The Tao of Emerson (2 page)

Notes

1
. Since 1976 the preferred method of romanizing the Chinese language has been the pinyin system, which renders Lao Tse as Laozi, and his book as the Dao De Jing (which is, in fact, the way the title is pronounced, even when written as the Tao Te Ching). Whenever Chinese words occur in this volume, I have chosen to use the older Wade-Giles system of Romanization because it was in use throughout the nineteenth century, when both James Legge and Emerson lived.

2
. James Legge (1815-1897) was a near contemporary of Emerson, who was born in 1803 and died in 1882. The two never met on any of Emerson’s visits to England. A Scotch-Presbyterian minister, Legge first went to China in 1839 as a missionary For nearly thirty years he lived in various parts of China, where he studied and translated many of the great Chinese classics. This work culminated in his developing, with F. Max Muller, the monumental
Sacred Books of the East
series, published in fifty volumes between 1879 and 1891, of which Volume 39 is Legge’s translation of the Tao Te Ching. Legge held the chair in Chinese language and literature at Oxford University for twenty years.

3
. Groff, Richard.
Thoreau and the Prophetic Tradition
. Los Angeles: The Manas Publishing Co., 1961.

4
. In this book both James Legge’s translation of the Tao Te Ching and the version I have gleaned from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson are set mainly as free verse, following the custom in the vast majority of translations of Lao Tse’s classic since the first one, written in Latin, in 1788.

5
. Brecht, Bertolt.
Poems 1913-1956
. Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the cooperation of Erich Fried. London and New York: Methuen, 1980.

6
. Christy, Arthur.
The Orient in American Transcendentalism
. New York: Octagon Rooks, 1978.

7
. Lin Yutang.
The Wisdom of China and India
. New York: Random House, 1942.

8
. Friedell, Egon. A
Cultural History of the Modern Age
, 3 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933.

The Tao that can be trodden is not the
   
enduring and unchanging Tao.
The name that can be named is not the
   enduring and unchanging name
.

Conceived as having no name
,
   
it is the Originator of heaven and earth;
Having a name, it is the Mother of all things
.

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see
.

Under these two aspects
   it is really the same;
But as development takes place
   it receives the different names.

Together we call them the Mystery.
Where the Mystery is the deepest
   is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.

That great nature in which we rest,
   that Unity, that Over-Soul,
Is an Immensity not possessed,
   and that cannot be possessed.

The animal eye sees, with wonderful
   accuracy,
   sharp outlines and colored surfaces.
To a more earnest vision,
   outlines and surfaces
   become transparent;
Causes and spirits
   are seen through them.

The wise silence,
   the universal beauty,
To which every part and particle
   is equally related,
Is the tide of being which floats us
   into the secret of nature;
And we stand before
            the secret of the world.

All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful,
And in doing this they have the idea of what ugliness is;
They all know the skill of the skillful,
And in doing this they have the idea of what
   the want of skill is.

So it is that existence and non-existence give birth
   one to the other,
Difficulty and ease produce each other,
Length and shortness fashion out the figure of the other;
Height and lowness arise from the contrast of
   the one with the other;
Musical notes and tones become harmonious
   through the relation of one to the other;
Being before and behind give the idea of
   one following another.

Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything,
   and conveys his instructions without the use of speech.
The work is done, but how no one can see;
Tis this that makes the power not cease to be.

Each thing is a half, and suggests another thing
   to make it whole.
As: spirit, matter;
   man, woman; odd, even;
   in, out; upper, under;
   motion, rest; yea, nay.
All are needed by each one.
Nothing is fair or good alone;
To empty here, you must condense there.

A great man is always willing to be little;
The wise man throws himself on the side
   of his assailants;
Postpones always the present hour
   to the whole life,
Postpones talent to genius,
   and special results to character,
Is very willing to lose particular powers
   and talents
So that he gain in the elevation
   of his life.
Action and inaction are alike to the true.

Not to employ men of superior ability
   
is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves;

Not to prize articles which are difficult to procure
   is the way to keep them from becoming thieves;
Not to show them what is likely to excite their desires
   is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government
,
   
empties their minds, fills their bellies
,
   
weakens their wills and strengthens their bones
.

He constantly tries to keep them without knowledge
   
and without desire
,
And where there are those who have knowledge
,
   
to keep them from presuming to act on it
.
When there is this abstinence from action
         
good order is universal
.

Nothing is secure but life, transition,
   the energizing spirit.
The one thing which we seek
   with insatiable desire
Is to forget ourselves, to be surprised
   out of our propriety,
To lose our sempiternal memory
And do something without knowing
         how or why.

No truth is so sublime but it may be
   trivial tomorrow.
People wish to be settled;
Only as far as they are unsettled
   is there any hope for them.

The poor and the low have their way
   of expressing the last facts of philosophy:
“Blessed be nothing. The worse things are
         the better they are.”

The Tao is like the emptiness of a vessel;
And in our employment of it we must
   
guard against all fullness.
How deep and unfathomable it is
,
   
as if it were the Honored Ancestor of all things!

We should blunt our sharp points,
And unravel the complication of things;
We should temper our brightness,
And bring ourselves into agreement
   
with the obscurity of others.
How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would
   
ever so continue
.

There is never a beginning,
There is never an end
   to the inexplicable continuity of this web.
System on system, shooting like rays,
   upward, downward,
   without center, without circumference.

In the mass and in the particle,
Nature hastens to render account of herself.
Under every cause, another cause;
Truth soars too high and dives too deep
   for the most resolute inquirer.

Heaven and earth do not act from any wish
   
to be benevolent.
They deal with all things as the dogs of grass
   are dealt with
.

May not the space between heaven and earth
   
be compared to a bellows?
Tis emptied, yet it loses not its power;
Tis moved again, and sends forth air the more.
Much speech to swift exhaustion lead we see;
Your inner being guard, and keep it free
.

We find nature to be the circumstance
   which dwarfs every other circumstance,
And judges like a god
   all men who come to her.

There is no end in nature,
But every end is a beginning;
There is always another dawn risen on mid-noon,
And under every deep a lower deep opens.

Good as is discourse,
Silence is better, and shames it.

The valley spirit dies not, aye the same;
The female mystery thus do we name,
Its gate, from which at first they issued forth,
Is called the root from which grew heaven and
   
earth.
Long and unbroken does its power remain,
Used gently, and without the touch of pain
.

In showers, in sweeping showers, the Spring
   visits the valley,
The miracle of generative force,
Far-reaching concords of astronomy.

Nature is transcendental,
   ever works and advances.
It is undefinable, unmeasurable,
But we know that it pervades and contains us.

Heaven is long enduring and earth continues long
.
The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure
   
and continue thus long
Is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.
This is how they are able to continue and endure
.

Therefore the sage puts his own person last,
And yet it is found in the foremost place;
He treats his person as if it were foreign to him,
And yet that person is preserved.
Is it not because he has no personal and private ends,
   that therefore such ends are realized?

The universe is represented in an atom
   in a moment of time.
It calls the light its own, and feels
   that the grass grows and the stone falls,
Yet takes no thought for the morrow.

Genius and virtue predict in man
   the same absence of private ends,
   and of condescension to circumstance,
United with every trait and talent
   of beauty and power.
The path which the hero travels alone
   is the highway of health and benefit to mankind.
What is the privilege and nobility of our nature
   but its persistency,
Through its power to attach itself
   to what is permanent?

The highest excellence is like that of water
.
The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things
,
      
and in its occupying, without striving
,
      
the low place which all men dislike
.
Hence its way is near to that of the Tao
.

The excellence of a residence is in the suitability of the place;
      
that of the mind is in abysmal stillness;
      
that of associations is in their being with the virtuous;
      
that of government is in its securing good order;
      
that of the conduct of affairs is in its ability;
      
and that of any movement is in its timeliness
.

And when one with the highest excellence
Does not wrangle about his low position
,
      
no one finds fault with him
.

Justice is the rhyme of things;
Trade and counting use
The self-same tuneful muse.

Water was the beginning of all things.
It is in that same liquid state
   that substances unite to
   and identify themselves with organized bodies.

The aim of the wise man will always be
   to set his time on such a key as he can hold,
   to bring his life level with the laws of the mind,
      not the body.

It is better to leave a vessel unfilled
   
than to attempt to carry it when it is full.
If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened,
   the point cannot long preserve its sharpness
.

When gold and jade fill the hall
,
   
their possessor cannot keep them safe.
When wealth and honors lead to arrogance
,
   
this brings its evil on itself.
When the work is done, and one’s name
   is becoming distinguished
,
      
to withdraw into obscurity
      is the way of Heaven
.

All the toys that infatuate men—
   houses, land, money, luxury,
   power, fame—
are the self-same thing.

The man whose eyes are nailed,
   not on the nature of his act,
But on the wages, whether it be
   money or office or fame,
   is equally low.