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

In par. 1 life is presented to us as intermediate between two non-existences. The words will suggest to many readers those in Job 1:21.

In pars. 2 and 3 I translate the characters 十有三 by “three in ten,” instead of by “thirteen,” as Julien and other translators have done. The characters are susceptible of either translation according to the tone in which we read the 有. They were construed as I have done by Wang Pi; and many of the best commentators have followed in his wake. “The ministers of life to themselves” would be those who eschewed all things, both internal and external, tending to injure health; “the ministers of death,” those who pursued courses likely to cause disease and shorten life; the third three would be those who thought that by mysterious and abnormal courses they could prolong life, but only injured it. Those three classes being thus disposed of, there remains only one in ten rightly using the Tao, and he is spoken of in the next paragraph.

This par. 4 is easy of translation, and the various readings in it are unimportant, differing in this respect from those in par. 3. But the aim of the author in it is not clear. In ascribing such effects to the possession of the Tao, is he “trifling,” as Dr. Chalmers thinks? or indulging the play of his poetical fancy? or simply saying that the Taoist will keep himself out of danger? ↩

養德, “The Operation (of the Tao) in Nourishing Things.” The subject of the chapter is the quiet passionless operation of the Tao in nature, in the production and nourishing of things throughout the seasons of the year;⁠—a theme dwelt on by Laozi, in II 4, X 3, and other places.

The Tao is the subject of all the predicates in par. 1, and what seem the subjects in all but the first member should be construed adverbially.

On par. 2 Wu Chʽêng says that the honour of the Son of Heaven is derived from his appointment by God, and that then the nobility of the feudal princes is derived from him; but in the honour given to the Tao and the nobility ascribed to its operation, we are not to think of any external ordination. There is a strong reading of two of the members of par. 3 in Wang Pi, viz. 亭之毒之 for 成之熟之. This is quoted and predicated of “heaven,” in the Nestorian Monument of Xi’an in the eighth century. ↩

歸元, “Returning to the Source.” The meaning of the chapter is obscure, and the commentators give little help in determining it. As in the preceding chapter, Laozi treats of the operation of the Tao on material things, he seems in this to go on to the operation of it in man, or how he, with his higher nature, should ever be maintaining it in himself.

For the understanding of paragraph 1 we must refer to the first chapter of the treatise, where the Tao, “having no name,” appears as “the Beginning” or “First Cause” of the world, and then, “having a name,” as its “Mother.” It is the same thing or concept in both of its phases, the ideal or absolute, and the manifestation of it in its passionless doings. The old Jesuit translators render this par. by “Mundus principium et causam suam habet in Divino 有 seu actione Divinae sapientiae quae dici potest ejus mater.” So far I may assume that they agreed with me in understanding that the subject of the par. was the Tao.

Par. 2 lays down the law of life for man thus derived from the Tao. The last clause of it is given by the same translators as equivalent to “Unde fit ut post mortem nihil ei timendum sit,”⁠—a meaning which the characters will not bear. But from that clause, and the next par., I am obliged to conclude that even in Laozi’s mind there was the germ of sublimation of the material frame which issued in the asceticism and life-preserving arts of the later Taoism.

Par. 3 seems to indicate the method of “guarding the mother in man,” by watching over the breath, the proto-plastic “one” of ch. 42, the ethereal matter out of which all material things were formed. The organs of this breath in man are the mouth and nostrils (nothing else should be understood here by 兌 and 門;⁠—see the explanations of the former in the last par. of the fifth of the appendixes to the Yi in vol. xvi p. 432); and the management of the breath is the mystery of the esoteric Buddhism and Taoism.

In par. 4 “The guarding what is soft” is derived from the used of “the soft lips” in hiding and preserving the hard and strong teeth.

Par. 5 gives the gist of the chapter:⁠—Man’s always keeping before him the ideal of the Tao, and, without purpose, simply doing whatever he finds to do; Tao-like and powerful in all his sphere of action.

I have followed the reading of the last character but one, which is given by Chiao Hung instead of that found in Ho-shang Kung and Wang Pi. ↩

益證, “Increase of Evidence.” The chapter contrasts government by the Tao with that conducted in a spirit of ostentation and by oppression.

In the “I” of paragraph 1