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The Tao is the Way, and the Way is the Tao. However, if you anticipate the Tao Te Ching to offer more specific details than that, I'm afraid you're likely to be disappointed. The Tao Te Ching isn't a how-to guide – or, if you'll excuse the expression, a Tao-to.
Author Lao Tzu is a highly venerated figure in modern China. Interestingly, as scholar D.C. Lau of the Chinese University of Hong Kong points out in an informative foreword, there's no real way to prove the historicity, or even the actual historical existence, of a monk who lived in the 6th century B.C. and was named 老子, Lao Tzu. Therefore, stories about Lao Tzu – like the one where he supposedly told a young Confucius to “Rid yourself of your arrogance and your lustfulness, your ingratiating manners and your excessive ambition. These are all detrimental to your person” (p. viii) – must be taken with a grain of salt.
What cannot be denied is that the Tao Te Ching – whoever its author(s) may be and whatever the circumstances of its composition – forms the basis of one of the world's great philosophical and religious traditions. In its 81 short, poetic chapters, the Tao Te Ching invites the reader to approach life with a spirit of acceptance and humility. This emphasis is no coincidence, as the book was compiled during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) – a particularly turbulent and unstable time in Chinese history when both ordinary citizens and powerful leaders were acutely aware of the uncertainty of human affairs. It's understandable, then, that so many passages from the Tao Te Ching emphasize contentment, caution, and endurance: “Know contentment/And you will suffer no disgrace;/Know when to stop/And you will meet with no danger./You can then endure” (p. 51).
On my first reading of the Tao Te Ching, I focused on areas where I could see its influence on Western culture. For example, in Chapter V, Lao Tzu writes that “Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs” (p. 9). Sure enough, it turns out that Sam Peckinpah's violent and controversial film Straw Dogs (1971), which also thematically focuses on ordinary people in a ruthless world, takes its title from this chapter.
And then there's Chapter XLVII, perhaps my favorite from the entire Tao Te Ching: “Without stirring abroad/One can know the whole world;/Without looking out of the window/One can see the way of heaven./The further one goes/The less one knows” (p. 54). Fellow Beatles fans will immediately recognize that this passage from the Tao Te Ching provides the lyrical inspiration for “The Inner Light,” a 1968 George Harrison composition that originally served as the B-side for the hit single “Lady Madonna.” George Harrison's interest in the religious traditions of the East is well-documented, and it makes perfect sense that, amid the chaos of being a Beatle, he would have been drawn to the Tao Te Ching's message of letting go of the pursuit of material things in favor of seeking spiritual sustenance.
To my mind, one of the passages that most explicitly defines the Way comes in Chapter VIII, when Lao Tzu writes that “Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way” (p. 12). Part of understanding the Way seems to involve the idea that the Way cannot be pinned down like a dead butterfly in a glass case; indeed, attempting to seize control of the Way will only lead one further from the Way. “Go up to it and you will not see its head;/Follow behind it and you will not see its rear” (p. 18). In a way, Lao Tzu's Way reminds me of physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics – the idea that one can accurately measure the position or the momentum of a subatomic particle, but not both. The only way to achieve some measure of knowledge is to let go of trying to know everything. How scientific, and how Taoist.
One can also, if one looks, find connections with the religious traditions of the West. When Lao Tzu writes in Chapter 53 that “The great way is easy, yet people prefer by-paths” (p. 60), readers familiar with the Judeo-Christian heritage might find themselves thinking of one of Jesus Christ's admonitions from the Sermon on the Mount: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). And Lao Tzu's call in Chapter 63 for his disciples to “do good to him who has done you an injury” (p. 70) will similarly bring to mind Jesus' call for his disciples to “Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:27-28).
Helpful appendices to this edition of the Tao Te Ching address the problem of Lao Tzu's authorship of the Tao Te Ching, as mentioned above, and the nature of the work. There's also a glossary of authors and works from the tradition of classical Chinese philosophy, along with a chronological table that spans from the beginning of the Eastern Chou Dynasty in 770 B.C. through the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 225 A.D. – all very useful for any reader for whom this history may be relatively new.
I read the Tao Te Ching while my wife and I were in Beijing. As we toured the Temple of Heaven complex, a magnificent group of religious buildings associated with the Taoist faith, I wondered how many believers, during the 600 years since the complex's construction, had walked to or from a ceremony of harvest prayers reciting a favorite chapter from the Tao Te Ching. I felt extremely fortunate to be familiarizing myself with this world classic of literature, religion, and philosophy while traveling in the land from which it originated.
Author Lao Tzu is a highly venerated figure in modern China. Interestingly, as scholar D.C. Lau of the Chinese University of Hong Kong points out in an informative foreword, there's no real way to prove the historicity, or even the actual historical existence, of a monk who lived in the 6th century B.C. and was named 老子, Lao Tzu. Therefore, stories about Lao Tzu – like the one where he supposedly told a young Confucius to “Rid yourself of your arrogance and your lustfulness, your ingratiating manners and your excessive ambition. These are all detrimental to your person” (p. viii) – must be taken with a grain of salt.
What cannot be denied is that the Tao Te Ching – whoever its author(s) may be and whatever the circumstances of its composition – forms the basis of one of the world's great philosophical and religious traditions. In its 81 short, poetic chapters, the Tao Te Ching invites the reader to approach life with a spirit of acceptance and humility. This emphasis is no coincidence, as the book was compiled during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) – a particularly turbulent and unstable time in Chinese history when both ordinary citizens and powerful leaders were acutely aware of the uncertainty of human affairs. It's understandable, then, that so many passages from the Tao Te Ching emphasize contentment, caution, and endurance: “Know contentment/And you will suffer no disgrace;/Know when to stop/And you will meet with no danger./You can then endure” (p. 51).
On my first reading of the Tao Te Ching, I focused on areas where I could see its influence on Western culture. For example, in Chapter V, Lao Tzu writes that “Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs” (p. 9). Sure enough, it turns out that Sam Peckinpah's violent and controversial film Straw Dogs (1971), which also thematically focuses on ordinary people in a ruthless world, takes its title from this chapter.
And then there's Chapter XLVII, perhaps my favorite from the entire Tao Te Ching: “Without stirring abroad/One can know the whole world;/Without looking out of the window/One can see the way of heaven./The further one goes/The less one knows” (p. 54). Fellow Beatles fans will immediately recognize that this passage from the Tao Te Ching provides the lyrical inspiration for “The Inner Light,” a 1968 George Harrison composition that originally served as the B-side for the hit single “Lady Madonna.” George Harrison's interest in the religious traditions of the East is well-documented, and it makes perfect sense that, amid the chaos of being a Beatle, he would have been drawn to the Tao Te Ching's message of letting go of the pursuit of material things in favor of seeking spiritual sustenance.
To my mind, one of the passages that most explicitly defines the Way comes in Chapter VIII, when Lao Tzu writes that “Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way” (p. 12). Part of understanding the Way seems to involve the idea that the Way cannot be pinned down like a dead butterfly in a glass case; indeed, attempting to seize control of the Way will only lead one further from the Way. “Go up to it and you will not see its head;/Follow behind it and you will not see its rear” (p. 18). In a way, Lao Tzu's Way reminds me of physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle from quantum mechanics – the idea that one can accurately measure the position or the momentum of a subatomic particle, but not both. The only way to achieve some measure of knowledge is to let go of trying to know everything. How scientific, and how Taoist.
One can also, if one looks, find connections with the religious traditions of the West. When Lao Tzu writes in Chapter 53 that “The great way is easy, yet people prefer by-paths” (p. 60), readers familiar with the Judeo-Christian heritage might find themselves thinking of one of Jesus Christ's admonitions from the Sermon on the Mount: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). And Lao Tzu's call in Chapter 63 for his disciples to “do good to him who has done you an injury” (p. 70) will similarly bring to mind Jesus' call for his disciples to “Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:27-28).
Helpful appendices to this edition of the Tao Te Ching address the problem of Lao Tzu's authorship of the Tao Te Ching, as mentioned above, and the nature of the work. There's also a glossary of authors and works from the tradition of classical Chinese philosophy, along with a chronological table that spans from the beginning of the Eastern Chou Dynasty in 770 B.C. through the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 225 A.D. – all very useful for any reader for whom this history may be relatively new.
I read the Tao Te Ching while my wife and I were in Beijing. As we toured the Temple of Heaven complex, a magnificent group of religious buildings associated with the Taoist faith, I wondered how many believers, during the 600 years since the complex's construction, had walked to or from a ceremony of harvest prayers reciting a favorite chapter from the Tao Te Ching. I felt extremely fortunate to be familiarizing myself with this world classic of literature, religion, and philosophy while traveling in the land from which it originated.
