The Way And Its Power; A Study Of The Tao Tê Ching

Laozi, Arthur Waley

• Publisher: Hauraki Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786257901
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

First published in 1934, this translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Tê Ching—unlike previous translations—is based not on the medieval commentaries, but on a close study of the whole of early Chinese literature.The Tao Tê Ching, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism, and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism, Confucianism, and Chinese Buddhism. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners, have used the Tao Tê Ching as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, and is among the most translated works in world literature.

TRANSLATION OF TAO TÊ CHING

CHAPTER I

“The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;

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.

Truly, ‘Only he that rids himself forever of desire can see the Secret Essences’;

He that has never rid himself of desire can see only the Outcomes.{222}

These two things issued from the same mould, but nevertheless are different in name.

This ‘same mould’ we can but call the Mystery,

Or rather the ‘Darker than any Mystery’,

The Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences.”

Paraphrase

The Realists demand a ch’ang-tao, an ‘unvarying way’ of government, in which every act inimical and every act beneficial to the State is codified and ‘mated’ to its appropriate punishment or reward. The Taoist replies that though there does exist a ch’ang-tao, ‘an unvarying Way’, it cannot be grasped by the ordinary senses nor described in words. In dispassionate vision the Taoist sees a world consisting of the things for which language has no names. Provisionally we may call them miao, ‘secret essences’. The Realist, his vision distorted by desire, sees only the ‘ultimate results’, the Outcomes of those essences, never the essences themselves. The whole doctrine of Realism was founded on the conviction that just as things which issue from the same mould are mechanically identical, ‘cannot help being as they are’,{223} so by complete codification, a series of moulds (fa), can be constructed, which will mechanically decide what ‘name’ (and consequently what reward or punishment) should be assigned to any given deed. But the two modalities of the Universe, the world as the Taoist sees it in vision and the world of everyday life, contradict the basic assumption of the Realist. For they issue from the same mould (‘proceed from a sameness’), and nevertheless are different as regards name. Strictly speaking, the world as seen in vision has no name. We can call it, as above, the Sameness; or the Mystery. These names are however merely stop-gaps. For what we are trying to express is darker than any mystery.

CHAPTER II

“IT IS because everyone under Heaven recognizes beauty as

beauty, that the idea of ugliness exists.

And equally if everyone recognized virtue as virtue, this

would merely create fresh conceptions of wickedness.

For truly ‘Being and Not-being grow out of one another;

Difficult and easy complete one another.

Long and short test{224} one another;

High and low determine one another.

The sounds of instrument and voice give harmony to one another.

Front and back give sequence to one another’.

Therefore{225} the Sage relies on actionless activity,

Carries on wordless teaching,

But the myriad creatures are worked upon by him; he does not disown them.

He rears them, but does not lay claim to them,—

Controls them, but does not lean upon them,

Achieves his aim, but does not call attention{226} to what he does;

And for the very reason that he does not call attention to what he does

He is not ejected from fruition of what he has done.”

Paraphrase

The Realists say that virtue (i.e. what the State desires) must, by complete codification, be ma...