Tao Te Ching by Laozi (reading comprehension books txt) 📕

the clause we are assisted by a somewhat similar illustration about a horse in the twenty-fifth of Chuang-tzŭ’s books, par. 10. ↩

去用, “Dispensing with the Use (of Means);”⁠—with their use, that is, as it appears to us. The subject of the brief chapter is the action of the Tao by contraries, leading to a result the opposite of what existed previously, and by means which might seem calculated to produce a contrary result.

In translating par. 2 I have followed Chiao Hung, who finds the key to it in ch. 1. Having a name, the Tao is “the mother of all things;” having no name, it is “the originator of heaven and earth.” But here is the teaching of Laozi:⁠—“If Tao seem to be before God,” Tao itself sprang from nothing. ↩

同異, “Sameness and Difference.” The chapter is a sequel of the preceding, and may be taken as an illustration of the Tao’s proceeding by contraries.

Who the sentence-makers were whose sayings are quoted we cannot tell, but it would have been strange if Laozi had not had a large store of such sentences at this command. The fifth and sixth of those employed by him here are found in Lieh-tzŭ (II 15 a), spoken by Lao in reproving Yang Chu, and in VII 3 a, that heretic appears quoting an utterance of the same kind, with the words, “according to an old saying (古語有之).” ↩

道化, “The Transformations of the Tao.” In par. 2 we have the case of the depreciating epithets given to themselves by kings and princes, which we found before in ch. 39, and a similar lesson is drawn from it. Such depreciation leads to exaltation, and the contrary course of self-exaltation leads to abasement. This latter case is stated emphatically in par. 3, and Laozi says that it was the basis of his teaching. So far therefore we have in this chapter a repetition of the lesson that “the movement of the Tao is by contraries,” and that its weakness is the sure precursor of strength. But the connection between this lesson and what he says in par. 1 it is difficult to trace. Up to this time at least it has baffled myself. The passage seems to give us a cosmogony. “The Tao produced One.” We have already seen that the Tao is “The One.” Are we to understand here that the Tao and The One were one and the same? In this case what would be the significance of the 生 (“produced”)?⁠—that the Tao which had been previously “non-existent” now became “existent,” or capable of being named? This seem to be the view of Ssŭ-ma Kuang (AD 1009⁠–⁠1086).

The most singular form which this view assumes is in one of the treatises on our Ching, attributed to the Taoist patriarch Lü (呂祖道德經解), that “the One is Heaven, which was formed by the congealing of the Tao.” According to another treatise, also assigned to the same Lü (道德真經合解), the One was “the primordial ether;” the Two, “the separation of that into its Yin and Yang constituents;” and the Three, “the production of heaven, earth, and man by these.” In quoting the paragraph, Huai-nan Tzŭ omits 道生一, and commences with 一生二, and his glossarist, Kao Yu, makes out the One to be the Tao, the Two to be Spiritual Intelligences (神明), and the Three to be the Harmonising Breath. From the mention of the Yin and Yang that follows, I believe that Laozi intended by the Two these two qualities or elements in the primordial ether, which would be “the One.” I dare not hazard a guess as to what “the Three” were. ↩

徧用, “The Universal Use (of the action in weakness of the Tao).” The chapter takes us back to the lines of ch. 40, that

“Weakness marks the course
Of Tao’s mighty deeds.”

By “the softest thing in the world” it is agreed that we are to understand “water,” which will wear away the hardest rocks. “Dashing against and overcoming” is a metaphor taken from hunting. Ho-shang Kung says that “what has no existence” is the Tao; it is better to understand by it the unsubstantial air (氣) which penetrates everywhere, we cannot see how.

Compare par. 2 with ch. 2, par. 3. ↩

立戒, “Cautions.” The chapter warns men to let nothing come into competition with the value which they set on the Tao. The Tao is not named, indeed, but the idea of it was evidently in the writer’s mind.

The whole chapter rhymes after a somewhat peculiar fashion; familiar enough, however, to one who is acquainted with the old rhymes of the Book of Poetry. ↩

洪德, “Great or Overflowing Virtue.” The chapter is another illustration of the working of the Tao by contraries.

According to Wu Chʽêng, the action which overcomes cold is that of the yang element in the developing primordial ether; and the stillness which overcomes heat is that of the contrary yin element. These may have been in Laozi’s mind, but the statements are so simple as hardly to need any comment. Wu further says that the purity and stillness are descriptive of the condition of non-action. ↩