The way you can go is not the unchanging way.
The name you can know is not the unchanging name.
The nameless is the source of Heaven and Earth.
The named is mother to the ten thousand things.
Constant and free of thought 5
Behold the wonder of its essence.
Constant and full of thought
Behold whatever it manifests.
These two arise united yet differ in name.
Their union we call a mystery 10
The mystery of all mysteries
The gateway to the essence of everything.
***
NOTES
lines 3 and 4: A variation of these lines appears in poem 25.
line 5: This line also appears in poem 34 as a description of Dao.
COMMENTARY
To quote Ursula K. Le Guin: “A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible. It contains the book. […] If you see it rightly, it contains everything.”[1] Truer words were never spoken. Thus it is entirely fitting that the first line of the first poem disrupts my intention of not using an English word for Dao. In Chinese the word dao, in its meaning as a way or road or path, can function as either a noun (a path) or a verb (to travel a path). More literally, line 1 reads, “The dao you can dao is not the unchanging dao.” Line 2 repeats line 1 but replaces dao with the word “name” (ming) as both noun and verb – and of course in English, “name” is also double-jointed: “The name you can name is not the unchanging name.” Unable to repeat these features of their parallel structure, I chose instead to link the lines by rhyming their verbs.
Laozi tells us that while Dao, the nameless, created the Creation, that Creation’s abundance of beings is due to other created beings, the named; in other words, nothing produced something, and that something is self-renewing generation after endless generation. Those who are diligent in their embrace of stillness are brought into direct contact with the nameless; those who are constant in their material fixations will never lack for something to obsess over. The immaterial and the material, the transcendent and the mundane, arise united yet differ in name. “As above, so below,” to quote a Western maxim. Two things that couldn’t be more different are in reality the same thing – this is the mystery of unity (see Introduction section IV.8), which Laozi here defines as the gateway to the essence of everything.
FOOTNOTE
1. Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way. Ursula K. Le Guin, English version and commentary. Boston: Shambhala, 1997, p. 3.
Links To:
The Classic of Dao and De by Laozi: Contents
For more on Daoism, see:
Film Dreams: Frank Capra
Music: KALW Radio Show #3, Ancient China in 20th-Century Music
Music: SFCR Radio Show #8, Daoism in Western Music, part 1
Music: SFCR Radio Show #9, Daoism in Western Music, part 2
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 