Tao Te Ching

by Lao Tzu

  My chief goal in undertaking this translation has been to create a thoroughly new English version of the Tao Te Ching. During its preparation, I intentionally avoided consulting other translations so that I would not be influenced by them. Aside from not wanting to be repetitive and stale, I did not wish to be trapped by facile solutions bequeathed by the received text, its editors, commentators, and translators. As a tribute to the unexpected re-emergence of the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, I have endeavored to provide a fresh examination on their own terms, one not burdened by two millennia of religious and philosophical exegesis. If others wish to amalgamate the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts with the received text, that is their prerogative, but it is not what I have set out to do here. For those who are interested in learning about later interpretations of the Tao Te Ching, several previous translations that include extensive commentaries and explanations are listed in the bibliography.

  APPENDIX

  This Appendix is designed for those who want additional information on the relationship between Yoga and Taoism.

  In his landmark comparative study Sufism and Taoism, Toshihiko Izutsu discerns what he calls “the two pivots of a world-view,” namely “the Absolute and the Perfect Man.” Izutsu sees these twin pivots (Tao and te, as it were) developing independently in different places and ages. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to prove that Sufism and Taoism were absolutely unrelated. This is especially the case when we consider that both Persia and China had commercial, cultural, and political ties with each other and with India during the period when Sufism developed. Similarly, given the unmistakable resemblances between Taoism and Yoga, it would be virtually impossible to prove that they have no historical connections whatsoever. Even Joseph Needham (pp. 257–88), the great advocate of the autonomy of Chinese technology, is persuaded by the evidence to admit that there must have been some sort of influence operating between these two systems of thought. The difficulty is in trying to sort out which came first.

  Because the question of priority is too complicated to include in the main body of the Afterword, I have gathered in this Appendix some of the more pertinent material. The first item of evidence from the Chinese side is an isolated inscription on ten pieces of jade making up a small knob that is datable to approximately the year 380 B.C.:

  In moving the vital breath (hsing ch’i) [through the body, hold it deep and] thereby accumulate it. Having accumulated it, let it extend (shen). When it extends, it goes downward. After it goes downward, it settles. Once it is settled, it becomes firm. Having become firm, it sprouts [compare Yogic bīja (“seed” or “germ”)]. After it sprouts, it grows. Once grown, then it withdraws. Having withdrawn, it becomes celestial [that is, yang]. The celestial potency presses upward, the terrestrial potency presses downward. [He who] follows along [with this natural propensity of the vital breath] lives; [he who] goes against it dies.

  (Kuo Mo-jo, p. 9)

  Without addressing the choppy, convoluted style in which it is written, I need only point out that every essential element of this inscription can be traced to Indian texts that date from 900 to 200 B.C. Among these are the thirteen classical Upaniads (c. 700–300 B.C.), which are supplementary teachings attached to the Vedas, India’s most ancient body of knowledge. For example, the Maitrī Upaniad offers an elaborate exposition of the five types of breath (prāa, apāa, samāna, udāna, vyāna), their movement upward and downward and throughout each limb, as well as their relationship to life and death. The whole second khaa (section) of the Muaka Upaniad has so many close parallels to the Tao Te Ching that it deserves the most thorough study by serious students of the Taoist classic. Here I shall cite only a part of the sixth stanza, which bears obvious resemblance to one of the most celebrated images of the Old Master:

  Where the channels (nāi) come together

  Like spokes in the hub of a wheel,

  Therein he (imperishable Brahman as manifested

      in the individual soul [ātman]) moves about

  Becoming manifold.

  The corresponding passage from the Tao Te Ching (chapter 55, lines 1–3) has a slightly different application, but the common inspiration is evident:

  Thirty spokes converge on a single hub,

      but it is in the space where there is nothing

          that the usefulness of the cart lies.

  In one of the earliest Upaniads, the Chāndogya, we find an exposition of the microcosmology of the human body that certainly prefigures Taoist notions of a much later period:

  A hundred and one are the arteries (nādi) of the heart,

  One of them leads up to the crown of the head;

  Going upward through that, one becomes immortal (amta),

  The others serve for going in various directions.…

  (translation adapted from Radhakrishnan, p. 501)

  This is not just an isolated occurrence, for the same conception is restated in the Katha Upaniad, the Taittīriya Upaniad, and the Praśna Upaniad.

  Yogic concentration of all the senses upon the self is clearly evident in the Chāndogya Upaniad. In the Maitrī Upaniad, Yoga is mentioned specifically by name and defined in a manner that would fit Taoism almost as well:

  The oneness of the breath, the mind, and likewise of the senses,

  The abandonment of all conditions of existence, this is designated Yoga.

  (translation adapted from Radhakrishnan, p. 835)

  By the time of the Yoga Sūtras and Yoga Upaniads (the earliest layers of which date to no later than the second century B.C.), the complete pre–Tantric Yogic system had received explicit and elaborate codification in written form. Patañjali, who wrote the first three books of the Yoga Sūtras around the second century B.C., recognizes (I.1) that he was not the creator of Yogic techniques but only wanted to present them in a rigorously systematic fashion. Those who take the trouble to read attentively the early Indian texts just cited, particularly the classical Upaniads, will realize that they foreshadow the entire philosophical, religious, and physiological foundations of Taoism, but not its social and political components, which are distinctively Chinese.

  Still farther back in time, the Atharva Veda (900 B.C. or before) has a very long chapter dealing exclusively with the vital breath and its circulation (to mention only one aspect that is pertinent to Taoism). Although the entire chapter deserves quotation and careful examination by all conscientious students of Taoism, I have space to present only nine stanzas here:

  When breath with thunder roars at the plants, they are fertilized, they receive the germ, consequently they are born abundantly.

  Rained upon, the plants spoke with breath (saying): You have extended our life, you have made us all fragrant.

  Homage, breath, be to you breathing up, homage to you breathing down; homage to you turning away, homage to you turning hither; here is homage to all of you.

  Your dear form, breath, and your even dearer form, also the healing power that is yours, of that put in us, that we may live.

  Breath is the shining One (the Queen), breath the Directress, all revere breath; breath is the sun and the moon, breath they say is the Lord of Creatures.

  Man, while still in the womb, functions with nether and upper breath [compare the “womb breathing” of the Taoists]; when you, breath, quicken him, then he is born again.

  When breath has rained with rain upon the great earth, plants are generated, and all herbs that exist.

  Who is lord over this (all) of every source, over all that moves, whose bow is swift among (against?) the unwearied ones,—O breath, homage be to thee.

  O breath, turn not away from me; you shall be no other than myself.

  I bind you to myself, breath, like the child of the waters, that I may live.

  (XI.iv.3, 6, 8–9, 12, 14, 17, 23, 26; trans. Edgerton)

  If there were still any doubts about the vast antiquity of Yogic physiological discipline in comparison with similar Taoist practices, one need only recall th
at āsana (postures) have been found represented on seals and statuettes from Mohenjo Daro and Harappā, sites of the Indus Valley civilization that date back to about 2500 B.C. Although we cannot be certain that the individuals so depicted are actually engaged in meditation (dhyāna), it is noteworthy that some elements of Yoga, as Eliade has asserted, must have preceded the arrival of the Aryans in the south Asian subcontinent. Yoga is reflected as well in many ancient archaeological monuments of India, Indochina, and Indonesia (see Pott). Specific meditational postures are already mentioned by name in the Indian epic Mahābhārata of which the Bhagavad Gītā forms a part. These include the maūkayoga (frog yoga) and vīrāsana (posture of a hero).

  The next piece of evidence from the Chinese side is quite well known and has been cited by most competent authorities as providing crucial data for the origins of Taoist physical exercises. It comes from one of the later chapters of the Master Chuang and may be dated roughly to 250 B.C., just about the time when the Tao Te Ching came to be written down:

  Blowing and breathing, exhaling and inhaling, expelling the old and taking in the new, bear strides and bird stretches—[these activities are designed] to achieve longevity and that is all. They are favored by those who [through] channeling [of the vital breath] and flexions [of the muscles and the joints wish to emulate] the longevity of Methuselah.

  (Concordance to Chuang Tzu, ch. 15, p. 40)

  The odd expression “bear strides” is illustrated on another recently unearthed document from Ma-wang-tui. A silk manuscript from the same Han tomb that yielded the manuscripts of the Tao Te Ching consists of painted designs of gymnastic exercises that date to 168 B.c. or before. Originally, the manuscript showed over forty exercises, but only twenty-eight survive intact in its present fragmentary condition.

  One striking feature of the twenty-eight exercises depicted on the fragmentary silk manuscript is that many of them are named after birds and animals (wolf, kite, sparrow hawk, ape, crane, and so on). This immediately reminds us of Yogic āsana (postures) that are patterned after the movements or poses of similar (and sometimes even identical) creatures: eagle, swan, peacock, crane, heron, cock, pigeon, partridge, tortoise, fish, monkey, lion, camel, frog, horse, cow, dog, crocodile, snake, locust, scorpion, and so on. One might say it is natural for man to imitate animals when devising physical exercises, but there are other grounds for believing that Taoist gymnastics and Yogic postures have a common origin.

  Let us discuss the native designations for this type of exercise in India and in China. The Chinese word is the bisyllabic tao-yin, which means leading, guiding, channeling, or duction (an obsolete English term that we may revive for this purpose) and basically signifies the directed movement through the body of ch’i (vital breath) as well as the controlled extension or drawing out of the limbs, muscles, and joints of the body. This sounds suspiciously close to Yogic breath control (Prāāyāma, from prāna [vital breath] and āyāma [lengthening, extension]). Prāāyāma is the rhythmically restrained drawing in and out of the breath.

  To return to our discussion of the passage from Master Chuang, after “bear strides” comes “bird stretches.” While not among the surviving postures and labels on the silk manuscript from Ma-wang-tui, it clearly echoes several Indian āsana. The next phrases show that Master Chuang disparages the pursuit of physical longevity, perhaps a sly dig at the Old Master and his ilk. At least one strand of the Tao Te Ching itself, however, is definitely opposed to conscientious life extension and breath control (see chapter 18, lines 16–17; chapter 40, lines 9–15 and the note to line 10; and chapter 77, line 8).

  I have cited above many early Indian texts that outline Yoga philosophy, yet they can only have constituted but a small fraction of what was transmitted orally in fuller form. Hence it is not possible in every case to provide specific textual references for the sources of Indian influence on the development of Taoism. For example, it would be difficult to pinpoint a single Indian source for the microcosmic physiological conception of the human body so characteristic of Taoism, yet we know that it was already securely in place in India long before being elaborated in China. So pervasive was the Indian impact upon the growth of Taoist metaphysics that the latter—especially in its formative stages—is not wholly intelligible without consulting its Yogic background. Our appreciation of Chinese thought in general is enhanced by the recognition that, in fact, it is intimately connected to world philosophy.

  The rise of Taoism is not just a matter of Sino-Indian cultural relations. A tremendous intellectual ferment convulsed all of Eurasia around the middle of the first millennium B.C. Within a brief span of approximately a century, the following major systems of thought were articulated or adumbrated: pre-Socratic Greek philosophy (Thales and Anaximander of Miletus), Confucianism, Mohism, Upaniadic Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Biblical Judaism. It is highly unlikely that these great movements were utterly independent phenomena (see Benjamin Schwartz’s comments on the Axial Age in his The World of Thought in Ancient China, pp. 2–3). Indeed, they were probably closely tied to the explosive growth in the use of iron during the preceding two centuries, which caused tremendous social and political rearrangements (see Calder, p. 169).

  The political manifestation of the widespread use of iron in China was the breakup of the feudal Chou empire into seven main and many lesser states about 475 B.C. After more than 250 years of prolonged fighting, the state of Ch’in emerged as the leading power to reunite China in 221 B.C. It is significant both that the original Ch’in base was far to the northwest and that her soldiers were well equipped with iron and advanced metallic alloy weapons. The procurement of these new technologies enabled the Ch’in armies to defeat the other warring states farther east that had splintered off from the Chou dynasty. The consolidation of the Chinese state under the First Emperor (Shihhuang) of the Ch’in probably thus represents the last eastward wave of the conquests of Darius the Great of Persia (558?—486 B.c.) and Alexander the Great of Macedonia (356–323 B.C.). This interpretation has been forcefully corroborated by the recent discovery in Sinkiang (“New Borders”—the Chinese-controlled part of central Asia) of a large copper statue of a west Asiatic warrior that is preserved in the regional museum at Urumchi. He dates to approximately the fourth century B.C. and is depicted in a kneeling posture almost identical to that of many infantrymen in the terra cotta army of the First Emperor of the Ch’in. The existence of a large Roman military encampment even farther east in Kansu province during the first century B.c. has also recently been documented. It was through these soldiers that the transfer of iron technology and the ideas that came in its wake were achieved.

  Note: Scholars who wish to obtain complete documentation for all points raised in the Afterword and who desire fuller annotations for the text may write to the author for a separate, sinologically oriented publication concerning the Tao Te Ching.

  SELECTED

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