Introduction
The Tao Te Ching was probably written
about twenty-five hundred hears ago, perhaps by a man
called Lao Tzu, who may have lived at about the same time as Confucius. Nothing
about it is certain except that it’s Chinese, and very old, and speaks to
people everywhere as if it had been written yesterday.
The first Tao Te Ching I ever saw was the
Paul Carus edition of 1898, bound in yellow cloth
stamped with blue and red Chinese designs and characters. It was a venerable
object of mystery, which I soon investigated, and found more fascinating inside
than out. The book was my father’s; he read in it often. Once I saw him making
notes from it and asked what he was doing. He said he was marking which
chapters he’d like to have read at his funeral. We did read those chapters at
his memorial service.
I have the book, now ninety-eight years old and further
ornamented with red binding-tape to hold the back on, and have marked which
chapters I’d like to have read at my funeral. In the Notes, I explain why I was
so lucky to discover Lao Tzu in that particular edition. Here I will only say
that I was lucky to discover him so young, so that I could live with his book
my whole life long.
I also discuss other aspects of my version in the Notes—the how of it. Here I want to state very briefly the why of it.
The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose,
partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a
patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch
that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings
in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry,
beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good
authority.
Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as
a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the
Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated,
and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible
to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful , and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening
for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people
have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years.
It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts,
funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly
refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is
also the deepest spring.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own
responses to the text. They are idiosyncratic and unscholarly, and are to be
ignored if not found helpful. In the Notes at the end of the book are more
detailed considerations of some of the chapters, thanks to my sources and guides,
and remarks on how I arrived at my version.
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
Book One: Chapters 1-37
1 - Taoing
The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed :
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden ,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin ,
but different in name,
whose identity is myster.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.
----
A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe,
perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in
Borges’s story: if you see it rightly, it contains everything.
2 - Soul food
Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together ;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
That’s why the wise soul
does without doing ,
teaches without
The Tao Te Ching was probably written
about twenty-five hundred hears ago, perhaps by a man
called Lao Tzu, who may have lived at about the same time as Confucius. Nothing
about it is certain except that it’s Chinese, and very old, and speaks to
people everywhere as if it had been written yesterday.
The first Tao Te Ching I ever saw was the
Paul Carus edition of 1898, bound in yellow cloth
stamped with blue and red Chinese designs and characters. It was a venerable
object of mystery, which I soon investigated, and found more fascinating inside
than out. The book was my father’s; he read in it often. Once I saw him making
notes from it and asked what he was doing. He said he was marking which
chapters he’d like to have read at his funeral. We did read those chapters at
his memorial service.
I have the book, now ninety-eight years old and further
ornamented with red binding-tape to hold the back on, and have marked which
chapters I’d like to have read at my funeral. In the Notes, I explain why I was
so lucky to discover Lao Tzu in that particular edition. Here I will only say
that I was lucky to discover him so young, so that I could live with his book
my whole life long.
I also discuss other aspects of my version in the Notes—the how of it. Here I want to state very briefly the why of it.
The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose,
partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a
patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch
that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings
in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry,
beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good
authority.
Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as
a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the
Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated,
and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible
to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful , and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening
for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people
have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years.
It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts,
funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly
refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is
also the deepest spring.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own
responses to the text. They are idiosyncratic and unscholarly, and are to be
ignored if not found helpful. In the Notes at the end of the book are more
detailed considerations of some of the chapters, thanks to my sources and guides,
and remarks on how I arrived at my version.
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
Book One: Chapters 1-37
1 - Taoing
The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed :
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden ,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin ,
but different in name,
whose identity is myster.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.
----
A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe,
perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in
Borges’s story: if you see it rightly, it contains everything.
2 - Soul food
Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together ;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
That’s why the wise soul
does without doing ,
teaches without
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