Translation
The outside world passes for the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
Still and silent, it alone does not change.
Goes round yet doesn’t harm,
It can serve as the mother of all under heaven and earth.
We don’t know its name,
Powerful, of words we call it the way,
Striving, of reputation we call it great.
Great we call death, death we call distant, distant we call reversal.
Hence, the way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and people are also great.
In the center there exists four ‘greats’, and people reside as one.
People follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way,
And the way follows that which is natural, and free from affectation.
1) have (there is; exist) matter (the outside world) mix (confuse; pass for) accomplish (become; turn into) earlier (first) heaven and earth (universe) give birth to (existence). 有物混成先天地生。(yŏu wù hún chéng xiān tiān dì shēng.)
2) still (silent; solitary) ! few (silent; deserted) ! only (single; alone) stand (set up) no (not) change (rectify), 寂兮寥兮独立不改，(jì xī liáo xī dú lì bù găi,)
3) make a circuit (all) go (be current; prevail; do; competent) <conj.> and (yet, but) no (not) danger (nearly almost), 周行而不殆，(zhōu xíng ér bù dài,)
4) can (may) think (believe; consider that) land under heaven mother. 可以为天下母。(kĕ yĭ wéi tiān xià mŭ.)
5) I (we) no (not) know (realize; tell) self (one’s own; certainly) name (fame; reputation), 吾不知其名，(wú bù zhī qí míng,)
6) stubborn (unyielding> powerful> strive) word of say (call) road (way, principle; speak; think). 强字之曰道。(jiàng zì zhī yuē dào.)
7) stubborn (unyielding> powerful> strive) do (become; mean, stand for, support) of name (fame; reputation) say (call) big (great; heavy rain, loud etc). 强为之名曰大。(jiàng wéi zhī míng yuē dà.)
8) big (great; heavy rain, loud etc) say (call) pass (die), pass (die) say (call) far (distant), far (distant) say (call) reverse (turn over; in an opposite direction; revolt). 大曰逝，逝曰远，远曰反。(dà yuē shì, shì yuē yuăn, yuăn yuē făn.)
9) reason (cause; hence) road (way, principle; speak; think) big (great; heavy rain, loud etc), sky (heaven; day; nature) big (great; heavy rain, loud etc), earth big (great; heavy rain, loud etc), human (man; people) also big (great; heavy rain, loud etc). 故道大、天大、地大、人亦大。(gù dào dà, tiān dà, dì dà, rén yì dà.)
10) field (region, area) center (middle; in; among) have (there is; exist) four big (great; heavy rain, loud etc), <conj.> and (yet, but) human (man; people) reside (dwell; live) his (its, he, it, that; such) one here (how; why). 域中有四大，而人居其一焉。(yù zhōng yŏu sì dà, ér rén jū qí yī yān.)
11) human (man; people) method (follow; model after) earth, earth method (follow; model after) sky (heaven; day; nature), sky (heaven; day; nature) method (follow; model after) road (way, principle; speak; think), 人法地，地法天，天法道，(rén fă dì, dì fă tiān, tiān fă dào,)
12) road (way, principle; speak; think) method (follow; model after) natural (free from affectation). 道法自然。(dào fă zì rán.)
Third Pass: Chapter of the Month
Corrections?
None this time
Reflections:
The outside world passes for the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
Still and silent, it alone does not change,
Goes round yet does not harm.
It can serve as the mother of all under heaven and earth.
When I read the outside world today, I thought to myself, the outside world doesn’t feel still and silent. Fire sirens, birds chirping, wind blowing… Not still and silent. Then I returned to reconsider… passes for the beginning of Heaven and Earth. Of course, the outside world itself isn’t still and silent, what it passes for is! The metaphor of a bowl fits here. A bowl is like the beginning of Heaven and Earth; the contents of the bowl are matters of the outside world. All the changing, the waxing and waning, the ebb and flow of the outside world exist in the still and silent bowl.
This also matches what I define as consciousness. Consciousness is like a bowl in which exist the changing objects of awareness. Consciousness is universal, non-local, eternal… However, living life invites our attachment to the changing objects of our awareness which makes it very difficult to perceive the subtle ‘magic’ behind the outside world’s curtain. (For more on consciousness, see Is Rock Conscious?, Seat of Consciousness, Thinking clouds consciousness, What Shapes How You Think?, Placebo Effect, to name a few forays I’ve made into the subject. To continue blowing your mind, check out Quantum nonlocality too.)
And this brings me to the idea of immortality… You are Immortal! Well, at least that bowl of consciousness is. The light shines; the object illuminated by the light are all that dies when ‘you’ die.
And this brings me to Great we call death, death we call distant, distant we call reversal. As life forms, we instinctively favor life, and all things that support it. We, and all other living things, can’t help our innate bias toward what we like. The reason we like ‘it’ is because ‘it’ doesn’t harm us; ‘it’ benefits us.
So, you may wonder, how is it that Heaven and Earth Goes round yet does not harm.? The lion eats its prey, a volcano eruptes, a tornado wreaks havoc — all these involve harm to something. Harm is a concept that arises out of our innate attraction to that which benefits our life, and our innate aversion to that which endangers our life. This is a natural self-serving survival bias that swirls around inside the bowl; the beginning of Heaven and Earth. Still and silent, it alone does not change, Goes round yet does not harm. Simply put, harm and benefit are both projections driven by self-preservation instincts. It is a Bio-Hoodwink, plain and simple.
Great we call death, death we call distant, distant we call reversal. The pro-life bias in all living things is a natural and necessary bias. It is a core part of Mother Nature’s life design. However, that same bias makes seeing the universe as it actually exist extremely difficult. Now, that is certainly not a problem for all creatures living in the wild. For humans, this is more problematic, especially in our hierarchical social systems that skew and exacerbate our innate biases. Chapter 40 attempts to push back on that bias, and set nature’s record straight.
People follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way,
And the way follows that which is natural and free from affectation.
This is one of my favorite passages. Viewing this as a natural hierarchy helps alleviate the divisive perspectives that wear us all down in time. Essentially, everything — everything — is born of nature. There are no exceptions. Of course, our innate bias creates the exceptions we see, i.e., child abuse isn’t natural. Alas, this along with all other ‘unnatural matters’ we experience are mostly the result of civilization’s hierarchical structure. We evolved to be hunter-gatherers, not isolated cogs in a social hierarchy. The ills of civilization we experience are merely symptoms of humanity’s extremely successful attempt to maximize its own comfort and security at the expense of natural balance. (See The Tradeoff.)
To be sure, this outcome is no one’s fault! Humanity never knew what it was doing, and still doesn’t. Nor do any other creatures. Life didn’t evolve to know the ‘truth’ of any situation; life evolved to know the ‘truth’ that serves its own short-term survival best. Only in the wild does that short-term response tend to bring long-term benefit. By taking matters into our own hands, short-term responses easily deliver the opposite of what we wish for long-term. Chapter 16 sums it up.
We didn’t evolve to “know the constant”, to “allow”, or to be “impartial”. Life is innately biased toward its own survival. Thus, how can one “rise beyond oneself”? We can’t! That is why chapter 16 states, “nearly rising beyond oneself”. Still, any movement in that direction brings us peace, and closer to perceiving… Still and silent, it alone does not change, Goes round yet does not harm.
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
Line 1: The outside world passes for the beginning of Heaven and Earth could probably use clarification; the word passes may mislead. The Chinese is hùn ( 混) which means: mix; confuse; pass for; pass off as; muddle along; drift along. It may help to think of existence (有物 = have, exist + matter, the outside world) as being shadows cast by the sun. The shadows are not what they appear to be, yet they represent some ‘thing’ very real. Shadows pass for the actual.
We easily get caught up—entangled—in things of the outside world because we read too much reality into them. Naturally, this is just the way nature intends it to be, as least at the primal level. Our trouble begins when we take to ‘judging the book by its cover’. This two edged sword of passing judgment cuts both ways. As Jesus put it, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven”. I suppose Christians may believe this means that if you don’t judge, Jesus or God won’t judge you. However, I find the dynamic internal and immediate, i.e., the world we see is a reflection of our self. That’s a hard pill to swallow; there is not be much we can really do, other than understand what is actually happening. Still, I find that immensely helpful.
I see another sticking point in line 9: Hence, the way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and man is also great. This comes across as just another case of humanity putting itself near the top of the heap… ‘homo superioritus’ J. However, line 11, helps broaden the view. People follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way. Seen in this context, People follow earth, (and so on), transfers notions of superiority on to the ‘higher realm’—earth, heaven, the way.
Besides follow, the character fǎ (法) also translates as: law; method; way; mode; follow; model after; standard; model; the dharma. Seeing my life in this context, as an emergent property of earth, heaven and the way, feels comfortable because it removes importance (ego) from myself and confers it to earth, heaven and the way. There is an ironic side to this also: By decreasing my self-importance (ego) I gain a form of immortality… The less you are, the more you become. (This is probably a result of my tribal instinct being channeled into ‘the all and one—the way’. If I were a Christian, the word I’d use would be God. It is just that the Taoist story suits me better by keeping it beyond words for the most part, i.e.,
Commentary:
This chapter reminds me of what I experience increasingly as I age. Daily, to one degree or another, I feel like I am getting a little too far ‘out on the limb’, and sense that limb incapable of sustaining my weighty self. I retreat, and return to what is superbly described in line 2 as Still and silent, it alone does not change, along with line 8, Great we call death, death we call distant, distant we call reversal. I don’t remember ever feeling this ‘out on a limb’ in my youth, or rather I should say sensing and understanding. I am more aware of my miniscule place in time and space; my sanity and contentment lie in staying as near to a moment-to-moment animal awareness as possible. The rest is superfluous, as chapter 24 put it…
What we look forward to, does not exist;
What we chase after, will not prevail.… and so on.
Son Luke wondered how ‘the way‘ might correlate. It is striking how truly impossible it is to put into words that which we all acutely feel. I think the omnipresence of it all accounts for this difficulty. As I see it, all definition relies on pitting one side against another: up vs. down, good vs. bad, mountain vs. valley, night vs. day, hard vs. soft. The way is a perfect definition for that which spans both realms. The ‘true All’ has no opposite that makes common sense; All or Nothing makes an ironic Taoist sense though. This parallels how I define balance.
Balance must include imbalance to be true, transcentand-like balance (I know I’ve put that more elegantly somewhere). Another way to think about this is to imagine being in a forest without end. You could see the trees, you could be in the forest, live in the forest, touch parts of the forest, perhaps even imagine a forest-like ‘truth’, but you could never get outside the forest enough to see the forest for the trees. You can’t see the forest for the trees is indeed a apt description of this situation.
And the way follows that which is natural and free from affectation is a statement more about the ‘eye of the beholder’ than about the way. Only when I feel natural and free from affectation can know the way. That is why throughout the day, I am drawn to…
Yet, I’ve always had a yearning in this direction. Why has it taken me this long to get my act together? Yearning is simply not enough is it? If anything, yearning may be symptomatic of what always stands in my way. In other words, other animals don’t seem to have any yearning to “Devote effort to emptiness, sincerely watch stillness”. Chapter 36 offers another element, which speaks to a universal dynamic that if fully accepted (understood) makes regret and guilt impossible, I find.
No matter how you look at it, life is a package deal with benefits and inevitable costs. The bottom line for me is that life is hoodwinked into seeking something for nothing and benefit before its time. It is just the way of Nature.
Suggested Revision:
The outside world passes for the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
Still and silent, it alone does not change,
Goes round yet does not harm.
It can serve as the mother of all under heaven and earth.
We don’t know its name.
Powerful, of words we call it the way.
Striving, of reputation we call it great.
Great we call death, death we call distant, distant we call reversal.
Hence, the way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and man is also great;
In the center there exists four ‘greats’, and people reside as one.
People follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way,
And the way follows that which is natural and free from affectation.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
This chapter downplays “The Tao”, and reduces it to merely “tao”. How? This chapter ends with, And the way follows that which is natural and free from affectation, or D.C. Lao put it, And the way on that which is naturally so. The Chinese word for nature is ziran, which is a combination of two characters: (自) zi = self; oneself; one’s own; certainly; of course; from; since, and (然) ran = right; correct; so; like that. This stands in sharp contrast to how nature is often viewed in the West. We give the word a moralistic, bordering on Godlike, quality in the West. For example, a plastic bottle isn’t natural and artificial foods aren’t natural.
I’ve always felt nature was much more profound than anything humans did or didn’t do. This moralized view is symptomatic of how taken we are with our own self importance, which in turn, is symptomatic of our ideal of self, which leaves us with a deep sense of disconnection and insignificance, which is why we have religion in the first place. (Boy, that was a long sentence.) The Chinese word for nature expresses a broader view of nature. What is ‘tao’, but the unfolding way of nature?
Inquiries into reality, its nature, origin and fate, are among the earliest and continuing questions humanity asks about the outside world. As long as we expect an objective answer, our inquiries will continue. It is an odd thing really, like asking where a circle begins and ends. Of course, biology hoodwinks us into perceiving reality as contrasts; the greater the contrasts, the more acute the perceptions, and the more real the outside world feels.
Therefore, ironically, as long as we insist on answering the mystery in terms that allow us to feel we have a solid answer, we can never find the answer that ultimately satisfies(*). To paraphrase chapter two, Thus Answer and Question produce each other, complement each other, off-set each other, harmonize with each other, and follow each other.
Simply said, the answer is the question, the beginning is the end, etc., (and visa verse naturally). Of course, just saying that doesn’t offer any emotional relief, but it may tell one where to look.