Understanding Lao Tzu: The Letter and the Spirit
Lao Tzu: Form
Lao Tzu, (Laozí), Tao Te Ching, Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin, 2001, 349 pages.Translation and Commentary by Jonathan Star.
There have always been obstacles related to the
understanding and appreciation of Lao Tzu’s masterwork. Even for the educated
elite of Ancient China, perhaps already on the path of self-cultivation, even
for people reading the Tao Te Ching in
the original Chinese, Lao Tzu’s cryptic language has elicited puzzlement, and his
simple declarations have piqued the desire for something more in the way of
elaboration and explication. Hence the number of commentaries (around 700 in
Chinese alone) on Lao Tzu written over the centuries. One of the oldest extant
commentaries on the Tao, written by
Wang Pi (Wang Bi) around 249 BCE, established
the basic format, including sequencing, of the text for readers over the next
several centuries. Wang Pi’s commentary was followed by hundreds of other books
written to guide and inform Lao Tzu’s readers. Yet despite the obvious challenges
associated with understanding this foundational text of Chinese literature, the
Tao Te Ching is today the second most
widely translated book in the world, after the Bible.
As wisdom literature, the Tao Te Ching belongs within a certain cultural tradition and within
a specific historical context. Knowing about this context is useful, but does
not in itself lead to the fulfillment of the text’s literary and philosophical
mandate for teaching the spirit and lessons of the Tao.
The redactor of the above-listed edition, translator Jonathan
Star, focuses his introduction to the text on the learning curve awaiting the
reader of the text in English translation, as well as the manifest rewards
awaiting the reader who can succeed in discovering aspects of its original
style and meaning. Less interested in the individual to whom the Tao is attributed, than in the text as
wisdom literature, Star says little about Lao Tzu as author of the
contra-Confucian book of the Way.
Jonathan Star briefly outlines various sources of difficulty
for the contemporary reader of the Tao in
English, including the following:
Problem:
Transmission
The evolution of the manuscript of the Tao Te Ching over centuries, during which time it accrued multiple
layers of contextualizing comments and sayings, makes it difficult to know when
one is reading the original text. Jonathan Star outlines a plausible path of
development for the text.
Star’s evolution hypothesis:
·
Lao Tzu
records the sutras.
·
Grouped units of sutras constitute a view of
reality.
·
Notes and commentaries are added.
·
Sections of the book may have been lost.
·
Political commentaries are added.
·
Book is divided into two sections.
·
Scribal errors may have occurred.
Problem: The Book
Books in Ancient China were made of wood or bamboo slips
held together by a thong.
Individual bamboo slips sometimes got lost.
Problem: The Text
Jonathan Star refers to one of the oldest surviving texts of
the Tao Te Ching, called “The
Bamboo-slip Lao Tzu.” It was written around 300 BCE. The Tao Te Ching as we have it today was divided into two parts and 81
sections at the time of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 221 CE) – hundreds of years
after Lao Tzu existed. The overall organization of this classic of Chinese
literature was thus not part of the original document.
Problem: Time
So much time has passed that we do not really know whether
the Tao Te Ching was written by one
sage named Lao Tzu, or was the inspiration of several individuals who contributed sayings at different times.
What then, is the answer to these
difficulties in approaching the text?
Free
Verse Translation
One answer offered by Jonathan Star is presented in the form
of a sensitive free verse translation of the kind that allows the reader to
read both analytically and intuitively, grasping the truth of the Tao from without and from within.
Verbatim Translation
Another solution offered by Jonathan Star, clearly immersed
in Lao Tzu scholarship,
is something the translator calls a verbatim translation.
The verbatim translation, no mere addendum, is presumably what allows Star to
claim his publication as “Tao Te Ching: The
Definitive Edition.”
How well does the verbatim
translation work?
On the principle that a translation is written to enable the
fluent reading (in a language fully assimilated by the reader, if not in his native
tongue) of a foreign language text ––Jonathan Star’s character-by-character
notation system doesn’t work as a translation. The verbatim translation doesn’t
deliver qua translation because the
reader cannot read it with any degree of fluency. One does not so much read, as
parse it.
The verbatim translation is not truly a translation, or even
a continuous text; rather a list of words, signs and symbols formatted line by
line, constituting a chart. In order to know its meaning, the reader must
painstakingly decode it, word by word, symbol by symbol.
The verbatim translation is the translator’s attempt to
provide the reader with a facsimile of the Chinese text.
The avowed purpose of the verbatim translation was to bring
the reader closer to the original text. Star formulated the project in response
to his own disenchantment with currently available English translations, when
he found that the clarity he experienced on first reading the Tao Te Ching faded with subsequent
readings. The birth of the verbatim translation was the translator’s attempt to
provide the reader with a facsimile of the Chinese text. Using this literal
rubric, those unfamiliar with the Chinese language could get some idea of its conceptual
nature by looking at the characters alongside designated words and elucidating
punctuation marks.
Why can’t people just read
through these lists, and why does it matter?
Here is an example of line 1 of verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching, in the free verse and in
the verbatim translation:
Free Verse Translation
A way that can be
walked
Is not The Way
Verbatim Translation
01-01 道 162 tao
Tao/ the Tao/way/ path/ paths/ “That”/ “The Absolute”/
“Nature”
01-02 可 30 k’o can/ able to/ can be/ “becomes”
01-03 道 162 tao Tao/
path/ way/ walked/ trodden/ be told/ talked about/ spoken of
01-04 非 175 fei not/ cannot/ surely not/ opposes/ “other than”/ “not identified
with”/
(Duy) (the)
While such juxtaposing of semantic clusters may be of
interest to the scholar or translator, the reader is left mostly at sea. The
experience of reading such lists clearly cannot approximate the experience of
the reader of Chinese. After all, the reader of Chinese reads the Chinese
characters with fluency. Fluency matters because the fluent reader is
essentially performing a synthesis, rather than engaging in an exclusively
analytical activity. The absorption that comes with fluency allows the reader
of literature to read both analytically and intuitively, grasping precise meanings
as well as meanings that are general and subjective in nature.
Just as important, such list-reading not germane to the main
purpose of reading the Tao Te Ching.
The main purpose in reading the Tao Te Ching, for most readers who are not Taoists, is
understanding; for Taoists and readers who belong to other spiritual
traditions, the purpose in reading and studying the text is enlightenment. The
typical first-time reader likely seeks to understand the Tao by in some way connecting the wisdom of the sayings, or sutras,
in the text with examples from personal experience that complete the sense of
the words. No initial reader, while reading the Tao Te Ching, would be likely to be capable of focusing on each
saying or sutra with an equal degree of concentration. This is so because new
readers will likely lack the context, depth of experience, and spiritual
awareness, to fully understand and connect with every sutra, or to connect
equally with all of the sutras. Reading wisdom literature for the first time,
is not, for most, a smooth, uniform experience. Each new reader will bring a
different set of aptitudes and experiences to the text.
In sum, the verbatim translation, while potentially useful
for bilingual readers or researchers, does not address the problem, as it
relates to most English language readers, of translating the Tao into English.
A Potted History of Tao Te Ching Translations
According to translators Roger Ames ad David Hall, the
majority of English translations of the Tao
Te Ching have been made by missionaries or sinologists (China experts).
While several writers such as Ursula K. LeGuin have translated Lao Tzu, a
translation by a philosopher is a rarity.
Considered the best scholarly translation by universal
acclamation, Ellen M. Chen’s 1989 version
is conscientiously researched, and incorporates knowledge of the Mawangdui
silk manuscripts discovered in 1973. However, Chen’s heavily footnoted
translation does not allow for a spontaneous experiencing of the Tao Te
Ching.
Jonathan Star’s translations, published in 2003, incorporate
the findings of the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, but not those of the Guodian
manuscript. Discovered in 1993, the 800 bamboo-slip manuscript contains 2,000
characters (out of 13,000 total) that match the Laozi. Dated to prior to 300 BCE, the Guodian bamboo-slip
manuscript is currently the oldest known version of the Tao Te Ching.
Praise for Jonathan Star’s Apparatus Criticus
While the verbatim translation is little more than daunting
to my untutored eye, I was unable to find any critical comments about the
verbatim translation from the cognoscenti. To the contrary, gurus and seasoned
students of the Tao Te Ching praised
Jonthan Star’s work as having great utility. One guru describes the verbatim
translation as “word by word parallel to the Chinese signs – completely
according to the Wang Pi version…It is quite useful to the devoted student.”[1] Others praised Star’s book as erudite,
comprehensive, and again, of great utility to the devotee. I am willing to concede
that the experts know more about Lao Tzu scholarship than I do, including the
utility of the verbatim apparatus. Just
don’t call it a translation.
Lao Tzu: Content
Some of the Tao’s tributaries
feed mainstream spiritual
traditions.
Other streams are channeled into
a divergent reality:
a questioning of norms,
a philosophical
skepticism.
There are numerous translations of the Tao out there, many of them good, all of them, of necessity, with
limitations. Some may be too freeform, some too scholarly. Often, readers in
English for whom this is a crucial, perhaps sacred text, acquire more than one
translation of the Tao, each to be read according to inclination.
There will probably never be a definitive translation of the Tao Te Ching. One could do worse than
have a freeform translation for inspiration, and a literal translation with
commentary for study.
The Tao Te Ching contains
many streams of thought. While some of its tributaries feed widely practiced, mainstream
spiritual traditions, other tributaries – formed of philosophical sutras and
unconventional aphorisms – are channeled into a divergent image of reality: a
kind of non-normative skepticism. The Tao’s
argumentation over conventional mores and normative behavior can be seen in
several clearly expressed passages in Jonathan Star’s free verse translation,
which emphasizes the superfluous nature of rules for the individual who can
think for himself.
When the Tao is lost one must
learn the rules of virtue
When virtue is lost, the rules of kindness
When kindness is lost, the rules of justice
When justice is lost, the rules of conduct…
The rules of conduct
are just an outer show of devotion and loyalty––
quite confusing to the heart
(Verse 38)
The Tao, albeit a
cosmological and philosophical principle of immeasurable dimensions, is clearly
humble and practical enough to be on the side of the human heart in its daily
struggles with social imperatives and conventionality.
[1]
Stenudd, Stefan, Taoistic: Tao Te Ching: Each Chapter Translated and Explained, www.taoistic.com
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