The Eternal Tao Te Ching by Hoff Benjamin;

Author:Hoff, Benjamin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams, Inc.
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

32.

WITHOUT TITLES

Here and there in the Way Virtue Classic, especially in this chapter, the author seems to be advocating a form of democracy, the opposite of Confucianism, in harmony with the checks and balances of the natural world. Here he is criticizing the tendency of China’s governmental systems—in particular, it would appear, the one advocated by the Confucianists—to complicate matters and make people unequal to each other.

The character ming, used three times in the chapter’s text, can mean not only “name,” as it’s commonly used; it can also mean “title,” “designation,” “rank,” “position,” or “fame.” In this chapter, “title,” “rank,” and “position” all seemed appropriate translations. So I used all three, starting with the second line of my first stanza.

In my first stanza, “act” in the tenth line and “behave” in the last line are my in-context interpretations of the text’s tzŭ, “I,” ”self,” “my,” “behavior,” “to act.” Tzŭ is typically interpreted indiscriminately in English-language versions of this and other chapters (such as Chapter Thirty-Seven) as “self.”

Chih in the text of my second and third stanzas means “regulation,” “a rule,” or “a system.” I used all three definitions to emphasize the point that the author seems to be making.

Regarding “princes” (first stanza, seventh line): According to one authority, in the time of the feudal kings (which included the Warring States period) hou would have meant “prince,” while later it would have meant “duke” or “marquis.” That would explain why some versions of this and other chapters present hou as “prince,” while other versions (most that I’ve seen) present it as “duke” or “marquis.”

The Chinese text of my first stanza’s lines seven and eight is hou wang jo nêng shou chih, “Princes kings if able to guard/to protect/to keep it.” Other interpreters of this chapter, Chapter Thirty-Seven, and Chapter Fifty-Two render shou, “guard,” “protect,” or “keep,” as “keep” or “hold,” or interpret it in words not related to shou, such as “keep to,” “cling to,” “maintain,” and so on. But with “keep” as the chosen meaning, the author would seem to be saying in the text of my lines seven through fourteen that “If princes and kings were able to keep it [capture it, lock it up, and keep it for themselves], the ten thousand things would act as their guests. Heaven and earth would notice, and would unite to send sweet dew. The people, without being ordered to do so, would then behave as equals.”

It seems more likely that in such a case the ten thousand things would die, heaven and earth would disintegrate, and the people—pretending for the sake of argument that they somehow would survive—would continue in their feudal positions of inequality under the rule of the now-stupendously powerful princes and kings. That is one reason why I chose “guard” and “protect” as the in-context appropriate definitions of shou. But I give a better reason next.

Apparently to other interpreters, shou as “guard” or “protect” would make no sense. A spirit, most people in Western culture would probably say,

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