One: 2

Star
Tao is both Named and Nameless.
As Nameless, it is the origin of all things.
As Named, it is the mother of all things.

LeGuin
Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed:
Name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.

Feng and English
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

Cleary
Nonbeing is called the beginning of heaven and earth;
Being is called the mother of all things.

Commentary:
Star begins his verses with the addition of the ‘The Tao is…’ and thus creating a context for the two verses that I believe he is correct in presenting.  Lao Tzu is continuing to describe the nature of the Tao.  The Tao is both Named and Unnamed.  The Tao is both Nonbeing and Being.  It is important to note that the Nameless, the Unnamed, is also Nonbeing – these are the beginning of heaven and earth – the totality of the universe.  While at the other end of the continuum is the Name, the Named which is also Being – these are the mother of ‘ten thousand things’ – i.e. all things.

What is going on here?

It is important to realize that naming is what we humans do.

But the thing itself, it’s true essence is something that exists before humans came about to name it.  The things itself as Alfred Korzybski tells us is not the word.  The thing itself is preverbal.  The thing itself is nonverbal reality.

By the act of creating names we created all things.  By the act of creating names we give meaning and a context to all things that is how we give birth to those things.  We take in the seed from the pre-verbal experience of the thing itself into ourselves through our senses and we process that pre-verbal and nonverbal experience of the thing and in that processing of that event and experience we come to understanding – which we then bring into the verbal.  The creating of the verbal out of our preverbal and nonverbal experiencing of the world around us is a receptive, gestating process – hence referred to by Lao Tzu as acting as a ‘Mother’.

By our noticing the things around us, by giving them names they now have significance to us – hence they ‘exist’.  What we do not notice is for us, individually and/or collectively, ‘nonexistent’.

The heaven and the earth and everything therein existed before there were humans and will presumably exist after we individually and we as a species, die.  The heaven and the earth is the pre-verbal and nonverbal reality; the external reality beyond our mental processes – our process of verbalization – of giving birth to names.

Star is saying that the Tao as ordering principle of the cosmos is the nameless origin of all things – from the principle of order and structure matter and energy come to manifest into the physical universe.

Star is saying that the Tao as the ordering principle within the human mind is the Named – the ability to verbalize and make words and thus to give birth to all things that we choose to be aware of.

One: 3
Jonathan Star:
A mind filled with thought, merged within itself, beholds the essence of the Tao.
A mind filled with thought, identified with its own perceptions, beholds the mere forms of this world.

D C Lao
Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets,
But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations.

Lok Sang Ho
Appreciate Emptiness, that we may see the nature of the Dao’s versatility;
Appreciate Existence, that we may see the extent of the Dao’s possibilities.

Commentary:
Here we are comparing two aspects of the Tao and thus of the Territory of Experience.  On the one hand there is the true nature, the true essence, the secrets of the Tao and the Territory.  On the other hand there is the perceived forms, the observed manifestations, and the sensory processed possibilities of the Maps that we make from our encounter with the Tao.

We can experience the true essence of the Tao in the initial nonverbal encounter.

We come to understanding of what that was when we process our nonverbal experience and put it into fixed and finite words.

Lao Tzu is reminding us that we can observe the manifestations through our words, but this is not the Tao’s secret Essence.  The True Nature of the Tao is its dynamic versatility that can only be realized in silence.

In the nonverbal encounter which takes place before our desires, our own world views, our own perceptions, and our collections of belief – there is the experience of the Tao through our own words.  Once we try and process that experience our desires, our hopes, our beliefs come into play and we get the manifestations of the Tao – the words that we create.

Here we perhaps have instructions on what to focus our awareness on and the results of our focus?

When we focus inward – the mind awareness pointed back onto awareness itself then we reach the place of the essence of the Tao.  When we focus on our own process of perception – the perception of our inner bodily experience and on the world outside our mind/body then we reach the place of the forms of the world – that is how the Tao takes form and shape.

One: 4

Jonathan Star
Tao and this world seem different but in truth they are one and the same
The only difference is in what we call them

D C Lau
These two are the same but diverge in name as they issue forth

Lok Sang Ho
These two, Emptiness and Existence, came from the same source.
Though they bear different names, they serve the same mystical cause.

Commentary

These opening verses are the first presentation of the Taoist concept of Unity and oneness.

Lao Tzu is presenting that two things although recognized as being different are inherently a underlining unity while still being acknowledged that they are distinct and opposite modalities.  This is a presentation of duality that is not antagonistic.  This is a presentation of a duality which is necessary unity, a non-antagonistic duality.

Niels Bohr set forth his formulation of this principle based on his study of Eastern Religions in 1928, he called it the Principle of Complementarity.  The principle was offered to resolve the nature of photons and other components of the atom, the description of a photon as having wave properties and as having particle properties was seen as no longer being contradictory – a antagonistic duality, but rather as two ideas that were necessary for a complete understanding of the phenomenon.  The duality complements each other and together explains more fully how the thing actually occurs under all conditions.

This concept of complementarity, a non-antagonistic duality is presented in Star’s translation of stanza 2 “The Tao is both Named and Nameless” and in this stanza “in truth they are one and the same.”

Here in this chapter is the source for the Yin and Yang circular symbol associated with Taoism – the black and the white half circles are shown as distinct and yet blending, and each have a part of the other within them – this is the visual symbol of Lao Tzu’s idea of unity composed of a duality.

Here in this verse the duality is acknowledged by the words we choose and not in their source and inherent nature.  As Red Pine translation points out the names are the thing that is different but in actuality they are the same.  Bynner in his translation refers to this unified duality as “the core and the surface”.  As D C Lao phrases it they diverge when we humans name them.  As Lin Yutang translates these two are the “secret” and “manifestations” which acquire differing names when they we are able to apprehend them through our senses – when they become manifest.  These translators are pointing out that we humans are the true source of the distinction of differences by our needs and requirements of naming things.

Lao Tzu is saying that just because we can create distinct names does not mean that the true nature of thing is distinct, opposite, conflicted, or contradictory.  Naming is a process.  Naming is a tool.  Once again Lao Tzu is implying the ideas that Korzybski presented that we must not confuse our map with the territory, we must not confuse our words with the thing.

One:5

Jonathan Star
How deep and mysterious is this unity.
How profound, how great!
It is the truth beyond truth,
The hidden within hidden.
It is the path to all wonder,
The gate to the essence of everything!

D. C. Lau
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery –
The gateway of the manifold secrets.

Lok Sang Ho
A mystery within a mystery,
Such is the gateway to all versatility.

Commentary
A summation of what came before – the unfolding of the Tao.
This opening chapter lays the foundation for the metaphysical theories of Lao Tzu.  This chapter is the gateway to all the insights that follow.

These words are the path to all wonder and the gate to the true essence that lies beating in the heart of all things – The Tao.

The Tao is the mystery, the container of secrets, it is the Infinite Divine beyond human comprehension as the mystics of the world first state it, just before they, being human, have to go forth and try to name it – to take the infinite and try and cast it into a finite container of words.

The Tao offers us unity.

Witter Bynner offers this insight: if we need to name what we have encounter, let us call it ‘wonder’ – from wonder into wonder all things unfold before us and within us.

Two: 1

Jonathan Star
Everyone recognizes beauty
only because of ugliness.
Everyone recognizes virtue
only because of sin

D C Lao
The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly;
The whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

Lok Sang Ho
People under heaven see beauty in what they call “beauty”,
that way they know of the “ugly”.
Similarly, people see good in what they call “good”,
that way they know of the “bad”.

Commentary
Here again Lao Tzu plays with duality.  This time focusing on the common idea that pairs of concepts must be opposites.

Beauty / Ugly
Good / Bad

But as we saw before when Lao Tzu presents a pair he is hinting at a complementary unity of the two things.

Here we are being told that one gives rise to the other.  One is recognized to exist because we can perceive the other.

Author Ursula K. LeGuin used this notion of pairs giving birth one to the other in her Science Fiction novel ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’.  She wrote these verses which in the context were suppose to be part of this culture’s sacred text:

‘Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death,
lying together like lovers in kemmer [sexual union which brings about conception],
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.’
[From chapter 16 of LeGuin’s novel: The Left Hand of Darkness]

Blackness is the absence of all light and White is the presence of all light – they are opposite ends of a continuum.  Between them both – when there is some presence of light and darkness mixed together it is then that we can perceive all the infinite shades of gray and the wondrous presence of the myriad abundance of colors.  The two are one, hands joined, lovers in rapture giving birth, the first step onward and the journey’s end.

LeGuin’s verse is the muse flowing onto the page through the inspiration of Lao Tzu.

Two: 2

Jonathan Star
Life and death are born together.
Difficult and easy
Long and short
High and low –
All these exist together
Sound and silence blend as one
Before and after arrive as one

D C Lao
Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;
The difficult and the easy complement each other;
The long and short off-set each other;
The high and the low incline towards each other;
Note and sound harmonize each other;
Before and after follow each other.

Lok Sang Ho
Existence and Emptiness are concepts
that make sense by comparison.
Similarly, long lends meaning to short, and high to low.
Harmony is produced when sounds combine in unison.
Because the fore goes, so the back follows.

Commentary
Each pair of the duality is recognized not as conflictual opposites but blended unities.  They flow one into the other and it is only when the dynamic flow is momentarily stopped, in that static instance, then one is recognized as being different than the other, but once the moment is no longer held – what was seemingly static returns to the dynamic flow and the two blend as one – a harmonious unity that describe the totality of possibilities.

The Seeds of wonder every blossom and grow – we harvest them into words.

Two: 3

Jonathan Star
The Sage acts without action.

D C Lao
Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action

Lok Sang Ho
Thus the Sage would not act as if he could act on his will.

Commentary
This section of the chapter begins Lao Tzu’s vision of a Tao filled human, one who knows the way and lives the way – the Sage.

Let’s start with some basics – like what is Lao Tzu saying.  What does it mean to say that a Sage acts without acting?  What is no action – the Chinese characters are Wu Wei.

Wu translates as non/empty/without
Wei translates as action/doing/activity/effort

When you translate the two together you get ‘non action’ or ‘empty effort’ or ‘without action’ or ‘without effort’, etc.  I find the way to understand this is to recall the dualistic harmonic concepts of yin and yang, which can be translated as receptive and assertive – Yin is allowing things to enter within, while yang is pushing things outward – the primal images of the female and male sexual organs being used as the key to the metaphoric meaning of yin and yang.

The concept of action/doing/effort is to make or create an outward manifestation and the extreme of action/doing/effort is the assertive, aggressive, forceful transformation of the thing subject to the act, the deed and the effort.  Violence and coercion are the extreme form of yang action and yang effort.

What would yin action/doing/effort be like?  This is the question that Lao Tzu answers with the term Wu Wei.  Wu Wei is yin action/doing/effort.  Red Pine translates Wu Wei as “effortless deeds”  The effortless deed is the receptive, taking in, allowing in, inward transformation not of something outside the self but turning one’s activities inward to alter the self/the doer/the actor.  It is containing the yang effect to a minimum.

Sanderson Beck translates Wu Wei as ‘without interfering”.  To act without acting is to act non-aggressively, non-violently, non-assertively, non-destructively, to act with the intent of minimum impact.  To act to change not the outer aspects of a thing acted upon but rather to act to change the inner nature of that thing.