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Tao Te Ching

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道德經
Pinyin: Dào Dé Jīng
Wade-Giles: Tao Te Ching
Archaic pre-Wade-Giles: Tao Teh Ching
Vietnamese: Đạo Đức Kinh
The Wade-Giles rendering of the title became predominant in the late 19th century, and is still common in Taiwan as well as much of international academia, but the People's Republic of China has promulgated the pinyin transliteration scheme, which results in the title Dao De Jing. As English editions of the book first became well known in the English-speaking world before the development of pinyin, the Wade-Giles transliteration of the title has stuck, and current English editions of the book almost always title it Tao Te Ching. See also Daoism-Taoism romanization issue for further discussion.

The Tao Te Ching (Chinese: 道德經, Dào dé jīng), roughly translated as The Book of the Way and its Virtue (see below on translating the title) is an ancient Chinese scripture. Tradition has it that the book was written around 600 BCE by a sage called Laozi (WG: Lao Tzu, "Old Master"), a record-keeper in the Emperor's Court of the Zhou Dynasty. A careful reading of the text, however, suggests that it is a compilation of maxims sharing similar themes. The authenticity of the date of composition/compilation and the authorship are still debated.

This short work is one of the most important in Chinese philosophy and religion, especially in Taoism, but also in Buddhism, because the latter – an Indian religion – shared many Taoist words and concepts before developing into Chinese Buddhism. (Indeed, upon first encountering it, Chinese scholars regarded Buddhism as merely a foreign equivalent of Taoism.) Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers and even gardeners have used the book as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside the Far East, aided by many different translations of the text into western languages.

Translations of the title

"Tao Te Ching", Calligraphy by Gia-Fu Feng

There are many possible translations of the book's title, as the meaning of the Chinese characters is somewhat wide.

  • 道 (dào) is usually translated into English as "the way ahead", "the path ahead", or simply "the Way". This term, used by all Chinese Philosophers (including Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, the Legalists, etc.), has special meaning within the context of Taoism, where it implies the essential, unnamable process of the universe.
  • 德 (dé) has the approximate English equivalent of "virtue" or "righteousness". 德 can carry the same connotations in Chinese that the word "virtue" does in English; that is, it may either mean "virtue" in the sense of a moral virtue, or it may also mean "virtue" in the somewhat archaic English sense of an inherent power (as in "healing virtue of a plant").
  • 經 (jīng) means "scripture", "great book", or "doctrine".

Thus, 道德經 could be translated as "The Scripture of the Way and the Virtue", "The Great Book of the Way and its Power", "The Doctrine of The Path and its Virtues", etc.

Though commonly referred to as the 道德經, the title is probably a fusion of the two books of scriptures, namely 道經 and 德經. In fact, the latter book has been found in first place in some recent discoveries. It is likely that the combined name of both books has no real intended meaning, though this is at present impossible to ascertain given the numerous revisions of the scriptures.

  • Note: Taoism is also known as Daoism in several Western countries and books.*

Structure

In the form we have it now, the Tao Te Ching is in two sections (Tao, containing chapters 1–37; and Te, chapters 38–81), and uses around 5,000 Chinese characters. Each chapter is rather short, using few characters to express its often difficult ideas poetically.

Historical authenticity

File:Lao zi.PNG
Laozi

The existence of Laozi is mentioned in scrolls dating back to 400 BCE, but the details of his life were not contemporaneously recorded. The Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote a supposed biography of him in about 100 BCE, indicating that his birth name was Li Er. Studies on the language and the rhyme scheme of the work point to a date of composition after the Shi Jing or Book of Songs, yet before the writing of Zhuangzi — some time in the late fourth or early third centuries.

Scholars debate the authorship of the current version of the Tao Te Ching. Sections of it in its current form have been found engraved on stone tablets dated to 300 BCE. The 1973 archeological discovery of more or less complete Chinese "scrolls" (actually silk rolls called the Ma-wang-tui Texts after the village where they were found: Text A, with more lacunae, thought to have been written sometime before Text B which has been dated to 200 BCE) reveals that our most common versions of the received text are substantially the same as that which was known in antiquity, thus limiting the time period during which the writings might have been substantially changed or contributed to. In 1993, the oldest known version of the text was discovered, printed on bamboo strips and dated to 300 BCE. This find unearthed 14 verses previously unknown, referred to as the Guodian text as they were discovered in a tomb in the town of Guodian, in the Hubei province. Many newer translations include these texts, and the verses of the book are often reordered to synthesize the new find.

As early as the 1930s, ways to resolve disputes over authorship without declaring who is right or wrong (a Taoist solution) have been proposed. In an essay accompanying a translation by Wai-tao and Dwight Goddard, Dr. Kiang Kang-hu offers, "Three Taoist sages who lived two or three hundred or more years apart, according to history, are commonly believed to be the same man, who by his wisdom had attained longevity. The simpler and more probable solution of the confusion is to accept the historicity of all three but to give credit for the original writing to Laozi and consider the others as able disciples and possibly editors. The book in its present form might not have been written until the third century BCE, for it was engraved on stone tablets soon after that time". Credit for some verses might be conditionally given to later Taoists "without detracting from the larger credit that belongs to Laozi".

Interpretation

Many believe that the Tao Te Ching contains some universal truths which have since been independently recognized in other philosophies, both religious and secular. Each modern language interpretation (including even interpretation of the three-character title, of which there are dozens) differs at least slightly and occasionally profoundly from the next. Depending on how one reads them, some chapters could have three or more interpretations, ranging from practical wisdom for the common man to advice intended for kings to even the odd medical recipe. The following are some concepts and principles which may facilitate understanding of the text.

The Tao that can be spoken of...

The [Tao] that can be told of is not an Unvarying [Tao];
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures,
each after its kind.
(tr. A. Waley)

These are the first words of the text in its present form (Waley translates "Tao" as "Way"). The Tao Te Ching does not specifically define what the Tao is. Laozi himself reportedly said, "My words are very easy to understand [...] yet no one under heaven understands them." (chapter 70) However, we can point to some of the Tao's characteristics. Tao is the core topic of the book, supplemented by related themes such as Te ("virtue", or "power"), nothingness, return, detachment, and wu-wei ("non-action"). The Tao can be seen as all being, before and beyond all distinctions between different forms or essences of things. Everything comes from Tao and returns to Tao.

The "Valley Spirit"

The Valley Spirit never dies
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.
(Chapter VI, Tr. A. Waley)

The Tao Te Ching can be seen as advocating mostly "feminine" (or Yin) values, emphasising the qualities of water — fluidity and softness (instead of the solid and stable mountain), choosing the obscure and mysterious aspect of things, and controlling things without ruling them. In this respect, this book can be understood as challenging "male" (or Yang) values such as clarity, stability, positive action, and domination of nature; such values are often referred to as Confucian values.

The Return

"When he is born, man is soft and weak; in death he becomes stiff and hard... the hard and mighty are cast down; the soft and weak set on high." (chapter 76) This quote shows again Laozi's focus on softness, but in another pair of counterparts: the newborn baby and the old man. Rigidity is the attribute of death, while weakness is the attribute of life. When things or beings are at their beginning, everything is possible. When things have not yet developed, it is the right time to act on them with a better chance for good results. A kind of return to the beginning of things, or to one's own childhood, is required.

This focus on the importance of beginnings also has social ramifications. As in the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Tao Te Ching assumes that ancient times were those of happiness, purity of intentions, and full communion with nature: "the times when anyone could look inside the nests of all the birds". Problems arose when humanity "invented" culture and civilisation. The Tao Te Ching proposes a return to the more natural state, for example in chapter 80, where the text argues the people should "come back to the usage of knotted ropes" in place of any other form of writing.

However, the "Return" shouldn't be understood as a simple or reactionary way back to the past, but as a "contraction," a "reduction," a "withdrawal" or even a "retreat" in oneself. This is illustrated in the anti-Confucianist saying: Learning consists in adding to one's stock day by day; the practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day (ch. 48) and in this strategic advice I dare not advance an inch but retreat a foot instead. (ch. 69) Diminishing one's ego, instead of "improving" it through studies, is the path to real wisdom. Letting the enemy take the first step (thus reducing his range of possiblities) is the way to gain the upper hand.

Although this idea of a "Return" is close to some modern psychological practices such as introspection, what is to be reached through "Return" is not the self but nothingness.

The Sage has no heart on his own...

The Search for Vacuity is a common concern for many different Asian wisdoms including Taoism, Buddhism, and some aspects of Confucianism. In the Tao Te Ching, nothingness is the theme of many chapters and one could see the entire book as a suite of variations on "the Powers of Nothingness". An explanation on how nothingness has power can be found in chapter 11:

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is,
we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
Chapter 11, tr. A. Waley

Looking at a Chinese landscape painting, one can understand also how nothingness (the unpainted parts) has the power of giving life to the beings - the trees, mountains, and rivers - it surrounds. Being nothing for a man means having no heart on his own, having no fixed preconceptions on how things should be, and having no intentions or agenda. For the ruler's point of view, nothingness is not far from the liberal laissez-faire approach: letting things happen by themselves is the best way to help them grow.

"Knowing oneself"

The pursuit of the knowledge of the self appears in many variations throughout the Tao Te Ching. One example in chapter 33:

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
Chapter 33 tr. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English


Other themes

Here are listed some other topics related to the Tao Te Ching:

  • Force begets force.
  • One whose needs are simple will find them fulfilled.
  • (Material) wealth does not enrich the spirit.
  • Self-absorption and self-importance are vain and self-destructive.
  • Victory in war is not glorious and not to be celebrated, but stems from devastation, and is to be mourned.
  • The harder one tries, the more resistance one will create for oneself.
  • The more one acts in harmony with the universe (the Mother of the ten thousand things), the more one will achieve, with less effort.
  • The truly wise make little of their own wisdom for the more they know, the more they realize how little they know.
  • When we lose the fundamentals, we supplant them with increasingly inferior values which we pretend are the true values.
  • Glorification of wealth, power and beauty beget crime, envy and shame.
  • The qualities of flexibility and suppleness are often superior to rigidity and strength.
  • Everything is in its own time and place.
  • The contrast of opposition — i.e. the differences between male and female, light and dark, strong and weak, etc. — helps us understand and appreciate the universe.
  • Humility is the highest virtue.
  • Knowing oneself is a virtue.
  • Envy is our calamity; overindulgence is our plight.

Translation

The difficulties of translating classical Chinese

File:Tao-te-ching005.png
Tao Te Ching - Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

The Tao Te Ching is written in classical Chinese, which is in itself difficult even for normally educated modern native speakers of Chinese to understand completely. Furthermore, many of the words used in the Tao Te Ching are deliberately vague and ambiguous. At the time the Tao Te Ching was written, educated Chinese who could read it would have memorized a large body of fairly standard Chinese literature, and when writing it was common to convey meaning by making allusions to other well-known works which now may have been lost. Few people today have the full command of the vast body of ancient Chinese literature that would have been common in Laozi's day, and thus many levels of subtext are potentially lost on modern translators.

There is no punctuation in classical Chinese, and thus often no way to conclusively determine where one sentence ends and the next begins. Moving a period a few words forward or back or inserting a comma can profoundly alter the meaning of many passages, and such divisions and meanings must be determined by the translator. Some Chinese editors and some translators, indeed, argue that the text is so corrupted (as it was written on one-line bamboo tablets linked with a silk thread) that it's not possible to understand some chapters without moving sequences of characters from one place to another.

Translations

File:Tao Te Ching Hintonjpg.jpg

The Tao Te Ching is perhaps the most translated book written in the Chinese language, with over 100 different translations into English alone. The combination of being mystical and obscure means that sometimes different translations have nothing in common, suggesting that getting a deep understanding of the text requires reading more than one. A common way to do this is to pick two translations and read them side by side.

In English

In French

    • Léon Wieger Les pères du système taoïste, Cathasia, Paris, 1950.
    • J.J.L. Duyvendak Tao tö king, le livre de la voie et de la vertu, texte chinois établi et traduit avec des notes critiques et une introduction. Paris, 1953.
    • Stanilas Julien Le Livre de la voie et de la vertu, Paris, 1942; (Cercle du livre précieux) Paris, 1967.
    • Liou Kia-hway, Tao-tö King, Gallimard, 1969
    • Marcel Conche Lao Tseu - Tao Te king, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 2003.

In German

In Italian

    • Lionello Lanciotti Il libro della virtu e della via: il Te-tao-ching secondo il manoscritto di Ma-wang-tui. Milano, 1995.(translation based on Mawangdui edition)
    • Attilio Andreini Laozi : genesi del Daodejing. Torino,2004.(translation based on Gudian edition)
    • Julius Evola Il libro della via e della virtù. Lanciano, 1923. (a "translation" not from chinese language. It was based on fascist ideology. Very popular among neo-fascists expecially in the '70s)



See also

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