Tao Te Ching

by Lao Tzu

  While there are significant differences between the Ma-wang-tui and the received texts of the Tao Te Ching, they resemble each other to such a degree that we may conclude they are part of the same broad textual tradition. That is to say, they most likely constitute different versions of a single, parent work. Therefore, even the received text—when used judiciously—is of some value in our reading of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts. Furthermore, certain studies of the Tao Te Ching carried out after the advent of “evidential learning” during the eighteenth century under the partial tutelage of the Jesuits and other Western scholars are occasionally useful in our efforts to understand the original Tao Te Ching. However, the solutions to most of the problems confronting the researcher can usually be found in the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts and the Fu I text together with other, contemporaneous materials.

  Because of the discovery of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts and the advancement of critical modern scholarship, specialists are currently in a better position to elucidate the original Tao Te Ching than at any time during the past two millennia and more. By closely analyzing the text and studying comparative religion, we now realize that oral composition played a significant role in the rise of the Tao Te Ching.

  Part II:

  The Meaning of the Title and Other Key Words

  Now that we have become acquainted with the historical background of the Tao Te Ching, the most pressing task is to familiarize ourselves with the title and a few key terms. By exploring in depth the three words that make up the title and three other basic words that are intimately connected to the book, we will gain a more profound understanding of its overall import. Several additional concepts vital to the thought of the Old Master will also be introduced.

  It may come as a bit of a shock to those who are fond of the Tao Te Ching to learn that, strictly speaking, the title is something of a misnomer. In the first place, the book was originally known simply as the Old Master, just as numerous other works of the Warring States period went by the names of the thinkers with whom they were most closely associated. The appellation “classic” only became attached to it during the succeeding Han period (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) by followers of Taoist religious sects. We can be fairly certain that orthodox Confucians would never have awarded it that honor.

  Tao Te Ching or the Way [and] Integrity Classic is actually a plausible enough name for the book, except that the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts begin with the thirty-eighth chapter of the received text, which focuses on integrity, whereas the first chapter speaks of the Way; a more proper designation would actually be Te Tao Ching or Integrity [and] Way Classic. For the convenience of readers who are accustomed to the conventional title and to make it easier for those who might wish to consult previous scholarship on the classic, I have retained the wording Tao Te Ching.

  The exact date on which the classic became known as the Tao Te Ching is unclear. Some scholars claim that this title was already used during the Western Han period (206 B.C.–A.D. 8), but all the sources they cite are actually from a much later time, even though they purport to draw on Han texts. According to his biography in the History of the Chin Dynasty (Chin-shu, written during the first half of the seventh century), the famous calligrapher Wang Hsi-chih (321–379) once copied out the Tao Te Ching in exchange for some fine geese that had been raised by a Taoist who lived in the mountains. This is probably the first explicit mention of the classic by this title. The next reliable occurrence of the title Tao Te Ching is in the “Bibliographical Treatise” (Ching-chi Chih) by Chang-sun Wu-chi (d. 659) et al., which is included in the History of the Sui Dynasty. This would seem to indicate that the classic was well known by its now customary title by no later than the Sui period (589–618).

  The Tao Te Ching is also known popularly as the Classic of Five Thousand Characters, but the number five thousand is entirely whimsical. Extant versions actually range from 5,227 to 5,722 characters in length. The repeated attempts to prune the classic down to exactly five thousand characters are but another example of the impulse to shape the thinker and his book into a neat, preconceived package.

  One of the most exciting recent developments in Chinese historical linguistics has a direct bearing on our investigation of the title. This is the discovery that there are unmistakable linkages between Old Chinese and Indo-European languages. Tsung-tung Chang, a Chinese scholar who has lived in Germany for three decades, recently published over two hundred proposed equivalences and is preparing a common lexicon for Old Chinese and Indo-European that will include more than fifteen hundred basic words. Since the work of Chang and others is still in its infancy, we do not yet know the exact nature of the relationship (that is, whether it is due to extensive borrowing, to some more fundamental kind of kinship, or a combination of the two). Nonetheless, investigators are heartened by the corroboration their work is receiving from archeology. It is now universally accepted, for example, that the chariots of the Shang dynasty burials in China from around 1200 B.C. are virtually identical with those of the Caucasus area between the Black and Caspian seas two centuries earlier.

  Various distinctive metal implements (knives, axes, arrowheads, toggles, etc.) have been excavated from a continuum of easily traveled steppe land that runs all the way from northern China, through south Siberia, to northern Europe. Wherever goods are exchanged, so too are ideas and words. Thus, I feel fully justified in pointing out the Indo-European cognates to all of the key terms that will be discussed in the remainder of this part of the Afterword. I also believe that this analysis will serve to illuminate powerfully the meanings of these terms for readers as well as to demonstrate the nonexotic, nonperipheral quality of Chinese civilization. No longer may China be excluded from discussions of world history, for it has always been very much a part of the ebb and flow of human events and ideas. It is only our limited historiography that has underestimated China’s place in the evolution of mankind.

  THE WAY/Tao (pronounced dow)

  The central concept of the Tao Te Ching, of Taoist philosophy and religion, and indeed of all Chinese thought is Tao. The translation of Tao as “Way” is an easy matter. But our understanding of the term is heightened by a closer look at its early history, which shows that the Tao is deeply imbedded in elemental human experience. The archaic pronunciation of Tao sounded approximately like drog or dorg. This links it to the Proto-Indo-European root drogh (to run along) and Indo-European dhorg (way, movement). Related words in a few modern Indo-European languages are Russian doroga (way, road), Polish droga (way, road), Czech draha (way, track), Serbo-Croatian draga ([path through a] valley), and Norwegian dialect drog (trail of animals; valley). The latter two examples help to account for the frequent and memorable valley imagery of the Tao Te Ching; ways and valleys, it would appear, are bound together in our consciousness.

  The nearest Sanskrit (Old Indian) cognates to Tao (drog) are dhrajas (course, motion) and dhraj (course). The most closely related English words are “track” and “trek,” while “trail” and “tract” are derived from other cognate Indo-European roots. Following the Way, then, is like going on a cosmic trek. Even more unexpected than the panoply of Indo-European cognates for Tao (drog) is the Hebrew root d-r-g for the same word and Arabic t-r-q, which yields words meaning “track, path, way, way of doing things” and is important in Islamic philosophical discourse.

  As a religious and philosophical concept, Tao is the all-pervading, self-existent, eternal cosmic unity, the source from which all created things emanate and to which they all return. This description could serve equally well for Brahman, the central principle of Indian philosophy and religion. Just as the Tao exists in the myriad creatures, so is Brahman present in all living beings. Brahman, like the Tao, is unborn or birthless (Sanskrit aja; modern standard Mandarin wu-sheng) and without beginning (anādi; wu-shih), both important ideas in Master Chuang and in later Taoism. Wu-sheng, in particular, becomes a standard epithet for the Mother Queen of the West, the main female deity in Taoism.

  A fre
quent image in Indian religions is that of a way leading to unification with Brahman, that is, Brahma-patha (patha being cognate with “path”). The Buddhists translated this into Chinese as Fan-tao, literally “Brahman-Way,” a striking expression that brings together these two manifestations of cosmic unity. Yoga, which I will have much to say about in Part III of the Afterword, is often thought of as a discipline that serves as a path to Brahman. In the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna (who is an avatar of the godhead) repeatedly encourages the hero Arjuna to follow his way (vartman, also rendered as Tao in Buddhist Chinese). An even more common word for the Way in Indian religions is mārga. In Buddhism, for example, it was thought of as the means for escape from the misery of worldly existence. Among the many translations of mārga into Chinese were the following: Tao, sheng-tao (sagely way), cheng-tao (correct way), sheng-tao (way of victory), chin-tao (way of progress), and so forth. These and other usages make clear the correspondence of Tao to Indian religious concepts, including Brahman.

  INTEGRITY/te (pronounced duh)

  The second word in the title of the Tao Te Ching, namely te, is far more difficult to handle than the first, as is evident from the astonishing sweep of thoughtful renderings of its meaning: power, action, life, inner potency, indarrectitude (inner uprightness), charisma, mana (impersonal supernatural force inherent in gods and sacred objects), sinderesis (conscience as the directive force of one’s actions), and virtue, to name only a few of the brave attempts to convey the meaning of te in English. Of these, the last is by far the most frequently encountered. Unfortunately, it is also probably the least appropriate of all to serve as an accurate translation of te in the Tao Te Ching.

  Much of the confusion surrounding the term te stems from its appropriation by Confucian moralists. Under their auspices it gradually came to mean “virtue” in the positive sense of innate goodness or the source of ethical behavior toward others. It did not connote the Latin-ate notion of “manliness, strength, capacity” (virtūs), which would be a more accurate translation of te. Regrettably, the English word “virtue” has taken the same moralistic path of evolution as that followed by modern standard Mandarin te.

  To illustrate how far we have departed from the Old Master, tao-te has come to mean “morality,” which is surely not what he had in mind by tao and te. To return to our exploration of the latter term alone, in the very first chapter of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, we encounter the expression hsia-te, which means “inferior te.” Another common expression is hsiung-te, which signifies “malevolent te.” If we were to render te as “virtue” in such instances, we would be faced with unwanted and unacceptable oxymorons. Clearly we must seek a more value-neutral term in modern English. I will begin this search by looking intently at the etymology of the Chinese word.

  Te was pronounced approximately dugh during the early Chou period (about 1100 to 600 B.C.). The meanings it conveys in texts from that era are “character,” “[good or bad] intentions,” “quality,” “disposition,” “personality,” “personhood,” “personal strength,” and “worth.” There is a very close correlation between these meanings and words deriving from Proto-Indo-European dhugh (to be fit, of use, proper; acceptable; achieve). And there is a whole series of words derived from the related Teutonic verbal root dugan. These are Old High German tugan, Middle High German tugen, and modern German taugen, all of which mean “to be good, fit, of use.” There is another cognate group of words relating to modern English “doughty” (meaning worthy, valiant, stouthearted) that also contribute to our understanding of te. They are Middle English douhti, dohti, or dühti (valiant), which goes back to late Old English dohtig and earlier Old English dyhtig (also “valiant”).

  As it is used in the Tao Te Ching, te signifies the personal qualities or strengths of the individual, one’s personhood. Te is determined by the sum total of one’s actions, good and bad. Therefore it is possible to speak of “cultivating one’s te.” Like karma, te is the moral weight of a person, which may be either positive or negative. In short, te is what you are. Te represents self-nature or self-realization, only in relation to the cosmos. It is in fact the actualization of the cosmic principle in the self. Te is the embodiment of the Way and is the character of all entities in the universe. Each creature, each object has a te which is its own manifestation of the Tao.

  The relationship between individual te and cosmic Tao is almost exactly parallel with that between the Indian concept of ātman (soul) and Brahman (the all-pervading divine reality of the universe; literally “growth, expansion, swelling [of the spirit or soul]”). Jīvātman (the living soul) is the self, whereas paramātman (the utmost soul) is none other than Brahman: thus the quintessential Hindu formula tat tvam asi (that thou art). In other words, you are one with the universe. Tao and Brahman both represent cosmic unity, while te and ātman stand for the individual personality or character. Just as the Bhagavad Gītā portrays the absorption of the separate soul (ātman) into the cosmic Unity (Brahman), so the Tao Te Ching describes the assimilation of the individual personality (te) into the eternal Way (Tao).

  The closest English approximation of te as used in the Tao Te Ching is “integrity.” In simplest terms, integrity means no more than the wholeness or completeness of a given entity. Like te, it represents the selfhood of every being in the universe. Integrity may also have a moral dimension in the sense of adherence to a set of values. But it lacks the uniformly positive quality of the usual translation, “virtue,” which subverts the moral ambiguity so important to our understanding of te.

  CLASSIC/ching (pronounced jeang)

  Ching is the standard term in Chinese for “classic” or “scripture.” However, its basic meaning is “warp of a fabric,” and from this is derived the idea of “passing through,” “experiencing,” “transacting.” Ching came to mean “classic” because it also signified the threads used to hold manuscripts together. Indeed, translators of Buddhist texts into Chinese used ching as an equivalent for Sanskrit sūtra, which is usually the final word in the titles of Buddhist scriptures. Sūtra literally means “thread” (compare English “suture”) and probably derives from the root siv (defined by the cognate English word “to sew”), which also applies to the stitching that holds the leaves of a manuscript together. In addition, sūtra refers to compositions consisting of short sentences or aphoristic rules.

  The Old Chinese sound of ching is roughly gwing. Without the final nasalization, this is very close to Proto-Indo-European gwhi (thread). Another form of the latter is gwhi-slo, which appears in Latin as filum (thread). English words ultimately derived from the Latin are “filament,” “fillet,” and “file” (in the sense of “line”). The latter may be traced back through Middle English filen and Middle French filer, which means “to string documents on a thread or wire” and is reminiscent of Chinese ching (book held together by thread). Other Indo-European cognates are Lithuanian gysla and Old Prussian gislo, both of which mean “vein,” as well as Lithuanian gija (thread) and Welsh gewyn (sinew, nerve). Note that the latter, like Chinese ching (gwing), has a nasal ending. The character used for Chinese ching (gwing) almost certainly depicts the warp of a fabric on a loom.

  Therefore, in strictly etymological terms, Tao Te Ching means “track-doughtiness-file.” It would originally have been pronounced roughly as drog-dugh-gwing, had the title in its current form already existed during the Chou period. It is clear that all three words of the title Tao Te Ching are conceptually linked to Indian notions such as Brahman or mārga, karma or ātman, and sūtra. But etymologically they appear to be more closely related to European terms. It is thus conceivable that both China and India may have received the ideas these words represent from some such Europoids as the Tocharians or their predecessors who lived in central Asia before the formation of the Tao Te Ching. And China may have received these concepts more directly than did India. However, these are speculations that await the findings of archaeology for confirmation.

  To complete our etymological jo
urney, let us look briefly at several key terms from the body of the Tao Te Ching text.

  SAGE/sheng-jen (pronounced shuhng-zren)

  This term, which occurs over thirty times in the text, represents the ideal Taoist ruler. There are a whole series of interesting parallels between Chinese sheng (Old Chinese syang, “sage”) and English “sage.” The first and most obvious is the similarity of their sounds. Still more striking is the fact that both of them are related to perceptiveness. The character used to write sheng (syang) shows this clearly by having an ear as its semantic classifier. The Proto-Indo-European root for “sage” is sap- (to taste, perceive). Several related English words are derived from this root (through Latin sapere—“to taste, have [good] taste, be sensible, wise”): sapid, sapient, sapor, savant, savor, savvy. “Sage” itself goes back to the same Latin word through Old French sage. Jen simply means “human” (see this page for further discussion). Thus, sheng-jen means “sagacious person.”