both dangerous
and in danger. So, enjoy your life, he says; live in your body, you are
your body; where else is there to go? Heaven and earth are one. As you
walk the streets of your town you walk on the Way of heaven.
[61] If you want to know more about Taoism, or would like some help and
guidance in reading the Tao Te Ching, the best, soundest, clearest
introduction and guide is still Holmes Welchâs Taoism: The Parting of
the Way (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).