Ackjiowledgements
Permission was kindly given by the publishers to quote from the following:
George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power, 1933 Cambridge University Press
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 1956 Harper & Brothers
Kirsopp Lake, Introduction to the New Testament, 1937
Aldous Huxley, Doors of Perception, 1954 Houghton Mifflin Company
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1918
Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, 1934 The Macmillan Company
F. C. S. Northrop, Meeting of East and West, 1946 The New Yorker
New Yorker, November 14, 1953 Princeton University Press
Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 1937, 1953 Arthur Probathain
J. J. L. Duyvendak, The Book of Lord Shang, 1928 Random House
Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India, 1942 Routledge & Kegan Paul
Arthur Waley, Travels of an Alchemist, 1931 Simon & Schuster
Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe, 1952
William H. Whyte, Is Anybody Listening?, 1952 The University of Chicago Press
Foreword
This book is not intended to be a contribution to Sinology, but to public understanding of the Chinese point of view, one component of which is Taoism. It is written in four parts. The first explains a fact which some translators have concealed from their readers: that neither they nor anyone else can be sure what Lao Tzu was talking about. Part Two explains what / think he was talking about. Part Three takes up the vast and curious movement which claimed him as its founder. Part Four tests his teachings on the problems of today. The third part —on the Taoist movement — must be read with particular caution. The subject is infinitely complicated; the information is difficult to get at; and mistakes are easy to make.
The reader may be disappointed to find that this volume does not include a complete translation of Lao Tzu. Since we already have thirty-six in English, it hardly seemed necessary. The fact is that no translation can be satisfactory in itself because no translation can be as ambiguous as the Chinese original. However, because I have taken an analytical approach, I owe an apology to Lao Tzu. He believed that many of his most important ideas could not be put into words. That is why he so often sounds ambiguous. I shall attempt to express them unequivocally and directly, which is at best presumptuous. Lao Tzu's teaching methods were intuitive. He put a low price on system and formal logic. I shall attempt to give his philosophy a logical and systematic form, demonstrating that I have not learned one of the lessons Lao Tzu teaches, that "the good man does not prove by argument."
I want to thank the following persons for the help they have given me in preparing this book: Chang Hsin-pao, Henry D. Burnham, Mrs. Arland Parsons, William Hung, James R. Hightower, Kenneth Ch'en, Ch'ii T'ung-tsu, and Arthur Waley.
Stowe, Vermont Holmes Welch
March, 1957
Foreword to This Edition
Since there is still no convenient synopsis of the various aspects of Taoism written in EngUsh, the present volume is being reissued. I have not attempted to update or revise it completely, but only to make changes that seemed important and typographically possible and to eliminate certain superfluities.
Holmes Welch Cambridge, Massachusetts December, 1965
TAOISM
Part One: THE PROBLEM OF LAO TZU
As to the Sage, no one will know whether he existed or not.— Lao Tzu
There is a legend that on the fourteenth of September, 604 b.c, in the village of Ch'ii Jen in the county of K'u and the Kingdom of Ch'u, a woman, leaning against a plum tree, gave birth to a child. Since this child was to be a great man—a god, no less—the circumstances of his birth were out of the ordinary. He had been conceived some sixty-two years before when his mother had admired a falling star, and after so many years in the womb, he was able to speak as soon as he was born. Pointing to the plum tree, he announced: "I take my surname from this tree." To Plum (Li) he prefixed Ear (Erh)—his being large—and so became Li Erh. However, since his hair was already snow-white, most people called him Lao Tzu, or Old Boy. After he died they called him Lao Tan, "Tan" meaning "long-lobed."
About his youth little is told. We learn, however, that he spent his later years in the Chinese Imperial capital at Loyang, first as Palace Secretary and then as Keeper of the Archives for the Court of Chou. Evidently he married, for he had a son, Tsung, who became a successful soldier under the Wei and through whom later generations, like the T'ang emperors, traced their descent from Lao Tzu.
Though he made no effort to start a school, people came of their own accord to become his disciples. Confucius, who was some fifty-three years his junior, had one or perhaps several meetings with him and does not appear to have given too good an account of himself. In 517 B.C. Lao Tzu closed their meeting by saying: "I have heard it said that a clever merchant, though possessed of great hoards of wealth, will act as though his coffers were empty: and that the princely man, though of perfect moral excellence, maintains the air of a simpleton. Abandon your arrogant ways and countless desires, your suave demeanour and unbridled ambition, for they do not promote your welfare. That is all I have to say to you." At which Confucius went away, shaking his head, and said to his disciples: "I understand how birds can fly, how fishes can swim, and how four-footed beasts can run. Those than run can be snared, those that swim may be caught with
hook and line, those that fly may be shot with arrows. But when it comes to the dragon, I am unable to conceive how he can soar into the sky riding upon the wind and clouds. Today I have seen Lao Tzu and can only liken him to a dragon."
At the age of 160 Lao Tzu grew disgusted with the decay of the Chou dynasty^ and resolved to pursue virtue in a more congenial at-mocphere. Riding in a chariot drawn by a black ox, he left the Middle Kingdom through the Han-ku Pass which leads westward from Loyang. The Keeper of the Pass, Yin Hsi, who, from the state of the weather, had expected a sage, addressed him as follows: "You are about to withdraw yourself from sight. I pray you to compose a book for me." Lao Tzu thereupon wrote the 5,000 characters which we call the Tao Te Ching? After completing the book, he departed for the west. We do not know when or where he died. But a last glimpse is given us in a late source, influenced by Buddhism, which describes his first three nights in the mountains beyond the pass. Lying under a mulberry tree he was tempted by the Evil One and by beautiful women. Lao Tzu did not find it hard to resist temptation, however, since to him the beautiful women were only "so many skin-bags full of blood."
The biography I have just given does not represent a consensus of all our sources. Actually, there can be no such consensus because different sources tell different stories. Possibly Lao Tzu was born not in 604 B.C., but in 571 b.c.; not in Ch'u, but in Ch'en. He may have spent not 62, but 81 years in his mother's womb and departed for the west at the age of 200, not 160. Possibly he was not even a contemporary of Confucius, but identical with Lao Tan, a Keeper of the Archives who we know held ofiice at the court of Chou about 374 b.c; or, on the other hand, he may be identical with one Lao Lai Tzu who figures in stories about Confucius and wrote a book (which has not survived) in
^ Sec Appendix II for table of dynasties.
*Tao (pronounced dow as in dowel) means "way"; te (pronounced dir as in dirty) means "virtue" in the sense of "power"; ching (pronounced jing as in "jingo") means "classic." Tao Te Ching means, therefore, "The Classic of the Way and the Power." As to the pronunciation of Lao Tzu, the lou in louse is close to "Lao." To approximate "Tzu," say adz without the "a," and prolong the resulting buzzing sound enough to make it a separate syllable. In the Wade-Giles system of transliteration from Chinese to English, consonants are unaspirated unless they are followed by an apostrophe. Thus "ta" is pronounced da, but "t'a" ta; "ching" is pronounced jing, but "ch'ing" ching.
fifteen chapters on the practices of the Taoist schools. Finally, it is possible that Lao Tzu never existed at all and that both the Tao Te Ching and its putative author are composites of various teachings and teachers. This is the opinion of some contemporary scholars.
It is my own opinion that, except for a few interpolations, the book was written by one man.^ But I would agree that we know nothing about him. All we have are legends, most of which may have been incorrectly attached to his name, while his name may have been incorrectly attached to the book which bears it. The great historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who attempted the first biographical sketch of Lao Tzu about 100 B.C., ends it by throwing up his hands in despair. His source material was certainly more complete and 2,000 years fresher than what we have to work with today. I do not think we shall ever succeed where Ssu-ma Ch'ien failed, unless, of course, archaeology provides new data. We shall never, that is, be able to write a life of the author of the Tao Te Ching.
Is this a great loss? I think not. The important thing about the book is not its author, but its ideas. One of its ideas is the value of anonymity, which is expressed in the line (somewhat freely translated) that heads this chapter. The book really had to be anonymous. That may be why it mentions no dates, no places, no persons, no events.
Though Sinologists cannot say who wrote the book, they have more to go on when it comes to deciding when it was written. Arthur Waley assigns it to about 240 b.c, on the basis of its vocabulary, grammar, and rhyme structure and because he believes that the ideas which it attacks were not current until this period. Mr. Waley is joined by many contemporary scholars. On the other hand Bernard Karlgren and Henri Maspero place it towards the beginning of the fourth century, while Hu Shih and Lin Yutang adhere to the traditional sixth-century date. Lin Yutang decries the textual critics who are "merely aping a fashion that has by now become very tiresome."
Authorship in China is obscured by the fact that the earlier the traditional author, the later the book may have been written. In China the man with a new idea knew that it had little chance of being accepted if he presented it under his own name. So he or his disciples would "discover" a book about it by some ancient worthy. As time
•See Appendix I.
passed, the more historical of the ancient worthies began to be used up and innovators had to draw on names increasingly legendary. This explains why a man of the sixth century b.c. could be the author of a book belonging to the fourth or third.
One thing we know: we have a book. Some person or persons wrote it. It is convenient to call that person or persons Lao Tzu, and in the following pages I shall do so. Furthermore, in using the words "Taoist" and "Taoism" I shall refer to the doctrines of the Tao Te Ching alone, not to those of Chuang Tzu or Lieh Tzu, who also taught what they considered Taoism, and certainly not to the doctrines of the later Taoist movement. These will be treated in a separate chapter.
No other book except the Bible has been translated into English as often as Lao Tzu's. Here is a list of translations, with the cities and years in which they were first published:
John Chalmers, London, 1868
Frederick Henry Balfour, London, 1884 (in his Taoist Texts) James Legge, London, 1891 Walter R. Old, Madras, 1894
Gen. G. G. Alexander, 1895 (no place of publication indicated) Paul Carus, Chicago, 1898 Thomas W. Kingsmill, Shanghai, 1899 L. W. Heysinger, Philadelphia, 1903 Walter Corn Old, Philadelphia, 1904 Lionel Giles, London, 1905
E. H. Parker, London, 1905 (in his China and Religion) G. Evans, 1905
C. Spurgeon Medhurst, Chicago, 1905 Isabella Mears, Glasgow, 1916 Dwight Goddard, New York, 1919
Shrine of Wisdom, Fin try, Brook (near Godalming), Surrey, 1924 Wu-wu-tzu (i.e., Dryden Linsley Phelps & Shei Ching-shan), Cheng-tu, 1926 Theosophical Press, Chicago, 1926 Arthur Waley, London, 1934
Bhikshu Wai Tao and Dwight Goddard, Santa Barbara, California, 1935 A. L. Kitelsman II, Palo Alto, California, 1936 Hu Tse-ling, Cheng-tu, 1936
Dirk Bodde, Peiping, 1937 (incomplete: in his translation of Fung Yu-lan's History of Chinese Philosophy)
Ch'u Ta-kao, London, 1937
Sum Nung Au-Young, New York, 1938
John C. H. Wu, 1939-40 (in Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. 9-10)
F. R. Hughes, London, 1942 (incomplete: in his Chinese Philosophy in Classi- r
cal Times) Lin Yutang, New York, 1942 Witter Bynner, New York, 1944 Hermon Ould, London, 1946 Orde Poynton, Adelaide, Australia, 1949 Cheng Lin, Shanghai, 1949
Eduard Erkes, Ascona, 1950 (with Ho Shang-kung's commentary) J. J. L. Duyvendak, London, 1954 R. S. Blakney, New York, 1955
Why have there been so many translations ? Certainly one reason is that the book is short. Its brevity appeals not only to the translator, but also to the reader with broad interests who cannot resist an important slender volume reasonably priced, tempting him by its very slenderness to do a little serious reading.
A more significant reason for so many Western versions lies perhaps in the parallels between the Tao Te Ching and the New Testament. Some examples follow. The Chinese is in Lin Yutang's popular translation,"* which has not been altered to press the point.
New Testament Tao Te Ching
Do good to them which hate you Requite hatred with virtue (Chap-(Lukc 6:27) ter 63)
Resist not evil (Mat. 5:39) It is because the [sage] does not con-
tend that no one in the world can contend against him (22)
They that take the sword shall perish The violent man shall die a violent with the sword (Mat. 26:52) deadi (42)
Except ye become as little children, In controlling your vital force to ye shall not enter into the kingdom of achieve gendeness, can you become heaven (Mat. 18:3) like the newborn child.? (10)
* Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India, pp. 583-624. Two examples arc from Mr. Waley's.
THE PROBLEM OF LAO TZU
New Testament Tao Te Ching
Behold the Lamb of God which Who bears himself the sins of the beareth the sin of the world (John world is the king of the world (78) 1:29)
If anyone would be first, he must be last of all (Mk. 9:35)
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it (Mat. 16:25)
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth . . . where thieves break through and steal (Mat. 6:19)
For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul.? (Mat. 16:26)
Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased (Mat. 23:12)
Parable of the lost sheep (Mat. 18:12)
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin (Mat. 6:28)
[A sparrow] shall not fall on the ground without your Father (Mat. 10:29)
Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find (Mat 7:7)
My yoke is easy and my burden is light (Mat. 11:30)
The Sage puts himself last and finds himself in the foremost place (7)
He who aims at life achieves death (50W)
When gold and jade fill your hall, you will not be able to keep them safe (9)
One's own self or material goods, which has more worth.? (44)
He who is to be laid low must first be exalted to power (Z6)
Did [the Ancients] not say, "to search for the guilty ones and pardon them"? (62)
[Tao] clothes and feeds the myriad things (34)
Heaven's net is broad and wide, with big meshes, yet letting nothing slip through (73)
Work it and more comes out . . . draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry (5 & 6W)
My teachings are very easy to understand and very easy to practice (70)
In these examples the similarity of ideas and even of phraseology is impressive. In amazement the reader may exclaim: "To think that those words were written 500 years before Christ in a wild mountain
pass in China!" It is not hard to understand the readiness of early scholars to assert that the doctrine of the Trinity was revealed in the Tao Te Ching and that its fourteenth chapter contains the syllables of "Yahveh." Even today, though these errors have been recognized for more than a century, the general notion that Lao Tzu was Christ's forerunner has lost none of its romantic appeal. It is a false notion, as we shall see. Though it is true that in certain situations the two teachings would recommend to a man the same course of action, they would do so on different grounds.
The Tao Te Ching is much translated for still another reason, namely, that it is very hard to decide what it means. It is a famous puzzle which everyone would like to feel he had solved. Certainly few other books have managed to achieve such obscurity as that which we find in its first ten lines:
The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.
Truly, "Only he that rids himself forever of desire can see the Secret Essences";
He that has never rid himself of desire can see only the Outcomes.
These two things issued from the same mould, but nevertheless are different in name.
This "same mould" we can but call the Mystery,
Or rather the "Darker than any Mystery",
The Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences (IW).*
Then consider Chapter 6.
The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
" From here forward some readers, aware of the importance of context, may wish to refer to a complete translation. If so, let it be Arthur Waley's, The Way and Its Power, which I have generally followed in supplying the quotations for this book. Quotations with a "W" after the chapter number are from Mr. Waley's translation, and even those not so marked may contain elements of his phraseology.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry (6W).
Here Lao Tzu is expounding his metaphysics—always a difficult topic. One might expect that his views on the practical problems of ethics would be easier to grasp. On the contrary, many of them are stated so paradoxically that the reader begins to wonder whether he or Lao Tzu views the world standing on his head.
When the six family relationships have disintegrated You have filial piety and parental love (18).
Banish human kindness, discard morality
And the people will be dutiful and compassionate (19W).
The truthful man I believe, but the liar I also believe, And thus he gets truthfulness (49W).
To remain whole, be twisted.
To become straight, let yourself be bent.
To become full, be hollow (22W).
"Straight words," as Lao Tzu innocently remarks, "seem crooked" (78 W).
The esoteric paradox has been a working tool of many religious teachers. It is a species of pun, stating a simple truth in a cryptic form. This makes the truth easier to remember, for the listener does not forget his initial bewilderment and the flash of understanding that followed it. He will remember the truth, and he will prize it because its secret is known only to him and a few other special people. Also, a paradox may express not a simple, but a complex truth and do so more succincdy than logical exposition, just as Picasso, rather than painting two profiles with one eye, paints one with two.
Succinctness in the Tao Te Ching is not confined to paradox and here is another reason for the book's obscurity. The style is one of extraordinary compression. Volumes seem reduced to chapters and chapters to hints. The style is more than compressed: it jounces the reader violently from subject to subject. The train of thought is an express on a bad roadbed; like Zen Buddhism, it seems to be trying to shake sense into us. Here is an example.
Tao gave birth to the One; the One gave birth successively to two things, three
things, up to ten thousand. These ten thousand creatures cannot turn their backs to the shade without having the sun on their bellies, and it is on this blending of the breaths that their harmony depends. To be orphaned, needy, ill-provided is what men most hate; yet princes and dukes style themselves so. Truly, "things are often increased by seeking to diminish them and diminished by seeking to increase them." The maxims that others use in their teaching I too will use in mine. Show me a man of violence that came to a good end, and I will take him for my teacher (42W).
Evidently Lao Tzu subscribed to the rule of Confucius: "If, when I give the student one corner of the subject, he cannot find the other three for himself, I do not repeat my lesson." And yet one becomes accustomed to his style. The structure is regular. A chapter will begin with three or four applications of the principle that seems to be its subject. Then Lao Tzu jumps across an abyss of non sequitur, and if the reader can jump after him, he finds himself in an unexpected vantage point, able to see the original principle with new contours. Often the chapter will end with an injunction or warning designed to drive home the importance of the lesson.
The main reason, however, for the obscurity of the Tao Te Ching is not its succinct and paradoxical style, but the inherent difficulty of Archaic Chinese itself. If the reader has not tried his hand at Archaic Chinese, he will find its difficulty hard to imagine. But, if he cannot imagine it, he will be unable to appreciate what kind of book is being discussed in the ensuing pages. Therefore a digression is in order.
Archaic Chinese—and this is true of the modern literary language for that matter—has no active or passive, no singular or plural, no case, no person, no tense, no mood. Almost any word can be used as almost any part of speech—I have seen "manure," for instance, used as an adverb. And there are no inviolable rules: indeed, as soon as one makes a statement about the language, he is confronted with an exception— and this applies to the statements just made. Sometimes the segment of a Chinese ideogram called its "radical" is omitted in writing it, a little as though we were to put down "ization" for "civilization." Since the practice was more common at the time the Tao Te Ching was written, and since we do not have the original manuscript, sometimes we cannot be sure whether a copyist has not supplied the wrong radical; that is, he may have written in ^ar^arization where Lao Tzu intended aV/Vization,
Connecting words in Archaic Chinese are reduced to a minimum, and often below it. If the author possibly can, he leaves out the subject of the sentence. There is no punctuation whatever: one must decide for oneself where a sentence ends, and naturally there are many cases where moving a period reverses the meaning. Last, but not least, most of the texts we have are corrupt. Sometimes copyists have merely been careless, mixing, for instance, the commentary into the text. Sometimes they have deliberately introduced material to launch their own ideas.
All these points have been emphasized by Western Sinologists in explaining the difficulty of Archaic Chinese. But another point, which they have not emphasized often enough perhaps, is that these things make the language more than difficult: they make it vague. And it can be vague without being difficult. Let us take an example from the book we are about to examine. Tao Te Ching, Chapter 49, contains the grammatically very simple line: "Good persons, I good them. Not good persons, I good them too." "Good" {shan) as an adjective is like the English "good," but here it is a verb. We can understand either "I consider that they are good," "I treat them with goodness," or "I make them good." Which is it.'' There is no way of telling. Furthermore, it could mean all three. This is an alternative that I think translators have too seldom adopted, because, of course, it is so difficult to translate. Lao Tzu used ambiguity to save words.
The quotation just given is at the lowest level of vagueness. When we go on to the two words that immediately follow it, we strike something knottier. These two words are te shan. Shan, as before, is "good." Te is the power or virtue that comes from following Tao. What can "power good" mean? One possibility is "(Thus my) power (stems from) good (ing people) " (cf. Blakney's translation). A second possibility is "(This is the) goodness (of) Power" (cf. Lin Yu-tang's translation). But there is another word, also pronounced te, which means "to get," and it is sometimes written with the character for te, "power." Substituting it we have "gets goodness." Who gets goodness? Mr. Waley says that the not-good person gets goodness. James Legge says that everyone gets goodness. Who can tell?
At least we know that Lao Tzu is telling us something about goodness, and that it is somehow connected with the words that preceded
it. But in the last lines of this chapter, we find a third level of vagueness. Mr. Waley renders them:
"The Hundred Families all the time strain their eyes and ears The Sage all the time sees and hears no more than an infant sees and hears" (49W)
The words in italics are literally "grandchilds it (or them)." What on earth can that mean? Here is what some other translators think:
"He deals with them all as his children" (Legge)
"They are all the children of the self-controlled man"
(Mears)
"While people in general strain their eyes and ears, the Sage wishes to have them sealed" (Cheng Lin)
"For wise men see and hear as litde as children do"
(Blakney)
All this from "grandchilds it"! The reason for the differing interpretations is a grammatical one. The word "it" (chih) is sometimes used to verbalize a noun that precedes it. In that case we would have here "to be hke (or play the role of) a grandson, an infant." The other use of chih is pronominal. In that case we would have "he treats them as grandchildren, infants." These two interpretations have so little connection with each other that I do not think Lao Tzu could have intended both, but no one in the world can tell us with certainty which he did intend. If a translator is emphasizing the mystical side of Lao Tzu, he chooses the first: if he is emphasizing the ethical side, he chooses the second.
I have discussed these examples in such detail because I fear it is the only way of making the reader understand the problems confronting the serious student of Lao Tzu, or of any of the classics. And there are other kinds of difficulty. There is, for instance, the use of allusions. Because most literate Chinese knew several thousand pages of text by heart, they could use and enjoy allusions a lot more freely than we do. Some poems are little more than a patchwork of earlier literature, meaningless unless we recognize the sources. But even if we recognize the sources, we still cannot be sure what is meant. Perhaps
the allusion is not to the content o£ its source, but to an event in the life of the man who wrote it, or to the place in which it was written; or perhaps, as sometimes happens, an attractive phrase has simply been appropriated without regard to its setting. By now it should be easy to see how, with most of Chinese poetry and much of Chinese prose, we have to decide for ourselves what is meant, within more or less broad limits set by the text. To read is an act of creation.
No one, not even the Chinese, could be comfortable with a literature so much of whose meaning was uncertain. Hence there arose the institution of the commentary. When a Westerner decides to read the Gospel according to St. Mark, he opens the Bible and reads. If he meets an occasional expression that is obscure, he turns to a footnote; often he can afford to ignore it. But until this century no Chinese, if he decided to read the Analects of Confucius, would ignore the Commentary. He would turn to it after reading every clause—if he had not already learnt it by heart. Written hundreds or many hundreds of years after the original text, the Commentary explained what each clause meant, sometimes each word in each clause, even where the meaning was already clear. After consulting it our Chinese reader might have to turn to the Subcommentary. This was a higher stratum of trot, written hundreds or many hundreds of years after the Commentary. It explained what the Commentary had failed to explain in the text, or what was clear in the text and had been garbled by the Commentary, or difficulties not in the text but raised by the Commentary itself. All this could only work like compound interest: it has left a vast accumulation. On every one of the major classics hundreds of commentaries and sub-commentaries have been written, often running to several times the length of the classic itself. This extraordinary system was necessary, let us note again, not merely because the classics were difficult, but because they were vague. Not only was there the possibility that the reader would not understand, but that he would misunderstand. He might choose the wrong meaning and take the first step down the road to heresy.
This may give us a clearer idea of what we have in our hands when we open the translation of a Chinese classic like the Tao Te Ching. It is not a translation as we usually understand the word, but a spelling out in English of what is not spelled out in Chinese. If it follows an orthodox commentator—in the case of the Tao Te Ching
that would be Wang Pi—it represents his selection of the many possible meanings in the original text. If it follows several commentators, it represents the translator's selection of their selection. If the translator has put commentaries aside and started from scratch, it represents his concept of Chou Dynasty life and thought. The Chinese classics arc deep waters indeed, and I think we must recognize at the outset that of all of them the Tao Te Ching is the one least susceptible of a definitive translation. We cannot be certain of what it means. We never will be. While some texts are more corrupt, some more archaic, and some more esoteric, no text—certainly none of comparable importance —so nicely combines vagueness with all these difficulties.
We have already noted how this combination is to be seen in Lao Tzu's metaphysics, in his paradoxes, and in his style. We have also noted that the Tao Te Ching is tied down by no references to specific persons, places, or events. There is an important consequence to such uncertainty. A critic of Shakespeare has pointed out that each era finds its own image in his plays; its values, sentiments, and preoccupations. How easily we can find our own image in the Tao Te Ching\ It is a magic mirror, always found to reflect our concept of the truth. That may be the reason so much of all religious literature is obscure. When, for example, St. John of the Cross writes, "To arrive at being everything, desire to be nothing," each of us, revolving the precept in his mind and observing life, can find situations to fit it. Then we say that wc have found the precept is true, whereas actually we have only found in what sense it is true. From person to person the sense changes, but the truthfulness remains. This Protean quality, this readiness to furnish whatever the reader needs, gives the Tao Te Ching an immense advantage over books written so clearly that they have only one meaning.
It is an advantage which has not appealed to all students and translators, especially those of the Victorian era. At Cambridge H. A. Giles wrote that Chapter 8 should "seal the fate of this book with readers who claim at least a minimum of sense from an old-world classic." ^ At Oxford James Legge called the Tao Te Ching "extraordinarily obscure" and pronounced the following judgement: "There has been a tendency to overestimate rather than to underestimate its value as a scheme of thought and a discipline for the individual and
' H. A. Giles, History of Chinese Literature, p. 59.
society. . . . Wc must judge of Lao Tzse that, with all his power of thought, he was only a dreamer." ^ It was probably a disagreeable experience for a Sinologist as eminent as Legge to find that he could often extract little meaning from his own translation. He shared this experience with Victorian and post-Victorian colleagues. For that matter, in China itself the Tao Te Ching has baffled and irritated orthodox minds. One such was Yiian Ku, who in the second century b.c. was asked by the Dowager Empress Tou for his opinion of the writings of Lao Tzu. He replied that such trashy books were more suitable for the baggage of maidservants than for a royal court. This infuriated the Empress, an ardent Taoist, who thereupon had him thrown to the pigs. This was an early chapter in the long feud between the Taoists, on the one hand, and the Confucians who found their theories so baffling.
The same kind of bafflement may help explain the fact that after an initial deluge from 1895 to 1905, English translations were appearing at the rate of only one in six years until 1934. Since 1934 there has been one every sixteen months. This is the date of Arthur Waley's excellent book The Way and Its Power. However, I do not think that he can be considered solely responsible for the revival of activity. In the last two decades the West has seen a growing interest in Buddhism, especially in Zen, which owes much to Taoism. New tools have been developed, such as semantics, psychoanalysis, and parapsychology, all of them, possible approaches to a reappraisal of the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu is in tune with our relativism.^ He wrote in a time of troubles not unlike our own. For all these reasons it is natural that the book should again attract translators and attention.
This is not to say that there is much more general agreement about its meaning than there was fifty years ago. Those who study it still come to many a parting of the way. As backdrop for the chapters that follow, let us now take a brief sam-
^ See the article on "Lao Tsze" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition.
* Lin Yutang's version of Chapter 25 can be interpreted as a reference to the curvature of space:
Being great implies reaching out into space.
Reaching out into space implies far-reaching.
Far-reaching implies reversion to the original point.
I doubt that this is a premonition of Einsteinian physics; it is, rather, an example of the perils of translation.
pling of recent interpretation. The reader must not expect to find it easy to follow unless he has already studied Lao Tzu. But what he will be able to see, perhaps, is how far apart—and how close—several interpretations can be.
Mr. Waley, like Duyvendak, approaches the Too Te Ching not to find out what it means to Chinese readers today, but what it meant to the contemporaries of its author. He believes that it was written by a practitioner of tso-wang, the early Chinese equivalent of yoga. But it was not intended as a manual on the various breathing exercises which induced trance, though it alludes to them. Rather, it was intended to show how to use the Power that such trance states gave over the material world and also how such trance states could be the basis for a metaphysic. The book is primarily addressed to the ruler of a country. Just as in earlier days the medium at great feasts prepared himself by abstinence to receive the ancestral spirits, so the Taoist ruler must become desireless if he is to achieve trance and the Power that it gives. How does this Power work ? In trance the ruler returns to the roots of his nature, perceives the Unity of the Universe, the nonexistence of absolutes, the non-existence of contraries. What does this Power do? It makes it possible to act without action, to bring things about without interfering, to act through by-passing the contraries of every dilemma. Those who try to rule by other means—by morahty or fear—only spoil what they do as fast as they do it. Waley's interpretation, then, is mystical.
F. C. S. Northrop reduces the mystical to metaphysics.® His interest in the Tao Te Ching is to illustrate his thesis that all oriental doctrines—from Hinduism to Zen—are grounded on the "aesthetic component" of mental function. Reality is directly sensed, not theorized about as in the West. It is an "aesthetic continuum," whose differentiations provide the transitory objects of the external world. But the Taoist can perceive this "aesthetic continuum" without differentiations. For him the aesthetic self and the aesthetic object become one, which, for one thing, permits him to paint the object from the inside. For another thing, being one with this timeless continuum, he is immortal. (This is a far cry from the very physical immortality of the later Taoists, as we shall see.) Such metaphysics have an ethical consequence. If we are one with another person or thing, we must feel
•F. C. S. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West. pp. 329-346.
their suffering as we do our own. The Taoist, therefore, Hke the Confucian, is motivated by compassion. Here Mr. Northrop stops. He barely mentions the doctrine of inaction. As for returning to the root of one's nature, he equates it with the Confucian objective of a society's return to the morals of the golden age.
Lin Yutang is the translator whose quotations were used above to illustrate the ease of parallells between Christianity and Taoism. He is an enthusiast for the Tao Te Ching, regarding it as "the one book in the whole of oriental literature which one should read above all others." ^" In particular he believes it is the answer to the Western scientist in search of religion. This is because it "does not presume to tell us about God," but only how we may approach God, or Nature. This approach is mystical, intuitive. Lin Yutang finds Ralph Waldo Emerson expressing clearly the Taoist doctrines of the unity, the relativity, and the cyclical pattern of reality. These, he feels, provide a rational basis for the doctrine of inaction. For what is the use of trying to bring a thing about when it will happen anyway in a turn of the cycle ? Or of desiring what the cycle will destroy ? What is the u^e of resisting evil when it is the same as good? What, for that matter, is the use of anything except recognizing the unity to which all things revert? Although Lin Yutang acknowledges his debt to Mr. Waley, he is impatient with the latter's philological-historical approach. Waley's power is for Lin Yutang character in the Sunday-sermon sense. Waley's breath-control (for trance) becomes self-control (for gentleness). Waley's fixed staring becomes enduring vision. Lin Yutang, perhaps, does not want the Tao Te Ching to sound so outre to our Western ears that we will fail to share his enthusiasm.
Fung Yu-lan, the great historian of Chinese philosophy, offers, Ukc Northrop, a careful analysis of the metaphysics of Tao.^^ But then, unlike Northrop, he goes on to relate the metaphysical to the ethical. Indeed, he maintains that Lao Tzu is primarily "concerned with how one should respond to the world." As to metaphysics, Tao is Non-Being, "the all-embracing first principle for all things." Tao's most important manifestation in the world around us is the cyclical pattern of change. This is central to Fung's interpretation, even more so than
^"Lin Yutang, op. cit. p. 579.
"Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. I, Chap. 8; A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Chap. 9.
to Lin Yutang's. Unvaryingly the wheel turns; what goes up must come down. Victories lead in the end to defeat, force to weakness, laws to lawlessness, good to evil—all because, as Fung puts it, "if any one thing moves to an extreme in one direction, a change must bring the opposite result." He does not tell us why this is so, but from it he deduces Lao Tzu's humility and doctrine of inaction. He mentions Hegel's theory of history as a parallel. Because of the cyclical pattern, our desires can only get us into trouble. Therefore, according to Fung, Lao Tzu urges upon us not an absence of desires, but a reduction of them. That is why we must learn how to unlearn. If we do not know about the objects of desire, we cannot desire them. In his later work, Fung also points out that only when we unlearn the difference between high and low, right and wrong, can we abide in the Undifferentiated One (cf. Northrop). But he has little or nothing to say about yoga and trance as avenues to the One.
By now the reader may feel not only confused, but little inclined to devote further attention to the Tao Te Ching. What can it be but a waste of time to study a book without an author, without a date, and with little meaning that those who study it can agree upon ? That is a hard question to answer. There will be many of us who, as one Sinologist put it, "prefer to work with things that are more tangible."
But there are motives for the study of Lao Tzu. One is curiosity. What can it be that has fascinated such a variety of people for so long.'' How is it possible to contrive a book in which everyone finds what he needs? Can nothing be done to determine its meaning once and for all.'' There must be a way. (It is curiosity about this last question that has even led to "translations" not from Chinese to English, but from EngUsh to English^^ and caused Duyvendak, the Dutch Sinologist, to cry in despair, "The Tao Te Ching has become the victim of the worst dilettantism." ^^)
One can mention other motives for the study of Lao Tzu—like the need to understand our Chinese neighbours, or the importance of assigning the Tao Te Ching its proper place in the history of thought, or even the search for wisdom—but I think that the soundest motive is curiosity.
"W. R. old, Bynner, and Ould based the texts they pubhshed on existing English versions, not on the Chinese original, "aided," as Old put it, "by such intuitions as have arisen from familiarity with theosophical and mystical speculations."
"J. J. L. Duyvendak, Tao Te Ching (Wisdom of the East Series), p. I.
Part Two: THE TAO TE CHING
1. Inaction
I have said that Lao Tzu wrote his book in a time of troubles, very much Hke our own. This time of troubles began in 771 b.c. when the Chou Dynasty was pushed out of its capital by barbarians from the northwest and then re-established itself 200 miles eastward in Loyang. The decay of the Eastern Chou, as the dynasty thereafter was called, lasted 522 years. From feudal monarchs able to control their vassals, the rulers of Chou sank slowly to the level of impotent figureheads, privileged only to carry out certain ceremonials, like the ploughing of the Sacred Field in spring. Concurrently their vassals began to make war, not, as propriety required, upon the barbarians at their outer borders, but upon one another. At first these civil wars were characterized by a certain orderliness. They were fought according to li, the Rites. The Rites in China covered not only the religious ceremonials which kept Heaven and Earth in order, making rain fall, crops grow, and livestock fertile, but also the whole gamut of human behaviour from tipping one's hat to dying for one's honour. Whatever the act, there was a correct, ritual way of doing it, and the purpose of war at this time was more to display one's mastery of the Rites—one's chivalry—than to conquer and pillage. Battles often centered on personal combat between champions dressed in armour, who, the evening before, might have drunk together and exchanged weapons and who now shouted "haughty compliments" to one another across the battlefield. If the vanquished showed courage and courtesy, they were spared, and it was better to be vanquished than to violate the chivalric code. That was why the Duke of Sung, for instance, refused to attack the armies of Ch'u when they were fording a river. When they were across the river but had not yet regrouped for battle, he still refused, and gave the order to attack only after the enemy was ready, so that his own forces were disastrously defeated. Afterwards he said: "The Sage does not crush the feeble, nor does he order the attack before the enemy have formed their ranks." This is an example of //, the Rites.
In 681 B.C. the larger feudal states had united in a league for mutual
defense, which did not prevent wars, but helped give them to some extent the orderly character I have mentioned. However, two centuries later this league collapsed and the decay of the Chou Dynasty began its acute and final phase. One cannot point to a particular year as the beginning, but it is an interesting coincidence that 479 b.c, the year which saw the annihilation of the first major feudal state and the "discontinuance of its sacrifices," was also the year of the death of Confucius, whose life had been devoted to imposing on China a moral system which would have made such an event impossible. From the fifth century onwards there ensued a ruthless struggle for power, which ended only in 221 b.c. with the recognition of the first emperor of China. During this period the purpose of the warring prince was no longer a show of chivalry, but to weaken and annex his neighbors. Now war ceased to be a noble exercise. The vanquished were killed, not spared. The soldiers of one state, in fact, were paid off only when they presented the paymaster with severed heads of the enemy. Atrocity answered atrocity. Whole cities were put to the sword; some chiefs boiled up the bodies of those they had defeated into a soup which they drank "to increase their prestige."
Among the three to seven principal contenders for supremacy, leagues and alliances formed and dissolved; war led to war; treachery to treachery; and, as armies marched to and fro over the land, "thorns and brambles grew." This came to be called the "Period of the Fighting States." China seemed to be spinning down a whirlpool of ruin. To the people of the fighting states, as to some people today, it appeared that the world—the known world—must finish as a wasteland.
These were the times in which Lao Tzu Hved. Though we cannot know how his philosophy developed, I think the times were a determining factor. He looked about, beheld reprisal following reprisal, and asked the question: Can this ever he stopped? If such a question was not in fact the point of departure for his philosophy, it is a good point of departure for understanding it.
Lao Tzu rejected the Confucian answer. Indeed, he probably believed diat Confucius was the person who had triggered China's decline by preaching moraUty. Lao Tzu's answer was the doctrine of inaction, or, in Chinese, wu wet (literally, "not doing"). In his opinion die best mediod of coping with pillage, tyranny, and slaughter
was to do nothing about them. Now, as in his own days, those who hear this doctrine for the first time are surprised, even exasperated. It sounds harebrained; worse than that, dangerous. What would happen to the world if none of us did anything about evil ?
Lao Tzu means that we should "do nothing" in a rather special sense. The inaction he recommends is abstruse and difficult to practice. It will take a good many pages to explain. Let us begin by considering four statements from the Tao Te Ching.
"Such things [weapons of war] are wont to rebound" (SOW). "The more laws you make, the more thieves there will be" (57). "The Sage does not boast, therefore is given credit" (22). "He who acts harms, he who grabs lets slip" (64W).
What is the principle that underlies these four statements? It is a simple one: In human relations force defeats itself. Every action produces a reaction, every challenge a response. This accounts for the rhythm discernible in life by which "the man who is to be laid low must first be exalted to power" (36) (pride goeth before a fall) and "whatever has a time of vigour also has a time of decay" (30).
Some readers may be reminded of Toynbee's theory of history. This is natural. Toynbee finds in history the same pattern that Lao Tzu finds in politics, personal relations, indeed, in all of life. How does this pattern arise? It arises out of the inertia of existence, the tendency of every existing object or arrangement to continue to be what it is. Interfere with its existence and it resists, as a stone resists crushing. If it is a living creature it resists actively, as a wasp being crushed will sting. But the kind of resistance offered by living creatures is unique: it grows stronger as interference grows stronger up to the point where the creature's capacity for resistance is destroyed. Evolution might be thought of as a march towards ever more highly articulated and effective capacity for resistance. Humans and human societies are thus highly responsive to challenge. So when anyone, ruler or subject, tries to act upon humans individually or collectively, the ultimate result is the opposite of what he is aiming at. He has invoked what we might call the Law of Aggression.
Many writers on Lao Tzu have noted his concept of the cyclical pattern of life. The wheel turns: what rises must fall. But to conceive
of the cycle in these terms is to miss the reason why it is there. It is not a cycle governed by time, but by cause and effect. The wheel, revolving unvaryingly and inescapably, is a poor analogy. Actually, no mechanical analogy can be satisfactory because the operation of cause and effect in human affairs is too complex. In its vast complexity we discern certain causal chains of challenge and response which represent the functioning of the Law of Aggression. It is this law, not the mere passage of time, which is the reason for the cyclical pattern of life.
We might note in passing that in evaluating "challenge and response" Toynbee and Lao Tzu come to apparently opposite conclusions. Toynbee believes that a society decays when it faces no challenge and perishes when it makes no response. Lao Tzu believes that challenges are to be ignored and that to cope with them by responding is the greatest of mistakes.
In Lao Tzu's opinion no one can achieve his aims by action. How then can he achieve his aims? The answer was wu wei. "To yield is to be preserved whole. . . . Because the wise man does not contend no one can contend against him" (22).
Is this the same doctrine as our Christian Quietism, in which we turn the other cheek? It is not. A Christian returns good for evil in a spirit of self-abnegation, as a holy duty, and as an expression of his love for God and fellow man. Ostensibly, Lao Tzu would have us return good for evil, or, as he puts it, "requite hatred with virtue (/<?)" (63), because that is the most effective technique of getting people to do what we want.
"The soft overcomes the hard and the weak the strong" (36W). Of the many similes Lao Tzu uses, his favourite is water, "which is of all things most yielding and can overwhelm [rock] which is of all things most hard" (43).
The Westerner today might admit the attractiveness of the simile, but would question its vahdity in practice. It is all very well, he would feel, to talk about "actionless activity" and "doing nothing, yet achieving everything." He would acknowledge that positive measures frequently boomerang. But how can inaction succeed?
It succeeds by being rather than doing, by attitude rather than act, by attraction rather than compulsion. What is meant by "attraction"? First, we must understand the Taoist ideal of tz'u—\ovt in the sense
of compassion or pity. It has only a brief mention in the Tao Te Ching: "Here are my Three Treasures: guard and keep them. The first is compassion . . ." (67); "Compassion cannot fight without conquering or guard without saving. Heaven arms with compassion those whom it would not see destroyed" (67). For the Christian love is the mainspring of action: for the Taoist it is ostensibly what makes inaction effective. It has a practical rather than a theological justification. It must be coupled with humility. Without humility a man will boast; thus he will not only lose credit for what he has done, but those for whom his boasting is a challenge will try to undo it. "The wise man puts himself in the background" (7); "The greatest skill seems like clumsiness, the greatest eloquence like stuttering" (45W). Humility and compassion together, if they come from our original nature, make it possible to act upon others passively, to obtain ends without the use of means. Like water, where the lowest stream is "King" of the upper streams, the Taoist causes others to want what he wants. Humility and compassion work like gravity between man and man. They bring into play the power of example, so that the Taoist "becomes the model for the world" (22 and 28). Lao Tzu recognized that we intuitively sense one another's feelings, and that my attitude, rather than my acts, is the determining factor in your attitude and your acts.
Lao Tzu, as I have presented his doctrine so far, appears to be a forerunner of Dale Carnegie. I do not think that is contrary to his intent. Ostensibly, he comes to us with a technique of human relations which, according to him, works, and that is why we should adopt it. This technique "is called the power {te) that comes of not contending, is called the capacity to use men" (68W). All of us would like to use men. Richard Nixon once said to his brothers about their father: "Just don't argue with him: you'll have a better chance of getting what you want out of him in the long run." ^ Similarly, Lao Tzu tells us that in using men the Sage "achieves his aim" (2W). All of us would like to achieve our aims. "In that case," Lao Tzu seems to be saying, "you had better listen to me."
I have outlined his technique for causing others to act. How would he prevent them from acting? By absorbing hostile aggression. Again the determining factor is other people's intuitive sensing of our
^ Quoted in Uje. Dec. 14, 1953.
attitudes. If they realize that we oppose what they are determined to do, even the most conspicuous yielding on our part will only redouble their determination. On the other hand, genuine yielding can be like a masochist red flag to a sadist bull. What, then, is the correct point of departure for the compassion and humility that absorb aggression? It is a complete relativism. The Taoist "has no set opinions and feelings, but takes the people's as his own. He approves of the good man and also of the bad man: thus the bad becomes good" (49). How can he do so without hypocrisy or total confusion? By realizing that good creates evil. Lao Tzu would say not that two wrongs make a right, but that two wrongs make two rights.
It is because everyone under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty that the idea of ugliness exists. And, equally, if everyone recognized virtue as virtue, this would merely create fresh concepts of wickedness. For truly Being and Not-Being grow out of one another. . . . Therefore the Sage relies on actionless activity (2W).
"Therefore" in the last sentence has three implications. First, the Sage never tries to do good, because this requires having a concept of good, which leads to having a concept of evil, which leads to combatting evil, which only makes evil stronger. Second, the Sage never tries to do good, because "every straight is doubled by a crooked, every good by an ill" (58W). Human affairs are complex: good done to one person may be evil to another. Reward the deserving man with a prize and we plant envy in the hearts of the undeserving. "Therefore the Sage squares without cutting" (58W). Third, our attention is being called not merely to the fact that the Sage relies on actionless activity, but to the basis on which he is capable of doing so— the point of departure for his effective compassion and humility. Good and evil being subjective, he can consider another man's criteria as valid as his own. Thus he can take the next step of "believing the truthful man and also believing the liar. Thus all become truthful" (49). Now this is in one sense a solipsist trick—if he believes it, it is true—but it is also a psychological fact. For "it is by not believing people that you turn them in liars" (17W). Distrust spreads in a vicious circle. If, for instance, our neighbours distrust us, what is the use of telling them the truth? They deserve to be lied to. And when we He to them, they will lie to us in return.
It is to avoid this vicious circle that the Sage makes his radical approach to the problem of what is true and what is not. He has a double standard. "In his own words he chooses to be truthful . . . because he prefers what does not lead to strife and therefore cannot go amiss" (8). But he considers it as impossible for anyone to tell him the truth as it is for them to tell him a lie. To tell the truth is impossible because of the semantic problem. When the Southerner says to the Eskimo, "Yesterday was a chilly evening," the words "chilly" and "evening" mean different things to each. All of us are in some degree Southerners and Eskimos to one another. On the other hand, to tell a lie is impossible because every statement has a reason. That reason is the truth of the statement. Ask two forty-year-old women their age. The first may answer: "I am forty." She answers this because, in fact, she is forty. The other may answer: "I am thirty-five." The reason she answers this is because she is afraid to lose her looks. From her lips "I am thirty-five" means "I fear old age." The listener who understands the Tao of human nature catches this meaning. Her use of symbols was oblique, but to him she has told the truth. To him meaning is problematical and can be determined neither with certainty nor out of the context of gestures, facial expression, and history.
Now this indifference to our concept of "truth" helps the Sage in practicing his technique of human relations. Because he knows that everyone is telling him the truth—if he can only understand it—he never becomes angry at their lies and he never finds it necessary to correct them. He does not commit aggression because of a difference of opinion—that great first cause of human misery. He understands the connection between truth and consequences. He stays out of trouble. It reminds me a little of the wise observation by John Hughes, a New York taxi driver who contributed to Edward Murrow's book. This I Believe. Mr. Hughes wrote: "In all my years of driving a taxicab I have never had any trouble with the pubUc, not even drunks. Even if they get a little headstrong once in a while, I just agree with them and then they behave themselves."
Or it might be said that Lao Tzu understood the usefulness of being able to keep our thoughts in separate compartments. He would have us consider that any deed is both right and wrong. For only by considering it right are we in a position to cope with its wrongness.
There is another element to the technique of inaction or wu wet: "To deal with the hard while it is still easy, with the great while it is still small" (63W); "In actions [the wise man values] timeUness" (8W). If one has understood Tao, i.e., the way the universe works, one can detect things at an exceedingly early stage in their development. Indeed, one can "deal with a thing before it is there" (64), while if one waits until it is full grown, one will face a much more difficult—perhaps impossible—undertaking for inaction. That is why one must understand the importance of "stopping in time" (9, 44) and why one must "requite hatred with te" (63)^ at the beginning of what might otherwise turn out to be a vicious circle of aggression.
This brings up another difference between Taoist and Christian doctrine: the former is less opposed to the use of force. If, as some pacifists are often asked to imagine, a madman entered the Taoist's house and began to chop up his children, he would not respond by passively interposing himself, because that would be ineffective. He would use force, but he would use it as a regrettable necessity. The regret which legitimizes the use of force is a cardinal point of Taoism. As we have noted, the Tao Te Ching was written when China was in the "Period of Fighting States." Lao Tzu comments on good generalship as follows: "The good [general] effects his purpose and then stops. . . . He does not glory in what he has done. . . . He fulfills his purpose, but only as a step that could not be avoided" (SOW); "He who delights in the slaughter of men will never get what he looks for out of those that dwell under Heaven" (31W). In other words, when force does become necessary, what we do is less important than the attitude with which we do it. If our attitude is bloodthirsty and destructive, the conflict will go on until the vicious circle of aggression results in mutual ruin. If our attitude is compassionate and sad, the enemy will sense that his hostility has not aroused a response and so, gradually, his hostility will atrophy. Only thus can the vicious circle of aggression be broken. Therefore, "he that has conquered in battle is received [home] with rites of mourning" (31W). Such an attitude makes a war of conquest impossible for the Taoist. "He who by Tao purposes to help a ruler of men will oppose all conquest by force of arms;
'The meaning of this famous phrase, often translated "return good for evil," will become clear in the next chapter.
for such things are wont to rebound. Where armies are, thorns and brambles grow. The raising of a great host is followed by a year of dearth" (SOW).
It is to rulers in particular that the Tao Te Ching directs its message. Lao Tzu tells them, just as Mencius did, that if they will follow his way, they can have kingdoms for the asking. "If kings and barons would but possess themselves of it, the world would yield to them of its own accord: Heaven and Earth would conspire to send sweet dew" (32). Sweet dew, which tastes like barley sugar or honey, falls only when a kingdom is at complete peace.
Lao Tzu classifies rulers as follows:
As to the best, the people only know that they exist. The next best they draw near to and praise. The next they fear and despise. . . . When the best [ruler's] work is done, throughout the country people say "we have done it ourselves" (17).
Thus Lao Tzu recommends government by non-interference. Governments must by-pass the dilemma of action, recognizing in particular the futility of trying to control so complex a thing as a nation.
Some go in front, some follow; some are blowing hot, while others arc blowing cold. Some are vigorous when others are worn out. Some are loading when others are unloading. . . . The empire is like a holy vessel, dangerous to tamper with. Those who tamper with it harm it. Those who grab at it lose it (29, transposed).
Government controls defeat themselves, for "they may allay the main discontent, but only in a manner which produces further discontents" (79). Therefore, "rule a big country as you would fry small fish" (60), i.e., do not keep stirring them or they will turn into a paste.
Government controls—and these include laws—defeat themselves for another reason. They are a form of aggression on the nature of man. The idea of man's original nature will be discussed later; but we must note here Chapter 57: "The more laws you make, the more thieves there will be." This is like the American Indian dictum: "In the old days there were no fights about hunting grounds and fishing territories. There were no laws then, so everyone did what was right." ^ Lao Tzu believes that man's original nature was kind and mild, and that
*Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, p. 233.
it has become aggressive as a reaction to the force of legal and moral codes. This is the basis for some of the surprising statements quoted in the first chapter. "Banish human kindness, discard morality, and the people will become dutiful and compassionate" (19W); "It was when the great Tao declined that human kindness and morality arose. . . . It was after the six family relationships disintegrated, there was 'filial piety' and 'parental love.' Not until the country fell into chaos and misrule did we hear of 'loyal ministers'" (18). Thus Lao Tzu reverses the causal relationship which most of us would read into such events. It was not that people began preaching about "loyal ministers" because ministers were no longer loyal: rather, ministers were no longer loyal because of the preaching, i.e., because society was trying to mal{e them loyal.
The wise ruler does not try to make his people anything. He "carries on a wordless teaching" (2W) because he knows that "he who proves by argument is not good" (81W). Some of us may recall reading about the occasion when President Adams took his grandson Henry to school. Henry was six years old, and had decided that to avoid going to school he would have a tantrum. In the midst of it old Mr. Adams emerged from the library, took the boy's hand, and led him down the road right to his schoolroom desk. Curiously enough, Henry felt no resentment. This was because his grandfather "had shown no temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of force. Above all, he had held his tongue. During their long walk he had said nothing; he had uttered no syllable of revolting cant about the duty of obedience and the wickedness of resistance to law; he had shown no concern in the matter; hardly even a consciousness of the boy's existence." ^ Lao Tzu would agree, I think, that on this occasion President Adams showed he understood the Tao of ruling.
The Tao Te Ching would have the people act on the ruler, not the ruler on the people—a democratic ideal less novel today than it was in 300 B.C. That is why he "takes the people's opinions and feelings as his own" (49) as though, in eflfect, he counted their votes. His role is to be "heavier" and "lower" than the people, attracting them by what he is, not compelling them by what he does. "In this way everything under Heaven will be glad to be pushed by him and will not find his guidance irksome" (66W). He must "rear them, feed them;
* The Education of Henry Adams, p. 13.
rear them, but not lay claim upon them; control them but never lean upon them; be chief among them, but not manage them" (lOW). Furthermore, the ruler "must not mind if the people are not intimidated by his authority. A Mightier Authority will deal with them in the end. . . . For the very reason that he does not harass them, they cease to turn from him" (72W).
Lao Tzu specifically opposes capital punishment. "He who handles the hatchet for the Master Carpenter is lucky if he does not cut his hand" (74). In any case, when the government finds it necessary to use capital punishment, it is its own fault. The people's lives must have been made intolerable by taxes and interference. With life hardly worth living, the death penalty becomes necessary and by the same token it becomes useless. "The people attach no importance to death because those above them are too grossly absorbed in the pursuit of life" (75W). "The people are not afraid of death: how can they be intimidated by the death penalty" (74). (This was the passage which struck a fourteenth-century emperor of China when he first picked up the Tao Te Ching. He reflected that while every morning in the capital ten men were executed, by evening there were a hundred others who had committed the same crimes. Therefore he withdrew the death penalty and soon "his heart was relieved.")
Rulers who flout Lao Tzu's warnings about the use of force and governmental interference will come to a bad end. "The man of violence does not die a natural death: I take this as my basic doctrine" (42). Lao Tzu is wrong about it, of course. Violent men usually die unnatural deaths, but not always. In our day the dictatorial score is two to one—assuming Stalin was not done in by his doctors. On the other hand, we might agree with Lao Tzu if he had said merely that the chain reactions of violence ignited by a violent ruler will always bring unnatural death to someone. Stalin's associates have found this to be true. It was true in Chinese history. There was Wu Ch'i, for example, an early Chinese general, who once murdered his wife to prove his loyalty to the state and was in the end murdered himself. There was Han Fei, who preached ruthless government and was executed by his comrade, Li Ssu. There was Li Ssu himself, who practiced ruthless government and was tortured to death by his collaborator, Chao Kao. All these men were connected with the Legalists, or School of Force. Because this school had certain similarities with
Taoism and because the life of its founder provides such an extraordinary instance of violence recoiling upon itself, I would like to tell his story. Though it has been told before, it will be new to some readers.
During the "Period of the Fighting States," in 361 b.c. a certain Kung-sun Yang reached the court of Ch'in, a poor state in the western wilds to the throne of which a new duke had just succeeded. In a series of conversations Yang explored the ambitions of this duke. At first he talked moralistically, but then, when he found the duke cared for power, not morality, he opened his heart to him. Yang had a scheme which, he guaranteed, would make the dukedom of Ch'in a great power. The duke appointed him chancellor. Thereupon, Yang established a fascist state, the first in China's history and completely at variance with the Confucian and chivalric traditions. It was based on a legal system of rewards and punishments. Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the historian, wrote about it as follows:
He ordered the people to be organized into cells of fives and tens mutually to control one another and to share one another's punishments. Whoever did not denounce a culprit would be cut in two: whoever denounced a culprit would receive the same reward as he who decapitated an enemy. . . . People who had two males or more [in the family], without dividing the household, had to pay double taxes [this was to encourage early marriage and breed soldiers]. Those who had military merit all received tides from the ruler according to a hierarchic ladder. . . . Great and small had to occupy themselves, with united force, with the fundamental occupations of tilling and weaving and those who produced a large quantity of grain and silk were exempted from forced labour. Those who occupied themselves with secondary sources of profit and those who were poor through laziness were taken on as slaves.^
These laws proved to be a complete success. Under their stimulus Ch'in became the great military power of China, and a century later in 221 B.C. its duke, after a series of campaigns in just one of which, according to the histories, 400,000 prisoners were decapitated, was recognized as the First Emperor of China—an event which he celebrated in 213 by burning all the books in his empire except those on divination, medicine, and agriculture.
'Translated by J. J. L. Duyvendak, The Boo\ of Lord Shang, pp. 14 ff.
To return to Yang, he soon led a military expedition against his home state of Wei, which he defeated after murdering its prince at a friendly dinner party. For this he was given the title of Lord Shang. He was still unpopular. He would venture into public only with a heavy escort of his secret police. Also, he had alienated the Heir Apparent by having his tutor's nose cut off—to show that none were above the law, including the Heir for whose crime it was payment. Therefore his prosperity depended on the life of the old duke, his master. At last the latter died, and Yang fled. He stopped at an inn for lodging, but did not dare to identify himself. The innkeeper said: "According to the law of the Lord Shang whoever shall receive at his inn guests who cannot be identified will be punished." Yang sighed and went on. He managed to reach home in Wei. There the people, who remembered his murder of their prince, said: "The Lord of Shang is a rebel of Ch'in; as Ch'in is a powerful country, when its rebels come to Wei, we have no choice but to send them back." This they did. Finally Yang returned to his seigniory in Ch'in, raised an army, was defeated and slain. But the young duke was not finished with him. He had Yang's body torn to pieces by war chariots and, according to the new laws, his whole family exterminated.
We might suppose that Yang's politics were in all respects the antithesis of the Tao Te Ching. This is not the case. Lao Tzu and Lord Shang both believed in "keeping the people ignorant" (65), though for a different reason and in a somewhat different way. In the Tao Te Ching we read: "The more knowledge people have, the harder they are to rule. Those who seek to rule by giving knowledge are like bandits preying on the land" (65W). What can Lao Tzu mean by this? Does he simply refer to the political fact that a people who are ignorant of how miserably oppressed they are, as well as of how to organize against their oppressors, will be unlikely to revolt? He refers partly to this. Lao Tzu liked the violence of revolution no better than any other kind of violence. But revolution is not his chief concern here. Rather, it is the damage to man's character which results from ambition and greed and which we shall discuss at greater length in the next chapter. What he wants to keep the people ignorant of is "rare, valuable goods" that will give them "sleepless nights" and cause them to "feed life too grossly." He wants to keep them ignorant of the thrill of power, which will tempt them to violent struggle for
high position. He wants to keep them ignorant of "favour and disgrace," both of which will drive them out of their senses. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, he wants to keep them ignorant of Confucian morality, with its 3,300 rules of etiquette, such as the right occasions for using t4/ei and o (formal and informal words for "yes"). This makes hypocrites of men who were once simple-hearted, for they outwardly conform while they inwardly rebel. "Banish learning," says Lao Tzu, "and there will be no more grieving. Between wei and o what after all is the difference?" (20W). Conformism can only lead to aggression: "He who is best versed in the Rites does not merely act, but if the people fail to respond he will roll up his sleeves and advance upon them. . . . The Rites are the mere husk of loyalty and promise-keeping and are indeed the first step towards brawling" (38). The fundamental difference between the popular ignorance espoused by Lao Tzu and that espoused by Lord Shang is a difference of purpose. Unlike Lord Shang, the purpose of Lao Tzu's ruler is not to oppress the people. On the contrary, he expects them to oppress him. "Only he who takes upon himself the evils of the country can be its King" (78). This quotation has several facets. One translator, as we have seen, renders it: "He who bears himself the sins of the world is King of the world." But the Taoist is not the Lamb of God. Rather, the Taoist, when a ruler, must in clear-sighted humility accept the blame for whatever is amiss in his country, realizing that he is ultimately responsible and that it is within his power to absorb the feelings of aggression that are multiplying themselves throughout the land. The attitude of the ruler will directly determine the attitude of his people.
This is not quite so theoretical as it may sound. We can find an up-to-date illustration of it in William Whyte's excellent book Is Anybody Listening? Some may remember his story about the Marine Corps officer in the last war. He begins,
One of the worst hurdles a staff man faces is the vale of distrust that exists between echelons of command. . . . To meet this one of the Marine Corps' finest divisional staff officers developed a remarkably simple antidote: the most important thing he ever did, he told subordinates, was to listen. Late at night, he went on to explain, he would be bothered time and again as some regimental or battalion officer called him up to complain of this or that or make some impossible request. "Most of the time it was a matter
for G-1 or G-2 or G-4, and sometimes the way they talked I should have told them to go to hell. But I didn't. And after a while the real trouble would come out. They were uneasy—the troops were itchy, maybe the outfit was low on rations—and it seemed to them there wasn't anyone else in the world who understood." And so he listened, and whenever he handed down an operation order, there was none of the usual what-the-hell-have-those-goldbrickers-up-in-the-division-done-to-us-now. Instead an almost instantaneous acceptance.
Lao Tzu would have commended this Sage of the Marine Corps.
I have frequently alluded to the interplay of attitudes. It is a cornerstone of my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. However, between groups of men this interplay is more complex and less reliable than between individuals. One nation, for instance, cannot practice wu wei upon another with the assurance that, within a predictable time, the poHcy will be successful. That is why the Tao Te Ching sanctions the use of force as a regrettable necessity. On the other hand, Lao Tzu does not except international relations from Tao. He considers inaction always the correct approach, though it may have to be temporized with self-defense.
A large kingdom must be like the low ground towards which all streams flow down. It must be a point towards which all things under heaven converge. Its part must be that of the female in its dealings with all things under heaven. The female by quiescence conquers the male: by quiescence gets underneath. If a large kingdom can in the same way succeed in getting underneath a small kingdom, then it will win the adherence of the small kingdom (61W).
Lao Tzu asks of any situation: is hate breeding a vicious circle of hate, or, by a compassionate response, is the original challenge losing its vigour.? The troubles in Kenya and Cyprus offered good examples of the vicious circle of hate. In particular I recall the incident in which a British officer had some Mau Maus tied up with thongs around their necks, the soles of their feet whipped, and their eardrums burned with a lighted cigarette. This officer was arrested and brought to trial. The British judge, giving him a light sentence, said: "It is easy to work oneself up into a state of pious horror over these offenses, but they must be considered against their background. All of the accused were en-
gaged in seeking out inhuman monsters and savages of the lowest order."^ In this British judge we see exemplified the antithesis of Lao Tzu's formula for inaction. Lao Tzu said: "The good man I approve: the bad man I also approve: thus the bad becomes good" (49). But the judge was guilty of an error more serious than intolerance. He did not regard the Mau Maus as human. When one person does not regard another as human, Tao will not "lend its power" to either of them.
We have finished for the moment with the doctrine of inaction, or wu wei. Let us summarize. Wu wei does not mean to avoid all action, but rather all hostile, aggressive action. Many kinds of action are innocent. Eating and drinking, making love, ploughing a wheat-field, running a lathe—these may be aggressive acts, but generally they are not. Conversely, acts which are generally aggressive, like the use of military force, may be committed with such an attitude that they perfectly exemplify wu wei. The Taoist understands the Law of Aggression and the indirect ways that it can operate. He knows that vir-tuousness or non-conformity can be as aggressive as insults or silence. He knows that even to be non-aggressive can be aggression, if by one's non-aggressiveness one makes others feel inferior. It is to make another person feel inferior that is the essence of aggression.
It is because of this Law that the Taoist practices wu wei. He sees spreading all about him the vicious circles of lying, hatred, and violence. His aim is not merely to avoid starting new circles, but to interrupt those that have already been started. Through his peculiar behaviour he hopes to save the world.
The Taoist well understands that wu wei is ineffectual if his compassion and humility are worn like a hat. These attitudes, to have their effect, must come from the roots of his nature. It is not easy for him to find these roots, as we shall see.
Now this may seem fairly close to another interpretation of the doctrine of inaction, perhaps the most common of all. As H. G. Creel puts it, wu wei means "doing nothing that is not natural or spontaneous." In effect that is true. The man who practices wu wei does nothing which is unnatural, for, as I have just said, he has had to return to the roots of his nature in order to practice it. But wu wei in itself does not mean avoiding the unnatural; it means avoiding the
•Reported in Time, Dec. 7, 1953.
aggressive. If we fail to appreciate this, we end up with a complete misunderstanding of Lao Tzu. Mr. Creel, for instance, goes on to write:
The enlightened Taoist is beyond good and evil; for him these are merely words used by die ignorant and foolish. If it suits his whim, he may destroy a city and massacre its inhabitants with the concentrated fury of a typhoon, and feel no more qualms of conscience than the majestic sun that shines upon the scene of desolation after the storm. After all, both life and death, begetting and destruction, are parts of the harmonious order of the universe, which is good because it exists and because it is itself. In this conception of the Taoist sage, Taoism released upon humanity what may truly be called a monster. By any human standards, he is unreachable and immovable; he cannot be influenced by love or hate, fear or hope of gain, pity or admiration.'^
I think we have already seen enough of Lao Tzu's insistence on compassion and humility to know that his Sage—unlike that of some of his successors, perhaps—could never be such a monster. Mr. Creel prefaced his statement by quoting Lao Tzu's words, "The Sage is ruthless . . ." (5). Those words are indeed a puzzle. We shall study them closely in the next section.
'H. G. Creel, Chinese Thought, pp. 112-113.
In exploring the doctrine of inaction we have met the most common symbols in the Tao Te Ching: water, which, though unresisting, cuts the most resistant materials; which "is content with the [low] places all men disdain"; towards which, when it has reached the lowest place (the Valley) all else flows; which in its lowliness and non-resistance "benefits the Ten Thousand Things"; and the symbol of the Female, who, like the Valley, is yin, the passive receiver of yang; who conquers the male by attraction rather than force; and who without action causes the male to act.
Lao Tzu makes use of symbols in expounding another basic doctrine—the return to our original nature. He speaks of the Uncarved Block {p'u)y Raw Silk {su), and the Newborn Child {ying erh). Fu and su today mean "plain," but originally p'u was wood as it came from the tree before man had dressed it, while su was silk that man had never dyed or painted. The last of the three symbols, the Newborn Child, is man himself, naturally simple and good before Society forces him into its mold.
Lao Tzu believed that the evolution of the individual parallels the evolution of the race. In his opinion, the earliest man did not belong to a complex social organization. He Hved in small settlements, of perhaps no more than a single family, and his desires were few: "to be contented with his food, pleased with his clothing, satisfied with his home, taking pleasure in his rustic tasks" (SOW). There was a minimum of culture and technology. Instead of writing, he used knotted cords. Instead of labour-saving devices, he used "strong bones" (3). Since there was no society, there could be no aggression by society upon the individual: no morality, no duties to the community, no punishments. And so the individual was not driven to commit aggresson in return. He did not make war. He killed, but only animals, and he killed to eat them, not to prove his power over them. In eating, satisfying his physical needs, he "filled his belly and weakened his ambition" (3). For him money and power, wisdom and reputation did not even exist.
35
He was so unambitious, in fact, that though "the neighbouring settlement might be so near he could hear the cocks crowing and the dogs barking, he would grow old and die without ever having been there" (80). It is this Eden, this indifference to good and evil, that Lao Tzu would have humanity recapture.
Even as our ancestors were untouched by society, so is each child at birth. The child too fills his belly and lacks ambition (when he fusses, we give him his bottle). In Lao Tzu's opinion, his nature—his original nature—is free from hostility and aggressiveness. But society mars this nature—and here Lao Tzu would seem to align himself with the extremists in progressive education. From the first parental whack to the last deathbed prayer, man is kneaded and pummelled, either by those who want to make him "good" or those who want to use or destroy him. He becomes a reservoir of aggression on which society can draw to produce its goods competitively, fight its wars fiercely, and raise children more aggressive than himself.
Such a man will find it hard to practice inaction. Inaction, as we have seen, depends on attitude, and his attitude—whatever he may believe or pretend—has become inwardly aggressive, deeply disturbed. He is too much on guard for compassion, too much on edge for the patience of good timing. In a word, he does not hold the Uncarved Block.
If I had to name the point in Lao Tzu's philosophy which I find least convincing, it would be the premise mentioned just above, that the Uncarved Block, or man's original nature, is free from hostility and aggressiveness. I suppose it is not a question that can be settled until behavioural scientists succeed in bringing up children in a totally neutral environment. There is this much to be said for Lao Tzu, however. In some human societies the aggressive, competitive modes of behaviour simply do not exist. It is interesting that the most perfect example of this is probably the most primitive of all societies, and hence the one nearest to what Lao Tzu would call man in his natural state. I refer to the Semang of Malaya, a remnant tribe of Negritos who have no social organization, who have refused to accept machines or any other "clever devices" from their civilized neighbours, and to whom war and competition are unknown. To some extent the same is true of the Eskimos, one of whom, describing his childhood to an American observer, echoed the reasoning of Lao Tzu's radical theories
on education. "Eskimo parents," he said, "do not approve of striking a child because then the child will feel ugly. He will want to strike someone himself. In our family we were encouraged to be good—not scolded. We could feel we were being loved and that made us love right back."
Competition is almost unknown to other primitive tribes like the Zunis, the Arapesh, and to Polynesians like the Typees, among whom Herman Melville spent six months after jumping ship in the Marquesas. The Typees made Melville an enthusiastic convert to their way of life. It does appear that their long-range plan was to convert him into a stew, but he escaped in time to forgive their cannibalism and praise them in such passages as the following.
Here you would see a parcel of children frolicking together the livelong day, and no quarrelling, no contention, among them. The same number in our own land could not have played together for the space of an hour without biting or scratching one another. There you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled with envyings of each other's charms, nor displaying the ridiculous affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whalebone corsets, like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, and unconstrained. . . . With the young men there seemed almost always some matter of diversion or business on hand that afforded a constant variety of enjoyment. But whether fishing, or carving canoes, or polishing their ornaments, never was there exhibited the least sign of strife or contention among them. ... In short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the well-being and conservation of society, the enlightened end of civilised legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom. ... I do not conceive that they could support a debating society for a single night: there would be nothing to dispute about. . . . But the continual happiness which so far as I was able to judge appeared to prevail in the valley, sprung principally from that all-pervading sensation which Rousseau has told us he at one time experienced, the mere buoyant sense of a healthful physical existence.^
It would be hard to find a better vignette of Lao Tzu's escapist anarchy.
Now in contrast to these happy savages, I cannot help thinking
'Herman Melville, Typee, pp. 184-185, 293, 298.
of a neighbour of mine, a Vermont dairy farmer, who is always having trouble with his hired man. Lao Tzu's theories would not be much help to him, I am afraid. He might agree that there was something to them (laissez-faire being an accepted principle in Vermont) but the next time his hired man smashes a side-rake or strips a cow with milk fever, my neighbour is going to lose his temper—and his hired man—again. How can he do otherwise? Milk prices are down; the farmer next door has just put up a new silo while his own has started to lean; his wife is boss; he drinks and is disapproved of.
If this neighbour of mine asked us how his fits of temper could be avoided, what should we answer? Should we say: "It is morally wrong to abuse a hired man the way you do. Remember that, and learn a little self-control"? Lao Tzu, if he could overhear us, would shake his head. To use that kjnd of self-control, he would say, is to do violence to one's own nature, already violated by others: the feelings "controlled" will only grow stronger.
Should we say to the farmer then: "Understand the Tao of human relations. When you see with perfect clarity that each of your fits of anger only rebounds on you, you will cease to be angry. No man knowingly harms himself"? Again Lao Tzu would shake his head. He would say that while that I^ind of understanding was a step forward, it was not enough. On the contrary, men do harm themselves, knowing quite well how they do it, though not why.
If we then addressed ourselves to Lao Tzu and asked what his prescription would be for the farmer, he would answer: "Give him Raw Silk to look at, the Uncarved Block to hold, give him selflessness and fewness of desires" (19). "Favour and disgrace," he would add, "drive men out of their minds" (13). If we passed this formula on to the farmer, I am afraid he would not feel we had helped him much. It is a little too Chinese. But I think it can be made understandable to us if not to the farmer.
First, what does Lao Tzu mean by "fewness of desires"? We might suppose he meant asceticism because, in our Judaeo-Christian tradition, it is the desires of the flesh that are considered the primary enemy of spiritual progress. But Lao Tzu is not talking about the desires of the flesh. The desires that he would make few are those fostered in us by human society—the desires for money, power, and importance. We must reduce them not merely because "wealth, im-
portance and pride bring their own downfall" (9), but also because they turn us away from self-cultivation: they distract us from the search for p'u, the Uncarved Block of our original nature.
"Fame or one's own self, which matters to one most ? One's own self or riches, which should count most?" (44)
And again:
"Riches, hard to obtain, get in the way of their owner" (12).
The desires for money and power lead to aggression, sometimes in the form of physical violence, more often in the form of economic competition. Competition is the seed and the fruit of the greatest social evils. How ominously Lao Tzu hammers out his warning! No lure is greater than to possess what others want No disaster greater than not to be content with what one has No presage of evil greater than that men should be wanting to get more (46W).
Whereas the "social" desires lead to aggression, the desires of the flesh do not. We cannot commit aggression on our belly. Quite the contrary, when, like the early man and the child, we fill it, our attention may be diverted from aggression that we would otherwise undertake.
On the other hand, Lao Tzu, though not an ascetic, warns us against satisfying our bodily desires beyond the body's natural capacity for satisfaction. If we do so, satisfaction defeats itself.
The five colours blind the eye,
The five sounds deafen the ear,
The five tastes spoil the palate,
Excess of hunting and chasing makes minds go mad (12).
Furthermore, overindulgence is offensive. People who feel that we eat too well, drink too deeply, or live too hard, take it as a challenge— "to fill life to the brim is to invite omens" (55W)—just as they will seek revenge on us if we enjoy our food not because it is good, but because it is better than theirs.
This is what Lao Tzu means, then, by "fewness of desires." While we must moderate sensuality, we must annihilate ambition. Ambition, whether for money or power, endangers the whole community, for it
spreads like the plague. Even today we can observe this, at a fashion shovv^, at an auction, in a nursery school. My two daughters were recently by my desk. They like to explore for "treasures" in the waste-basket. After the elder finished, the younger began. She discovered a calendar in which her sister had shown no interest whatever. But as soon as she decided she wanted it, her sister wanted it too, and so there was a crisis. Lao Tzu says: "If we did not prize rare valuable goods, there would be no more thieves" (3).
We should note that Lao Tzu plays a trick on us. He lures us on with promises of power. "Apply [Tao] to an empire and the empire shall thereby be extended" (54W). "Possess the Uncarved Block and the world will yield to you of its own accord" (32). This has an intriguing sound to it as though the Uncarved Block were a kind of magic lamp by which every one of our desires could be satisfied. It is like Lao Tzu's statement, referred to in the last chapter, that inaction gives us "the capacity to use men." But in accepting these doctrines, we must reject the very rewards that have attracted us to them. We cannot practice inaction or hold the Uncarved Block unless we cease to care whether the world yields to us or not; and for that very reason it will yield. "It is because the Sage does not strive for any personal end that all his personal ends are fulfilled" (7). Here is the paradox of Taoism, a good trap for bad men: the quiet, all-potent means cannot be means to aggressive ends. And so we must amend our earlier comparison of Lao Tzu to Dale Carnegie. He is not really offering us a human-relations technique. If we adopt it as such, we shall not in fact be adopting it. Compassion is much more than a means of making inaction effective. If we adopt it as such, we shall not in fact be compassionate. And to return good for evil is simply beyond the reach of the man who does it, as the last chapter suggested, to get what he wants. Lao Tzu having trapped his disciples with the lure of power, teaches them indiiTerence to power. Such traps are not uncommon in mysticism. The objective of mystical teachers is, after all, to attract those who need their teaching, not those who have already renounced the world. Westerners have been attracted to Yoga because they wanted to exercise supernormal powers, a motive that will always prevent them from succeeding. In Christ's ministry, as Kirsopp Lake put it, "the crowd and possibly some of his disciples thought that he
was the Davidic Messiah." ^ They were attracted to him because he promised the Kingdom: by the time they reaUzed that he was not speaking of a Davidic Kingdom on earth, they cared only for the Kingdom of Heaven.
After "fewness of desires," the second part of Lao Tzu's prescription for getting hold of the Uncarved Block is the rejection of public opinion, or of "other-directedness" as some call it today. "Favour and disgrace drive men out of their minds. When a ruler's subjects get it [favour, praise], they turn distraught. When they lose it, they turn distraught" (13W). Favour can lead a man to infatuation. Disgrace can lead him to seek revenge upon those who have disgraced him or in whose eyes he has been disgraced. Even favour can lead a man to seek revenge, for it puts him in the position of being patronized. In either case, once he submits himself to the goads of public opinion, he will find it hard to keep his balance and even harder to continue the search for his original nature.
If we are to return to our original nature, or help others to, we must discard what everyone under Heaven accepts: not only ambition, but morality, law, duty, knowledge of right and wrong. That is why "everyone under Heaven says that our Way is greatly like folly" (67W). That is why Lao Tzu in his own book never urges his views on us as "right" or "good" but only on the basis that if we do not follow them, we invite disaster. We saw in the last chapter how futile he believes it is for the ruler to attempt making his people just, compassionate, or wise. Now we see the converse: that the people, for their part, should ignore his attempts to make them such. Let them understand the relativity of good and evil; let them do nothing and believe nothing merely because they have been told it is "right"; let them not be intimidated by scholars and critics or read a book because it is Great; let them "prize no sustenance that comes not from the Mother's breast" (20W). Thus they will never permit violence to be done to their inner natures and their inner natures will never cause them to do violence in return. "Banish wisdom, discard knowledge, and the people will be benefited a hundred fold: banish human kindness, discard morality, and the people will be dutiful and compassionate" (19W).
'Kirsopp and Silvia Lake, Introduction to the 'New Testament, p. 233. Cf. Acts 1:6. Even after the Resurrection the Apostles looked to Jesus for a restoration of the Xingdom.
But until morality is discarded by everyone, there will be the dilemma of conformance. Those who conform are full of resentment against those who do not: those who do not conform are a challenge to diose who do. Therefore the Taoist conceals his non-conformance. He does not flaunt the Uncarved Block. He does not make a morahty of amorality, for diat would be committing the error he set out to avoid. He does not insist on strange clothes, strange food, or strange words, no matter how strange his ideas may be. "The Sage wears haircloth on top and carries the jade next to his heart" (70).
Lao Tzu's inward amorality leads him to what seems at first a cruel and almost sardonic realism. The reader may recall Mr. Creel's criticism of the Taoist as a potential monster.^ He based it on Chapter 5, which is one of the most crucial in the book, and certainly a puzzle. I hope the reader will be patient, for to get to the bottom of it we shall have to analyze it carefully. Here is a verbatim translation;
Heaven Earth not good [jen]
Regard Ten Thousand Things as straw dogs
Sage man not good
Regards Hundred FamiHes as straw dogs
Heaven Earth's between [space] it resembles bellows
Empty but not collapse
Move and more issues
Much talk quickly exhausted
Better keep Middle
"Heaven and Earth" is the Chinese epithet for the whole physical universe. The "Ten Thousand Things" refer to the contents of the universe. The "Hundred Families" refer to mankind. Straw dogs are images for sacrifice. Chuang Tzu says: "Before the straw dogs are set forth they are deposited in a box or basket and wrapt up with elegantly embroidered cloths while the representative of the dead and the officer of prayer prepare themselves by fasting to present them. After they have been set forth, however, passers-by trample on their heads and backs, and die grass cutters take and burn them in cooking. That is all they are good for." ^
'Sec p. 34.
*Tr. James Legge, Texts of Taoism. Vol. I, p. 352. I have changed his "grass dogs" to "su-aw dogs."
Mr. Waley renders the chapter thus:
Heaven and Earth are ruthless;
To them the Ten Thousand Things are but as straw dogs.
The Sage too is ruthless;
To him the people are but as straw dogs.
Yet Heaven and Earth and all that lies between
Is like a bellows
In that it is empty, but gives a supply that never fails.
Work it and more comes out.
Whereas the force of words is soon spent.
Far better is it to keep what is in the heart.
Mr. Waley comments that in the first Hne the word jen (good) is cognate to jen (man), although it is written differently. ]en (good) originally meant the "men of the tribe," first in contrast to the common people and later in contrast to the people of other tribes. Only men of the tribe were mei jen (handsome and good, kaloskagathos). Later, jen came to be the Confucian virtue of "humanheartedness," the Highest Good. Mr. Waley lets the reader draw his own conclusions about an important question: how can the Sage have compassion as one of his Three Treasures and yet be ruthless ?
Ch'u Ta-kao translates the third line: "The Sage does not own his benevolence." He comments that the Sage neither interferes in the activities of mankind nor does he take credit for them. Men "come into being, grow old, and die away all of their own accord." Mr. Ch'u's implication is presumably that the Sage's benevolence (compassion) should be impersonal: it cannot be his own because if it were it would amount to interest and ultimately interference in the Hundred Families. Thus he is impersonally benevolent, but personally regards the people as straw dogs.
Lin Yutang translates the third verse as "The Sage is unkind" and follows both the foregoing lines of thought. Since the Confucians were the champions of morality and of jen as the first moral principle, Lao Tzu, he suggests, is here attacking the Confucian emphasis on "conscious affectation" as opposed to the "unconscious goodness" that comes from the root of our nature. (The Confucians bear somewhat the same relationship to the Tao Te Ching as the scribes and Pharisees to the New Testament.) In other words, Lao Tzu is not saying that
the Sage is simply not kind: rather, he is not kind-in-the-same-way-as-the-Superior-Man-o£-Confucius. Lin Yutang also writes: "Tao resembles the scientist's concept of an impersonal law that makes no exception for individuals." Do we presume, then, the Sage should be as impersonal—as merciless—himself? It must be, for Lin Yutang translates the fourth line, "He treats the people like sacrificial straw dogs."
Hu Tse-ling ingeniously makes the verse a question: "Is the Sage unkind regarding all things as straw dogs?" He comments that "Heaven and Earth are very kind: for they produce all things without speaking, possessing, and so on. But their kindness is too great to be described and beyond comparison, so it looks as if they are not kind." This is as ingenious as the French translation of De Harlez: "If Heaven and Earth were without kindness, they would regard all men as straw-dogs."
Cheng Lin picks up the implication of Waley's philological comment and renders it "The Sage is amoral." The Sage, in other words, is not a man of the tribe and the tribal mores have as little importance for him as they have for Heaven and Earth.
These various interpretations complement rather than contradict each other. They explain the special meaning which Lao Tzu attached to jen^ and which made it possible for the Sage to be both unkind and compassionate, indeed, made unkindness a prerequisite of compassion. "Banish humankindness (jen) . . . and the people will become compassionate (tz'u)" (19W).
They do not explain in my opinion the other problem of Chapter 5, raised most clearly in the version of Lin Yutang. How can the Sage, being compassionate—though unkind—treat the people as straw dogs? It is hard to image a compassion so impersonal that one's fellow men become lifeless images to be crushed with the heel and burned.
First, we must discard Lin Yutang's word "treats." The Sage "regards," he does not "treat" the people as straw dogs. The Chinese original is perfectly clear about this. Second, we must remember that the Sage himself is a member of the Hundred Families. He too is a straw dog. He too may be blotted out by earthquake or flood, along with the just and the unjust, the innocent and those who "deserve" to
^ Not always. According to Chapter 8, the best man chooses to be jen in his relations with others.
die. Unless he recognizes this fact, unless he regards mankind as Heaven and Earth regard it, he will be living on false premises. But this realistic analysis of life, which we call "dispassion," does not make the Sage indifferent, as Lin Yutang suggests, to the suffering of others. He may not share their prejudices and desires, and he may therefore seem indifferent, but he is not. On the contrary, he understands more clearly than anyone else how mankind suffers and that in this suffering he is involved. Dispassion brings compassion.
Let us attempt to paraphrase Chapter 5 in the light of the foregoing. "The universe is not moral, not 'our kind,' not kind the way the Rites requires. The universe regards the things in it as straw dogs. The Sage is not moral, not 'our kind,' not kind in the way the Rites requires. He regards men—including himself—as straw dogs. But the universe, amoral as it is, supports us. If we call on its orderliness, it never fails us—any more than the law of gravity will fail us. Try to call on morality the same way, and you will quickly exhaust its support. Forget morality; follow your inner nature."
In the opinion of Lao Tzu, as we shall later see more clearly, our inner nature is an extension of the nature of the universe. To follow one is to be in harmony with the other. Therefore the Sage is a votary of "back-to-nature"; not only in the sense of a return to his own nature as it originally was, but also in the sense of a return by society to its natural state and in another, esoteric sense which we have yet to consider. He understands that a return to "natural" society means the rejection of "ingenious devices"—complex machinery of production and communication, which not only distract the individual from self-cultivation, but represent a form of excessive activity which inevitably defeats itself.
Once I saw a pair of road signs, one of which advertised a gasoline with "Total Power" and showed a car moving at breathtaking speed, while the sign next to it read "Speed Kills." The second sign was a "public service," paid for partly out of profits on the first. Lao Tzu could point to other and graver examples—like the farm surpluses which have resulted from improving our agricultural methods, the population problem which has resulted from improving the medical care of infants, the survival problem which has resulted from improving our knowledge of nuclear physics. In every case, Lao Tzu would
counsel us to abandon our ingenious devices, our clever ideas, our improvements, and follow nature.
To follow nature means being ready to accept her support and her cruelty as one. Gentle rains or spring floods, the havoc of a landslide or the beauty of mountain mist—all are parts of the whole to which the Sage himself belongs. This whole, this Mother, is something he both reveres and loves. Whether Lao Tzu's Sage felt the same romantic love of nature as the later Taoists is uncertain.
The idea is not excluded by the indifference to scenery which the Sage displays on a journey. He "will not let himself be separated from his baggage-wagon: however magnificent the view, he sits quiet and dispassionate" (26W). The literal meaning of "baggage-wagon" is "covered-heavy," an allusion to the secret, solid part of his own nature. The man who does not let himself be separated from this original part of his nature is secure. He is what he is, and because he knows that he is what he is, he "cannot either be drawn into friendship or repelled, cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed, cannot either be raised or humbled, and for that very reason is highest [most honoured] of all creatures under heaven" (56W). Some may object that this makes the Sage sound Hke a monster again, beyond any human appeal. What, for instance, would the Sage do if he found himself in the position of the Good Samaritan? That is a good question. In fact it is the crux of the Christian objection to Lao Tzu. Would the Sage "do nothing" and let nature take its course? Of course he would. But it is part of man's nature to feel compassion and because he feels it, not because he wants to do what is right, he will help the man who fell among thieves. His help will be consistent with the doctrine of inaction which, as we have seen, means not to do nothing, but only to do nothing that is hostile or aggressive.
We have heard about the Uncarved Block and in what sense its holder is desireless, dispassionate, natural. But we have not yet learned from Lao Tzu what it is. He is not too helpful on this point, until we penetrate to the mystical level of his teaching, as we shall in the next section. He describes the Uncarved Block as blank, childlike, untutored, dark, nameless. It cannot be adequately described. To reach it is to "know oneself" (33), to "return to the root from which we grew," to "push far enough towards the Void, hold fast enough to Quietness" (16W). Pushing towards the Void suggests Chapter 14;
"Endless the series of things without a name on the way back to where there is nothing. They are called shapeless shapes; forms without form; are called vague semblances. Go towards them and you see no front; go after them and you see no rear. Yet by seizing on the Way that was you can ride the things that are now. For to know what once there was in the Beginning, this is called the essence of the Way" (14W). Mr. Waley comments that "what there was in the Beginning" refers macrocosmically to the universe, microcosmically to oneself.
It may have already occurred to the reader that parallels can be drawn between the phraseologies of Lao Tzu and the psychoanalyst. The concept of the Uncarved Block (p'u) sounds, for instance, like the unconscious mind. Both are blank and nameless: both are connected with intuition as opposed to discursive reasoning ["the perfect reckoner needs no counting sUps" (27) and "the Sage sees all without looking" (47)]: both offer us a way of doing things effortlessly ["the infant is able to scream all day without getting hoarse" (55)]. I do not think we can therefore say that p'u is identical with the unconscious. There may be some overlap in the two concepts. But the unconscious is an area of activity, whereas p'u is that area's original condition as Lao Tzu supposes it. If we set out to look for parallels between Taoism and psychoanalysis, I think we can find them more easily in method than in concept. I offer some for what they may be worth, partly because no one else, so far as I know, has done so, and partly because they illustrate the ingratiating ease with which Lao Tzu offers himself to all comers for adoption.
During the early phases of a patient's analysis, particularly of the "non-directive" school, the analyst plays a role not unlike that of the Taoist Sage. In listening to his patient, guiding him by question and by silence rather than by command or advice, he seems to be practicing a kind of "actionless activity." Thus he might be said to carry on a "wordless teaching" (2): indeed some analysts, like Dr. Ernest Jones, are reported to say only "good morning" and "good-bye." To them we can apply Lao Tzu's statement "From the Sage it is so hard at any price to get a single word that when his task is accomplished . . . everyone says 'It happened of its own accord'" (17W). Furthermore, the analyst "does not lay claim" to the patient nor "call attention to what he does" (2W). Through transference he "takes upon himself
the evils [of the patient]" (78): his "high rank hurts keenly as our bodies hurt" (13W). He absorbs aggression.
In his own analysis the analyst has perfected himself by reaching his original nature. "The perfected man must be the teacher of the unperfected, and the unperfected man must be the stock-in-trade of the perfected" (27). Lao Tzu says that the teacher's duty is to "teach things untaught, turning all men back to the things they have left behind" (64W). Many analysts, Sage-like, have "discarded morality," recognized the relativity of right and wrong, and help their patient to do the same. In the early phases of therapy, at least, they do not goad him with "favour and disgrace." What is their goal? Is it not really their goal to leave the patient contented, quiet, ready to "fill his belly"—"all tangles untied, all glare tempered, all dust smoothed" (4W) ? Chapter 37 puts it in another way: "The blankness of the Unnamed brings dis-passion: to be dispassionate is to be still" (37W).
How does the psychoanalyst come to understand his patient? Often, it seems, by "banishing wisdom, discarding knowledge" (19W). As Dr. Theodor Reik puts it, the analyst must "forget what he has learned ... in courses, lectures, seminars, and books . . . and listen to his own response." Thus he can lead the patient back to "the root from which we grew" (16W). For "to know what once there was in the beginning, this is called the essence of the Way" (14W). It might all be summarized in the words of Chapter 71: "The Sage's way of curing disease also consists in making people recognize their diseases as diseases and thus ceasing to be diseased" (71W).
We shall conclude this chapter by trying to visualize the man who "holds the Uncarved Block." How does he appear ? Lao Tzu gives us two wonderful and poetic portraits. The first shows him as he appears to himself while still in search of his original nature.
All men, indeed, are wreathed in smiles,
As though feasting after the Great Sacrifice,
As though going up to the Spring Carnival.
I alone am inert, Hke a child that has not yet given sign;
Like an infant that has not yet smiled.
I droop and drift, as though I belonged nowhere.
All men have enough and to spare;
I alone seem to have lost everything. Mine is indeed the mind of a very idiot. So dull am I.
The world is full of people that shine; I alone am dark.
They look lively and self-assured; I alone, depressed. I seem unsettled as the ocean; Blown adrift, never brought to a stop. All men can be put to some use; I alone am intractable and boorish. But wherein I most am different from men Is that I prize no sustenance that comes not from the Mother's breast (20W).
The other, equally poetic portrait shows the Sage who has attained p'u as he appears to others.
Circumspect [he seems], like one who in winter crosses a
stream. Watchful, as one who must meet danger on every side. Ceremonious, as one who pays a visit; Yet yielding, as ice when it begins to melt. Blank, as a piece of uncarved wood; Yet receptive as a hollow in the hills. Murky, as a troubled stream— Which of you can assume such murkiness, to become in
the end still and clear.? Which of you can make yourself inert, to become in the
end full of life and stir.? Those who possess this Tao do not try to fill themselves
to the brim, And because they do not try to fill themselves to the brim They are like a garment that endures all wear and need
never be renewed (15W).
Thus far, in reconnoitering the doctrines of the Tao Te Ching, we might compare ourselves to travellers through mountainous country in autumn, when the clouds hang low. We have seen only gentle slopes and valley land—very much like the country we are accustomed to at home. There have been novelties, but nothing transcendental. Where are those mysterious peaks for which Lao Tzu is famous ?
They have been right above us all the time, shrouded in obscurity. Let us go up and explore them. As we chmb, it may be difficult to understand the terrain. The difficulty will vanish, however, if we remember that the peaks we shall find there poking up through the clouds are continuations of the gende slopes around us here. That is to say, the doctrines of Lao Tzu have a different look at different levels: his words have a different application at different levels. But they are the same doctrines, the same words.
Now these levels are not abrupt like steps, but are a continuous grade. There is an illusion of abruptness in the cloud—the cloud of mystical experience—that we must penetrate in our climb to the peaks of doctrine. This cloud may tempt us to divide Lao Tzu's world in two—one hidden, accessible only by trance or analyzing the reports of trance (as we are about to do), and the other, quite separate world we see around us down here. To accept such a demarcation makes the Tao Te Ching impossible to understand. Usually Lao Tzu speaks at all levels simultaneously, though sometimes he seems to jump back and forth, and indeed he can do so in the middle of a sentence. In his book, ethics, spiritual discipline, and metaphysics blend into one another: the reader can never say with assurance, "This statement is esoteric, that statement is common sense." For example, inaction is a practical, testable doctrine of ethics; it is also part of the regime that leads to trance experience of Tao; it is also an attribute of Tao itself.
The two preceding sections, by keeping the field of vision rigidly confined to the ethical level of the Tao Te Ching, presented it falsely. Henceforward, from new vantage points, perhaps we shall be able to
50
see all levels at once. But what is ahead of the reader now is more arduous and more problematical than the teachings of Lao Tzu that he has encountered so far.
Most of us are familiar with the general proposition advanced by Oriental mystics: that everything is God and that by contemplation a man can first perceive and then become identical with God. "Every man," says the Sufi Gulshan-Raz, "whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that there is no being save only One. ... In his divine majesty the me and we, the thou, are not found, for in the One there can be no distinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and this echo: / am God: he has an eternal way of existing and is no longer subject to death." Or, as the Upanishads put it, "That art Thou."
A discussion of mysticism usually begins with the admission that adequate discussion is impossible. Likewise, if we go to the mystic himself and ask for information about what he has experienced, he will tell us that he cannot tell us, and then he will tell us. St. John of the Cross writes: "We receive this mystical knowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images, in none of the sensible representations which our mind makes use of in other circumstances. Accordingly in this knowledge, since the senses and the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor impression, nor can we give any account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of the soul." Having said that he cannot furnish a likeness, St. John immediately furnishes one: "The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the more solitary it is."
Lao Tzu is just as inconsistent. He begins his whole book with the sentence, "The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao." In Chapter 56 he seems to impale himself on a monstrous dilemma when he announces, "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know."
But we must not make fun of mystics for inconsistency. If they said no more about their vision than what they could put into precise, apposite terminology, we would learn nothing at all. We must be content with their symbols and similes. We are—to use an analogy that
many mystics have used—like a class-room of congenitally blind children hearing a lecture on water colours. The lecturer cannot tell us how colours look; he cannot even prove to us that colours exist. The best he can do is to translate colours into terms of other senses and emotions—soft or hard, quiet or violent, depressed or joyful. Or, if he followed Chinese tradition, he might offer some much odder equivalences: red, he would say, is the colour of seven, green the colour of eight, and yellow the colour of five. All this would be about as helpful to his blind auditors as the mystical hints of the enlightened to the unenlightened.
The unenlightened—and again I suppose this term includes most of us—are skeptical. Confronted by a man who says he frequently sees or is God, we turn upon him with questions. "What is God like.?" we ask, "Can you define Him? Can you say where He came from and what He does ? Just how did you manage to acquire this extraordinary information? If, as you say, you became God, what are you doing here? And how do you know it isn't all a lot of imagination?"
These questions can be addressed to Lao Tzu as well as to any other mystic who claims special knowledge and experience. Let us examine his answers and see how they compare with the answers given by his peers.
First, what is Tao ?
The references to Tao in the Tao Te Ching are obscure and in a low tone. They lack the fire, lyricism, and definition which generally characterize mystical writing. There is no sentence like that in the Upanishads which cries out: "Listen, O Ye children of the Immortal, I have found the One Great Absolute Being respendent in his glory beyond a mass of darkness." Instead, Lao Tzu mutters in Chapter 1 about "the Mystery or rather the 'Darker than any Mystery,' the Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences" (IW). In Chapter 6 he amplifies this by telling us that the Doorway is attached to the Mysterious Female who appears to be identical with the Valley Spirit. It is not even clear whether he is talking about Tao at all.
Most mystics and metaphysicians define God in terms of various attributes. Sankara, for instance, the ninth-century Vedantist, writes thus of the union of soul with Being: "I am pure ... I am eternal . . . the ultimate truth . . . the very image of consciousness and bliss." We are all familiar with definitions of God like the Universal or In-
finite or Absolute or Pure Being or Pure Reality or Pure Beauty or Pure Love or Substance or Essence or the /i// or the Owe.
Lao Tzu makes little use of such vocabulary. He does call Tao "Being" and sometimes "One," in what sense we shall presently see.
Another traditional way of defining God is to say what He is not. In the pseudo-Dionysius, for instance, we find:
The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither stands, nor moves, nor rests. ... It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it.
It is to this negative variety that Lao Tzu's only extensive definition of Tao belongs. In Chapter 25 he writes:
There was something formlessly fashioned.
That existed before heaven and earth;
Widiout sound, without substance.
Dependent on nothing, unchanging.
All pervading, unfailing.
One may think of it as the mother of all things under
heaven. Its true name we do not know; "Way" is the by-name that we give it (25W).
Does Lao Tzu reach that final stage of negative definition where God is "nothingness," as Blessed Henry Suso called him, or, in the words of the great eighth-century theologian, John Scot Erigena, "per excellentiam nihilum non immerito vocitatur".? We can best answer this by taking up the question, "Where did Tao come from.''"
From scattered references in the Tao Te Ching it is possible to deduce a scheme of creation, or cosmogony. But we must not be stricter in deducing than Lao Tzu in writing, and that, as we know, is not strict at all. He uses Tao in several senses and for each sense he uses several synonyms.
In Chapter 4, after praising Tao, he asks,^ "Was it too the child of something else? I do not know. But as a substanceless image it existed before the Ancestor" (4W). In Chapter 25, after explaining how the universe is conditioned by Tao, he states that "Tao is conditioned by the Self-so." Tao, then, is not the ultimate. There may have been Something Else before Tao and there is even now Something Else beyond Tao on which it depends.
Chapter 40 allows us to go a few steps further. From it we know that "Heaven and Earth and the Ten Thousand Creatures were produced by Being; Being was produced by Non-Being." Since we know from other chapters (42, 51) that it was also Tao which produced the Ten Thousand Creatures, we may equate Tao with Being. As to the production of Being from Non-Being, we met this phrase earlier and in another connection. Chapter 2 gives it an epistemological sense: one can only know a thing in relation to what it is not. ("It is because everyone under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty that the idea of ugliness exists.") There are several ways these ideas can be utilized in formulating a cosmogony. We can, for instance, imagine a universe packed with primordial substance. Since there is no space—no nothing —to differentiate substance from substance, an observer would not see anything. He would, in effect, see nothing. But now, within this primordial substance, interstices develop. Things take shape. What makes them take shape? The nothing that separates them one from the other. And so out of "nothing," nothing has produced everything. Sophistical as this may sound, I think it is some such picture of creation which Lao Tzu had in mind. Like many archaic pictures of creation, it is vague enough to suggest some of the concepts of contemporary physics. The idea, for instance, of a "nothing" which is packed with substance and out of which the universe was created, would have some resemblance to the "hole theory" of P. A. M. Dirac.^
^ Actually, Mr. Waley supplies the interrogative. The literal translation is simply "I do not know whose son it is."
^Mr. Dirac, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, first published the "hole theory" at Cambridge in 1931. It postulated that the vacuum between the particles of the universe might be solidly packed with electrons in a negative energy state. "Energy state" here does not mean electrical charge. The electron has a fixed negative charge, but its energy state may be either plus or minus, according to Dirac, and the number of these possible energy states is infinite. The plus energy states of a given electron vary according to its position in the atomic solar system. No two electrons in a single atom can occupy the same energy state. Each seeks to reach one lower and
In any case the picture which emerges from the Tao Te Ching is clear in its outUnes: first Tao and then the physical universe—Heaven and Earth and the Ten Thousand Creatures—arose from Something Else.^ This Something Else Lao Tzu variously describes as the Self-So, the Nameless, or Non-Being. It is symbolized by the Mysterious Female because of the birth motif and by the Valley Spirit because of the motif of emptiness. It "never dies." It is outside time, standing ready, perhaps, to produce new universes ruled by Tao and maintaining the Tao that maintains this one.
But in making this distinction between Tao and the Something Else, we have ignored a mystery like that of the Trinity. Let us look again at Chapter 1, this time in a more literal translation.
"The Tao that can be Tao'd is not the Absolute Tao {ch'ang tao) The name that can be named is not the absolute name."
Tao and the Something Else are, I think, only aspects of one another. The Something Else is the ch'ang tao —the Eternal, Unvarying, Absolute Tao. It is a Way that we cannot follow. We cannot even give it a
is only prevented from doing so because the lower is occupied. Thus each electron, if it could, would cross the boundary of zero energy state and go into the vacuum out of "existence." This may actually happen when an electron collides with a positron, for both disappear, with a release of gamma radiation. Conversely, when a photon of gamma radiation gets far enough into the strong electromagnetic field of an atomic nucleus, the photon disappears and an electron and positron are "created." The explanation of this coming into and going out of existence is a simple one. The positron is really no more than the "hole" left in the substratum when the electron jumps up out of it (that is why this is called the "hole theory"). The height of the jump corresponds exactly to the energy of the photon of gamma radiation which is absorbed when the jump takes place. Being an electron's "hole," the positron's charge must naturally be opposite to the electron's—which it is. There are other pairs of such oppositely charged particles of the same mass, e.g., positive and negative protons and mesons. Each may reflect the existence of a substratum.
Dirac's theory can be interpreted to support the picture of creation outlined above. Originally the universe was a perfect vacuum. Nothing "existed." All particles occupied a negative energy state. Then something happened. Particles were forced from a minus to a plus energy state; they became separated from the substratum and from each other; and so the universe came into being.
Lao Tzu had no better reason to say that Being came from Non-Being than Democritus had for saying that matter consists of qualitatively similar atoms of diflerent shapes. Still, if Dirac proves to be right, Lao Tzu (to the extent that his concept has anything in common with Dirac's) will deserve credit for a first guess.
'Cf. Chapter 42. "Tao gave birth to the One; the One gave birth successively to two things, three things, up to Ten Thousand" (42W).
name. And when we give the name "Tao" to its manifest aspect, it is not a true name, for "its true name we do not know" (25W). Therefore this nameable Tao can itself be called nameless, as it is in Chapter 41.
But let us return to Chapter 1. It continues:
"It was from the nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang; The named is but the mother of the Ten Thousand Creatures."
These two lines tell us little more than we have already learned. The physical universe as a whole—Heaven and Earth— was produced from Non-Being, or Tao's nameless aspect. All the things which come and go within the universe—the Ten Thousand Creatures— are produced by Being, or the Tao that can be named (here and in Chapters 52 and 59 the name given it is "Mother").
At this point an objection can be raised. Our interpretation is inconsistent, strictly speaking, with Chapter 40, which describes Being as the producer both of the physical universe and everything in it. The universe should have been produced by either one aspect of Tao or the other. Which is it? Let us remember our resolve not to construe Lao Tzu too strictly. What he has in mind is probably something like this: Nameless Tao could not produce the universe without becoming nameable. Anything "here" can be given a name. Nameable Tao, in a sense therefore, came into existence simultaneously with the physical universe and yet, in another sense, it antedated and produced the universe since it produced everything in it. To wonder how Nameable Tao could be both simultaneous with the universe and antedate it is like wondering whether the law of gravity antedated matter.
Chapter 1 continues:
Truly, "Only he that rids himself forever of desire can
see the Secret Essences"; He that has never rid himself of desire can see only
the Outcomes. These two things issued from the same mould, but
nevertheless are different in name. This "same mould" we can but call the Mystery, Or rather the "Darker than any Mystery," The Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences (IW).
These lines are less formidable when we assume that Tao has two aspects—its public aspect the order of the universe, its secret aspect the Something on which that order depends. All of us are aware of the order of the universe. How are we aware of it ? By watching the things going on around us—the "outcomes," the Ten Thousand Creatures. Few of us are aware of the Something on which it depends. Even if we rid ourselves of desire and entered trance, we would still not sense it directly. We would only sense what Lao Tzu calls its "Secret Essences." What are the Secret Essences ? They are the manifestations of the inner aspect of Tao, just as the Outcomes are the manifestations of its outer aspect. These two aspects are one and this Two-in-one is the mystery which permits Lao Tzu to say that both Outcomes and Secret Essences "issue from the same mould."
To understand this "mould" better, let us review its dual sets of names: first, the Nameless, the Tao, the Self-so, Non-Being, the Mysterious Female, the Valley Spirit; and next in its other aspect, Tao, Being, the Mother, the One.
By "the One" Lao Tzu means Tao not only as a cosmogonal unity, but as a continuous field in which all physical and moral contraries are reconciled, in which up and down, good and evil disappear. This unity of contraries, including good and evil, was recognized by many of the Indian schools and in the West by mystics Uke Plotinus, Erigena, and Nicholas of Cusa.
Also under the epithet of "the One," Lao Tzu gives the clearest answer to our question "What does Tao do?"
As for the things that from of old have understood
the One— The sky through such understanding remains limpid, Earth remains steady, The spirits keep their hoUness, The abyss is replenished, The ten thousand creatures bear their kind. Barons and princes direct their people. It is the One that causes it.
Were it not so limpid, the sky would soon get torn. Were it not for its steadiness, the earth would soon
tip over,
Were it not for its holiness, the spirits would soon
wither away. Were it not for its replenishment, the abyss would
soon go dry. Were it not that it enabled the ten thousand creatures
to bear their kind, They would soon become extinct (39).
This chapter is Lao Tzu's clearest definition of Tao as the order of the universe. It is the laws of nature, the God that exists by the argument from design; not identical with the universe and yet at work everywhere within it. Tao is impersonal, "unkind," * and beyond the reach of prayer. It is real, but no more real than the universe it governs. Here are two important contrasts with other mystical traditions. In the West, mystics generally regard the universe as real and God as personal, while most Eastern traditions regard God as impersonal and the universe as illusory.
Let us pursue for a moment this comparison with other systems of thought. We can find similarities as well as contrasts. We might call Tao similar, for instance, to the Brahman of the Upanishads, whose spark in the individual would therefore be p'u. Some scholars have compared Tao to the apex of Plato's hierarchy of ideas, which is perceptible to the eye of the mind and to reach which one goes back past increasingly "formless forms." There is a certain resemblance between Tao and the Logos of Neo-Platonism, whose emanations are then the Ten Thousand Creatures. "Tao gave them birth; the power of Tao reared them, shaped them according to their kinds, perfected them, giving to each its strength [or essence]" (51W). Tao might be said to resemble the potential existence or prime matter of Aristotelianism. In its aspect of Non-Being, it includes everything that ever was (and has now returned to non-being) and everything that ever will be (and has not yet left non-being). Lao Tzu, when he tells us to deal with things while they are yet in Non-Being (64) may be saying more than that prevention is better than cure. He may be urging us to deal with them when we return to Non-Being in trance: that is where we can find them. This suggests a doctrine held by several schools of Buddhism : that past, present, and future are equally real and coexistent. It
* See the discussion of "unkindness" on pp. 43-44.
makes Non-Being positive, for Non-Being is not what never is, but only what is not at this instant—and that is practically everything. And so forth. Such comparisons are interesting. But, like attempts to show that all great thinkers really thought the same thing, they can muddy rather than clarify our understanding, unless we are careful to think of differences as much as similarities. No two things, in the world or in our minds, are exactly the same. A duck is like a goose, but a duck is not a goose.
We might object to Lao Tzu's metaphysics as too speculative. But mystical, unlike academic, metaphysics is not at all speculative to its adherents. It is eminently empirical. When Lao Tzu tells us about the aspects of Tao, he is faithfully reporting what he has seen with his own eyes—his mind's eyes—in trance. Far from speculating, he offers first-hand experience. We should neither accept nor reject it until we have analyzed and compared it with other trance experience that we accept or reject. Let us recall our example of the lecturer on water colours at the school for the bHnd. His listeners may not be particularly impressed if he is also blind himself and is merely discussing colour as a quality which ought logically to exist. They will be impressed only if he can discuss colour as something he has seen. If they want to decide whether or not he is telHng them the truth about it, they will compare his statements with those of other colour-seeing individuals, seeking for inconsistencies and confirmations. That is what we shall try to do now—to compare, that is, the stages and content of trance in Lao Tzu and in other mystics.
Trance, of course, does not necessarily have stages. The form most common in the West is apparently spontaneous, as in the case of St. Paul on the road to Damascus or of converts at revival meetings. (I use "trance" in the broad sense of a state of awareness in which one senses what others do not.) But in the East mystics generally achieve trance by discipHne, or, some would say, by a prolonged and carefully regulated program of autosuggestion. Both this discipline and the trance it produces are divided into stages, giving rise to a complex taxonomy. It is not a uniform taxonomy. The Sufis, for instance, distinguish four stages; the Buddhists five; the Tantrists six. It will be convenient to our purpose to say that there are four and to think of them not as stages which must follow one another, but as varieties which can exist independently. Here, then, are the four: (1) visions
and voices; (2) non-perceptual awareness of God; (3) merging widi God; (4) cessation,
Visions have pictorial explicitness, like a dream. According to Al Ghazzali they "take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain their favours." The explicitness that we see in this quotation is not confined to religious visions. When Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma of the 1870's, went into trance, she would "go out and around and see a great deal. Sometimes I go into a house and view the conditions of the room. Sometimes I see persons and nothing more." In religious visions the explicitness can reflect a well-developed symbolism, as on the occasion when St. Teresa saw Sacred Humanity lying in the bosom of the Father, with the Father in the shape of a huge diamond whose brillance contained the universe.
A sense of brilliance is strikingly common in visions. The great light that shone around St. Paul blinded him for three days. For three days also after a vision the eyes of St. John of the Cross were weak as from the sun. Plotinus wrote: "Everything shines yonder." The first word in Pascal's account of a mystical experience is "Feu." Dr. R. M. Bucke, whose account of conversion is quoted by William James, writes: "All at once without warning of any kind I found myself wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city: the next I knew the fire was within myself." And throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Protestants at their revival or conversion saw a light "like the brightness of the sun." Even after conversion the whole world would sometimes appear bathed in light so that, as a farmer said, "every straw and head of the oats seemed as it were arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory."
When we turn from these images and this glory to Lao Tzu, what does he offer us in counterpart? Not a line. If he has ever had a vision, he does not allude to it. If he has ever found Tao to be luminous, he tells us the opposite: "its rising brings no light, its sinking no darkness" (14W). Possibly he believed, as did St. John of the Cross, that sensible imagery is harmful to mystical development. Possibly illumination occurs only with ecstasy, and, as we shall see, there is no indication that Lao Tzu ever felt ecstasy.
In the second stage of trance, the mystic leaves visions and voices behind him and reaches an immediate awareness of God. "You will ask me what it was that I saw," writes St. Angela of Foligne. "It was Himself, and I can say nothing more. It was a fulness, it was an inward and overflowing light for which neither word nor comparison is worth anything. I saw nothing corporeal." If we turn from St. Angela to a recent Protestant account of ecstacy furnished by William James, to whom I am indebted for many of the illustrations in this section, we read that "God had neither form, colour, odour, nor taste: moreover, the feeling of his presence was accompanied by no determinate localization." It is only a little way from this lack of localization to the sense of oneness, the compelling sense, as St. Angela wrote, that " 'This whole world is full of God.'" Once the oneness of God is perceived, there can be little holding back from union.
Union with God, which I have termed the third stage of trance, is commonly considered the supreme mystical act. For then the individual becomes, as the Sufis put it, "the paragon of perfection, the object of worship, the preserver of the universe." This is evidently an experience more ecstatic than visions or awareness—so ecstatic that it has often been described in the language of sexual love. The opening line of the Song of Solomon, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth," has been the text for much Christian contemplation. St. Teresa, after telling how in her ecstasies an angel used to plunge his fire-tipped golden dart into her heart, writes: "There takes place then between the soul and God such a sweet love transaction that it is impossible for me to describe what passes." This love transaction resembles the "delicious death" of sexual climax. St. Teresa writes further: "Thus does God when he raises a soul to union with himself suspend the natural action of all her faculties. She neither sees, hears, nor understands so long as she is united with God." The pleasure is even physical. It "penetrates to the very marrow of the bone." Curiously enough, this pleasure, like the masochist's, may be connected with pain. St. John of the Cross, who elsewhere condemns ecstasy as "spiritual gluttony," praises the enrichment of an intuition of God and says that it may be followed by "a strange torment—that of not being allowed to suffer enough." Suso reports that during a rapture in which "his soul was joyful and content ... his body suffered so much . . .