The Tao Te Ching is a Chinese ancient text, one of the famous classics of the world. It is often called simply Lao Tzu (also Laozi or Lao-Tze) after the name of its author. It’s a book discussing the Tao and the Te, and it is divided into 81 chapters; the first 37 chapters are also called the Tao Ching, and the next 44 chapters the Te Ching. In modern Chinese, Tao and Te have been combined into one word TaoTe to stand for morality or ethics. However, in the book of Tao Te Ching, they are two closely related separate terms: the Tao literally means “the way”, but is of a dual meaning of “the knowledge of the truth” and “the ultimate energy in the universe”, and the Te is the fundamental attribute (or virtue) of the Tao, which is of behavioral significance, in addition to the cognitive and physical significances.
The Tao Te Ching is the most translated classic in the world. Today if you go online to search for “Tao Te Ching” or “Lao Tzu” or “Laozi” or “Lao-Tze”, you could find hundreds of different versions of translation of the Tao Te Ching in many different languages. Although the Bible is the most printed book, but the translation of the Bible is very restricted, the same for other religious books, and thus the Tao Te Ching somehow becomes the most translated book in any category in the world. The strange thing is that for a single language there could be many different translations by different people.
Unfortunately and ironically, the Tao Te Ching is also at least one of the most mistranslated classics, if not the most mistranslated one, in both western and eastern history.
1. Lao Tzu was a naturalist. As the central notion of the Tao Te Ching, the Tao seemingly points to the supernatural domain, and Lao Tzu was also portrayed as a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions. Nonetheless, from his discourse in the Tao Te Ching, especially in Chapter 28, one of the most mistranslated chapters so far, we can see that Lao Tzu was actually a naturalist, who did not believe any afterlife, but believed that human reproduction and nurturing of kids is the only channel for the ceaseless continuation of life as well as general human societal operation.
In fact, one strange thing about knowing Lao Tzu is that, when chasing the shadow of Lao Tzu from the myths, all the scholars seem to have overlooked one fact that, in comparison to the speculations based on the myths or legendary stories, Lao Tzu actually talked quite a lot about himself in the Tao Te Ching.
According to the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu did not live a socially active life as some legendary stories tell us, but lived a lonely life in the midst of a socially active community, which could be clearly seen from Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching:
People all like to hang out with friends, for things like celebrating sacrificial feasts, or ascending high places in spring. But I alone wander around, without knowing where to go. Undiscerning and innocent, I am like an infant; exhaustedly drifting around, I seem to have no place to return. All others are accompanied by friends, but I am alone as if abandoned. My heart is like that of a fool. Others all live for their goals, only am I dull; others all look around and talk to each other to find out what are going on, only am I staying quiet.
Besides, Lao Tzu felt sadly sorry for the fact that with no one could he share his mastery of the Tao (i.e. knowledge of the truth), as is expressed in Chapter 70 of the Tao Te Ching:
My words are easy to understand and easy to follow, yet no one in the world understands or follows what I have said.
Unfortunately, these self-expressions of Lao Tzu have not only been ignored but even often been contradicted with opposite comments in those mythological style or legendary style stories about him. This phenomenon indeed reflects the current awkward status of the general scholastic comprehension of the Tao Te Ching.
2. The ignorance of the structure causes more errors. The disastrous situation of translation of the Tao Te Ching would first be reflected from the discrepancy in the literal meanings (not just wording) of in all translations (including all Chinese translations from ancient language to modern language) so far. However, as we will see in this article, the ultimate root cause for the errors with the literal meanings is not its difficulty of language as has been claimed by many, but its philosophical profundity.
The impact of the errors with literal meanings goes far beyond the sheer “controversial about the meanings of specific verses” as has been claimed by the scholars in the field. In fact, the most misunderstood part of the Tao Te Ching so far is its overall structural arrangement, because of the misunderstandings of the literal meanings, of course. The Tao Te Ching has been considered by many to be an anthology of separate proses without any logical structure across different chapters. This ignorance of the internal logical connections between different chapters of the Tao Te Ching has entailed more serious peremptory claims about the layout of the book or even the number of authors of the book.
In 1973, a copy of the Tao Te Ching was found during the famous archeological discovery of a Han Dynasty tomb from more than 2000 years ago. When that copy was unearthed, instead of the Tao Ching before the Te Ching as expected, the Te Ching was placed above the Tao Ching. Even though the placement of the Tao Ching and the Te Ching in that particular case could be simply according to the personal favoritism of the buried person, some scholars in the field of the Tao Te Ching began to claim that the original order should be the Te Ching before the Tao Ching, which means the currently supposed Chapter 38 should be Chapter 1, and the currently supposed Chapter 1 should be Chapter 45. Another even bolder claim about the Tao Te Ching is that it was not written by a single author but by many authors over a span of long time. We might easily reject the first one for its scantiness of the archeological particulars as Hegel commented against the third form of Reflective History in his “Philosophy of History”, and disapprove the second for the reason that the involvement of many people in its composition over a period of history is basically impossible if no one has truly comprehend the text as attested by the existence of severe mistakes in the translations by all the well-known figures so far in history. Besides, both claims are against the currently best accepted knowledge about the Tao Te Ching,
Nonetheless, as long as the Tao Te Ching is truly an anthology of independent proses, then any of the above claims would still have its ground of argument. That anthology assumption could be best refuted if we could identify the existence of any structural arrangement through the text across chapters, which could also be the best proof of an overall design by a single author. In fact, as one example, we might find a clear structural arrangement from the meaningful response given in the ending chapter (Chapter 81) to the opening statement of Chapter 1, in addition to the response to the contents in Chapter 25 from within Chapter 28 (as we will see a little later), and many other instances.
But the ignorance of the structural arrangement is by no means the only failure for understanding the Tao Te Ching during the past two and a half millenniums. Chapter 28 provides a good example for which the naturally meaningful message delivered by the original text has been skewed by all the past translations.
3. Let’s take a look at one the most mistranslated chapters. The original text of the Tao Te Ching has been surprisingly misunderstood to a great degree in the past 2500 years, which includes the ignorance of the existence of some structural arrangement through the text, the missing of the extremely valuable knowledge about “knowing” in the opening chapter, the confusion about some quite straightforward description of natural processes, the lack of understanding of some ontological statements, and so on, in all translations so far. Of course, the problems in the translations of all other languages are rooted in the mainstream Chinese translations in the past.
We might get a sense of the severity of this disastrous situation from the English translation of Chapter 28 as an example. A critical challenge for this chapter is how to interpret a term, “perpetual virtue (常德)”, in the original text, which appears three times in Chapter 28: “perpetual virtue (常德) stays (不离)”, “perpetual virtue (常德) grows to its full (乃足)”, “perpetual virtue (常德) suffers no problem (不忒)”. One important point that has been ignored by all the past deciphers of the Tao Te Ching is that a replacement of “perpetual virtue (常德)” by the word “life” would perfectly fit in the contexts of those three places, while the meaning of “virtue” does universally exist in “pure life” for any language in the sense that when we speak of “pure life” we do sense its virtue. With this replacement, it becomes obvious that a very confusing term in that chapter, “stream of the world (天下溪)” is actually referring to seminal fluid, and thus the meaning of the whole Chapter 28 becomes logically clear. But so far I have not seen anyone else give a correct interpretation of it.
Before we further delve into Chapter 28, it’s worth knowing that, with Chinese logogram, sometimes a sentence might be formed with some implicated meanings. For example, in English when we say “he recovers from the sickness”, the only subject is clearly “he (or his health)”; but in Chinese, the same sentence could be translated into “他的(his)病(sickness)好了(is well)”, which literally says “his sickness is well”, but obviously, it should mean “his sickness is gone and he is well”. This works the same for both modern and ancient Chinese.
To save space, let’s have a close look at the English translation only for the first two sentences of Chapter 28. Those two sentences are originally formed by connecting the following groups of words together (dash sign “–” is used here within each group of words to show how the original sentences were formed with Chinese characters):
“知(know)”-“其(its)”- “雄(masculine)”, “守(keep, adhere)”-“其(its)”-“雌(feminine)”, “为(being)”-“天下(of the world)”-“溪(stream)”. “为(being)”-“天下(of the world)”-“溪(stream)”, “常德(perpetual virtue)”-“不离(stay with it)”, “复归于(return to)”-“婴儿(infant)”.
A meaningful straightforward translation should be as follows (my translation):
Knowing the masculine, but staying in the feminine, it is a stream of the world;
Being a stream of the world, it carries life, and thus it will be reincarnated into an infant.
Here the “Knowing” can also be replaced by “Coming from”. Now let’s compare the above translation to one of the Barnes & Noble Classics, translated by Charles Muller:
Know the Masculine, cleave to the Feminine, be the valley for everyone.
Being the valley for everyone, you are always in virtue without lapse, and you return to infancy.
Obviously, my translation is not only closer to the meaning of the original text but also makes a lot more sense than that of Muller.
Although the deciphering measure of replacing “perpetual virtue” with “life” could critically help to understand Chapter 28, the main cause for the mistranslations of Muller and all others so far has been indeed the philosophical confusion about that chapter. Since the Tao Te Ching has been portrayed as a text of moral teachings and self-improvement craft by many, people often try to push their translations into an atmosphere of moral significance and thus ignored the fact that the whole Tao Te Ching is a discussion about the Tao, not just moral or mental or natural, and Chapter 28 offers an insight about how the Tao circulates in human society in the form of perpetual Te (life), which serves as an important fundamental part for knowing the Tao. As a matter of fact, in Chapter 25, Lao Tzu describes the Tao as, “ceaselessly repeating its own cycle, could be the mother of the universe”, which is manifested in Chapter 28 in a particular way.
My translation of the whole Chapter 28 could be found in next section of this article, and Muller’s translation of the whole Chapter 28 could be found (based on the fair use rights) in Appendix B, together with the sample translations of Le Guin and Legge, as examples to show how wrong the translations could go because of philosophically misunderstanding the original text.
A common blunder in the existing translations of Chapter 28 is the missing of the sense of “pure nothing” for the word “无极” which is the combination of “无(nothing)”and “极(extreme)”. Accordingly, some nowadays Chinese philosophers even claim that there is no such thing of “pure nothing” as in the western philosophy. This is one consequence of lacking a good overall understanding of Chapter 28. What Lao Tzu expresses in Chapter 28 is his view about how life is continued in the human world. By using the “无极(extreme of nothing)” he tells that no afterlife exists once a person dies, and thus the only way for the Tao to have life to continue in the world is through the process that he described in Chapter 28. Therefore, the “无极(extreme of nothing)” in Chapter 28 indeed refers to “nothing at all” (even not relating to the decaying corpus), which is the essence of “pure nothing”.
Therefore, from his discourse in the Tao Te Ching, we can see that Lao Tzu was actually a naturalist, even though his Tao seemingly points to the supernatural domain, and he was later portrayed as a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions.
4. Let’s enjoy true wisdom of the original text through correct translation. Since we don’t have the original text of Lao Tzu, current (both Chinese and non-Chinese) translations are all based on the so-called “original text” from different versions of Chinese translation from long time ago. That means, although different modern translators might provide their own translations of the original text which could be very different from those ancient versions, the contents of the so-called “original text” have all been taken from this or that “original text” used by different ancient translators. The problem is that there are some variations in the contents of those different versions of the “original text” (while basically they might all look close to each other), and unfortunately, some variations change the meanings of the translations. That alone tells that the misunderstandings of the Tao Te Ching can be traced back to a couple of thousand years ago.
Because of the above reason, for my translation, I have decided to use a compilation of different popularly circulating versions of the Tao Te Ching as the text of the original work. I have made decisions on which version to follow for any specific part of the text whenever I see some critical discrepancies with the “original text” between those versions.
The following are my English translations of two sample chapters (Chapters 1 and 28) of the Tao Te Ching, which are among the most misunderstood chapters so far.
Chapter 1:
The original text for the following translation of Chapter 1 is a compilation of that used by the famous HeShangGong (River’s old man) and that used by the famous Nan HuaiJin (see Appendix A).
The Tao that can be said is not an eternal Tao,
The name that can be given is not an eternal name;
There was no name at the beginning of the universe,
Naming things is the mother of the knowledge of things;
So without a name, we would only perceive the nature of a being,
With a name, we could discover the details and limits of (the notion of) that being;
Those two things come from the same one but differ in terms of name (note: neither “differ by name” nor “differ in name”, since one of them is “no name”),
So both are called mystery;
One mystery after another,
That’s the gate to the unknown knowledge of all things.
Chapter 28:
The original text for the following translation of Chapter 28 is a compilation of that used by the famous Wang Bi, and that used by the famous Nan Huaijin (see Appendix A).
Knowing the masculine, but staying in the feminine,
it is a stream of the world;
Being a stream of the world, it carries life,
thus it will be reincarnated into an infant.
Knowing the glory (of life), yet enduring the humiliation by itself,
it is the holder of the world.
Being in the holder of the world, life grows to its full term,
and then is reincarnated to a baby (or an unprocessed log, meaning a kid).
Knowing the white (hair) in the outside world,
nurturing the black (hair kids) at home,
it is the common way of life.
In this common way,
life continues without being ruined,
and the carriers of life would go back to the extreme of nothing (i.e. pure nothing).
The kids (or the unprocessed log) will spread out and become implements for the society,
the leaders will use them,
and the outstanding ones will become officers in the society;
In this way, the systematic functioning of the world is not interrupted.
5. Let’s witness the disaster through examples. Appendix B provides (based on the fair use of copyrighted content) sample translations of the above two chapters by three different translators. While differing from each other in some specifics, they all share one important commonplace: none of them would correctly present to the audience the central themes of Chapter 1 and Chapter 28 as reflected in my translation.
The central theme of Chapter 1 is to tell us the role of language in the creation of human knowledge system and accordingly the role of language in the learning and thinking processes of each individual, instead of talking about “what is the Tao” as usually assumed. The third section of Chapter 1 is of critical importance for correctly translating the whole chapter, which tells that there are two basic ways of thinking: language based thinking and language-less thinking. In fact, these two ways of thinking correspond to the different essences of arts and philosophy. So far, none of the previous translators has correctly expressing this meaning in their translations, including those of the three translators in Appendix B.
As previously pointed out, Chapter 28 is about how the Tao circulates in human society in the form of perpetual Te (life), which serves as an important fundamental part for knowing the Tao. In the context, it also serves as a response to the comment he made in Chapter 25 about the Tao as, “ceaselessly moving in its own recurring cycles, capable of being the mother of heaven and earth!” Besides, from the use of the term “无极” (pure nothing) in Chapter 28, we could see that Lao Tzu was actually a naturalist.
The misunderstandings of those three translators about the original text of Chapter 1 and Chapter 28 are only examples of the severe mistakes that have been made by thousands of translators over the past two millenniums.
6. So the Tao Te Ching has become a disaster for many translators. The root cause of the disaster is its philosophical profundity of the original text, instead of its difficulty of language as has always been falsely claimed by many in the field. Philosophy in general has been known as an open book of ciphertext, in the sense that many philosophical works have been there for hundreds or thousands of years, but still not well comprehended by institutional professionals although they are all very good at reading books. In fact, compared with ancient Chinese translators who used the ancient language every day, people with modern scientific knowledge and multicultural background might be more advantageous for comprehending some difficult philosophical insights (as shown in Chapter 1 and Chapter 28) of the original text. Furthermore, over the past 2500 years, in spite of the serious misunderstandings of the original text, some fundamentals for reading the Tao Te Ching have been well established (e.g. punctuations etc). Therefore, it is possible to have a correct new translation of the Tao Te Ching in any language directly from a reliable version of the original text without the need to follow any particular existing mainstream Chinese translation of the original text.
Appendices
Appendix A. The Original Work of the Translated Sample Chapters
Chapter 1:
The following original text for Chapter 1 is a compilation of that used by the famous HeShangGong (River’s old man, 河上公) and that used by the famous Nan HuaiJin (南怀瑾):
道可道，非常道。
名可名，非常名。
无名天地之始，有名万物之母。
故常无，欲以观其妙；
常有，欲以观其徼。
此两者同出而异名，同谓之玄。
玄之又玄，众妙之门。
Chapter 28:
The following original text for Chapter 25 is a compilation of that used by the famous Wang Bi (王弼), and that used by the famous Nan Huijin (南怀瑾):
知其雄，守其雌，为天下溪。
为天下溪，常德不离，复归于婴儿。
知其荣，守其辱，为天下谷。
为天下谷，常德乃足，复归于朴。
知其白，守其黑，为天下式。
为天下式，常德不忒，复归于无极。
朴散则为器，圣人用之，则为官长，故大制不割。
Appendix B. Samples of Existing Published Translations of the Tao Te Ching:
The following are sample translations published by three different translators for the example chapters as fair use for showing the problems in the existing translations:
Chapter 1:
- Translation of Charles Muller:
The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth
While naming is the origin of the myriad things.
Therefore, always desireless, you see the mystery
Ever desiring, you see the manifestations.
These two are the same ------
When they appear they are named differently.
This sameness is the mystery,
Mystery within mystery;
The door to all marvels.
- Translation of Ursula K. Le Guin:
The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.
- Translation of James Legge:
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and
unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and
unchanging name.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven
and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all
things.
Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development
takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them
the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that
is subtle and wonderful.
Chapter 28:
- Muller’s translation:
Know the Masculine, cleave to the Feminine
Be the valley for everyone.
Being the valley for everyone
You are always in virtue without lapse
And you return to infancy.
Know the White, cleave to the Black
Be a model for everyone.
Being the model for everyone
You are always in virtue and free from error
You return to limitless.
Know Glory but cleave to Humiliation
Be the valley for everyone.
When your constancy in virtue is complete
You return to the state of the "uncarved block."
The block is cut into implements
The sage uses them to fulfill roles.
Therefore the great tailor does not cut.
- Le Guin’s translation:
Knowing man
and staying woman,
be the riverbed of the world.
Being the world's riverbed
of eternal unfailing power
is to go back again to be newborn.
Knowing light
and staying dark,
be a pattern to the world.
Being the world's pattern
of eternal unerring power
is to go back again to boundlessness.
Knowing glory
and staying modest,
be the valley of the world.
Being the world's valley
of eternal inexhaustible power
is to go back again to the natural.
- Legge’s translation:
Who knows his manhood's strength,
Yet still his female feebleness maintains;
As to one channel flow the many drains,
All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky.
Thus he the constant excellence retains;
The simple child again, free from all stains.
Who knows how white attracts,
Yet always keeps himself within black's shade,
The pattern of humility displayed,
Displayed in view of all beneath the sky;
He in the unchanging excellence arrayed,
Endless return to man's first state has made.
Who knows how glory shines,
Yet loves disgrace, nor e'er for it is pale;
Behold his presence in a spacious vale,
To which men come from all beneath the sky.
The unchanging excellence completes its tale;
The simple infant man in him we hail.
The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms
vessels. The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the
Officers (of government); and in his greatest regulations he employs
no violent measures.
