Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching

The
Tao
Te
Ching
was probably written
about twenty-five hundred
hears
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 it’s 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 father’s; 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 he’d 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 I’d 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 Notes—the
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 “sage,” 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.

—Ursula K. Le
Guin

Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own
responses to the text. They are idiosyncratic and unscholarly, and are to be
ignored if not found helpful. In the Notes at the end of the book are more
detailed considerations of some of the chapters, thanks to my sources and guides,
and remarks on how I arrived at my version.

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed
:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the
unwanting
soul
sees what’s hidden
,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin
,
but different in name,
whose identity is
myster.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe,
perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in
Borges’s story: if you see it rightly, it contains everything.

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.

That’s why the wise soul
does without doing
,
teaches without talking.

The things of this world
exist, they are
;
you can’t 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.

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.

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
,
nothing’s out of order.

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….

It’s not a statement susceptible to logical
interpretation,
or even to a syntactical translation into
English; but it’s a concept that transforms thought radically, that changes
minds. The whole book is both an explanation and a demonstration of it.

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.

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
what’s
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 forth—all 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.

Heaven and earth aren’t humane.
To them the ten thousand things
are straw dogs.

Wise souls aren’t humane.
To them the hundred families
are straw dogs.

Heaven and earth act as a bellows:

Empty yet structured
,
it moves, inexhaustibly giving.

The “inhumanity” of the wise soul doesn’t mean cruelty.
Cruelty is a human characteristic. Heaven and earth—that is, “Nature” and its
Way—are 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 can’t even be indifferent
if you aren’t different. Altruism is the other side of egoism. Followers of the
Way, like the forces of nature, act selflessly.

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 don’t 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.
Water’s good
for everything.
It doesn’t 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.

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.

Brim-fill the bowl
,
it’ll spill over.
Keep sharpening the blade
,
you’ll 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.

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 “refrains” throughout the book, identical or
similar lines repeated once or twice or three times.

Thirty spokes
,
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful

Hollowed out
,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.

Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t
,
there’s room for you.

So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.

One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He’s
explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive
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.

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.