The Old Master by Kim Hongkyung Laozi

Author:Kim, Hongkyung,Laozi. [Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438440132
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2011-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

In this essay from Huainanzi, water is so passionately beautified that it is conceived as the origin of the universe.

The third line can be translated differently. For example, according to Wu Cheng and Xue Hui, this reads, “This is because nothing can replace [yi 易] water,” which most English translations have followed. According to Heshanggong and Lin Xiyi, this reads, “This is because nothing is easier [yi 易] than water to use [for attacking the stiff and the strong].” I followed Lü Huiqing and Dong Sijing in this respect because their interpretations better match the description of water in Huainanzi above. According to Dong Sijing, “the nature of water, which is good at placing itself low, soft and weak, cannot be replaced, so that it never loses its substance and thereby can overcome other things.” In this interpretation, the demonstrative pronoun zhi 之 indicates the nature of water.

As discussed in chapter 57, “Tianxia” in Zhuangzi ascribed the idea of “tak[ing] upon themselves the disgrace of the country” in line 6 to Lao Dan, and according to Lüshi Chunqiu, Lao Dan was a sage at that time. Thus, if line 6 is really a saying from a sage, it can be ascribed to him. However, some earlier sources also contain similar ideas: “If you, the myriad states, commit crimes, those crimes will fall onto me; if I commit crimes, they will have nothing to do with you, the myriad states” (Shangshu zhushu, 54: 167d). “Streams and ponds embrace filthy things; mountains and marshes hold vermin; a beautiful jade has a blemish on it; a lord of a state keeps taints of the state in his mind. This is the Way of heaven” (Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhushu, 143: 516d–7a). The first quotation also appears in the last chapter of the Analects, and the second one mentions the Way of heaven, which is also frequently mentioned in the passages neighboring this one in Laozi. Laozi also has some comparable passages to this “saying”: “For this reason, the lords and kings refer to themselves as ‘the Man in Solitude,’ ‘the Man with Scant Virtue,’ and ‘the Man with No Goodness’ ” (39), and “If you know the pure but abide by the stained, you will become the valley of all under heaven” (28).

The final line countervails reader's potential suspicion of the verisimilitude of this teaching. People usually regard “taking upon themselves the disgrace of the country” and “taking upon themselves the ominousness of the country” as humiliating: therefore they would not trust the teaching of Laozi here until they understand that “Correct words seem contradictory.” Putting forth its “correct words,” which seem contradictory to people's common sense, is one of the Laozi's dialectics. Its words are striking and shocking because they contradict our common sense, but they are plausible because they are “correct.” In Laozi, this type of pedagogy is used so frequently that a list of phrases containing it, even only in Part I, is quite long:

The man of superior virtue is not concerned about virtue, for this reason, he has virtue.

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