(The author believes the only “true” translation of the Tao must be a mistranslation, for, as 老子 himself said, 道可道非常道, or ‘Tao as Tao not eternal Tao’. Enjoy this ongoing mistranslation!)
1.
Tao as Tao is not Tao. Name as Name is not Name. Heaven and earth began in a nameless place. The ten thousand things were born when each was given a name. To have kept your reason but have lost even the faintest glimmer of a desire, accordingly observe him wonderful in all things, while he who is ruled by his desires, accordingly observe him trapped in a sheer container of his own design, banging at the walls and hollering. These two things (to know without desire and to desire without knowledge) are alike but each different. Both are considered profound. Profundity’s still profound when it leads to the person being trapped in a sheer container of his own design, he then becoming many beautiful things’ entrance.
2.
Everyone under heaven knows beauty as beauty, therefore they know evil too. All know good as good, therefore they know not-good too. Therefore, being nothing of themselves, both are born as sibling to an opposite other. Difficult and easy both become one another; long and short both stem from the other; high and low both lean toward the other; pitch and mode both are joined in singing; front and back both follow each other.
The sacred person certainly uses one part of the larger catastrophic whole, not as a solitary event, but understood in relation to its opposite—carrying out said event not as speech, but as a speechless teaching. The ten thousand things affect the here and now and yet don’t dismiss that which is not here, grow and yet never have more than is necessary, govern over their respective spheres of influence yet do not rely on the things over which they govern, accomplish success yet do not lay claim to their accomplishments. The ordinary man also doesn’t lay claim to his accomplishments, and therefore doesn’t depart from the true path.
3.
Not yet virtuous? In such a case as this, the people will not compete to become like you. If you have no costly-difficult-to-obtain goods, no one will steal your cheaply produced products. Not looking with a desiring eye? The tender hearts of the bachelors and maidens who listen to the pop hits you record will not become chaotic and confused in their tender little hearts. Therefore, the sacred person says, Empty that heart, solidify that abdomen; weaken that will, strengthen that bone. Often leading to an unwittingly frigid populace and causing all persons with extrasensory awareness to not be so bold as to act. Be without being, consequently you’ll be without anarchy.
4.
The Tao is empty and yet in use; otherwise it wouldn’t become full. The abyss, sigh, resembles some chthonic god. Defeat that acute longing, separate those varied intentions, harmonize with that light, be similar to that dirt. The deep, sigh, seems to be a region that exists. We do not know the seed of this. Imagine the first emperor bathing himself in the blood of innocents.
5.
The universe is not benevolent. Accordingly, the ten thousand things are hay dogs or fodder for the non-benevolent universe’s obscene whims. The sacred man is also not benevolent, accordingly the hundred from women born are also hay dogs or fodder for his obscene whims. The universe is a space in between, that’s like a panpipe’s sack now! Empty yet not bent, act upon it yet more issues forth in a teeming mess. Many words are numbered as poor, not comparable to abiding by the Tao.
6.
The valley spirit does not die, rather is called the Dark Female. The Dark Female’s doorway is called the universe’s root. Please be continuous-continuous if you live through this, but do not use regularly.
7.
The heavens are long, and the ground has been the ground for a long time. The universe therefore can claim a long ancestry—being a long time thing, accordingly it can grow long. Therefore, the sacred person falls behind himself yet puts himself first—is outside himself yet he exists. Not according to that selfless evil? Therefore, can accomplish that selfish aim.
8.
The high good is like water, and furthermore this watery goodness benefits the myriad creatures that fill our plane of existence—yet without competing—for it is a mere element that does not understand our paltry human ways. Instead, it seeps into the ground with great power. In places the crowd-man considers evil, the Tao becomes subtle.
Live on the good earth, heart the good abyss, give to good charities, speak in good faith, govern the good government, your affairs well done, acting in good time. The man who has committed himself to not struggling, remains without especially caring.
9.
Clinging like some little baby also overflows it. Not as if that self were really anything more than a baby suckling at a tender teat.[1] Polish and sharpen your convictions, and they will not be preserved for long. The hall full of gold jade cannot be guarded. Have wealth and status only to become arrogant, thereby losing the ability to blame yourself.[2] When your contribution’s complete, if you retreat, the Tao becomes as heaven!
10.
While carrying the soul’s encampment and cherishing the singular truth, can you also do this without leaving the rest of your species to rot now? While concentrating on air in an attempt to achieve gentleness, can you be an infant at the same time now? While washing away the obscurity[3] to sightsee in a sunlit land, can you do this without becoming blemished yourself now? Loving the people while at the same time governing them, can you do this without becoming “that guy who loves the people while at the same time governing them” now? Seeing the heavenly gate as open to all, can you do this without then finding yourself clutched in the arms of the local barmaid, vomit staining your lapel, now? Attaining understanding of the four corners of knowledge, can this be obtained while maintaining ignorance now? If so, give birth to it and raise it into a demonic force.
11.
Thirty spokes join together in one hub. As regards the area without spokes, you’ll find the wheel uses this as well. You believe the boundary that’s formed by soil with large clay content to be a vessel with which perhaps you might carry water, but the space within and the vacuum between particles is used as well.[4] Chisel out the windows and the doors and you believe yourself to have a room, but it is the pre-existing area between the walls within which we live. Therefore, though you may believe that benefit comes from having, believe also that to be without also is useful.
12.
Viewing the five colors makes a person go blind. Not unlike staring into the sun, except also totally unlike staring into the sun in so far as the sun is a single blinding light, while what we’re speaking of here are colors like leaves have colors.[5] Do you think that listening to the five sounds that make up all other sounds[6] causes a person to go deaf or that tasting of the five flavors causes a person’s mouth to feel refreshed with so much delicious food? Obviously, you have not been listening and also know nothing of classical Chinese. Instead, know that galloping about and hunting all the time makes a person become crazy—i.e. a bird with golden wings—and furthermore that the difficulty of these commodities hinders a person’s stride through inching time. Therefore, the sacred person exists not as simply an abdomen slurping up fish guts at the local restaurant, nor as a giant eye, instead removing this to obtain that.
13.
Both favor and disgrace should be treated as if they are startling tongues appearing at random within the cavity of our mouths, and both esteem and great worry should be experienced as if they are our body.[7] What’s the meaning of this? That favor and disgrace are as alarming as alien tongues in the mouth? Favor being above and disgrace being below, it must of necessity seem alarming leading to the loss of that seeming alarm, is the meaning of favor and disgrace both seeming startling.[8]
What’s the meaning of this? That life seems nothing more than one giant esteemed worry?[9] We therefore are great sufferers. For we have life. Achieve the simple goal of ourselves as being without life, then what suffering can we have? For instance, by means of this sensation of preciousness, our lives are for the world and therefore consigned to the world; by means of this sensation of love, our lives are for the world, and therefore entrusted to the world. (Or, as if we’ve been entrusted with the whole living expanse under heaven as children that occasionally bite back with teeth that hurt.)
14.
That which goes unseen is called foreign, and that which goes unheard is called hidden, and that which is not obtained in our struggles is called slight. These three cannot cause interrogation, cause confusion yet are one.
That which is above is not bright, and that which is below is not obscured. As seamless as rope upon rope, unnamable, the placeless expanse is both within and without returns to nothing. This is called the realm of appearances beyond the realm of appearances, or imagination without object, or to be filled with absent-minded sudden insight.
Greet as if the person with whom you were talking were not the head of a large household, follow as if you were leading. Grasp the Tao’s ancestry, and through so doing steer the present tense of the owned world. The ability to know the ancient beginnings is called the Tao’s Annals.
15.
The Tao People of ancient times were tiny dark experts with subtle and exquisite penetration of mind who could not be deeply known. They built their empires upon the shoulders of lesser beings, for these ancient Tao People were what you would call captains of industry, notorious for their ability to speak riddles so as to elude the understanding of the lesser beings, while all the while selling these lesser beings into bondage. As they are very obviously beyond the understanding of ordinary mortals, I will make an effort to describe their true natures.
About as relaxed as someone wading through a river in winter. They were either monkeys full of dread concerning the foreigners encroach on all sides or dignified as a guest. They either would scatter like shards of ice soon to be released into a liquid freedom or were as urgent as a block of wood. Every spacious and unoccupied area seemed as if a valley gorge to them, or muddy as muddy can be.
Who can be muddy while simultaneously always acting in accordance with the serenity of unhurried purity? Who can pacify his enemies while simultaneously moving at the speed of a tree reaching for the sun? Protect this here Tao Person, who does not desire to become full. The man who promises to not become full can cover the corpse to accomplish anew.
16.
Achieve the unreal extreme and defend tranquil sincerity. Regard all the ten thousand things simultaneously and accordingly return to a state of abject wonder. The man-object cuts the luxuriant growth, and each blade returns to its roots like a beheaded baby returning to its mother’s womb. This beheaded-baby-in-the-womb state is what we call the environment of stillness or recovered destiny; recovered destiny speaks of permanence and a knowledge of ordinary things, for once a person has truly embraced themselves as beheaded babies, they are one with the eternal and can see their surroundings with uncluttered eyes. However, if you do not know the ordinary, the absurdly rash becomes a ferocious evil that bubbles up from the abdomen in chaotic swirls of nonreasoning bile.
If knowledge is always contained, your countenance always appears just, and your justice is intact. You are whole and therefore God, God and therefore Tao, Tao and therefore long-living. To lose yourself is to no longer be dangerous. You honestly believe this?
17.
The highest one, I don’t know I have him.[10] Then, is the one that relatives go honor. Then, I dread the one below that. Then, I mock the lowest.
Trust not enough here, then have not trust here. Distance those expensive words. Accomplish a matter’s success, and the hundred Xings will together cry, “I naturally.”
18.
The great road is abandoned, and you discover benevolent justice. Wisdom and cleverness appear, and you have great hypocrisy. When Jan and Marsha bicker, the rest of the adorable children known singly as The Brady Bunch, find themselves awash in pious filial loving, the other four children in this famous family playing various card games till the early morning while they tell intimate secrets and share their darkest hopes. When the homeland is shrouded in the dusk of anarchy, and you have a devoted minister.
19.
Sever the sacred and abandon intelligence, and the benefit to the people will be hundredfold. Sever love and abandon justice, and the people recover pious loving. Sever the skillful craftsman’s hand and abandon beneficial economic policies, and you will find your country empty of thieves and stealing. These three maxims are just words but also not a sufficient platform on which to form government policy, because these decrees belong in the annals of small-minded local governors.
Instead, view the simple and embrace the plain wood. Have few secrets and also have few wants. Sever your studies and be without worries.
20.
How far are promises and flattery from each other?[11] How similar are good and evil with each other? That which people dread cannot but be dread. The wild uncultivated truth is not yet brought into the middle path, alas! Everyone is glorious, as if enjoying the Emperor’s animal sacrifice for the sky-god, or as if in a spring mountain meadow.
I alone am moored, sigh, who have not yet achieved perfection, am turbid as a child who has not yet achieved laughter, a puppet, sigh, or like one who does not belong. The masses have a surplus. I alone seem lost. I am also a foolish person of the heart, alas! The vulgar people are evident-evident, I alone am dusk-dusk. The vulgar people investigate and examine. I alone am depressed, lost in a calm, sigh, that is like the sea, a high wind, sigh, that seems to be without toes. The masses altogether have purpose, I alone am obstinate, moreover base. I alone oppose the people, yet my esteemed food is the mother of us all.
21.
The hole-virtue’s shape only comes from the Tao. Being things of the Tao, only sudden insight, only absent-minded. Between the sudden insight and the absent-mindedness, there is the image.[12] Between the absent-mindedness and the sudden insight, there is the thing. Between profundity and obscurity, there is the essence. Between the essence and the truth, there is trust. From now on back to ancient times, the name Tao never left us.
Read the crowd.
Why do I know what’s going on? With this.
22.
Bent, consequently intact. Crooked, consequently straight. A hole, and therefore becomes full. Tattered, consequently new. Few, consequently many. Many, consequently confusing.
This is, according to the sage person, cherish-singular-as-under-heaven style. I don’t see myself, and so it is evident. I am not myself, and so I manifest in the world. I do not attack myself, and so I achieve great things. I do not pity myself, and so my career is long. The man who promises to not argue, cannot be made to participate in a quarrel.
The wisdom of the ages can also be called a “bent consequently intact” thing. We celebrate empty words, alas! Sincere wholeness yet belongs to it.
23.
Few words and so natural. In this way, the fluttering wind will not end the dynasty, and the galloping rain will not end the day. Who becomes these things? The universe. The universe upholds that which cannot last a long time, yet to people it is only cold water now! From this matter then it is a quick hop skip and a jump to Tao things, then to Tao, righteousness things, then on to righteousness. Similarly, for Tao people the Tao is joyfully gained, and for virtuous people virtue is gleefully acquired. Similarly, with lost people loss is pleasantly achieved. Trust is not sufficient here. Do not have trust here.
24.
Stand-on-tiptoe people are not sturdy. People who walk with long strides cannot move slowly. People who see only themselves do not understand. People who act only in their own interests are not manifest in the surrounding universe. People who attack themselves are without achievement in the eyes of their peers. People who pity themselves are not long-living among the living. Those who are hard at the Tao say also, surplus food, superfluous walk.[13] The region of myriad things is wicked. Therefore, those who have Tao do not dwell there, living instead in the land of the fairies.
[To continue reading go here.]
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[1] What is truly meant here is that every time you cling with too much vim to your chosen path, you leave that path behind like a baby suckling at the tender teat or a clown downing in bottle after bottle of choice vodka while the crowd cheers beyond the curtain and the stage remains empty.
[2] Consider the American, who has now lost his position on the world stage as a result of his inability but still does not blame himself even when his own hands cannot agree what to do with themselves.
[3] Removing all obstacles
[4] That a vessel is only known because there are other things which are not vessels
[5] And televisions and cheeks have color and all of these things making you blind to the full kaleidoscope of vision in the same way advertisements make you blind to the full potential of experience
[6] Not including current developments in electronically created music
[7] That everything we do will forever lead us back down the same byways, with jerky in fist and a crick in the knee, our eyes forever shrink-wrapped in the most melodramatic of tears and our hands forever shaking.
[8] The favored having been placed incongruously above and the disgraced below in your wormy little mind, it must of necessity seem startling to you. Therefore, we must lose the very notion of being startled.
[9] Worry in all its forms understood here as a conceptual nausea always concealing the ever-increasing doubt we experience as the intuitive immortality experienced by youth erodes.
[10] Often translated as, “The best rulers are those whose existence the people forget,” although the literal Chinese is, ‘Too high, not know have existence’
[11] Usually translated as, “How far is the distance between promises and swearing?”
[12] “Oh, there are elephants! Oh, there are things!”
[13] As in, if you got more than enough to eat, you got very little reason to even move from your seat by the refrigerator as you gorge on pint after pint of premium ice cream.
Gabriel Boyer has been making up stories about himself for as long as he can remember. There was never a time he was not fully seated in his various delusions. He continues to delude himself daily. You can read more about him here.
