Lao Tzu, the “Old Master,” came and went like the wind in the sixth century B.C.E. But in his passing, he left behind an eternal thunderbolt. Born in the state of Ch’u half a century before the great K’ung-fu Tzu (Confucius 551–479 B.C.E.), his life is mostly legend. Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Records of the Historian (100 B.C.E.) place him in the Chou capital of Loyang, working as historical archivist for the court, having come from the rich delta of the Yellow River, where shamanism was a cultural influence. Legend has the old sage, by name Li Erh-tan, losing his library amidst the crumbling Chou empire and fleeing through Han-ku Pass in the West. There he was questioned by the border guard about the nature of tao and te. Lao Tzu, it is said, sat there one evening and wrote out the Five-Thousand-Word Classic in two parts before disappearing from the world (or into it). Chinese literary history overflows with such apocryphal legends.
In all likelihood, Lao Tzu compiled and edited the Tao Te Ching to a far, far greater extent than actually writing it. The text is full of folk sayings, lines from folk songs, and poetic and philosophical tidbits often surprisingly juxtaposed. There are variant texts and there is no certifiable “original” so the text of the Old Master himself has probably been corrupted. How much of this is the result of subsequent anonymous editors is anyone’s guess. For a couple of centuries, the most famous book in the Chinese pantheon didn’t even have a title.
When K’ung-fu Tzu met Lao Tzu (ca. 516 B.C.E.), the former was in his mid-thirties, the latter likely in his late eighties. Master K’ung remarked afterward, “He is a dragon among men.” The Old Dragon’s The-Way-and-Its-Virtue Classic has kept people intrigued and learning for two and a half millennia. When encountered, interpreted, and incorporated by early Chinese Buddhists over a thousand years ago, it produced Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism and the practice of what we know most commonly by its Japanese name, shikantaza, “deep sitting meditation.” Taoist-like use of paradox is everywhere evident in Zen koan or “case.” Taoism also grew into a religion and various kinds of cults, all sorts of sects that grew increasingly farther away from the teachings of Lao Tzu’s classic.
During the collapse of the Chou dynasty, there was a lot of philosophical argument between the Confucians and their main rivals, the Mohists. The Confucians believed in building the state through the structure of the family, and that filial piety and philosophical and familial lineation could best build a strong state. Mohists argued in favor of a meritocracy and against the idea that the emperor could actually be the “Son of Heaven.” Both philosophies were devoted to empire building. Both argued by quoting ancient sages, historical precedent, and anecdote.
Some scholars have claimed the Tao Te Ching as a philosophical argument against Confucianism, Mohism, and the whole notion of empire. Lao Tzu clearly preferred a smaller, less-threatening, less-powerful state. But unlike the philosophical texts of its time, the Tao Te Ching makes no reference to historical times or personae and cuts directly through the Chinese traditions of formal argument. Some have claimed the Tao Te Ching as a political or military treatise; others explicate its existential metaphysics. All are, to a degree, correct.
Master K’ung also spoke about a “way” in the Ta Hsueh (“Great Learning”) and elsewhere, but the Confucian way is one to be studied and attained; it is a purely human way based on the teachings and inspiration of old masters, a way of character building rooted in virtuous behavior. Lao Tzu’s Tao is more the “way-of-nature,” not something earned, but something inherently within all beings and to which we must become attuned if we are to live wisely and harmoniously for our time in this world. These two paths sometimes worked harmoniously, but often conflicted. “Give up all attainment!” Lao Tzu cries, and the good Confucian replies, “Agreed. To give up attainment is to attain transcendence. Such a person is fit to lead.”
The classical Chinese mind enjoyed the arguments between the primary schools of philosophy, drawing from each, and, centuries later, adding the fundamental philosophy of Buddhism to create san chiao, three interlocking, cross-pollinating systems of thought from which arose the great cultures of the T’ang and other periods. In classical Confucian poets, one finds elemental Taoism; in Buddhist poets, elemental Confucianism. Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism became the intricately interwoven threads that produced the great complex fabric of classical Chinese culture.
Chuang Tzu says, “A great person’s words are as simple and clear as water, while a small one’s words are sweet as wine.” In our age of political and social doublespeak and psychobabble, his observation cuts two ways and rings as true as ever. Lao Tzu’s clear, simple language harbors great complexity within. Even the character for tao is simultaneously simple and complex. For centuries the character 
has been defined as containing two parts: 
a “head” (actually an “eye in a head”), and 
a “walking foot” meaning “to go.” Together, they mean “the way” (both physically and philosophically/metaphorically) or “the path or road.” If one removes the eyebrow over the eye, one gets the elements of the character “to see” 
(an “eye with legs”).
The Taoist scholar-translator Red Pine, however, quotes a Taiwanese scholar who presents a persuasive case for the “head” in the character actually being the “moon” 
. He suggests, therefore, that the “way” of the Tao Te Ching is centered in coming into harmony with the tides, with the phases of the moon that bring light in darkness. Even the universal symbol for Taoism 
represents waxing and waning moons: in darkness, light; in light, darkness. To be in harmony with the Tao is to be “at one” with nature, both one’s own innermost nature and the “force of nature” we experience everywhere. These are not two things. To follow the Tao is to embody the Tao. Life is transient, but as we more fully experience the Tao, each moment blossoms.
The te 
is most often translated as power or virtue (virtue in its root, Latinate sense, a cousin to virile, suggesting fecundity as well as strength). It conveys a sense of ethical or moral power. The elements in the character are “walking legs” on the left, and on the right top, “straight,” with “mind” below. There is the suggestion of the mind moving straight forwardly, directly. Te conveys energy and dynamism, the forces of nature.
Lao Tzu is a great subversive. He’s not interested in whether a ruler has the Confucian “mandate of heaven” or was born to high station. The filial sentiments are neither strictly maternal nor paternal, but are manifest everywhere, “thirty spokes converging at a single hub.” From the great “feminine mystery” of origin, the Tao flows, the seasons turn, the moon waxes and wanes, while in the paternally dominated world of today, the political arguments and the war-making of nations continue, unabated since his day. “Civilizations are as short-lived as our days,” the late Nobel poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote. Lao Tzu insists, “The world is feminine, / feminine in constant stillness / overcoming the masculine.”
And our place in that world must embody that feminine stillness, the desire to listen; real peace is learning to embody the force of change while resisting the temptations of mere power.
As the Chinese say, the sage “wears rough clothes,” eschewing prosperity, preferring rather to preserve the “jewel” (or literally “jade”) within—the jewel that is the te of Tao. The sage “acts without presumption, and accomplishes without acclamation.”
The Old Master’s masterpiece is one of the most frequently translated books in all of history, in part because it is simply impossible to translate into a Western language in a strictly literal way. Too many words and phrases convey plurisignation, multiple meanings. Some translations go wrong by trying to explain too much within the text, thereby losing the poetry of terse clarity so often found in the original; and some bear faint resemblance to the original.
Poetry is itself a Way. It thrives on image and metaphor and juxtaposition and rhythm. It requires alert, active reading, and benefits from being spoken as it is read, in order to properly engage the ear as well as the eye with the embodiment of language. The rhythm of the heartbeat and the rhythm of the breath are the foundations of all spoken language and are important to every poem. Enunciation, phrasing, lineation, punctuation (in English), rhyme and slant-rhyme, the sounds of syllables, vowel-againstconsonant—all contribute to a fuller understanding of the language in hand. They are its pleasure as well as its genius—and all languages express genius, each in its own way. Each poem is a body of music.
This a poet’s translation, one that adheres very closely to the original, almost word by word, while replicating as much of the sheer poetry of the original as I could convey. The way and the power of its virtue: to be in the service of such a text is to be in the presence of ancient masters in the Confucian sense as well. Lao Tzu is good company as well as a wise teacher. He likes to talk about human nature and politics. He is congenially available and convivial. But he also reminds us that he is the master and we are here to learn.
Civilizations rise and fall, and the wisdom of the Old Master is ever-present, seeing us through it all. The agonies of his time and the agonies of our time are not so different. The way to inner (and social) peace and harmony remains the same. To follow the way, one must first become the thunderbolt that lights the sky and shakes one’s world free of brutal illusions before embodying the calm. Twenty-five hundred years later, the message of the Tao Te Ching is every bit as revolutionary as the day Lao Tzu, legend says, wrote it out and simply vanished. Every decent translator would love to become so transparent, to vanish . . . if not from, then into the poetry.
—Sam Hamill
Kage-an, December 2004