Beliefs @ Face Value

The problem with holy books is that people too often tend to take them at face value. If they want to believe them, they do, no questions asked. This is apparent with fundamentalist schools of any religion, as is seen with some of today’s Christians and Muslims (although I admit to no knowledge of the extent to which Islamic fundamentalists base their actions on a literal reading of the Koran, except maybe when it comes to stoning people to death – or is it even in there?). Then there’s the fundamentalist strain of Buddhism I wrote about a few days ago.

But as the man says, “Wait, there’s more....” Consider the willingness of Krishna freaks to embrace the Hindu pantheon without really sorting folklore from reality. Consider the readiness of modern European-Americans to accept the validity of Native American beliefs, regardless (or perhaps because?) of their own folkloric aspects, just because they strike them as more attuned to nature. And consider also the willingness of some occidental minds to find truth in the oracular sayings of the I Ching (the “Book of Changes”). Here we have an ancient book wherein meaning is ascribed to patterns of lines. Its advice is cryptic and variable. How its meanings were arrived at is shrouded in the mists of antiquity. Yet its judgments are taken as truth centuries later.

My skepticism regarding the I Ching necessarily casts a shadow, albeit faint, on my predilection for the Tao Te Ching. The former predates the latter but both represent the same cultural tradition. But while the I Ching originated as a fortune-telling text, the TTC was a “manual” for a later philosophical school. And over the years I’ve often wondered whether to take it at face value or not.

Unlike the Bible, whose myths and miracles are so outrageous that they’re best taken with a grain of salt, the TTC is a tougher nut to crack. Its metaphors are open to interpretation. Its advice is often blunt or cryptic. And its intended readership is vague – some would say it’s intended for everyman, others for sages or rulers.

The problem with taking it at face value lies in reading things into it that aren’t necessarily there; that’s why so many modern “translations” seem to represent little more than what the translator wants it to say. They’re personal interpretations passing themselves off as accurate renderings. That’s why I’ve tended to rely on editions like Ellen Chen’s that at least explain translation decisions and word choice.

But I learned that face value isn’t enough with the TTC when I came across an edition entitled The Tao of the Tao Te Ching by Michael LaFargue, published by the folks at SUNY Press (who have produced probably the best list of scholarly studies of Taoism I’ve seen). Most serious commentators on the text recognize that the TTC wasn’t the work of a single person; LaFargue takes this a further step by applying hermeneutics in order to show how the text was assembled as a collage of sayings from oral tradition. Some lines are shown to be popular adages, others to be comments on them. It puts the book in a whole new light and clears up a lot of the more cryptic passages.

What I’ve learned from LaFargue is that it’s fine to take the TTC at face value if that’s what you want to do. But doing so poses as many dangers as any other holy book. Religion is enough of a minefield; it would help if the maps were as understandable as scholars like LaFargue make them.