It had been a while since I sat down and read the Tao Te Ching straight through, it being the kind of book more conducive to sampling arbitrary passages like the Bible’s psalms or proverbs. It sat on my side table for several months while I picked it up intermittently, and I’ve recently finished.
One of the things that struck me was that the book repeatedly talked about the emergence of consciousness in human history: the speculation that man once lived as a natural being in tune with the Tao but that our predisposition to form value judgments led us astray. It’s probably safe to say that our pre-human ancestors lacked our cognitive powers and discriminatory functions, but for the ancient Chinese mind to recognize that there was such a jump is startling. This is so much in tune with the Eden legend that it’s uncanny, and one has to wonder how such fables originated. Each culture points to the emergence of the “knowledge of good and evil” as man’s downfall, Christianity branding the event a sin against God while Taoism sees it as turning away from Nature. But the bottom line is the same: once upon a time, man was ignorantly and obliviously part of the natural world; then he got smart (or so he thought) and it’s been downhill ever since. Has it ever.
Another surprise was that this re-reading led me to reconsider the interpretation of te. This word has usually been rendered in English as virtue or power (as in the title of Waley’s edition, The Way and Its Power); but Ellen Chen allows it to stand untranslated, so that by the 63rd chapter we find the line “Repay injury with te.” How striking, I thought, to come across this seemingly Christian notion, until I read her commentary:
“For a proper understanding of this line we must understand that, in the Tao Te Ching, te does not mean virtue. Te is the pristine condition of nature unburdened with distinctions between good and evil. Within the moral sphere distinguishing good from evil there can be no resolution of the problem of evil. Only when humans transcend virtue to the level of nature prior to the distinctions between good and evil can they be free from evil. Injury is unavoidable in the moral sphere; moral evil is the price paid for moral distinctions.
“To ‘repay injury with te’ means to return injury the way nature returns injury. Nature is not conscious of goodness, nor does it design retaliation. . . . Armed with the distinction between right and wrong humans bear rancor against injuries, but nature bears no rancor. Nature accepts and suffers injury; it also heals injury such that there is no trace of injury left.
“This must be what Jesus means when he commands us to forgive our enemies. The Christian is called to rise above ordinary morality, which bears rancor to imitate the perfection of the Father in heaven. To become as perfect as the Father we must forgive and forget that there has been injury at all.”
Advocating that a response to offense be “natural” rather than moral does make a difference. And the fact that this interpretation ties in with the pre-consciousness human condition is especially enlightening. Through our propensity to make value judgments we have lost touch with te. But although it’s absurd to think that civilization could realistically retreat to a “natural” state, te may not lie outside our grasp: when we engage in any meditative practice, what we’re doing is turning off our discriminatory function and just being. (And by the way, it’s not unreasonable to call the meditative state “vegetative”; plants simply are, and emulating them seems entirely appropriate to cultivating te.)
A third surprise was coming across Lao Tzu’s “three treasures” in chapter 67, because it had been so long that I’d read through the book that I had completely forgotten about this passage. (While the “three treasures” may once have been a touchstone for me, I eventually came to favor chapter 20.) These virtues – motherly [i.e. nurturing] love (rendered in many translations as “compassion”), frugality, and “daring not be at the world’s front” – made an impression on me when I first encountered them. Forty years ago, I found it convincing that compassion and frugality were the marks of an enlightened being, but I was somewhat shaken by the third concept – alternately worded as “daring not to be first in the world” and sometimes rendered simply as “humility” – that one doesn’t have to strive for fame or success (as un-American a notion as there ever was); living in harmony with Tao is what matters. In fact, it’s all that matters. It’s what enables the te response to whatever life hands you.
What I realized after this re-reading is that for all these years I’ve looked to the TTC for an explanation of reality by focusing on Tao as another way of envisioning what others call God or Ground or First Cause. “Becoming one with Tao” became a key phrase for living. But I sense now that I’ve given short shrift to the fact that te is the critical element in that endeavor.
As I’ve noted previously, what’s especially reassuring about the Chen translation is the care that she takes to explain her word choices. It’s all well and good to have someone filter the TTC through their own sensibility, but the result might be no better than taking wisdom from fortune cookies or greeting cards. If you want to know what an ancient text in another language really said, you need to seriously grapple with it, not blindly accept the rendition of someone attempting to appeal to contemporaneous readers. (Consider the hole that the Catholic Church dug for itself by adopting a translation of the Bible that called Mary a “virgin” rather than a “maiden.”) It says what it says, it’s up to you to decide if it speaks to you. And as chapter 70 asserts, “My words are very easy to understand . . . But no one under heaven can understand them.”
The Tao Te Ching has spoken to me for most of my adult life – which is not to say I’ve always paid attention. This blog certainly attests to the fact that I’m as opinionated as anybody, ready to expound about what’s right or wrong, good or bad (IMHO, of course). Lately, though, I’ve felt like I’ve overdosed on the constant barrage of on-line opinion, so much so that I can’t even bring myself to read my fellow citizens’ comments anymore. As Wordsworth put it, the world is too much with us. And let’s not forget Thoreau’s observation that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation – that is, until they gain an on-line sounding board. So as all too many contemporary commentators have summarized, “What the fuck.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and try to cultivate my te. . . .
Advocating that a response to offense be “natural” rather than moral does make a difference. And the fact that this interpretation ties in with the pre-consciousness human condition is especially enlightening. Through our propensity to make value judgments we have lost touch with te. But although it’s absurd to think that civilization could realistically retreat to a “natural” state, te may not lie outside our grasp: when we engage in any meditative practice, what we’re doing is turning off our discriminatory function and just being. (And by the way, it’s not unreasonable to call the meditative state “vegetative”; plants simply are, and emulating them seems entirely appropriate to cultivating te.)
A third surprise was coming across Lao Tzu’s “three treasures” in chapter 67, because it had been so long that I’d read through the book that I had completely forgotten about this passage. (While the “three treasures” may once have been a touchstone for me, I eventually came to favor chapter 20.) These virtues – motherly [i.e. nurturing] love (rendered in many translations as “compassion”), frugality, and “daring not be at the world’s front” – made an impression on me when I first encountered them. Forty years ago, I found it convincing that compassion and frugality were the marks of an enlightened being, but I was somewhat shaken by the third concept – alternately worded as “daring not to be first in the world” and sometimes rendered simply as “humility” – that one doesn’t have to strive for fame or success (as un-American a notion as there ever was); living in harmony with Tao is what matters. In fact, it’s all that matters. It’s what enables the te response to whatever life hands you.
What I realized after this re-reading is that for all these years I’ve looked to the TTC for an explanation of reality by focusing on Tao as another way of envisioning what others call God or Ground or First Cause. “Becoming one with Tao” became a key phrase for living. But I sense now that I’ve given short shrift to the fact that te is the critical element in that endeavor.
As I’ve noted previously, what’s especially reassuring about the Chen translation is the care that she takes to explain her word choices. It’s all well and good to have someone filter the TTC through their own sensibility, but the result might be no better than taking wisdom from fortune cookies or greeting cards. If you want to know what an ancient text in another language really said, you need to seriously grapple with it, not blindly accept the rendition of someone attempting to appeal to contemporaneous readers. (Consider the hole that the Catholic Church dug for itself by adopting a translation of the Bible that called Mary a “virgin” rather than a “maiden.”) It says what it says, it’s up to you to decide if it speaks to you. And as chapter 70 asserts, “My words are very easy to understand . . . But no one under heaven can understand them.”
The Tao Te Ching has spoken to me for most of my adult life – which is not to say I’ve always paid attention. This blog certainly attests to the fact that I’m as opinionated as anybody, ready to expound about what’s right or wrong, good or bad (IMHO, of course). Lately, though, I’ve felt like I’ve overdosed on the constant barrage of on-line opinion, so much so that I can’t even bring myself to read my fellow citizens’ comments anymore. As Wordsworth put it, the world is too much with us. And let’s not forget Thoreau’s observation that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation – that is, until they gain an on-line sounding board. So as all too many contemporary commentators have summarized, “What the fuck.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and try to cultivate my te. . . .
