Introduction
If you walk into a Barnes & Noble bookstore and browse the shelves devoted to “Eastern Thought,” you may find one or two translations of the Analects of Confucius. The books will probably be plain and low priced, perhaps reprints of long out-of-print editions that are profitable to republish because royalties do not have to be paid to the long-dead translators.
Nearby you will find editions of Laozi’s Daoist classic, the Daodejing, stretching in an impressive line. Cheap reprints will sit between handsome new hardback publications, some quite pricy, and the selection will also include glossy oversize editions illustrated with elegant calligraphic ink designs or sinuous color paintings. Some of the translators will have been paid six figure sums for their (often incompetent) renderings of Laozi’s brief text (perhaps a quarter the size of the Analects). Mini-editions may be included too, for those who feel they should carry the words of the sage in their pocket at all times, in case wisdom should be suddenly required when away from home.
Everyone familiar with the field of Chinese thought knows that Daoism sells in America and Confucianism doesn’t. And it’s no wonder. Daoist books are beautifully written, poetic, imaginative, and often playful. And as far as serious thinking goes, Daoist texts sound deeply profound, while Confucians have a tendency to seem shallow and pedantic. One of the great attractions of Daoist texts is actually that the sense of wisdom they convey is so deep that it frequently seems impossible to understand what they mean. But when we hear Laozi utter majestic words such as, “Reaching the ultimate of emptiness, deeply guarding stillness, the things of the world arise together; thereby do I watch their return,” it seems almost sacrilegious to ask precisely what he’s talking about.
SourcePDF p. 4Major Daoist works
When we speak of Daoism in the Classical period, we generally mean by the term the ideas of two rather mysterious texts that date from about the fourth century BCE. These are the Daodejing (道德經, The Classic of the Dao and of Virtue) by Laozi 老 子 and the works of the quirky recluse Zhuangzi 莊子, which appear in a book that takes his name as its title. There are a number of other texts that share many ideas with these two books, but we are not sure whether we should actually refer to them as Daoist. Part of the reason we are unsure just which texts to classify as Daoist is that the term “Daoism” itself is much vaguer than is the term Confucianism.
While the Confucians were an identifiable school during the Warring States period (450-221), with teachers and students who shared an identity as disciples of the great Master, Confucius, there was, during the same period, no group of people who called themselves “Daoists” or were labeled by that term. The books we call Daoist are instead independent works, negative reactions against Confucianism that share many features, but whose authors were not necessarily aware of one another or conscious of contributing towards the formation of a school of thought. We do not know, for example, whether the authors of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi were teachers with students or merely solitary writers whose words were read and passed down by friends and admirers chiefly after their deaths. Only after the Classical period was long over did scholars group these texts into a single school and coin a name for it, calling it the “School of Dao” because of the unique role that the authors of these texts assigned to the term Dao. For these writers, the Dao was not just a teaching that they promoted, in competition with the Daos that other teachers offered. For Daoists, the term “Dao” referred to a fundamental order of the universe that governed all experience and that was the key to wisdom and human fulfillment.
The origins of Daoism
Daoism appears to have begun as an escapist movement during the early Warring States period, and in some ways it makes sense to see it as an outgrowth of Confucianism and its doctrine of “timeliness.” That doctrine originated with Confucius’s motto: “When the Way prevails in the world, appear; when it does not, SourcePDF p. 5 hide!” Even in the Confucian Analects, we see signs of a Confucian trend towards absolute withdrawal. The character and comportment of Confucius’s best disciple, Yan Hui, who lived in obscurity in an impoverished lane yet “did not alter his joy,” suggest this early tendency towards eremitism (the “hermit” lifestyle). In Book 18 of the Analects, Confucius himself seems half drawn to this path of absolute social withdrawal.
Chang Ju and Jie Ni were ploughing the fields in harness together. Confucius passed by and sent his disciple Zilu over to ask directions. Chang Ju said, “Who is that holding the carriage reins?” Zilu said, “That is Kong Qiu.” “Kong Qiu of Lu?” “Yes.” “Why, then, he knows where he can go!” Zilu then asked Jie Ni. Jie Ni said, “And who are you?” “I am Zhong You.” “Are you a disciple of Kong Qiu of Lu?” “I am.” “The world is inundated now. Who can change it? Would you not be better off joining those who have fled from the world altogether, instead of following someone who flees from this man to that one?” Then the two of them went on with their ploughing. Zilu returned to report to Confucius. The Master’s brow furrowed. “I can-not flock together with the birds and beasts!” he cried. “If I am not a fellow traveler with men such as these, then with whom? If only the Dao prevailed in the world I would not have to try to change it!” (18.6)
Righteous hermits were much admired in Classical China, and men who withdrew from society to live in poverty “in the cliffs and caves” paradoxically often enjoyed a type of celebrity status. The legend of Bo Yi, a hermit who descended from his mountain retreat because of the righteousness of King Wen of Zhou, led to the popular idea of hermits as virtue-barometers -- they rose to the mountains when power was in the hands of immoral rulers, but would come back down to society when a sage king finally appeared. Patrician lords very much valued visits from men with reputations as righteous hermits, and this probably created the opportunity for men to appear at court seeking patronage on the basis of their eremitic purity.
Possibly during the fourth century, this eremitic tradition seems to have generated a complex of new ideas that included appreciation for the majestic rhythms of the natural world apart from human society, a celebration of the isolated individual SourcePDF p. 6 whose lonely stance signaled a unique power of enlightenment, and a growing interest in the potential social and political leverage that such renunciation of social and political entanglements seemed to promise. The product that emerged from these trends is the Daodejing of Laozi, perhaps the most famous of all Chinese books.
Laozi, the guy
Despite the fact that after his death he became one of the world’s two or three best-selling authors, Laozi never actually died. In traditional China, many people believed that this was so because Laozi had possessed the secret of immortality and had evaded death by transforming his body into a non-perishable form, after which, being able to fly, he had moved his home to heavenly realms. Modern scholars believe that the reason Laozi never died is because he never lived. There was never any such person as Laozi.
“Laozi” means “the Old Master.” Lao is not a Chinese surname and Laozi was clearly never meant to be understood as an identifiable author’s name. The Daodejing is an anonymous text. Judging by its contents, it was compiled by several very different authors and editors over a period of perhaps a century, reaching its present form perhaps during the third century BCE.∗
However, the authorial voice in the Daodejing is so strong that readers of the text were from the beginning fascinated with the personality of the apparent author, and among the deep thinkers who claimed to understand the book, there were some who also claimed to know all about the man who wrote it. Pieces of biography began to stick to the name Laozi, and, to make sure that readers understood that Laozi was a more authoritative person than Confucius, his biography came to include tales of his personal relationship to Confucius. Laozi, it seemed, had actually lived before Confucius and had actually been Confucius’s teacher. Confucius had journeyed far to study with the great Daoist master, whose sageliness he recognized. Unfortunately, Confucius had not been wise enough to grasp Laozi’s profound message and Laozi,
SourcePDF p. 7 for his part, had found Confucius to be a well-meaning but unintelligent pupil. Later in Chinese history, Daoist initiates discovered that before becoming an immortal, Laozi had traveled from China to India, where he went by the name “Buddha” – but that’s a story for another course.
The Daodejing
Much of the attraction of the Daodejing is the product of its very powerful rhetoric. It is written in a uniquely resonant style, and fortunately it is possible to capture some of this resonance even in English translation. The arcane or mysterious style of the Daodejing is not an accident. It seems very clear that the composers of the text wanted the book to be mysterious. Part of the message that the Daodejing is meant to convey is precisely that there is a type of wisdom that is so subtle and esoteric that it is difficult for ordinary minds to comprehend.
The opening phrase of the text sets its tone: “A Dao that may be spoken is not the enduring Dao.” What does this say about the book we are about to read --among other things, that it will not tell us what the Dao is, since this is beyond the power of words to convey. In the original Chinese, the first line is famously difficult to understand. Since the term that the text chooses to use for the word “spoken” is Dao (which includes “to speak” among its meanings), the first six words of the book include the word Dao three times (more literally it reads: “A Dao you can Dao isn’t the enduring Dao.”) Throughout the Daodejing the very compressed language challenges readers to “break the code” of the text instead of conveying ideas clearly. Every passage seems to deliver this basic message: Real wisdom is so utterly different from what usually passes for wisdom that only a dramatic leap away from our ordinary perspective can allow us to begin to grasp it.
Basic ideas of the Daodejing
The Daodejing is often a vague and inconsistent book and it is sometimes tempting to wonder whether its authors really had any special insight to offer, or whether they just wanted to sound impressive. But the book does in fact articulate ideas of great originality and interest, ideas that have had enormous influence on Asian culture. The following eight points are among those most central to the text:
SourcePDF p. 81. The nature of the Dao. There exists in some sense an overarching order to the cosmos, beyond the power of words to describe. This order, which the book refers to as the Dao, has governed the cosmos from its beginning and continues to pervade every aspect of existence. It may be understood as a process that may be glimpsed in all aspects of the world that have not been distorted by the control of human beings, for there is something about us that runs counter to the Dao, and that makes human life a problem. Human beings possess some flaw that has made our species alone insensitive to the Dao. Ordinary people are ignorant of this fact; the Daodejing tries to awaken them to it.
2. Changing perspective. To understand the nature of human ignorance, it is necessary to undergo a fundamental change in our perspective. To do this, we need to disentangle ourselves from beliefs we live by that have been established through words and experience life directly. Our intellectual lives, permeated with ideas expressed in language, are the chief obstacle to wisdom.
3. Value relativity. If we were able to escape the beliefs we live by and see human life from the perspective of the Dao, we would understand that we normally view the world through a lens of value judgments -- we see things as good or bad, desirable or detestable. The cosmos itself possesses none of these characteristics of value. All values are only human conventions that we project onto the world. Good and bad are non-natural distinctions that we need to discard if we are to see the world as it really is.
4. Nature and spontaneity. The marks of human experience are value judgments and planned action. The marks of the Dao are freedom from judgment and spontaneity. The processes of the Dao may be most clearly seen in the action of the non-human world, Nature. Trees and flowers, birds and beasts do not follow a code of ethics and act spontaneously from instinctual responses. The order of Nature is an image of the action of the Dao. To grasp the perspective of the Dao, human beings need to discard judgment and act on their spontaneous impulses. The Daodejing celebrates spontaneous action with two complementary terms, “self-so” and “non-striving” (ziran and wuwei, see Glossary). The inhabitants of the Natural world are “self-so,” they simply are as they are, without any intention to be so. Human beings live by purposive action, planning and striving. To become Dao-like, we need to return to an animal-like responsiveness to simple instincts, and act without plans or effort. This “wuwei” style of behavior is the most central imperative Daoist texts recommend for us.
SourcePDF p. 95. The distortion of mind and language. The source of human deviation from the Dao lies in the way that our species has come to use its unique property, the mind (xin, see Glossary). Rather than allow our minds to serve as a responsive mirror of the world, we have used it to develop language and let our thoughts and perceptions be governed by the categories that language creates, such as value judgments. The mind’s use of language has created false wisdom, and our commitment to this false wisdom has come to blind us to the world as it really is, and to the Dao that orders it. The person who “practices” wuwei quiets the mind and leaves language behind.
6. Selflessness. The greatest barriers to discarding language and our value judgments are our urges for things we believe are desirable and our impulse to obtain these things for ourselves. The selfishness of our ordinary lives makes us devote all our energies to a chase for possessions and pleasures, which leaves us no space for the detached tranquility needed to join the harmonious rhythm of Nature and the Dao. The practice of wu-wei entails a release from pursuits of self-interest and a self-centered standpoint. The line between ourselves as individuals in accord with the Dao and the Dao-governed world at large becomes much less significant for us.
6. Power and sagehood. The person who embraces the spontaneity of wu-wei and leaves self-interest behind emerges into a new dimension of natural experience, and becomes immune to all the frightening dangers that beset us in ordinary experience. Once weakness, poverty, injury, and early death are no longer concepts we employ in our lives, we discover that such dangers do not really exist. Once we are part of the spontaneous order of Nature, it presents no threat to us and we gain tremendous leverage over it. We have the power (de, see Glossary) of the Dao. This active power is wisdom, and the person who possesses it is a sage.
7. The human influence of the sage. The selfless power of the sage endows him or her with a social prestige that cannot be matched by ordinary people. So magnificent is the presence of the sage that those who come into contact with such a person cannot help but be deeply influenced. As in the case of Confucianism, de (character, virtue, power) has power over other people, who will spontaneously place themselves under the protection of and seek to emulate the sage.
8. The political outcome. As the Daoist sage comes effortlessly to subdue the world, he will necessarily be treated as its king. The rule of such a king will be to discard all human institutions and social patterns that are the product of human intellectual effort and value judgments. The people will be returned to a simple and primitive state close to animal society, and this social environment will itself nurture in the population a stance of wuwei. Ultimately, SourcePDF p. 10 the world will return to the bliss of ignorance and fulfillment in a stable life of food gathering, food consumption, and procreation, all governed by the seasonal rhythms of Nature and the Dao.
It is not hard to see how a philosophy along these lines could have emerged from a group of hermits who had withdrawn out of social disillusionment. The anti-Confucian elements of the Daodejing should also be easy to identify. The most important metaphors that the text uses to symbolize the Dao and the sage are an uncarved block of wood and an undyed piece of cloth, which contrast clearly with the Confucian celebration of the elaborate ritual patterns institutionalized by legendary sage kings.
What is more surprising, however, is that the Daodejing proved to be a very popular text among the ruling class of late Classical China. This was the result of the fact that it seemed to provide a paradoxical path to social and political wealth and power through the act of renouncing interest in wealth and power. “The sage places his person last and it comes first,” the Daodejing tells us. Daoists who arrived at feudal courts in the Classical period found that they could attract the interest of ambitious men by linking their Dao of selflessness to an outcome in accord with the most selfish of ambitions.
One important difference between the ideas of the Daodejing and those of the Confucian writers is that while the Confucians made very clear the practical path that people needed to follow to achieve wisdom – the ritual syllabus of the Confucian Finishing School – the Daodejing is extremely vague when it comes to practical advice. While wuwei may be simple in the abstract (just behave more or less like your dog does), in practice there are problems (hey, nobody filled my dish!). If you spend one hour following the imperative to eliminate value judgments and the desires associated with them, you will discover that without a teacher or model rules to follow, it is difficult to follow the Dao of the Daodejing.
Structure of the text
The Daodejing consists of eighty-one brief chapters. Portions or all of many are in verse-like form, though others are unrhymed and much simpler rhetorically. The integrity of the chapters seems to have evolved at an early date. In the earliest extant SourcePDF p. 11 manuscripts, datable to the last part of the fourth century BCE, we see many of the chapters already fully formed, although ordered differently. In some cases, parts of the chapters seem not to have yet been incorporated; we don’t know whether that is because they were “inserted” later, or whether there were simply multiple versions of the text circulating at the time and a different version is the ancestor of the received text that has been preserved until today.
The text was traditionally divided into two halves. The first 37 chapters constituted the upper portion, and was traditionally known as the “Classic of the Dao,” in part because the initial word of the text is the word dao 道, and in part because these chapters seem, on the whole, more focused on that key concept. The rest of the chapters were known as the “Classic of De,” in part because the initial phrase of chapter 38 is, “highest virtue (de 德),” using the second key term of the text’s title, and in part because there is, on the whole, a somewhat greater emphasis on this notion of a power of character in this portion of the text. A second century BCE silk version of the text that was archaeologically recovered in 1973 places the “Classic of De” portion first, which tells us both that the division of the text into these two portions is very old, and that different versions of the text varied in the choice of which to place first.
Most Daodejing chapters appear to be a collection of brief sayings, rather than the product of a single literary impulse. Many component portions of chapters appear multiple times in the text. In his excellent 1963 translation of the text, the late D.C. Lau began a practice of labeling these separate sub-sections according to his judgment of where divisions within chapters occurred. Others have since followed this practice, and the version below does the same.
