Tao Te Ching chapters 46 to 54: original text, transliteration, translation and line by line commentary

Tẩu mã 走馬 is a swift horse, khước 卻 means to send back, and phẩn 糞 here is a verb meaning to manure the fields, not a noun for filth. The next line answers it: nhung mã 戎馬 is a horse used in war, giao 郊 is the open country outside the walls, and mares that have followed the army too long to return give birth right there in the fields when their time comes. The book only points at where the horse is standing. It says not one word about losses.

The character cữu 咎 means a fault and the calamity one brings on oneself, already met in chapter 9. The first clause names a state, the second the action that grows out of it: disorder does not break out from lack but from not knowing contentment. A sufficiency reached by acquiring enough always hangs on a number, and numbers change.

The Heshang Gong text and both Mawangdui silk manuscripts have a further clause in front, tội mạc đại ư khả dục 罪莫大於可欲, making three clauses. The received Wang Bi text has only two, and this is noted here so the reader knows the passage was originally longer.

Hộ 戶 is the single-leaf door of a dwelling, dũ 牖 is a window, and khuy 闚 means to peer through a crack, written 窺 in many printed editions. The easy misreading lies in the character tri 知, to know: the line does not say that this person knows the news of every event out there, for that would be a supernatural power, something the book never promises. What is meant is knowing the common principle, and the second clause says so outright: what is seen is thiên đạo 天道, the way of heaven.

Di 彌 means the more, increasingly. The line is written against expectation, and that reversal is the argument: it does not reject travelling and looking, it rejects using the quantity of things seen and heard as the measure of knowing. The more scattered facts one gathers, the more fragmented the view.

The three characters bất kiến nhi danh in the closing line are where the commentators part ways: the received text has danh 名, to name, while many later scholars read it as minh 明, to be clear, since that pairs more smoothly with tri, to know, in the clause above. This page keeps the received text, but the reader should know the line has no final verdict yet.

These six characters are the most often shrunk, and the usual shrunken version is: Laozi disparages learning. The original does not say that. Ích 益 means to add, tổn 損 means to take away. The two characters are opposed in direction, not in good and bad. There is no word of disapproval in the line, no hại (harm), vọng (delusion) or ngụy (falseness), the characters the book reaches for when it wants to disapprove. The two clauses stand level, in the same three-character mould.

What the line says is that the two activities differ in their method. Learning accumulates, and a learner who knows less each day is learning badly. Cultivating the Tao clears away, and a practitioner who piles on more each day is cultivating badly. Apply the method of one to the other and both go wrong.

Wang Bi glosses the first clause as advancing what one is able to do, and the second as returning to emptiness: the gloss describes two directions, it does not rank them. Where the book really does speak harshly of learning is the line tuyệt học vô ưu, at the end of chapter 19 or the start of chapter 20 depending on the edition, and there the word learning refers to the burdensome ritual learning and the skill in disputation of the day.

Hựu 又 means again, once more, and it turns the subtracting into a repeated act with no set end. The point reached is not a void but wu wei 無為: not sitting still doing nothing, but no longer having any action added by private intent. Wang Bi reads tổn as dropping action that has a private purpose. The inner alchemy schools of the Tang and Song read it as a practice of gradually reducing the number of thoughts, a reading the original neither resists nor requires.

Here the texts differ significantly. The received text has vô vi nhi vô bất vi, and the Guodian bamboo slips carry the same idea in the corresponding passage, using the character vong 亡 in place of vô 無. But in chapter 38, both the received text and the Mawangdui silk manuscripts have vô vi nhi vô dĩ vi 無為而無以為, and some scholars hold that the book's original phrasing was vô dĩ vi, with vô bất vi a later strengthening of the line.

Vô bất vi is not a promise of power: once all private intent is dropped, the action that remains follows the nature of things, and what follows the nature of things meets no resistance.

Vô sự 無事 means not stirring up affairs, as against hữu sự 有事, making trouble, issuing decrees, mobilising forced labour. The closing passage carries the method of tổn from inside one person's heart out into the world, and it speaks in a decisive tone: once affairs have been stirred up, one is no longer able, not merely finding it harder.

The received text has vô thường tâm 無常心, while both Mawangdui silk manuscripts have hằng vô tâm 恆無心. The character hằng 恆 was taboo in the Han because it was the personal name of Emperor Wen, Liu Heng, so in many places in the book it was replaced by thường 常, and in this line the positions of the two characters also shifted once the substitution was made.

Whichever reading is taken, the second clause at once fills the gap with the heart of the hundred families: the line does not describe someone with no intent at all, it describes someone who has moved the place where intent sits.

The two characters đức thiện 德善 are where the commentators part ways. Read đức 德 literally and the sense is: only this is the virtue of goodness. Many scholars read it as interchangeable with đắc 得, to obtain, so the sense becomes: only by acting this way does one obtain goodness. The translation on this page leans to the second reading, and since the question is unsettled, the reader is invited to weigh it.

This line is often read as a call to abolish the distinction between good and bad, but the original still names thiện giả and bất thiện giả plainly. What it drops is making that distinction the condition for how one treats people: to be good only to the good makes one's goodness a bargain, dependent on the other party. The character hài 孩 in the last line has two readings, to treat the hundred families as children, or to bring them back to the plainness of children.

The four opening characters xuất sinh nhập tử have two readings: coming out from there is birth and going back in is death, which sums up a whole human life, or, as Wang Bi leans, going out into life and going in to death, which speaks of where people take themselves.

The three characters thập hữu tam have been argued over for two thousand years. The first reading, three in ten: Wang Bi reads it as three parts out of ten, so the chapter counts three in ten who belong to the way of life, three in ten who belong to the way of death, and three in ten more who are living in peace yet stir themselves into the ground of death. That makes nine parts, leaving one, and that one part is precisely the person skilled at preserving life described in the second half of the chapter. The second reading, exactly thirteen: Han Feizi, in the chapter Jie Lao, the oldest surviving commentary, lists the four limbs and the nine openings of the body, called tứ chi cửu khiếu. This page follows the first reading.

The character sinh 生 in sinh sinh chi hậu appears twice, the first as a verb, to feed, the second as a noun, life. This is where the argument turns sharply: there is a class of people living in peace who walk into the ground of death of their own accord, simply because they tend their life too carefully.

The second half of the chapter uses vô sở 無所, no place, three times: horn, claws and blade are not lacking, what is lacking is a place for them to catch hold. Later practitioners of the occult arts read this chapter as evidence for the art of immortality, but the original speaks only of where one stands.

The four clauses list the four things that have made a thing what it is, and this is one of the very few places where the book says what it means by Te. Đức 德 here is not morality in the ethical sense, not good character, but the particular share that each thing receives from the Tao. Vật 物 is the material, thế 勢 is the circumstances surrounding it as it takes shape.

The Mawangdui silk manuscripts give the fourth clause as khí thành chi 器成之, the vessel brings it to completion, in place of thế thành chi 勢成之. The two characters differ considerably in meaning.

The character mệnh 命 is a verb here, meaning to decree, to confer a title. The line answers the question the previous clause has just raised: the ten thousand things honour the Tao and prize Te, so who compels them to? No one. Every kind of eminence people know is conferred, and what is conferred can be stripped away. The eminence spoken of here is in no one's hands.

Six verbs in a row describe a nourishing carried through to the end, not abandoned midway. The two characters đình 亭 and độc 毒 are read differently by different scholars. Heshang Gong reads đình as thành 成 and độc as thục 熟, so some editions write 成之熟之 outright. Wang Bi reads đình as making it stand firm and độc as making it secure. Others read độc in the sense of đốc 篤, steadfast. All three readings avoid the sense of poison.

The three closing clauses, sinh nhi bất hữu, vi nhi bất thị, trưởng nhi bất tể, together with the four characters thị vị huyền đức, repeat the closing line of chapter 10 exactly. Forty-one chapters apart, a line returns without a single character changed. This is not a stray duplication. What has changed is where the line stands.

In chapter 10, the line closes a series of six questions about self-cultivation, and the implied subject is a human being, so the mysterious Te there is a way of conduct to be reached. In chapter 51, it closes a passage on the relationship between the Tao and the ten thousand things, and the implied subject is the Tao and Te, so the mysterious Te here is how the Tao treats what it brings forth.

Set the two chapters side by side and the chain of argument runs against the order of the chapters: chapter 51 lays the root, chapter 10 lays what follows from it. The person cultivating the self is to treat what he brings forth and rears exactly as the Tao treats the ten thousand things. Chapter 10 is chapter 51 applied to one person, and because the model is the same, the line has to repeat word for word.

The character huyền 玄 has been met since chapter 1 in the phrase huyền chi hựu huyền, meaning deep, hidden, dark, not mysterious in the sense of miracles. Huyền đức, the mysterious Te, is therefore a Te that is not displayed and claims no credit. The book uses the phrase three times: in chapters 10, 51 and 65, where the sense shifts towards governing the people.

The character thủy 始 is the beginning, mẫu 母 is the mother, and the two have stood side by side since chapter 1 and return in chapter 25. The method here runs in two directions: grasp the mother and one knows the child, that is, understand the root and one can infer the countless branches. Then, having known the child, return to keep to the mother, because whoever goes from root to branch is very apt to stay with the branch for good.

The character đoài 兌 is easily confused. In the Book of Changes, 兌 is the name of one of the eight trigrams, whose image is the marsh. But in this chapter none of the commentators read it as the trigram. They read 兌 as an opening, a passage to the outside, that is, the ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Wang Bi's gloss: đoài is where affairs and desires arise from, môn is where affairs and desires go out through.

To be clear: this line does not tell one to stop up the ears and eyes and live that way. Chapter 56 repeats exactly these two lines and follows at once with hòa kỳ quang, đồng kỳ trần, soften the light, merge with the dust, that is, one still lives in the midst of the world. What must be blocked is the point where the heart runs out after the senses and does not come back.

The two lines kiến tiểu viết minh, thủ nhu viết cường redefine two words people think they already understand: clarity is seeing what is still small, strength is keeping to the soft. The last line has a variant in the old manuscripts: the received text has 習常, to practise the constant until it is habit, while the silk manuscripts have 襲常, to inherit the constant and hold to it.

The opening line has two difficult points, and both are places where the commentators part ways. The first is giới nhiên 介然. Heshang Gong reads giới 介 in the sense of great. Some scholars read it as the slightest, a little. There is also a reading as a firm, steadfast bearing. The translation on this page leans to the third, but the reader should know all three.

The second is the character 施. Wang Bi glosses it as tà 邪, going astray, so many scholars take it as interchangeable with 迤 and read it dị, to wind off sideways. Others keep the reading thi in the sense of bestowing. This page follows Wang Bi, because the very next line speaks of shortcuts.

The character di 夷 in đại đạo thậm di means level, a different sense from the same character in chapter 14. The two opposed clauses form the root image of the whole chapter: the great way is not at all hard to walk, and yet people leave it to squeeze into the shortcut, simply because the shortcut promises to get there faster. The seven clauses in the middle of the chapter are an inventory without a single word of comment: the gleaming court against the wild fields and empty granaries, then embroidered silks, sharp swords, eating to satiety, wealth to spare.

The two closing characters đạo khoa 盜夸 are a point where the old manuscripts differ. The received text has khoa 夸, to boast, so đạo khoa is a robber who even boasts of his loot. Han Feizi, in the chapter Jie Lao, has đạo vu 盜竽, where vu 竽 is the yu, the reed mouth organ that leads the orchestra, so đạo vu is the one who leads the band of robbers. The one called a robber outright is the person in embroidered silks with a sharp sword.

Kiến 建 is to set upright, bạt 拔 is to pull up, bão 抱 is to hold in one's arms, thoát 脫 is to slip out. The two clauses define thiện 善, skill, by the outcome afterwards rather than by the effort spent at the time: a post sunk deep can still be pulled up, and what is skilfully planted is what does not rely on the depth of the sinking. A thing clutched tight can still slip away, and what is skilfully held is what needs no clutching.

Five clauses spread from small to large, and the word paired with each level is never repeated: chân 真 real, dư 餘 overflowing, trường 長 enduring, phong 豐 abundant, phổ 普 covering all. So these are not five grades of one and the same Te, but five spheres, each of which brings out a different quality: in the self the measure is realness, because there one is alone with oneself, and in the village the measure is endurance.

The Mawangdui silk manuscripts give the fourth level as tu chi bang 修之邦, while the received text has tu chi ư quốc 修之於國, because the character bang 邦 was taboo as the personal name of Emperor Gaozu of the Han, Liu Bang. That is firm evidence that the received text passed through the hands of Han copyists.

The sequence dĩ thân quán thân at the end has two readings: use one's own self to examine other selves, inferring from the near to the far, or examine the self by the measure of the self and the state by the measure of the state. The two characters dĩ thử close the nine chapters with a very firm statement: knowledge of great matters comes from acting rightly at the nearest level.