Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way

by Lao Tzu

Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years. It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is also the deepest spring. —Ursula K. Le Guin

Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own responses to the text. They are idiosyncratic and unscholarly, and are to be ignored if not found helpful.

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.

To bear and not to own; to act and not lay claim; to do the work and let it go: for just letting it go is what makes it stay.

A clear stream of water runs through this book, from poem to poem, wearing down the indestructible, finding the way around everything that obstructs the way. Good drinking water.

Can you keep the deep water still and clear, so it reflects without blurring? Can you love people and run things, and do so by not doing?

Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where the wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is is in the use of what isn’t.

So the wise soul watches with the inner not the outward eye, letting that go, keeping this.

To be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear. To take the body seriously is to admit one can suffer. What does that mean, to be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear? Favor debases: we fear to lose it, fear to win it. So to be in favor or disgrace is to live in fear.

True leaders are hardly known to their followers. Next after them are the leaders the people know and admire; after them, those they fear; after them, those they despise. To give no trust is to get no trust. When the work’s done right, with no fuss or boasting, ordinary people say, Oh, we did it.

Stop being holy, forget being prudent, it’ll be a hundred times better for everyone. Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous, people will remember what family feeling is. Stop planning, forget making a profit, there won’t be any thieves and robbers. But even these three rules needn’t be followed; what works reliably is to know the raw silk, hold the uncut wood. Need little, want less. Forget the rules. Be untroubled.

Not showing themselves, they shine forth. Not justifying themselves, they’re self-evident. Not praising themselves, they’re accomplished. Not competing, they have in all the world no competitor.

Give yourself to the Way and you’ll be at home on the Way. Give yourself to power and you’ll be at home in power. Give yourself to loss and when you’re lost you’ll be at home. To give no trust is to get no trust.

You can’t keep standing on tiptoe or walk in leaps and bounds. You can’t shine by showing off or get ahead by pushing. Self-satisfied people do no good, self-promoters never grow up.

Good people teach people who aren’t good yet; the less good are the makings of the good. Anyone who doesn’t respect a teacher or cherish a student may be clever, but has gone astray. There’s a deep mystery here.

The hidden light and the deep mystery seem to be signals, saying “think about this”—about care for what seems unimportant. In a teacher’s parental care for the insignificant student, and in a society’s respect for mothers, teachers, and other obscure people who educate, there is indeed illumination and a profoundly human mystery. Having replaced instinct with language, society, and culture, we are the only species that depends on teaching and learning. We aren’t human without them. In them is true power. But are they the occupations of the rich and mighty?

Hold fast to the great thought and all the world will come to you, harmless, peaceable, serene. Walking around, we stop for music, for food. But if you taste the Way it’s flat, insipid. It looks like nothing much, it sounds like nothing much. And yet you can’t get enough of it.

So: when we lose the Way we find power; losing power we find goodness; losing goodness we find righteousness; losing righteousness we’re left with obedience. Obedience to law is the dry husk of loyalty and good faith. Opinion is the barren flower of the Way, the beginning of ignorance. So great-minded people abide in the kernel not the husk, in the fruit not the flower, letting the one go, keeping the other.

Return is how the Way moves. Weakness is how the Way works. Heaven and earth and the ten thousand things are born of being. Being is born of nothing.

It wouldn’t be the Way if there weren’t jokes about it. So they say: The Way’s brightness looks like darkness; advancing on the Way feels like retreating; the plain Way seems hard going. The height of power seems a valley;

The Way is hidden in its namelessness. But only the Way begins, sustains, fulfills.