There was something before Heaven and Earth were born.
So silent!
So formless!
Standing alone, unchanging
Ceaseless and all-pervading. 5
Some call it mother to Heaven and Earth.
I don’t know its name, so I call it Dao.
Compelled to name it, I would call it great.
Greatness makes you far-reaching.
Reaching far makes you travel distances. 10
Traveling distances makes you return.
Thus Dao is great
Heaven is great
Earth is great
And the king is great too. 15
In this realm there are four greats
And the king is one of them.
People follow Earth.
Earth follows Heaven.
Heaven follows Dao. 20
Dao follows its nature.
***
NOTES
lines 6 and 7: A variation of these lines appears in poem 1.
COMMENTARY
In both tone and topic, the first part of poem 25 is, like poem 4, an attempt to talk about Dao directly. And as he does there, here too Laozi eventually must step forward in the first person with an I don’t know, admitting that he calls it Dao because he doesn’t know its name. The limits created by naming – an issue in the Dao De Jing from the second line of the first poem – are implied here; in poem 32 Laozi is explicit on the subject. Greatness, his name for Dao, is seen in lines 9–11 as a link in a logical chain that ends naturally in returning (see Introduction section IV.7). Dao is generative – some call it mother to Heaven and Earth – but it is also the return to silence and formlessness. So by declaring the king to be great, what may seem like a bow to authority becomes a reminder of mortality. That may be why lines 18–21 are not an exact reverse order of the subjects of lines 12–15: Rather than reference the king Laozi begins the last four lines with people, because the king is another person.
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 