Laotse
IT is A PLEASANT legend. Lao Tan, affectionately nicknamed Laotse, the “Old Boy”, full of years and wisdom and service to his Emperor, was leaving by water buffalo for the far mountains to spend the remainder of his life in contemplation. At the gate to the Pass of Han-Ku, he was stopped by the gatekeeper, Yin Hsi, himself a philosopher, who engaged him in conversation and persuaded him finally to pause long enough to write down the essence of his lifetime of thinking. Affable and serene, Laotse turned back and in three days’ time wrote the eighty-one stanzas which comprise the classic mystical scripture of the Chinese, the Tao Te Ching. Presumably he entrusted the verses to Yin Hsi and then, discharged of his obligation to mankind, climbed once more upon his buffalo and rode off into the hills. Some say he lived to be 160; others claim 200 years. It is not known where he died.
As is often the case with holy men about whom not many facts are known, legends grew up around the figure of Laotse. The most fanciful one being that his mother, after a supernatural conception, carried him in her womb for sixty-two years so that he was born already white-haired and wise. The date of his birth is set at 604 B.C.
The most credible biography of Laotse appears in the historical records of Szema Chien, written about 100 B.C. According to Chien, the philosopher was born in Honan Province and became historian and librarian of the Emperor’s royal library at the Court of Chow. Chien makes note of the fact that “Laotse was a superior man who liked to keep in obscurity. He taught that the transformation of man takes place, as a matter of course, from being pure and still.”
It is fairly well substantiated that Laotse had at least one interview with Confucius in 517 when the Old Boy was 87 and the younger man 35, after which meeting Confucius is quoted as saying, “This day I have seen Laotse. This day I have seen a dragon. Birds have wings to fly with, fish have fins to swim with, wild beasts have feet to run with. For feet there are traps, for fins nets, for wings arrows. But who knows how dragons surmount wind and cloud into heaven?” Who knows, if not Laotse, the Old Dragon? And where can one learn, if not in the Tao Te Ching?
Did Laotse write the book? It is a controversy that has been occupying scholars for centuries. Laotse himself had great disdain for scholars and their controversies. He would be the first to say that from the point of view of a spiritual aspirant, it does not matter in the least who wrote the Tao Te Ching. There it is. Make use of it. As a matter of fact, whether or not he was the one who put down the words, the teaching must be an accretion, as the Upanishads are, of hundreds of years of mystical thought and practice. And, as one commentator, Huston Smith, says, it is a book that can be read in half an hour, or in a lifetime.
The word Ching means authoritative scripture. The book is divided into two parts, the first discussing the nature of the Tao, the second, the use of Te or Tao’s power. The character of the book is aphoristic and lends itself to innumerable interpretations. There are at least thirteen versions in English alone, each one with its author’s individual annotations, definitions, clues. It seems that a new translation has almost always been made because of someone’s dissatisfaction with all other translations.
The trouble arises at the very beginning with the attempt to define the indefinable Tao. Each translator seems to think that the Tao must be explained before the translation begins. The trouble is compounded by the fact that Chinese words, perhaps more than the words of any other language, trail with them subtle emanations of other meanings, implications, connotations, even puns. The result is that in many versions, the translator’s intro duction comes out longer than the Tao Te Ching itself. So, it becomes a matter of individual interpretations of wide latitude, and we who do not know Chinese, must search among the translator for the man who is most like us. Or better yet, study them all.
But the fact is that every reader, even the Chinese, comes ro the Tao Te Ching from where he stands on the spiritual ladder, brings to it just as much understanding as he is capable of, finds in it just as much help as he is presently able to assimilate. Moreover, without doubt, it grows in him and he grows in it. Every time he reads it, he finds greater meaning. One can well imagine a translator becoming dissatisfied with his own translation and trying anew.
LAOTSE knew the incurable propensity of men to define. His very first sentence reads, “If the Tao could be comprised in words, it would not be the indefinable Tao.” No one pays any attention to that warning. The most usual English word for Tao is “The Way”. There is a reluctance even to write it down, so inadequate is it. For the Tao is the path but also the goal; it is the Perennial Philosophy, it is the ground of all existence, the essence of being, it is the greatest of the great, the smallest of the small, immanent as well as transcendent, eternally existent, and so forth. By using such equally inadequate words, we have failed with all the others, and like them attempted to express the inexpressible – the boldest of all contradictions. On the other hand, if we are to use words at all, perhaps the more names the better. When the color wheel has all the colors on it, it spins white.
The Tao is unmoving. But it is inseparable from Te, its creative power, like fire and its power to burn, like water and its wetness. Te brings forth the “ten thousand creatures” which comprise the whole universe.
Well, if Laotse does not define the Tao, at least he spends much time and many verses in examining it and singing its praises.
There is a force at work in the Universe that guides all things. To imitate this force is called ‘falling in line with the Way of Heaven.’ It is the way of this force to yield. It is the way of this force to endure. Holding fast to the ‘Way’, all things are accomplished by this force. The force does not strive, yet all things obey it. Mystery of mysteries, this force is the Mother of all things; mystery of mysteries, he who knows it knows the Eternal.
If one looks for Tao, there is nothing solid to see; if one listens for it, there is nothing loud enough to hear. Yet if one uses it, it is inexhaustible.
The ‘Way’ cannot be escaped. All creatures obey the laws of heaven though they know it not. The law of ‘reap what you sow’ is a Universal law; though it does not contend, enforce or insist, it is ever in effect. Sow violence, and violence is gained; sow anger, and anger is bred within; sow confusion, and confusion is your home. But he who sows peace, receives peace, lives in peace, and is able thus to sow much more of peace.
Tao is eternal but has no name.
WITH this lure, Laotse goes on to teach about the Te and its use. According to him, ignorance and troubles arise from the fact that men have separated themselves from their divine source. Spiritual practice consists in learning to live in harmony with the Tao, to give up ego and self-will, and lay ourselves open to the workings of Te within us.
The sage holds to the inner-light, and is not moved by the passing show. Quiet and serene he watches the merchants with their merchandise pass by, watches the seller and the buyers parading to the market and returning to their homes. Quiet and serene, he is fixed upon the Eternal. When the moment comes, he will do what is right without pausing to consider its rightness; when the moment comes he will act for the welfare of all.
What is the first step? “To know men,” he says, “is to be wise; to know oneself is to be illumined.”
THERE are, of course, certain preparations for knowing one’s self. The wise man gives up extravagances, excesses, pride; he does not fight, does not boast, and puts himself in the background; he becomes humble like water which seeks the low places, becomes like the window which is useful because of its clarity, the pitcher because of its emptiness, becomes once more what the Chinese called the “uncarved block” of wood, a symbol of man’s pristine simplicity.
The next step is to be still. Laotse uses the familiar metaphor of muddy water which, when allowed to stand, becomes clear. “Tao can only be mirrored in a still pool.” He says:
Block the passages, shut the doors. Let all sharpness be blunted, all tangles untied, all glare tempered, all dust smoothed. This is called the mysterious levelling.
The result of the practice of this mysterious level ling will eventually be the melting of the little self into the great Tao. There, on that level, “all is peace, quiet ness, security.” Living in the presence of the Tao is the ultimate contentment. “Truly,” says Laotse, “he who has once known the contentment that comes simply through being contented, will never again be otherwise than contented.”
Laotse is once described by his great commentator, Chuangtse, as being found sitting like a log of wood as though he had no consciousness of any outside thing and were wandering somewhere all by himself. When the disciple commented in surprise on his state, Laotse is supposed to have replied, “True. I was wandering in the Beginning of Things.” And in a section of the Tao Te Ching, he himself speaks of the ecstasy called “Far Away Wandering,” which he says means returning to “What There was at the Beginning.”
LIKE all mystics, Laotse was eminently pragmatic, and, possessing the Tao, he used it with the greatest common sense. “Meditate on the Tao within yourself,” he says, “and the power of your personality will be true power.” He had no liking for organized administration, but put his faith in intuition and conscience – in other words, in the Tao. He was absolutely nonviolent.
Force is not of the Tao, and what is not of the Tao quickly perishes.
Success may have been an unavoidable step. But the real success must not be one of force.
To be incapable of harm, remain low; to be incapable of being harmed, remain low. None are jealous of, none contend with, that which is below them. None seek to overthrow that which takes the lowest place. That is why the low endures; that is why the low is able to outlast the high. All pass over the low, without a glance, and so the low remains undisturbed by the world, remains at peace.
He believed that government should be in the hands of the sages, for then all action will be balanced, pure and effective. The sage knows “how to be on top without crushing the people with his weight. He speaks s though he were lower than the people, puts himself in the background. Thus they do not find him irksome. Because he does not strive, none can contend with him.” He had homespun comparisons: “Rule a kingdom gently, as you would fry a small fish.”
What kind of a man is he who has possessed himself of the Tao? He acts without personal motive. He is com passionate and forgiving, repaying evil with good, injury with kindness. In his description of the ideal man, we see Laotse himself- simple, spontaneous, serene, at the same time outspoken and powerful because of the Tao within him.
That which is steady and constant is to be trusted. That which is unwavering and Eternal is to be taken as a guide. He who is not shaken by the winds of passion, nor upset by the desires on this side or by the refusal of that on the other, he it is that has taken as guide the ‘Way’. All things come from Heaven, therefore the sage refuses nothing; therefore, he is overjoyed at nothing. The pleasant and the unpleasant, the day and the night, the winter and the summer, all are accepted in the same calm spirit. Into his hands come all things, and the sage offers thanks to Heaven for all.
In the face of misfortune, the Taoist is undisturbed; in the face of death, he is calm. As Chuangtse said quietly about the loss of his wife, “She has gone to rest awhile in the Inner Room. Shall I disturb her with my wailing and lamentation?” For Laotse, death was to be an endless enjoyment of Tao. And for us he has a reassuring word, “All eventually will come to Tao, as streams and torrents flow into the sea.”
This comprehensive view of life and death and freedom, then, is the Tao Te Ching. This is what the Old Boy wrote down in just three days’ time at the gate to the pass of his final liberation, and then rode off to his meeting with the Tao. There must have been a radiance about his going. He knew, and he said it plainly:
Tao is forever, and he that possesses it, though his body ceases, is not destroyed.
Nancy Pope Mayorga
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