Tao Te Ching

“The undiscovered vein within us is a living part of the psyche: classical Chinese philosophy named this the interior way “Tao”, and likens it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao fulfillment, wholeness, one’s destination reached, one’s mission done, the beginning, end, and perfect realisation of the meaning of existence innate in all things”.

C.G.Jung: Collected Works, The Development of Personality

Cy Grant made his paraphrase of the Tao Te Ching by comparing all the translations he could find and meditating on them through the years since he made his acclaimed broadcast [21 of the 81 ‘chapters’] for the BBC World Service in 1980.

I believe that we have to leave our academic, scientific training behind when we approach the mystery of the Tao. We tend to want to analyse and look at knowledge, what is, in a Western ‘objective’, scientific and discursive way (a construct of materialist dialectics) which immediately separates us from the nature of Tao.

The ultimate answers to existence are not to be found in intellectual, scientific or philosophical concepts but rather on a level of direct non-conceptual experience. We should no longer confuse the indivisible nature of reality with conceptual categories of language. The meaning of the language of the Tao Te Ching can only adequately convey the meaning if related to personal experience, i.e., experiential self-exploration.

The very first lines of the Tao Te Ching states that “The Tao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao” meaning that the Tao cannot be caught by words.One cannot discuss it in ordinary language; it is ineffable; it can only be experienced. That is the paradox. The Tao is impersonal yet can only be known by personal by personal experience. One could but try to live it and be in a state of complete nowness, one with the primordial wisdom. Very few can attain this state, so who would dare expound it? One can but meditate on its precepts: reconciliation of opposites, non-duality, non- attachment, without desire for accumulating material things.

There have been many versions and interpretations of the Tao Te Ching. Writers have attempted to capture for instance the Tao of relationships, of leadership, of power and the ‘way’ of life. It has been translated by many scholars, including Robert G. Henricks, Arthur Waley, Paul Carus, Gia Fu Feng, D.C Lau, Michael Lafargue, Tam Gibbs & Man-jan Cheng, Chu Ta-Kao, Richard Wilhelm, and Jacob Needleman. Recently there has been a beautifully illustrated version by Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer & Jay Ramsay and the excellent rendition by Ursula Le Guin.

As well as the many English versions, the Tao has been translated into practically every other language. It may be that no book has been so translated, paraphrased, and interpreted, its many versions deriving from the insights and scholarship of each translator. The Tao accommodates them all as it embraces all things, resolves all polarities – a difficult concept perhaps for the West to accommodate, locked as it is in a paradigm of separation and division. The ancient text itself has been clouded in obscurity and although now credited to one Lao Tzu, there has been uncertainty about the authenticity of some versions of the text – the order in which sections were placed and juxtaposition and omission of lines and verses- as well as discovery of lost portions of the original.

The greatest difficulty in translation emerges from the idiogramic nature of Chinese writing itself, its hieroglyphs or pictograms, allowing for a certain degree of abstraction whilst addressing themselves to the fundamental questions of existence, the nature of reality and the mystery of creation, all of which are beyond description. I must confess that I do not speak Chinese. I made my paraphrase by comparing all the translations I could find and meditating on them. I found that all of the many translations of this classic differ greatly from each other, mostly, I presumed, because the Chinese who translated them may have had a limited understanding of English or that the English scholars who made their translations found the concepts difficult to comprehend.