Tao Te Ching

Context In the book as it has come down, this is the opening chapter, and commentators have long treated it as a key to everything that follows. It sets out the difficulty the book keeps coming back to: the Tâo is the source of everything, yet no word can hold it. In the first line dào also appears as a verb. It is usually read as to speak or tell; Legge’s “trodden” takes it as walking the road the word also names. Either way the first line plays on its own key word. The round brackets in “(Conceived of as)” are Legge’s own. They make no name and a name into two ways of regarding one Tâo, a reading that paragraph 4 supports. In the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, sealed in a tomb in 168 BCE and found in 1973, the Te half comes first, so there this chapter opens the second half.

In plain words (our paraphrase, not the text) The Way that can be walked is not the Way that lasts and never changes. The name that can be spoken is not the name that lasts. Thought of as having no name, the Way is where heaven and earth begin. Thought of as having a name, it is the mother who gives birth to every single thing. To reach its depths we have to stay free of wanting; as long as wanting lives in us, we will see only its outer edge, though some commentators divide these lines differently and read them as being about non-being and being rather than about desire. The nameless and the named are really one and the same. They come to have different names only as things unfold. Together they are called the Mystery, dark and deep, and at the Mystery’s deepest point is the gateway through which everything subtle and wonderful comes.

Key terms dào (DOW), “Tâo”: The Way, a road or path. In the first line it is also the verb: most readers take it as speaking, Legge as treading. míng (MING), “name”: A name, or the act of naming. The chapter says the name that can be named is not the lasting one, and then names the Tâo anyway. cháng (CHAHNG), “enduring and unchanging”: Constant, always so. Legge uses two English words for this one Chinese word, which marks the Tâo and the name that do not pass away. yù (YOO), “desire”: Wanting. In this chapter it decides how much of the Tâo we see: its depths without desire, only its fringe with it. xuán (SHWEN), “Mystery”: Dark, deep, hidden, like the night sky. Legge capitalizes it as the name for the nameless and the named taken together. miào (mee-OW), “subtle and wonderful”: Fine, subtle, wondrous. The Mystery is the gate through which such things come; the same word lies behind the deep mystery of paragraph 3.

To reflect on Think of something you care about that no word quite fits: a person, a place, a feeling. When you do give it a name, what does the name leave out?

Context Water, the book’s best-loved image, makes its first appearance here. “Excellence” is Legge’s word for shàn, good or skilled, which runs through the whole chapter; each item in paragraph 2 names where some thing’s shàn lies. “Striving” renders zhēng, contending with others, which the book sets itself against again and again. The chapter returns to it in its last line, where Legge has “wrangle”. His many brackets show how much he supplies to make the terse Chinese read as English. The Chinese text as it has come down has one more item in the list of paragraph 2, about speech being trustworthy, which does not appear in Legge’s list as printed here.

In plain words (our paraphrase, not the text) The highest good is like water. Water does good to all things, and it settles, without contending, in the low places that people dislike and try to avoid. In this its way comes close to the Way itself. What makes a dwelling good is its place. What makes a mind good is a stillness as deep as an abyss. What makes friendships good is keeping company with good people. What makes government good is order, what makes the handling of affairs good is competence, and what makes any move good is its timing. Legge takes the item about friendships to mean choosing good company, while others read it as dealing kindly with people. And because the one with this highest good does not quarrel about being placed low, no one finds fault with him.

Key terms shàn (SHAHN), “excellence”: Good, excellent, skilled. It is the word repeated through the chapter, first for water and then for each item in the list. zhēng (JUNG), “striving”: Contending, competing with others. Water does not do it, which is why it takes the low place and escapes blame. dào (DOW), “Tâo”: The Way. Water’s way of benefiting and staying low is said to come near to it.

Connections Compare Chapter 7: The sage puts himself last there and is preserved; water takes the lowest place here, and no one finds fault. Compare Chapter 6: The low valley that never dies is close kin to the low place water chooses. Compare Chapter 3: Rivalry among the people, which a ruler should not stir up, is the striving that water never does.

To reflect on Watch where water goes today when it is left to itself: a gutter, a puddle, the low corner of a sink. What does this chapter see in that, and do you see it too?