by Laozi
Chapter 54
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.
Chapter 56
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.
Chapter 57
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.
Chapter 58
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.
Chapter 59
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.
Chapter 61
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.
Chapter 62
The first and last verses hang together; the two middle verses are difficult and rather incoherent. Waley says the enigmatic second verse refers to sophists and sages who went about selling their "fine words" to the highest bidder, like our pop gurus and TV pundits.
Chapter 64
I think the advice about being careful at the end of an undertaking was added, perhaps to balance the advice that the right time to act is before the beginning. It confuses the argument a bit, and I put it in parentheses.
The line I give as "tum back to what people overlooked" is rendered by Lafargue as "turns back to the place all others have gone on from"; Feng-English, "brings men back to what they have lost"; Henricks, "returns to what the masses have passed by"; Waley, "turning all men back to the things they have left behind." Each version brings out a different color in the line, like different lights on an opal.
Chapter 65
A dictator and his censors might all too easily cite from this chapter. A democrat might agree that the more people know, the harder they are for a ruler to govern—since the more they know, the better they are at governing themselves. Anyone might agree that an intellectual agenda pursued without reality-checking is indeed a curse upon the land. From the divine right of kings through the deadly teachings of Hitler and Mao to the mumbojumbo of economists, government by theory has done endless ill. But why is Lao Tzu's alternative to it a people kept in ignorance? What kind of ignorance? Ignorance of what? Lao Tzu may be signalling us to ask such questions when he speaks of "understanding these things."
Chapter 69
Waley is my guide to the interpretation of the second verse, but I make very free with the last two lines of it. If they aren't a rather vapid statement that one should never underestimate one's foe, they must follow from what went before and lead to the extraordinary last verse. It all comes down to the last line and the word shwai. Carus translates it as "the weaker [the more compassionate]," and Bynner uses the word "compassion." Waley translates it as "he who does not delight in war," Henricks as "the one who feels grief," Gibbs-Cheng as "the one stung by grief," Feng-English as "the underdog," Lafargue as "the one in mourning." A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
Chapter 71
I follow Henricks in choosing the Ma wang tui text, which has a double negative in the second line. Most other texts have "not knowing knowing is sickness."
Chapter 72
I take the liberty of reading this chapter as a description of what we, we ordinary people, should fear. The usual reading is in the manual-for-princes mode. In that case "what should be feared" is the ruler, the rightful authority, and the advice that follows is evidently directed to that ruler. It's certainly what 'William Blake would have told the oligarchs of the Industrial Revolution, who still control our lives:
When people don't fear what should be feared
they are in fearful danger.
Don't make them live in narrow houses,
don't force them to do stupid work.
When they're not made stupid
they won't act stupidly.
Chapter 74
I follow the Ma wang tui text, but make very free with the word Henricks renders as "constant [in their behavior]." If I understand Henricks' version, it says that if people were consistent in behaving normally and in fearing death, and if death were the penalty for abnormal behavior, nobody would dare behave abnormally; and so there would be no executions and no executioners. But this is not the case; as Lao Tzu says, there are times when even normal people lose their normal fear of death. So what is the poem about? I read it as saying that since we are inconsistent both in our behavior and in our fear of death, no person can rightfully take on the role of executioner, and should leave the death penalty to the judgment of heaven or nature.
Chapter 80
To dismiss this Utopia as simply regressivist or anti-technological is to miss an interesting point. These people have labor-saving machinery, ships and land vehicles, weapons of offense and defense. They "have them and don't use them." I interpret: they aren't used by them. We're used, our lives shaped and controlled, by our machines, cars, planes, weaponry, bulldozers, computers. These Taoists don't surrender their power to their creations.
The eleventh line, however, is certainly regressive if it says knotted cords are to replace written literature, history, mathematics, and so on. It might be read as saying it's best not to externalize all our thinking and remembering (as we do in writing and reading), but to keep it embodied, to think and remember with our bodies as well as our verbalizing brains.
Chapter 81
This last poem is self-reflexive, wrapping it all up tight in the first verse, then opening out again to praise the undestructive, uncompetitive generosity of the spirit that walks on the Way.
To my mind, the best reason for following the Ma wang tui text in reversing the order of the books is that the whole thing ends with a chapter (37) that provides a nobler conclusion than this one. But if you reverse the order, chapter I turns up in the middle of the book, and I simply cannot believe that that's right. That poem is a beginning. It is the beginning.