Three: 3

Jonathan Star
With the people so pure
Who could trick them?
What clever ideas could lead them astray?

D C Lau, 1963
and ensures that the clever never dare to act.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002,
In so doing the clever people will learn
that their contrivance will not work.

Commentary
These lines present the idea of human creation as contrasted with natural creation.  And that those humans who have so created are the ‘Clever’ who are actively doing something to cloud the nature simplicity that exists for all to realize.  ‘Cleverness’ is an artificial and human construct and not existing in nature, and thus is not truly a part of the Dao.  The Dao is elegant simplicity, complexity without complications.  We humans create something artificial which we proudly offer as worthy of consideration, this is our cleverness but the Dao is natural simplicity.

Lao Zi, as the translator’s presented his words, frames the picture that the Clever are tricking, meddling and interfering.  This creation of cleverness is present as a form of deception.

But we can ask, are the Clever really deliberately trying to hide the simplicity of the Dao?  To do so means that they are aware of this true nature and are trying to keep others from recognizing it?  What if the Clever lack the conscious realization of the simplicity of the Dao?  What if they can not see and experience consciously the Dao’s true nature?  If this were so, then their action is not one of intended distortion, but the distortion of the Dao’s true nature is only the unforeseen results from their own misguided understanding.

What if all the Clever is deliberately doing is being egotistical and thrusting their own inventiveness onto others; acting as a child frantically wanting to get their parent’s attention and approval.  If the Clever do not consciously realize the Dao’s simplicity then they can not attempt to hide it from others.

What I am here suggesting is not what Lao Zi’s words are suggesting, but we are capable of our own independent thought on this and other matters.  We can be inspired to consider alternatives.  Lao Zi is not presenting dogmatic truth of an all or nothing nature.  We can ask and answer our own questions inspired by Lao Zi’s teachings.

What I am saying is that Lao Zi’s understanding of the Dao is filtered through his own preconceived perceptions and biases of humanity, society, and the natural world.  Lao Zi sees and experiences the Dao through the tinted glasses that he has been given and he has shaped himself consciously and unconsciously during the experience of his life up to the time that he put these words to paper.

I am not saying that Lao Zi is ‘wrong’ and that I am ‘right’, that would be very un-Daoist.  I am offering a yang to Lao Zi’s yin, to use that metaphor.  To understand the Dao is to realize that we humans can only get a fragmented, static understanding of a thing that is a vast dynamic interactive continuum.  The Dao that is spoken is never the complete Dao, as Lao Zi teaches us.  The Dao we speak of is only a partial vision of the Dao.

Three: 4

Jonathan Star, 2001
When action is pure and selfless
Everything settles into its own perfect place.

D C Lau, 1963
Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002,
Because the Sage does nothing but following
the law of nature
Nothing will deviate from their natural and orderly places.

Commentary
Jonathan Star’s adjectives of ‘pure and selfless’ have a semantic reaction differing from the others who have translated the text, his translation seems to me to moralize, something I’ve not read in the other translations of this and the previous verses.

The others who translate this verse translate the Chinese characters of Wu Wei in their familiar English form of ‘non-action’, ‘acting without doing’, ‘taking no action’, ‘not doing’, ‘not acting’, etc.  Lao Zi has presented these characters and this idea before.  Lok Sang Ho overlays this concept as being the ‘law of nature’ – the way the Dao manifests, is what I understand Lok Sang Ho to be saying.  The Dao acts without disruption, force or aggression – the Dao is like the flowing of water.

Order is thus seen as the way of the Dao – the process of how the Dao manifests itself.  The Sage teaches this way and those who learn it will live in harmony with that Order, in harmony with the Dao.  This is the action without coercive force, the action that does not disrupts, the action that is simplicity.  The way of the Dao is not the way of extremes.  There is no best in the Dao.  There are no finalities.  There are no preferences, one thing over another.  The Dao is a continuum that flows as an endless simple process.

Four: 1

Jonathan Star, 2000
Tao is empty
yet it fills every vessel with endless supply
Tao is hidden
yet is shines in every corner of the universe

D C Lao, 1963
The Way is empty, yet use will not drain it.
Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures.

Lok Sang Ho, 2002
The Way (Dao) is like water that simmers slowly,
Perpetually emitting its energy without boiling over.
It is like a deep, deep pool in the mountains,
Unfathomable yet could well harbor the origin of all life forms.

Commentary
The first thing I notice is that Lok Sang Ho fleshes out the abstract metaphors of the Chinese Characters.  He gives a descriptive image; he makes concrete the abstract metaphors.  His water simmering metaphor is unique.  Most translators use the image of bowl or a well.

The metaphors all point to the idea that the Dao is an abundant source that one can draw from without depleting it.  When this image is combined with the second line you get a cosmological image of creation.  Using modern cosmology, the Dao would be the primal source out of which the Big Bang burst forth and thus filled the universe with existence.  The Dao would be the primal stuff of the universe – as Carl Sagan had said: we are all star stuff.   Lao Zi could be imagined as saying: we are all Dao Stuff.

Bringing these lines into more abstraction – the Dao is the source of creativity and creation.  The ancient Greeks imagined nine goddesses who were the Muses – those deities who assisted and helped artisans to create.  The Greeks conceived of inspiration and creativity in embodiment in the concrete imagery of divine feminine beings, where as Lao Zi’s conception was an abstract embodiment of fecundity.

Jonathan Star’s translation of the Dao as ‘hidden’ seems to spin out of the metaphors hinted at in the meanings of the Chinese character which could be and has been translated as the deep, bottomless, profound, and vastness.  And Jonathan Star is harkening back to the first chapter with the references of emptiness as being associated with the nature of the Dao.