When a superior man hears of the Tao, he immediately begins to embody it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he half believes it, half doubts it. When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. If he didn’t laugh it wouldn’t be the Tao. -41
Summary
For my first read through (assuming there might be more) without much research I picked up Stephen Mitchell’s version. Two things of note, one Stephen Mitchell was also the one who authored my version of Gilgamesh which was fantastic. Second, he makes clear that this is an English “version” and not straight translation of the Tao Te Ching. This book came with his own commentary at the end, as well as a transcript of an interview about the process of translation. I read once all the way through, and then re-read referencing his notes. The Tao Te Ching itself is similar to the Old Testament in that its actual authors are lost to history. It appears to have been put together from various text around 250BC. The assumed author Laozi or Lao Tzu is a person we know next to nothing about, in fact he may not even exist. His name adds to this mystery by being translated as “old teacher”. That being said there are now over 250 translations of the text and its 81 short chapters.
Thoughts
I’ve been thinking a lot about the benefits of cyclopean viewpoints. They tend to get a bad rap, but sometimes it takes some unbalance to see things that a balanced person would miss. The first line is “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao” or again in chapter 56 “Those who know do not talk, those who talk do not know”. Evidently, these are the lines needed to get your book to be argued about for centuries and translated 250 times. For a book whose main theme is balance, I’ve never felt so off balance. Or if I was Laozi, I would say “to become truly balanced, one must first become unbalanced”. I think I could program a Laozi generator in one line of code: “To truly become {noun}, one must first become not-{noun}.” Is there a thin line between silly bumper stickers and wisdom? Are bumper stickers, wisdom in its final form? With the TTC I was never really sure what side of the line I was standing on, the only thing I knew was that what I just read was about to be contradicted. If not by the text itself, then the commentary afterward. This contradiction is not enough to make me discount it entirely. In fact, it reminds me a lot of McGilchrist’s right hemisphere trying to communicate secret messages before the left hemisphere can attach logic to things and turn them into dead mechanical parts. For the book’s message in total, I fall right into Laozi’s “average man” in the quote above, I believed parts of it, and disbelieved other parts. This seems like just the book you need to read before doing mechanical work on a car. I have always become frustrated working on cars due to lack of knowledge and never having all the right tools on hand. When you know you have to do something that is really frustrating, I can’t think of a better message to read than something like:
When she (the master) runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn’t cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her. -63
Or
Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself -60
On the other hand, there definitely seems to be cases where the above quotations are demonstrably false. Alas, doomed to mediocrity, at least I can take comfort in that I did not laugh, but wait, I would not be surprised to find out that laughing is the wisest of all three choices in the first quote. The final thing is about translation, one reason why there are so many is because the text is notoriously hard to translate from its original language. Classical Chinese has no punctuation, so you can imagine all the difficulties that brings. Additionally, the words themselves make it difficult to understand the author’s intent like some Biblical passages. I found this version which purports to be the most accurate version anywhere and this is how it renders chapter 18.
The great Tao fades away There is benevolence and justice Intelligence comes forth There is great deception The six relations are not harmonious There is filial piety and kind affection The country is in confused chaos There are loyal ministers
Mitchell renders this beautifully as:
When the great Tao is forgotten goodness and piety appear. When the body’s intelligence declines, cleverness and knowledge step forth. When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born.
This liberty of translation on Mitchell’s part makes the text much more readable as a Westerner and I would assume Easterner as well. This has not gone without some criticism of Western Orientalism, as Mitchell himself does not speak the language, but had profound experiences which he felt gave him the confidence to create such a free translation. I am in no place to judge but I can point to one of his commentaries on a chapter for his take on it. There are a number of passages in the Tao Te Ching where a much narrower consciousness is at work than in the rest of book. These passages may be interpolations. Or perhaps the old fellow had indigestion on the days he wrote them. But since my job was to re-crate the essential mind of Lao-tzu, I could not in good conscience include them in this version. So as a reader I guess you have two options, become a Tao Te Ching fundamentalist where you try to find the most original text and defend every word with your life. Or possibly view it as a classic that is full of wisdom but has its flaws, and as such enjoy the ride. After all, if the Tao cannot be named, then what I’ve read is not the Tao. On the negative side, I found it difficult to find much meaning or usefulness to me. I know this would have been considered the wrong way to take the book, so I suppose I will leave it until such a time when I am ready to know by not knowing.