Tao Te Ching (book)

THIS ARTICLE FOLLOWS THE PRINCIPLE OF WU WEI, SO IT IS BOTH UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND NOT UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

The Tao Te Ching, Daodejing, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing (simplified Chinese: 道德经; traditional Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng), also simply referred to as the Laozi (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ), is a Chinese classic text.

The Tao Te Ching and Theosophy

HPB

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C. Jinarajadasa

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Richard Brooks

Many Theosophists have fallen in love with the little Chinese classic known as the Tao Te Ching and ascribed to the sage Lao Tzu. We see in it an echo of many familiar Theosophical ideas. Others share our enthusiasm, however, since it has been translated into English more often than any other book except the Bhagavad Gita. But what, exactly, is the nature of this little book? And why does it fascinate people?

First of all, it is a short "classic" (ching). It is traditionally divided into eighty-one chapters, which are further organized into two sections, one dealing with tao (literally "way") and one dealing with te (usually translated "virtue," but conveying the idea of "moral force"). There are several different versions of the text, but each contains about five thousand Chinese characters. That makes it a manageable task for a reader.

Second, it is often cryptic. Many passages are susceptible of quite different translations. Not only does this offer a challenge to any translator or reader, it also leads to a feeling, on the part of many, that they know what it really means, whereas others have missed the point. In fact, Lao Tzu even encourages this attitude, when he says:

My words are easy to understand and easy to practice,
Yet no one under Heaven understands or practices them.
My words have an ancestor, my deeds have a lord.
Precisely because men do not understand this, they do not understand me.
Because those who understand me are few, I am greatly valued.
Therefore, the Sage wears a coarse woolen coat, and carrieshis jade underneath it. [ch. 70]

To have an "ancestor" and a "lord" was to be part of the social order, that is to say, not to be a wild man. Here it is a metaphorical way of claiming that the Tao Te Ching has a coherent teaching. The last line is a metaphor to say that the teaching is, however, hidden under an apparently rough exterior guise. These lines make an important point for those who cannot read Chinese: one should always be cautious about citing any translation uncritically. And that applies to those in this essay, which are all my own.

Third, where one finds general agreement among translators on the meaning of certain passages, the philosophic viewpoint that the Tao Te Ching offers is so strikingly different from our normal way of thinking that it causes us to sit back and reassess our own viewpoint--especially in the realms of metaphysics and interpersonal behavior. Again, Lao Tzu alludes to this when he writes:

When the best student hears of the Way (tao),

He practices it diligently. When the average student hears of the Way, He half believes, half disbelieves it. When the foolish student hears of the way, He laughs out loud.

If he didn’t laugh, it couldn’t be considered the Way! [ch.41]

That is true of most really profound teachings. And that is why Theosophists find the Tao Te Ching a book well worth careful, repeated study. But that’s just the beginning. We still haven’t answered the question what is its nature? The answer to this question is crucial to any translation, since it will color how certain important words, and even whole passages, are translated.

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The Theosophy of the Tao Te Ching, Part One Originally printed in the January - February 2001 issue of Quest magazine. Citation:Brooks, Richard W. "xxx." Quest 89.1 (JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2001): 18-21.