Book of the Forest Path

I. A New Rendition of the Tao Te Ching

Introduction

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient work consisting of 81 cryptic verses. It is the basic text of the philosophical and religious movements known collectively as Taoism. And it is certainly one the most read, celebrated, and translated works in the history of the written word. It has been reasonably dated anywhere within the millennium before the West's Christian era. I think the versions we are familiar with were likely composed shortly after the life of Confucius (551-479 BCE), because I think it is, in part, a response to Confucian teachings.

It is not clear whether the person to whom it is attributed, Lao Tzu, actually existed, though in the tradition he has been represented as a younger contemporary of Confucius. At any rate, the question is ill-formulated, as someone certainly wrote it, and "Lao Tzu" means simply "the old master." One legend about his person and his book is worth recounting, however. When Lao Tzu was, as an old man, fleeing a war zone (and the China of Lao Tzu's time was continuously torn by war, a fact that is evident from the text), border guards refused to let him cross until he wrote down his teachings; the result was the Tao Te Ching. This makes sense of one of the book's main themes: that what it teaches cannot be taught, that what it says cannot be written.

The book is, of course, worth the huge number of translations it has received, since it is at once so profound and so cryptic. It supports an incredibly wide range of formulations into English.

I am trying to accomplish a couple of things in the translation that follows. First of all, I have a particular philosophical interpretation of Taoism, and I am trying to see how far it can be reflected in a translation. I think it is not compatible with the translations I've seen. Second, I've tried to make it plain and cool English. My objection to the existing translations is basically philosophical and it is fundamental. I think the going translations (even the ones I like the most (Mitchell's and Red Pine's, for example)) still reflect a dualistic metaphysics. They take Taoism to privilege emptiness over existence, inaction over action, yin over yang, and so on. That is understandable and does emerge from the text. But I think the reasons for that are, from a certain view, historical accidents: they reflect a Taoism that is dedicated to a critique of Confucianism. Nevertheless the considered position of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu (another great Taoist sage) is that, finally, both yin and yang, both the world and the emptiness at its heart, must be approached with a perfect affirmation, and that they are, in fact, the same thing. I have tried to apply that insight - surely fundamental to Taoism, throughout the text. So, for example, the first chapter in my view just can't possibly say that namelessness is good and naming bad, that desirelessness is good and desire bad, and so on. Such views would be more proper to Buddhism, for example.

In addition, the Tao Te Ching is an anarchist political text, and its radical attack on political authority and wealth have often been obscured by translators: I have tried to restore a sense of its pointed political critique, its direct attack on inequalities of wealth and power in ancient China.

Finally, I regard the work as more playful and aware of its paradoxes than most other translations make it out to be. There is a touch of irony, emerging in part from the self-awareness with which it says what it says cannot be said.

This book can tell you nothing;

the Tao leaves you where you began.

A maiden can leave things nameless;

a mother must name her children.

Perfectly empty or carrying ten thousand words, you still return,

and return, and return.

Naming things loses what unites them.

Failing to name things loses them into what unites them.

Words are limits that make experience possible.

But form and formlessness are the same.

Tao and the world are the same,

though we call them by different names.

This unity is dark and deep, but on the other hand it is deep and dark.

It opens into the center of everything.

Beauty originates in ugliness,

virtue in vice.

Life and death, being and nothingness:

you might as well think of them as the same thing.

What's easy and what's difficult make each other what they are

to the point where they are precisely identical.

What's long and what's short are the measure of one another.

What's high and what's low reach toward each other.

High notes and low notes form a harmony.

Future and past form a circle.

So there's nothing to do but remain in the emptiness

from which all these notions emerge and into which they are released.

The speech of the sage is silence; his silence, speech.

Things come and go, and he lets them.

He doesn't seize them, and so participates in their own spontaneity.

He does his job and lets go.

Because he does, he acts in eternity as he finds repose in time.

If you're always groveling before the great,

people become envious and quarrelsome.

If you hide your riches

you obviously think people are robbers.

Soon they will be.

If, on the other hand, you flaunt your things

you encourage people to be devoured by their own greed.

So the sage governs himself, not other people.

He empties his own mind and so helps free others from greed and envy.

He fills their stomachs and helps them relax.

He strengthens people's bodies.

In the company of people, he tries to find simplicity.

Look. Forget how smart you think you are. Stop wanting everything,

as though there is something out there that will cure or fix you.

Just make things happen by allowing them to happen

Then everything will turn out alright.

The Tao empties itself continually,

and is never exhausted.

The source

gives everything as a pure gift.

In it, sharp things are rounded,

knots are untied,

water settles, clears,

becomes pure and still

Whose child is it?

It is the source, even, of God.

Obviously, the world makes no judgments.

It's as likely to be evil as good.

It doesn't care about our little preferences.

The Tao is empty, like a flute making music,

like a bellows making fire.

It's silent, like the place from which

we speak.

Live from the center.

The source of water gives over and flows:

a woman,

a mother, a lover,

an origin, clear as mystery.

The more it yields

The more it has.

The sky endures, and the earth.

How? They do not care what they are.

The sage, too, endures

by losing herself.

To lose yourself is to achieve yourself

perfectly.

If there were a god,

he'd be like water

that brings life to things

without trying.

Water seeks the lowest place

and cleanses what it touches.

It is as satisfied with the humble

as with the exalted.

Still, deep, clear,

true, kind, useful,

generous, prompt.

This is also the true man,

liquid, and at ease.

Keep pouring, and the vessel overflows.

Keep sharpening, and the knife becomes useless.

Hoard gold and jade, and you are in continual danger.

Pride and its collapse are the same.

Work hard, then relax.

Nurture, then release.

That's the true way.

Let your spirit embrace your body,

and your body your spirit.

Preserve your vital force

in a state of utmost flexibility.

Be like a small child.

Clean the dark mirror

so that it can reflect things with the utmost clarity.

Order the state merely by loving people.

Can you overcome your own cleverness

and walk the world's path?

Can you maintain a female receptivity?

Can you achieve transparent awareness

and see everything clearly while remaining still?

If so, with the Tao, you can create things

without owning them.

You can act with immersion in the process

and let go of the result.

Lead but don't dominate.

This is the forest path.

You make a wheel by arranging spokes,

but the empty hub receives the axle.

You make a vessel from clay,

but it's the emptiness that holds things.

You build a house from lumber,

but you live in the space inside.

We work with things

and shape the emptiness.

Always staring at bright colors

makes your eyes less sensitive.

Always listening to beautiful music

can compromise your ability to hear yourself.

Eating gourmet food all the time

can dull your taste for truth.

Always running around, searching

for excitement, hunting

for what seems precious

injures your capacities.

So the sage attends to his senses

as well as to his pleasures.

Hence he learns to preserve himself.

Honor and disgrace are both warnings.

Fear and confidence are equally ways by which

the self loses everything that is not itself, that is, everything.

Exaltation anticipates its own collapse.

Disgrace exalts.

Exaltation disgraces. Why?

Because it seems to trap you in the self

when in fact there is no self.

Treasure even your misfortunes, if you can.

Nature can be trusted to govern everything,

even you.

You can't see the invisible.

You can't name the fugitive.

You can't hear what can't be heard.

You can't grasp what you can't touch.

Now can you?

You can't avoid these qualities,

but you can't comprehend them, either.

They make a universe.

Tonight the sky is dark and the earth glows

as with moonlight.

A cord stretches from it to it, and returns and returns.

What is the substance of emptiness,

the form of the shapeless?

Confront it and its face evades you.

Follow it and its back disappears.

But still the ancients moved with the Tao into presence.

Stay connected to the origin.

That's Tao's cord.

In the time of origin, masters and warriors

approached mystery mysteriously,

profundity profoundly.

If you try to grasp such people, you miss them:

poised, as though hopping rocks in a stream;

careful as a man surrounded by enemies;

reserved as an honored guest;

open, like ice in a thaw;

straightforward as uncarved wood;

empty and accepting as a valley;

opaque as muddy water.

Allow water to settle and it clears,

but life stirs neverthless.

They didn't try to assume any particular form,

so they were again at each moment renewed.

Arrive at emptiness.

Keep still.

Things are balanced and in repose at their center.

They arise in unison.

We experience that,

and then we and they return.

All things come to be together,

and in unity they return to the source.

The source is serene.

Emergence and return form a circle.

Its center is permanent;

if you find it you find truth,

tolerance, comprehensive knowledge.

If you don't find it, you live falsely.

Real nobility is found in acting from the Tao,

acting and knowing that you are a part of nature.

Then you, like nature, like the Tao,

are inexhaustible.

The greatest leader is one

of whom the people need not even be aware.

Then there is the one who is loved,

then the one who is held in awe,

then the rest, who are despised.

If you have no trust in the people,

they will show you no trust either.

The real leader acts quietly, without display.

And when he is done, the people say:

we did the right thing, spontaneously.

We must be good.

Benevolence and rectitude make their appearance

When the real Tao is lost,

Learning and intelligence appear together with hypocrisy.

Filial piety is necessary

only if there's no peace in the family.

Patriotic fervour arises

in a nation in crisis.

Abandon holiness,

discard your plans,

and the people will improve.

Let go of duty,

and the people will find devotion.

Renounce learning and ceremony,

and the people will find peace.

Ditch your clever schemes and thirst for profit,

and thieves will disappear.

Better yet,

just return to the purity and simplicity,

of raw silk or unworked wood.

Lose your self-consciousness

and ease yourself away from desire.

What, exactly, is the difference between yes and no,

good and evil? You can't get one without the other.

Must I fear what other people fear,

want what they want?

This wilderness of ideas is bewildering.

Everyone seems to want to party,

or glut themselves with food and drink,

as though that will refresh them.

Sometimes I think that I'm the only one< who can be alone and

hold steady within myself,

giving no sign,

like a baby who doesn't know much of anything.

I alone can wander aimlessly,

and always be home.

Most people have too much,

and want even more.

I know that I possess nothing,

and am happy that I'm not clever.

I must be the deepest sort of fool.

People try to shine;

I allow myself to be concealed and nurtured in darkness.

People try to be sharp,

but I am dull about distinctions.

They resemble the ocean in a gale,

but I am adrift and becalmed.

They've got their important purposes;

I let such things go.

They try to seem sophisticated;

I'm deeply uncouth.

I seem to be estranged from people

because I am still connected to the source.

A path through the forest

is merely where the trees aren't:

a clearing or absence.

What is it? Where is it?

These are not exactly the right questions;

it is an absence in space

that is also the way you are going.

It is surrounded by trees;

if it had a nature, that would be it:

the stuff all around it that touches

and shapes the emptiness within it.

But that's where you move, isn't it?

That's how and where you go.

It is a useful emptiness, an effective absence.

You've never left it, even if you think you have,

and everything you've seen, you've seen from it.

I know it because here I am.

To become strong, yield.

To be straightened out, bow down.

To achieve fullness, empty yourself.

To be young again, allow yourself to age.

To learn, forget.

The wise person seeks the darkness

and shines.

She doesn't boast or compete,

so no one can compete with her.

There is an old saying that, like a tree, our survival depends

on flexibility, that the rigid snap when the wind rages.

That is a cliche. It is also true.

If you can let yourself go

you have already returned.

Stop your whining.

Even the most intense storm ends eventually;

in fact the strongest storms are brief.

Their origin is the relation of sky and earth.

If they can't go on forever

neither can you.

So just do your daily tasks

embodying the Tao in yourself.

Allow yourself the experience the power of loss

as well as the power of aspiration.

You can do this by allowing yourself

to find your identity with Tao and Te.

What won't fail you is directness and honesty.

Standing on tiptoes,

you lose contact with the ground and grow unsteady.

Trying to take great strides,

you forget how to walk.

Trying to show off,

you conceal what actually shines.

Concentrating on your righteousness,

you misplace your real qualities.

Praising yourself,

you make yourself ridiculous.

In relation to the Tao, that's all just crap.

If you must embody ambition,

make it to steadiness and stillness.

In origin

all is complete, combined, one.

There is no distinction

between earth and sky:

just tranquility, formlesseness, solitude,

circulating freely, inexhaustible.

This is the world's mother.

It precedes and overwhelms

our attempts to know or name it.

Constrained to pick it out,

we'd call it Tao.

It flows without stint,

giving everything to everything.

It has made itself scarce and it is returning.

Tao is spacious.

The sky is spacious.

Earth is spacious.

Even the center of man is spacious,

when it finds its connection to these.

What we are is fused to earth,

earth to sky,

sky to Tao,

Tao to what we are.

The root's stability makes possible

the leaf's communion with air.

Likewise, serenity is always still there,

at the heart of agitation.

The sage travels lightly,

but his wagons are heavily laden.

He is still, even as he moves

through the beauty and strangeness of the world.

He is unattached and rooted simultaneously,

a leaf moving freely on a stem.

He moves outward into the air,

into a kingdom,

into everything

and yet remains steady within himself.

Without that steadiness, rulership

is ridiculous.

If you could walk perfectly

you would leave no trace.

If you could speak perfectly

your words would be like birdsong,

lovely, then gone.

If you could make perfect decisions

you would not stop to calculate.

You could be secure without locks,

bound without cord.

That's how the sage abandons no one

and helps everyone, without trying.

Maybe people think his light is shrouded;

he knows the light and its shroud

need one another.

If he teaches bad people to be good,

it's because they taught him first.

The wise are lost.

That is called the crux.

Encompass the male but reside within the female.

In the world, be a valley,

a source of waters, pure:

an infant.

Know cleanness, but affirm even filth.

The stream, but also the bank.

The water and its channel.

The spring and the fall.

The origin and the outcome.

Gaze upon the white, but always from within the darkness

that has no borders.

There you will find your essence.

The sage is not an official.

The block of wood is not a tool.

The fabric is not clothing.

Do you intend to seize the world

and make it better?

I hope you will not succeed,

and I don't think you will.

The world is sacred.

It cannot be improved.

If you try to transform it

you will only damage it.

If you try to control it

you will only lose it.

Just let it happen, and yourself within it.

Breathe in; breathe out.

Push forward; fall back.

Find strength or lose it.

Enjoy companionship or dwell in solitude.

The wise person knows the sweetness of the ordinary.

Why would she need to go to extremes?

If you want to serve your ruler,

do it with the Tao, not with weapons,

not with force.

Violence recoils on the person who inflicts it.

Where armies camp, brambles grow.

Where armies march, desolation follows.

Fight only if you must. Be resolute and let go.

Be resolute and abandon pride.

Be resolute and abandon vanity.

Be resolute and abandon cruelty.

Attain your purpose and stop.

Don't swagger and wave your manhood around.

People like that lose their way and die quickly.

Weapons, even lovely ones, are terrible things.

They are forged from greed.

Abandon them into the Tao.

Rulers who pursue peace and freedom

mourn when they must fight.

If you are forced to fight,

do so solemnly, with clarity and forbearance.

Do not display weapons proudly or ostentatiously;

that merely displays a love of killing.

If you love killing, you yourself cannot survive.

When you gather to plan a military campaign,

it ought to be like gathering for a funeral.

When you see the dead on the field of battle,

allow yourself to feel grief and remorse.

If you win the war,

mourn.

"Tao" is the name of the nameless,

of the perfectly simple.

The emptiness at the heart of real power

renders it impossible or pointless to resist.

Reside in this central stillness

and all things begin to shape themselves

and come to exist with ease in your experience.

The sky unites with the earth in a gentle rain.

People find unity without constraint.

Names dissolve and namelessness with them,

until each thing is precisely itself;

each thing stands as itself in your awareness,

names itself, depicts itself, contains itself.

The river contains the sky.

The sea contains the river.

The sky contains the sea.

Know others by knowing yourself.

Overcome others by overcoming yourself.

Understanding what is enough is enough.

Presence is perseverance.

Coming to stillness is forging ahead.

Find life by accepting death.

The way is a river

flowing and overflowing everywhere.

Completely reliable, it receives every thing.

Whatever it does, it does without effort,

and when the job is finished lets it go.

It touches everything and controls nothing.

That is why whatever it touches is eternal.

Reside in the center

where understanding does not require words or images,

and folk will come to you to be taught

how to be serene.

Where there is good music and food

people stop to rest and regain their energy.

But though the Tao seems unmelodious or even bland

it is an inexhaustible source of refreshment.

To shrink something,

allow it to expand.

To weaken something

allow it to become strong.

To abolish something,

exalt it.

To take something,

abandon it.

This is seeing beneath the surface.

Live in the world like fish in a river.

Rule the world like a knife cutting water.

The Tao does nothing

and leaves nothing undone.

When a ruler inhabits it,

the people come to be themselves.

They forget even to try

not to try.

In being,

everything saves itself.

Reality does not represent itself as real:

that is its reality.

Reality abandons itself into reality:

that is its presence.

It cannot judge this to be high or that to be low:

that is its exaltation.

It has no purpose:

that is its fulfillment.

It is without compassion:

that is its mercy.

The man of rectitude tries to make things turn out right,

and when that fails he rolls up his sleeves and redoubles his efforts.

If you lose the way, you lose reality.

If you lose reality, you lose compassion.

If you lose compassion, you lose rectitude.

If you lose rectitude, you lose your manners.

When people have no manners the world descends into anarchy,

tumbles into a void.

But in the anarchy we act again;

we must learn how to behave;

we learn rectitude;

we learn sincerity:

not the appearance this time but the very heart.

Can you remain in the center and allow things to be?

Either way you always return.

At the origin

each thing was whole

and all things were connected.

In their wholeness they found clarity

and serenity. In their connection,

they were sacred. People, too,

were whole, unified with each other,

integral to the world, each one a ruler,

each one pure.

Remain in the primordial purity

and the sky will become clear;

the earth will find peace;

the spirit, strength;

the valley, water;

living things, growth;

leaders, integrity.

Humility is the source of nobility.

The low is the foundation of the exalted.

Root yourself in responsibility.

Quiet yourself.

Back here.

That's where the path always leads.

That's where these wings will always bring you.

All the things that are

come from the one that is not.

When the wise study about the Tao,

they slog through its lessons with appropriate diligence.

When the sort-of-wise hear about it, they grasp it and lose it.

If they didnπt lose it, they couldnπt try to find it.

When the fool hears about the Tao, he laughs and laughs.

That is the Tao.

The Tao sees darkness as though it were light,

sees retreat as progress,

knows that that the rough conceals the smooth,

that the truth appears in fragments,

purity within defilement,

goodness as incoherence,

integrity in letting go,

simplicity in ramification.

A perfect square is a circle.

A perfect circle is boundless.

A perfect note is enwrapped in the silence.

The world has no form.

Is the Tao hidden?

It forms and fills us.

It empties and releases us.

The Tao makes one.

The Tao and one makes two.

The Tao and two makes three.

The Tao and three makes everything.

Everything makes the Tao.

The male and the female separate and coalesce;

they are two; they are one; it is whole and lost.

What people hate is to stand alone,

yet that is also what they want.

Power cannot overcome death.

What is unyielding slowly yields to what is yielding.

That which has no solidity

can enter anything, anywhere, and permeate it.

This shows the value of not intending,

of teaching without subject or substance,

of moving without effort.

That is how we travel the path.

Let your name name yourself.

Let your things be yourself.

Hoarding wealth is poverty;

poverty is wealth.

Avoid disgrace by finding contentment.

Avoid danger by stopping.

Then live forever when you are.

What is most perfect seems shabby, worn,

but it is consecrated by use.

What is fullest seems empty,

a sheer capacity.

What is most true is not level;

what is most skilled is simple;

nothing prospers like poverty;

sincerity is most eloquent.

When it gets cold, move around.

When it gets hot, grow still.

In general, stay calm.

The sky, the ground.

When they know the way,

people use their horses to plow the fields,

and use their horses' manure to enrich them.

When they lose their way,

they breed their horses for war.

No knowing is greater than no knowing.

Wanting, always wanting:

that is our calamity.

He who knows that he already has what he wants

knows peace.

Traveling is homelessness.

Seek truth at home;

it is there too; and as you travel it remains

just as far away as ever.

Therefore the sage knows more and more

about less and less.

She stays home.

She is home.

A man hungry for knowledge gains something every day.

A man who already knows loses something every day:

strips down to the essence

and strips down the essence to nothing,

and leaves nothing unknown.

To rule, let go.

Let people go; let yourself go; let the empire go.

Anarchy is the only art of rulership.

The person who knows

has no fixed ideas, and allows the ideas of others to come and go.

They see the goodness in good people, and the goodness in evil people:

she sees that both are both and that neither is either,

that there is power in both, and powerlessness.

What would be ideal would be to return

to the simplicity of childhood.

If we could, we would receive

the universe in its own beginning,

its infancy, its alien innocence.

We live between life and death.

One in three is a follower of life.

One in three is a follower of death.

One in three is suspended, like a leaf in a wind,

like a fish in water.

The one who is suspended,

who knows and loves life and death,

is safe and without fear, even in a world

infested with ferocious animals and terrible wars.

The teeth that rend him

cannot rend him.

The swords that lacerate him

cannot lacerate him.

Even his death is a way of life.

Tao is the origin of life.

Your life is that life.

Merely by breathing, by being,

you know and honor the source

and its expression or manifestation.

Each of us is a place of culmination.

Each of us is nurtured by the source

and is what nurtures us.

Create and let go of what you create.

Give and expect