The Way and The Life: Tao Te Ching

You may want to have a few coffees for this one… on a roll today it seems. I want to go out and do some juggling, but I feel moved to add this. Inspiration can be a hard task master….

When I was in London, I suddenly saw a sign that I had seen many times on the London Underground. It said Philosophy course. I went to this philosophy course and I found my inner feeling didn’t resonate with the conventional western philosophy. My feeling at the end of a few classes was it was all about ‘I am’. On some level I can understand that, the self understanding itself through thought and philosophy. Yet for me, I felt I was searching for something else, but didn’t know what it was. Then I made a decision to leave the course, on the way out I saw this obscure little book on the table. It drew me and I opened it. I saw little poems in it, as a poet it just naturally attracted me. When I read a few words I resonated and realised I had come to the course for this. I bought it and it became one of my teachers through life. The Chinese have great philosophers who are waiting to be resurrected in China today, they do know the Way and the Life. I had found the Tao Te Ching. Translates as The Way and The Life. This was the meaning of life I was looking for. The translations are many and different, the one I found was the Richard Wilhelm version and that is the one I provide below. I have pulled out aspects of this book to give you a run down on Lao Tzu, a very mysterious mystic (I nearly wrote philosopher), he knew he wasn’t pontificating.

Also if you want to know how it works in today’s world I would recommend you go and download an audio book of Byron Katie ‘A thousand names for joy’. She explains the Tao Te Ching but from an awakened perspective. What it really gives you is an insight into is those who have awakened, the message they send, it comes from the source of life. Not a bad place to start on our journey of earth changes.

Full text available http://www.acucentre.com.au/Classics/Daoism/DaoDeJing/WilhelmDaoDeJing1.pdf

Richard Wilhelm (trans.) (1985) LAO TZU | TAO TE CHING The
Book of Meaning and Life. Translation and commentary by Richard Wilhelm. Trans. into English by H.G. Ostwald. Arkana.

TAO TE CHING

No other work of Chinese literature has attracted as much attention as Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It has been translated more often than any other book except the Bible, and more commentaries have been written on it than any other Chinese classic. Both philosophical speculation and mystical reflection, the Tao Te Ching is about the harmony and flow of life and the necessity for affinity to it. Richard Wilhelm lived in China for more than twenty years, coming into contact with some of the major Chinese intellectuals of the early twentieth century. Throughout his life he produced a steady stream of translations from Chinese, the most notable being his translation of the I Ching (Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Richard Wilhelm, renowned for his superb translation and commentary on the I Ching, completed his translation of the Tao Te Ching in 1910 and it is only now appearing in the English language. His commentary helps us toward a more profound understanding of the work.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE DAO DE JING
Part I: DAO
Part II: DE, or LIFE

COMMENTARY: THE TEACHING OF LAO ZI

1. DAO
2. The phenomenal world
3. On the attainment of DAO
4. Worldly wisdom
5. State and society
6. Daoism after Lao Zi

The Dao De Jing in its epigrammatic brevity, is a Book of Wisdom almost as inexhaustible as the DAO itself of which it treats. The forceful and immediate effect it still exercises upon us today, nearly three thousand years after it was first written, derives from the fact that Lao Zi gives expression to his insights in elemental – one is tempted to say archetypal – images.

Nevertheless, some knowledge of the cultural background from which the text evolved and drew its strength will be helpful for a more profound understanding of the work. What DAO means to Chinese culture, and what it can mean to us was set forth by Richard Wilhelm in his commentary ‘The teaching of Lao Zi’, first published in 1925. This commentary has been included in this new edition for the first time, as a valuable complement to the text.

THE AUTHOR OF THE DAO DE JING

We know very little about the author of this collection of aphorisms in terms of historically established facts – so little, in fact, that Chinese scholarship has often been unable to find anything at all about him and has placed him and his work in the realm of mythology. Lao Zi himself, true to his nature, would hardly have objected to such treatment. He never attached any importance to fame, and knew well how to keep himself away from the world’s gaze, both during his lifetime and after his death. The Chinese historian Si Ma Qian (163-85 BC) has this to say about him: ‘He strove towards self-concealment and remaining without name’. We are indebted to Si Ma Qian for the essential data that we have on the author’s life, and with these we have to make do.

The name Lao Zi under which he is known in Europe is not, in fact, a personal name but an epithet which is best translated as ‘the Old One’.1

His family name was Li, which is a very common name in China. In his youth he was called ‘Er’ (‘ear’); as a scholar he was called ‘Bo Yang’ (‘count Sun’); and after his death he was given the name ‘Dan’ or ‘Lao Dan’ (literally ‘old long-ear’, which means ‘old teacher’). It seems that he came from what is now called the province of Henan, the southernmost of the so-called northern provinces. He was probably about fifty years older than Confucius, which would place his date of birth at the end of the seventh century BC.

During his lifetime he held the office of archivist at the Imperial Court, which was then at Luo-Yang, in what is now the province of Henan. It was at this time that Confucius is said to have met him, during his visit to the court. Much has been talked about this encounter between the two giants of Chinese letters. Apart from Si Ma Qian’s historical work, their meeting is mentioned directly or indirectly in the book Li Ji which is of the Confucian school of thought, and in the rather late Confucian School Tales, Jia Yu, as well as in relatively early Daoist literature. In any case, this encounter had already become so much a part of popular consciousness by the time of the Han dynasty (second century BC), that we find an illustration of it among the famous tomb sculptures in western Chaodong (near Jia Xiang); here Confucius is depicted handing a pheasant to Lao Zi as a token of respect. There are a multitude of reports about the conversation which took place on this occasion. All are agreed that Lao Zi spoke in a rather deprecatory manner about Confucius’s
honoured idols, the heroes of ancient times, and that he tried to convince him of the futility of his cultural pursuits. Confucius, on the other hand, expressed his respect for the sage’s unfathomable depths to his disciples – essentially by comparing him to the dragon who rises up to the clouds. The subject of the reported conversation can be gleaned to some extent from the pronouncements of the Dao De Jing, and from the tales about Confucius’s encounter with the ‘hidden sages’ in The Analects of Confucius, book XVIII. It is obvious that nothing reliable can be gathered about the actual wording of their discourse. Whether one should judge the whole conversation as belonging to the realm of fiction – as Chavannes does in his translation of Si Ma Qian (Les Mémoires historiques de Sé Ma Tsien, vol. V, Paris, 1905, pp. 300ff.) – or not, it is difficult to decide. There is cause for concern in the fact that it was not actually reported in the Analects, although several other similar encounters are mentioned.2

Lao Zi is said to have left the court when political conditions had deteriorated so far that there was no longer any hope for a restoration of order. According to a later tradition, he arrived at the provincial border at the mountain pass of Xian Gu, riding on the back of a black ox. The border official, Vin Xi, asked him to leave something in writing with him: at this request, Lao Zi wrote the Dao De Jing in 5,000 pictograms and gave it to him. He then went west, but nobody knows where. It is understandable that a further legend grew up around this tale, according to which Lao Zi went to India and got in touch with Buddha. In later disputations between Buddhism and Daoism, each side claimed that the founder of the other religion had learned from the founder of their own. In reality, however, the Xian Gu mountain is in the western part of what was then the state of Zhou, but no less in the heart of China. Any personal contact between Lao Zi and Buddha is completely out of the question: later conditions have been superimposed upon the historical picture.

But this was not the end of it. Just because the life of ‘the Old One’ offered so little to research, legends sprang up all the more freely. His personality reached gigantic proportions, and finally dissolved into a cosmic figure who was said to have appeared on earth at all kinds of times. The silly games played with the name Lao Zi (which can also be translated as ‘old child’) need not be dealt with in this context. It follows quite clearly that we cannot learn much about Lao Zi’s work from the fragmentary and uncertain facts of his life story. For the mystic, life histories – like all historical facts – dissolve into insubstantial apparitions. And yet: an original and inimitable personality speaks to us out of the aphorisms of the Dao De Jing. In our opinion this is the best proof of their historicity. But one must have the right kind of feeling for such things; there is no point in disputing them. In the end, the question is not of decisive importance. In any case: the Dao De Jing exists, no matter who wrote it. 

CONTENT (a must read)

The metaphysics of the Dao De Jing is built on a foundation of intuition which cannot be formulated into static or narrowly defined concepts. Lao Zi ‘painfully’ called this DAO (see section 25 of the text). From the outset the correct translation of this word has been the subject of a great deal of controversy. ‘God’, ‘Way’, ‘Reason’, ‘Word’, ‘Logos’ (λoγos) – these are just a few of the translations that have been suggested; while a number of writers have simply introduced the word ‘Dao’ into European languages without translating it. In point of fact, the term matters little since even for Lao Zi himself it was only a sort of algebraic symbol for something ineffable. It was for essentially aesthetic reasons that it seemed desirable to have a German word in a German translation.

I have chosen to use the word ‘Sinn’ throughout.3 I made this choice in the light of a passage in Goethe’s Faust (Part 1), in which Faust returns from his Easter outing, settles down to translate the New Testament and tries to render the opening words of the Gospel according to St John as ‘Im Anfang war der Sinn’.4 This would seem to be the translation that does most justice to the Chinese word DAO in its various meanings. The primary meaning of the Chinese word is ‘way’; it then broadens out into meaning ‘direction’, ‘state’ (as condition) and from there into ‘reason’, ‘truth’. Used as a verb the word means ‘to speak’, ‘to say’, or, metaphorically, ‘to lead’. We do not need to consider the outside meanings of ‘periphery/vicinity’, or ‘district’ here. The German word ‘Sinn’ also has the original meaning of ‘way’, ‘direction’. In addition, it implies: (1) ‘the inner man’s directedness towards something’; (2) ‘the inner man as the seat of consciousness, perception, thinking, reflection’ (cf. ‘der innere Sinn’, i.e. the intrinsic meaning); (3) ‘bodily sensation’, predominantly used in the plural (‘die Sinne’); (4) ‘meaning, idea, sense of words, images, actions’ (see M. Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch, Leipzig, 1906). Among all these meanings only the one mentioned under (3) should be rejected as inapplicable to DAO; in other respects, though, the concurrence of meaning between the words ‘Sinn’ and DAO is very comprehensive. In order to emphasise the algebraic character of the word, it appears in capital letters throughout this translation

The other term that occurs frequently in the Dao De Jing is DE. I have decided to translate this throughout, and to justify my decision give its Chinese definition: ‘What beings receive in order to come about is called DE’. I have therefore translated the word as ‘Life’ (following John 1:4: ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of Man’). It would have been equally possible to translate it as ‘nature’, ‘essence’, ‘spirit’, ‘power’ – translations which have been used frequently in the Analects of Confucius; but I have avoided these here because they clash with other terms used in the text. The common rendering ‘virtue’ – which is more appropriate to later treatises on morals – suits Lao Zi even less than it suits Confucius.

After these introductory remarks on the two key terms in the Dao De Jing, I shall now go on to seek out the basic points on which Lao Zi founded his metaphysics. Immediately we have to establish an essential difference between his views and those of ancient Greek philosophy. The ancient Greek philosophers were outward-looking, and searched for a cosmological principle; it is no accident that a large number of their works are entitled: ‘Peri physeos’. Nor is it surprising that as such a one-sided principle was pursued to its logical conclusion, its limitations had to become apparent at some point.  In this respect, it does not make a great deal of difference whether one adopts ‘water’, ‘fire’, ‘atoms’, ‘being’ or ‘spiritual matter’ as the basic principle: all of these are only one aspect of a total experience, whose practical application is necessarily limited. This is why the individual philosophical systems of the cosmological era of Greek philosophy continuously changed and succeeded one another: for they all lacked a central foundation. It is also the reason that the main weakness of all these systems is revealed when they move into the realm of psychology. A system whose fundamental principle is cosmological cannot get beyond a materialistic psychology. As is well known, the enantiodromia of the Greeks developed through the subjectivist-sceptical era of the Sophists, and it was only in the third phase that the great systems of Democritus, Plato and, above all, Aristotle were created – systems which, by using all the material that had been worked over so often, prepared the way for a more unified philosophical approach.

Chinese thinking pursued an essentially different course. Neither Confucius nor Lao Zi ever strayed outside humanist territory. It is of the greatest importance to recognise this clearly, particularly where the teaching of Lao Zi is concerned. For although Confucius’s orientation towards social ethics is hardly ever disputed, the DAO that Lao Zi speaks about may at first sight appear to be something purely cosmological. But this is only apparently so. Lao Zi repeatedly gives the departure point for his insights or, more adequately put, his views. For example, in section 21 he speaks of DAO and in section 54 of DE, or Life. In both instances he concludes with the question: Whence do I know that this is so?’ – that is, what had just been claimed about DAO and DE. This question is followed by an answer that seems rather strange: ‘Just through this.’ In each case, the prominent position given to these words compels us to attribute a meaning to them which goes beyond the merely tautological. It is clear from the context in both sections that the insight is founded upon a general principle – which is also, however, present in the reflecting individual. It is precisely through this participation of the individual in the general principle of truth that these insights are assured of the source of all certainty: evidence.

If we now turn to a more practical consideration of Lao Zi’s metaphysics, we notice that the following sentence occurs three times: ‘“The Man of Calling” puts away the other and adheres to this’ (sections 12, 38, 72). In time, every principle that has been derived from external experience will be disproved and become obsolete. For as mankind progresses man’s knowledge of the world changes; and, in the end, the known world is the only existing ‘world’. On the other hand, whatever is known from a central experience (‘out of the inner light’, as the mystics put it) will remain irrefutable, provided that it has been seen purely and truly. Therefore the harshest reproach that even Lao Zi’s worst opponent, the cultural prophet Han Yu, could make was that the sage lived at the bottom of a well and did not see the world: but what he did see from there no man can refute. In this context it is useful to note that it is not the psychologically conditioned, accidental ego which is important to Lao Zi. The ego is the seat of illusion and danger. Lao Zi is concerned with the Self (the ‘pure “I” which belongs to man-as-man). In order to progress from the empirical ego to this supra-individual entity a great deal of abstraction from everything accidental and distinctively individual is required. This penetration into the supra-individual sphere appears to be a decrease, while the business of research with its accumulation of individual, separate and specific insights appears as an increase (see section 48).

The most important thing is that the heart should become empty: only then can it comprehend the great truths. Lao Zi continually praises the empty heart as the ideal condition for true knowledge as well as for action. To understand this correctly we must not forget that for the Chinese the word ‘heart’ means something quite different from what it means in Christian-influenced, European thought. To a European the chief associations are with ‘courage’, or ‘feelings’ – and this colours and determines its meaning. For the Chinese, however, the word ‘heart’ primarily refers to one of the five senses; more specifically, it refers to that complex of senses which mediates most directly with the outside world, and which is commonly called ‘sensation’. It follows from this that the heart is also the source of desire for external things. For Lao Zi all involvement with the empirical world through the senses and desires is perilous; it hinders true cognition because it is the source of illusion (see section 12). The way to penetrate to the truth consists in ‘closing the gates’ through which these illusionary impressions enter our inner world (cf. sections 52, 56). It is immediately obvious, then that all positive knowledge takes a back seat. In fact, Lao Zi dismisses all ‘knowledge’ and ‘cognition’ as insufficient (see sections 19, 20). One might think this would inevitably lead to a denial of the world. But this is not his intention at all. Instead his approach is based on the view that where appearances end, the true, hidden being – eternal, and superior to the fleeting changes of sensory illusion – comes into focus all the more clearly and purely. Lao Zi does not seek ‘cognition’ but ‘seeing’, inner ‘enlightenment’. It is, however, made very clear in a number of places (see, for example, sections 3 and 12) that this ‘seeing’ has nothing to do with ascetic visions: on the contrary, Lao Zi absolutely approves of the care for one’s ‘body’ and ‘bones’ necessary for one’s physical well-being. This inner ‘enlightenment’ leads quite of its own accord to simplicity (see section 28), the most beautiful symbol of which is the child who has not yet been hurled about in the whirlpool of desires. The human being thus forms a continuous unity which returns into itself, and whose activity unfolds spontaneously. Within this unity, the expression of every principle or attribute is immediately complemented by its opposite, which is posited together with and by it, just as every wave in the sea is accompanied by a trough. This harmony of balance is not even disturbed by birth or death: for it brings with it eternal life, reaching beyond death.

At this point Lao Zi’s consideration of the problem of cognition leads him almost imperceptibly to a metaphysical principle: DE or Life. For according to Lao Zi Life is nothing other than this spontaneously active essence of man, identical, in the final analysis, with the foundation of the world.

Spontaneity of activity is of the greatest importance in this respect: for this spontaneity is the secret of Life of the highest order (see section 38). From the point of view of the individual, however, this very spontaneity appears as something negative. For the individual ‘holds back’. The individual does not live itself, but ‘lets itself be lived’, it is ‘being lived’ (see section 50). This is the reason that Lao Zi emphasises the principle of non-action. This non-action is not idleness or inertia, but a total receptiveness to that which wells up out of the metaphysical source in the individual. This is also the meaning conveyed by the various passages in the Dao De Jing which describe Life as female, as purely receptive. Life is ‘good’ in so far as it conducts itself ‘adequately’ at every moment and in every situation (see section 8). Its power consists precisely in offering the necessary complement in every relationship. It is good to the good, and to the non-good it is also good: for it gives to each its necessary complement. This complementarity is something that can be offered without conflict or strife; it is, in a manner of speaking, the filling of an empty space. But the act of offering this complementarity itself confers superiority on the giver. Therefore for Lao Zi ‘good’ is an alternating concept, one which cannot be established once and for all, but which has to be adapted to each individual case. Everything posited from a one-sided or single point of view is necessarily judged inferior. Even the highest virtue which defends and imposes itself is something inferior, because it represents only one side of the necessary pair of opposites. If everyone in the world recognises the good as good, then thereby the non-good is already posited. Therefore the Life that wants to impose itself by outward means, as a ‘positive’ force, is an inferior Life – even if it expresses itself as love of one’s fellowmen, justice, or morality (see section 38). In every instance, a positive necessarily evokes a negative. Whoever identifies himself with only one side of such a pair of opposites thereby places himself in the wrong, considered from the highest point of view. Here we have the kind of view of life which underlies all tragedy – a view that has been particularly clearly formulated by Hebbel. Any step an individual takes beyond his individuality causes a reciprocal and balancing reaction from the universal continuum that has thus been disturbed.

The man who embodies this Life in himself, the ideal man, is called Sheng Ren throughout the Dao De Jing. I have translated this term as the ‘Man of Calling’; though one can also find it translated as ‘the saint’. The Man of Calling is the individual who, by putting away his individual inclinations and wishes, completely corresponds to the principle of Life. He does not live himself and does not seek anything for himself, but lets Life express itself through him. In this position he is, in a sense, a cosmic power. This is but a necessary consequence, for it is never possible to exclude man from the world, as he is always a necessary factor in that complex we call ‘world’. (Even the most modern views of the world do not get beyond this point; after what Kant has shown us in his philosophical work it is no longer possible to have any serious doubts in this respect.) The ‘Man of Calling’ is, however, not realised in any historically specific personality. He is an idea beyond time, in some respects comparable to the idea of the Jewish Messiah, an idea in which everyone can participate according to his inner adaptation. (In this context, we might be able to throw some light on that
obscure passage in section 4: ‘I do not know whose son he is: he seems to be earlier than God.’)

If we pursue ‘spontaneity’ a step further still, beyond the human realm, we come to DAO. Just as Life is spontaneity in man, so DAO is absolute spontaneity in the world. It is different from all things, it escapes all sensory perception. To this extent it does not come within the realm of existence either.

Lao Zi repeatedly attributes the qualities of ‘non-existence’ or ’emptiness’ to it. In order not to misunderstand these terms we should remember that the negative plays a part in Chinese philosophy that it does not play in European thought. For the Chinese, existence and non-existence are not contrary, not mutually contradictory opposites. The relationship of one to the other is like that of the negative and positive signs in mathematics. ‘Nonexistence’ is not purely a term of privation: it could, in fact, often be translated as ‘being-by-‘ (or ‘in’) ‘itself’, in contrast to ‘existence’. There are some interesting observations to be made with regard to the psychology of language, even in relation to modern colloquial Chinese. While it is possible to give double negation the value of ‘strong positive’ in Europe, the natural feeling of the language is usually quite against this kind of expression; in the Chinese language, however, it is quite common. Where we say ‘He will definitely come’, the Chinese have no hesitation in saying: ‘He cannot not come’. They express ‘omnipresence’ as ‘no place where he is not’. This complete equivalence between positive and negative is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in answers to negative questions. To the question ‘Is he not coming?’ a Chinese will answer ‘Yes’ if the person does not come, because the ‘not’ in the question does not signify negation for him: it combines with ‘coming’ into a compound concept, the concept of ‘not-coming’, and this can be confirmed without any risk of misunderstanding, just as any positive concept can.

Lao Zi’s ‘non-existence’ must be understood in the same sense. It is not simply the same as nothingness, but something qualitatively different from existence. DAO is in all things but it is not itself a thing. Its effectiveness is essentially qualitative. An analogy can be found in the laws of nature. The laws of physics are expressed in all phenomena, but are not something distinct and separable, capable of interfering with the course of events from the outside. In the same way Lao Zi’s DAO is present in all that happens: it can be left or right (see section 34) but it is not exhausted in anything that happens. This non-exhaustion or, as Lao Zi puts it, this ‘non-filling-up’, is the quality that makes it superior to all things, without this superiority ever expressing itself in any way. This non-expression of superiority, its ‘weakness’, can be called its ‘smallness’; while its all-pervading effectiveness in all things accounts for its ‘greatness’.

Finally, it remains to be mentioned that the eternity of DAO rests on the fact that all of its movements ‘return’ into itself. All opposites are eliminated by it by being balanced against one another, so that every movement necessarily turns into its opposite. Once things have grown strong they die: it is just this strength, and the rigidity that goes with it, that brings about death. This principle is borne out by modern evolutionary theory, which shows how forms of life like that of the dinosaur gradually became extinct through developing too far and too inflexibly in one respect. Life always exists in the whole, never in isolation; therefore Nature does not know love as mankind does, but all things partake in its abundance: if men want to keep some of the affluence for themselves, they bring about their own death, just in this way.

From an ontological point of view, DAO is therefore the root of all existence: but since existence differs from non-existence only in name but not in essence, therefore DAO is also at work in existence. Here it is in the form of the motherly, the birth-giving which brings forth individual beings into life – and takes them back to itself in death.

Having ascended, by a process of induction, to Lao Zi’s principle for explaining the world, we must now consider the opposite direction: the way in which he descends, deductively, from this highest principle to reality. As one might expect, it is here that he meets his greatest difficulties.

The God who dwells within my breast
Can deeply stir my inmost being.
He who is enthroned on high above my strength,
Cannot move a thing outside myself.
Goethe, Faust (part I)

Lao Zi himself experienced some of the affliction that speaks from this verse, both personally, in relation to contemporary circumstances (as he laments in a tragic outburst – see section 20); and in tracing the course of the external world from DAO. However, he cannot really be reproached for this, for there remains an irrational residue in the effective which cannot be grasped by thought alone. Perhaps it is precisely this irrational residue that is the ground of every individual’s existence. Since time immemorial, mankind has chafed against this without finding an answer to questions which perhaps cannot be resolved at all, except by the will of the individual, for the individual. We must not expect Lao Zi to succeed where no other philosopher has succeeded before or since – in other words, in penetrating to reality (‘to that which is the effective’) by means of thought alone. Nevertheless, the lines that Lao Zi draws to indicate the direction in which DAO moves towards the real (the effective), are of great interest. There are two central issues to be considered here: on the one hand the movement that leads from DAO, as the final unity, to the coming about of the manifold; and on the other the lines that point from thought to reality. The principle of unity is the basis of Lao Zi’s philosophy. In this respect, he is decidedly a monist (just as, incidentally, all Chinese thinking is fundamentally monist -in spite of the prominence given to teachings about dual powers, for these are at work only within the world, that is, not transcendentally). This unity is the ultimate point to which all thought ascends, the secret of secrets, the gateway to the revelation of all powers (see section 1). Within this unity all opposites are still intermingled with one another, as yet unseparated. It is that which is usually called ‘non-existence’ which lies even before the ‘primal beginning’ (see note to section 1, at the end of this edition). The One, as thesis, generates the Two, as antithesis (the opposites of light and dark, male and female, positive and negative, for example). From these pairs of opposites the visible world is born as the Three.

The progression from unity to multiplicity – without thereby creating something completely different – is made possible by the fact that multiplicity is already inherent in unity, although it cannot as yet be seen in its germinal state. This is probably the meaning of section 14, where it is said that inherent in DAO are an invisible visibility, an inaudible audibility and an impalpable palpability; and that these three are inextricably intermingled and form one. This multiplicity in unity makes further unfolding, further development, possible. It is immediately obvious that this is not the result of the creation of the world at a specific historical time. For this unfolding is an essentially logical process, which can indeed be projected back in time and called the beginning of Heaven and Earth; but it shows itself equally within the spatial world, in the continuous regeneration of life (see section 1). Unity unfolded into multiplicity is also mentioned in section 25, where this unfolding is represented as a circular movement. DAO reveals itself in a perpetual state of flux: it works in Heaven, that is in the totality of invisible, effective, non-material forces; and, emanating from there, it overflows into the most distant places, fructifying the Earth, or the totality of material corporeality; and finally, it returns to itself in man. Accordingly, Man, Earth and Heaven are always prefigured in the nearest preceding level of Existence. Their modus operandi is thus derived from DAO, which alone has immediate effect. This unity is identified in section 39 of the Dao De Jing as the root source of the directedness of Heaven, Earth, and Man as ruler. (In this particular section there are two additional complexes of ideas, ‘the gods’ and ‘the valley’, which I shall discuss in more detail below.)

The transition from DAO to reality must be distinguished from the relationship between unity and multiplicity. In this respect sections 14 and 21, and the beginning of section 51 are of particular significance. Here we find hints as to how reality is potentially inherent in DAO. Any attempt to systematise these individual intuitions, which elude conceptual expression, would be doomed to failure. These passages are the hesitant expressions of experiences which transcend human thought.

One could say that there is a certain kinship between Lao Zi’s views and Plato’s teaching on ideas. In these passages the point is often made that the effectiveness of DAO within individual beings in reality is possible precisely because formless, non-corporeal ideas or images are contained in it in a way that is beyond comprehension. In order to communicate these ideas Lao Zi uses on the one hand, the concept of Life: ‘the content of the great Life completely follows DAO’, that is, shapes itself according to it (see section 21); and on the other, the concept of ‘the seed’. I have already spoken about the relationship between Life and DAO in this Introduction. The concept of the seed takes up a position between the world of ideas and the corporealmaterial world. According to section 21, the seed partakes of reality: in this way the connection with the external world is established. In addition to these concepts, Lao Zi uses the more commonly held conception of the duality of Heaven and Earth. Heaven, in this context, represents the spiritual powers; Earth stands nearer to the material world, the greatest degree of self-effacement of DAO. Another pair of concepts which appear in sections 6 and 39 should also be mentioned here: ‘the deep’ or ’emptiness’ (literally ‘the valley’); and ‘the spirit’ or ‘the gods’ (Shen).

‘The deep’ or ’emptiness’ originally referred to ‘the space between two mountain slopes’. It has come to mean ‘life as it is formed through the action of the spirit’: this is probably bound up with even earlier mythical representations. In this way ‘the deep’ has almost paradoxically come to mean what we call ‘matter’, that is, the as yet undefined, inactive, sheer possibility of existence; ‘spirit’ provides the corresponding active principle. It would lead beyond the limits of this introduction to follow these hints and suggestions to their conclusion. We would almost certainly find ourselves involved in a chain of ideas which would deviate to some extent from those pursued in the Dao De Jing. I mention them here, however, in order to draw attention to them.

Later Daoism has conducted some far-reaching speculations along these lines. Some of these have led to extravagant fantasies about alchemical attempts to find an elixir of life, or redeem the body from mortality through physical exercise. It is a measure of the height of Lao Zi’s own standpoint that these things are alien to him, and that he restricts himself to hints at the ineffable, the pursuit of which is left to the individual.