Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (8 page)

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): "[Who] dies / yet / not / perishes, / the-one /
is-long-lived [immortal]."

Carns's
free translation: "One who may die but does not perish has life
everlasting."

Waley
:
"When one dies one is not lost; there is no other longevity."

Feng
-English:
"To die but not to perish is to be eternally present."

Henricks
:
"To die but not be forgotten-that's [true] long life."

Bynner
:
"Vitality cleaves to the marrow /
Leaving
death
behind."

Lafargue
:
"One who dies and does not perish is truly long-lived."

Gibbs-Cheng: "One who dies yet
still remains has longevity."

Lau: "He who lives out his
days has had a long life."

Under J. P. Seaton's guidance I finally came to feel that I
had a handle on the line, and that Lau's 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
ming
—
this
phrase in the first line of the second verse (and the chapter title)—is tricky:

Carus
(word
for word): "the
secret's
/ explanation"

Carus's
free translation: "explanation [i.e., enlightenment] of the secret"

Feng
-English:
"perception of the nature of things"

Gibbs-Cheng: "wonderfully
minute and obscure, yet brilliant"

Lafargue
:
"subtle clarity"

Henricks
:
"subtle light"

Bynner
:
"a man with insight"

Waley
:
"dimming one's light"

Ming
is "light"
or "enlightenment."
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 "the
nameless, the natural" and in the next verse as "the unnamed, the
unshapen
" are the same four words:
wu
ming
chih
p'u
; more literally,
"the naturalness of the unnamed." "The unnamed" is a key phrase
in the first chapter and elsewhere, as is "not wanting," "
unwanting
."
P'u
is the natural, the uncut wood, or, as
Waley
glosses it here, "
uncarved
-wood
quality."

The series here is of familiar Confucian principles:
jen
,
li
,
i
—"good, humane,
human-hearted, altruistic"; "righteous, moral, ethical"; "laws,
rites, rules, law and order." But Lao Tzu reverses and subverts the
Confucian priorities.

Chien
shih
in the fourth verse is
"premature knowledge" in
Carus
and
"foreknowledge" in Lau,
Henricks
, and
Waley
(who explains it as part of Confucian doctrine
) .
Henricks
interprets it as
having "one's mind made up before one enters a new situation about what is
'right' and 'wrong' and 'proper' and 'acceptable' and so on."
Prejudice, that is, or opinion.
Buddhists and Taoists agree
in having a very low opinion of opinion.

Yi
, "one, the
one, unity, singleness, integrity," is here translated as "whole,
wholeness."

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 "too many carriages is the same as no
carriage," 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 anybody's 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 "thought." The word connotes "form, shape, image, idea."
Waley
explains it as the form which is formless, the
Tao which can't be
tao'd
.

In the sixth line, does the word
fu
mean "carry on one's back"
or "tum one's back on"?
Lafargue
is the
only translator I found that made the second choice. I don't follow him because
I don't think the "ten thousand things" 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.)

Lafargue's
reading, however, lets
the next stanza follow more coherently—orphans, the bereaved, the outcast are
what we tum 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 "what others
teach" 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, "It's a message that for all its flat
moralism does connect Taoism to Confucianism and even to Buddhism with a single
solid thread—averting a hundred holy wars, if nothing else."

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, but—as
here, and in chapter 39 and other places—they bring a tremendous statement down
to a rather commonplace ending. But then, Lao Tzu values the commonplace.

The last line, literally "not do, yet accomplish,"
is a direct statement of one of the fundamental themes of the book. When I came
up with a slightly mealy version of it ("doesn't do, but it's done")
J. P. Seaton reminded me that "doing without doing is doing, not
not
doing."

Shi
(my
"fuss,"
Carus's
"diplomacy") is
translated by
Lafargue
as "work," by Lau as
"meddling," by
Waley
and
Feng
-English as "interference," by
Henricks
as "concern," by Gibbs-Cheng as
"act for gain."

Following some of
Carus's
interpretations, the first lines of the third verse might be read, "Wise
souls live in the world carefully, handling it carefully, making their mind
universal." I can't make much sense of any of the other versions except
Henricks's
beautiful reading:

As for the Sage's presence in the
world, he is one with it.
And with the world he merges his mind.

Those who read
shih
yu
san
as "thirteen," rather than as
"three out of ten," make better sense of the difficult first verse.
The thirteen "companions of life" (
Waley
,
Henricks
), which I translate "organs," may be
physical, the limbs and passages and cavities of the body—or
physio
/psychological, the emotions and sensations.

My "mad bull" occurs variously as a rhinoceros and
a wild buffalo. The idea seems to be a big irritable animal with horns.

My "live in the right way" is literally "take
care of your life," or "hold on to your life." 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 doesn't come at you as your
enemy. Lao Tzu's "nowhere for death to enter" isn't a promise of
invulnerability or immortality; his concern is how to live rightly, how to
"live till you die."

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 don't 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
"discordant with the teachings of Lao Tzu," won't even discuss this chapter.
Waley's
reading saves it, but the listing "self,
family, community, country, empire/world" (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 Tzu's 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
t'ung
,
"the deep sameness":
hsuan
is "deep" or "mysterious";
t'ung
is
variously translated "identification," "oneness,"
"sameness," "merging," "leveling," "assimilation."
It is an important theme, met with before in chapter 49.

The phrase "How do I know? By this," has become a
kind of tag by its third repetition; but as
Waley
points out, it still implies intuitive knowing, beyond reason—knowing the way.

The words I translate "experts" literally mean
"sharp weapons," but the term implies "pundits, know-it-alls."
I was tempted to say "smart bombs," 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 "square, right, angular," 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
"gather spirit," is variously translated "frugality,"
"moderation," "restraint," "being sparing," or, by
Waley
, "laying up a store." 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
Waley's
reading, which points to the
symbology
of the breath (
ch'i
) and the "long
look" of the meditator, gave me the courage to try. Here is a version closer
to the conventional ones:

In controlling people and serving
heaven
it's 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 country's yours.
If you can make the country's Mother yours
,
you'll last a long time.
You'll have deep roots and a strong trunk.
The way to live long is to look long.

The first seven lines continue the themes of
"sameness" or assimilation, and of "being woman,"
"being water," the uses of yin. From there on, the language goes
flat, and may be interpolated commentary. There's 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 "Small
countries, submitting to a great one, are dominated," and in the next
verse, "Some by lying low stay on top, but some by lying low stay on the bottom."
Both versions are truisms, but the Ma
wang
tui
version isn't even a
Taoistic
truism.