Tao Te Ching chapters 55 to 63: original text, transliteration, translation and line by line commentary

Xích tử 赤子 literally means the red one, a baby just out of the womb. The chapter chooses this image not to praise innocence but because the infant is the closest specimen of a state in which the breath has not yet been divided: it has no intention of separating itself from things, so things have not yet separated themselves to stand against it. The next two lines both close with the character chí 至, utmost: fullness comes not from adding but from not yet having been drained.

The chapter has two textual variants. Wang Bi reads 蜂蠆虺蛇不螫, Heshang Gong reads 毒蟲不螫. Wang Bi reads 全作. The Fu Yi text and the silk manuscript line read 朘作, where 朘 refers to a baby boy's genitals.

These two lines are easily read backwards, because tường 祥 and cường 強 sound like praise. The root meaning of 祥 is an omen, and it can be good or bad. Set beside the chapter's closing line, here it means an ill omen. Ích sinh is forcing more onto life, tâm sử khí is letting the wanting mind drive the breath. Both are additions, and the chapter calls addition a fault.

The closing line vật tráng tắc lão already appears word for word in chapter 30: hardness and strength are not the peak but the point where decline begins.

The first thing to say: the character tri 知 here is not about having more or less knowledge, and is not measured by the number of books one has read. It refers to knowing the Tao, the thing chapter 1 fenced off in advance: the Tao that can be spoken is not the constant Tao. Whatever can be put into words has already been trimmed to fit words, and so is no longer the thing itself.

So a person who knows in that sense does not rely on words. The line lays down no rule of silence: chapter 81 goes on to say those who know are not wide-ranging, those who are wide-ranging do not know.

Đoài 兌 here is not the Dui trigram of the Book of Changes but a character meaning an opening, an orifice leading outward. The old commentators usually took it to mean the senses, the places where the mind runs after things. These four characters already appear word for word in chapter 52, together with the line chung thân bất cần, to the end of one's days one is not worn out. Placed here again, they serve as a signpost: to reach mysterious sameness one must first stop letting oneself be pulled outward by every sight and sound.

These four lines also appear word for word in chapter 4, where they describe the Tao itself. Here they describe a person. Hòa kỳ quang does not mean putting out one's light, but letting it blend into the common light. Đồng kỳ trần means living mingled with the dust of everyday life.

The second line varies between editions: Wang Bi reads 解其分, where 分 is the point of division, while Heshang Gong and most later received texts read 解其紛, where 紛 means tangled confusion.

The character huyền 玄 was already used in chapter 1 in the phrase huyền chi hựu huyền, mystery upon mystery: it means deep and dark, with no bottom in sight, not mystical in the sense of supernatural powers. The character đồng 同 means being one and the same. Put together, huyền đồng, mysterious sameness, is the oneness at the deep level where distinctions have not yet sprouted.

It is not a dissolving that loses the self, nor a stance of going along with everyone. The proof is in the six lines that follow, which come in three pairs: close and distant, benefit and harm, honor and disgrace. A person at the level before division offers no handle for anyone to grasp.

Chính 正 is straight, upright, head-on. Kỳ 奇 is oblique, odd, off the usual path. The pair is a familiar one among the military writers: Sunzi's Art of War says engage with the straight, win with the surprising. The chapter says that two different tasks call for two different methods, and whoever brings the methods of war into the governing of a state is playing tricks on his own people. The third line is the real point: above both methods stands vô sự, making no trouble. A further note: the Mawangdui silk manuscripts read 邦 where the received text reads 國, the latter substituted to avoid the taboo name of Liu Bang.

The four pairs in the middle of the chapter follow one pattern: the more of this you add, the more of its opposite you produce. The pair the more finely laws are spelled out, the more thieves there are is the one most often misread: the chapter is not against having laws. It describes a loop, in which the thicker the law book grows, the more kinds of behavior are labeled as offenses and the more loopholes there are to slip through.

The four closing lines are built on four uses of the character tự 自, by themselves. The subject of each first half is ngã 我, I, the one above, not the people. So this is about the ruler pulling back his hand, not advice for the people to let things slide.

The four opening lines use four doubled characters, arranged as two contrasting pairs. Muộn muộn 悶悶 is dim, indistinct, a way of governing that does not pry. Sát sát 察察 is inspecting every little thing. Thuần thuần 淳淳 is simple and honest, without tricks. Khuyết khuyết 缺缺 originally means chipped or broken, and here describes a character that has cracked.

The argument is a feedback loop: the more you scrutinize, the more you teach people how to dodge, and the more they dodge, the more you have to scrutinize.

The character to look at closely in this line is ỷ 倚. Its root meaning is to lean on, to rest one's back against, like a person leaning against a wall. It describes a relation that is side by side and visible: this one stands only because that one props it up.

So fortune does not stand on its own. It must lean on some misfortune to take shape: a failed harvest is what gives a good harvest its worth. This line is often quoted alongside the story of the old man at the frontier who lost his horse, from the Huainanzi, but that story illustrates only half the idea.

The character phục 伏 is entirely different from 倚 in the line above, and the two must not be merged into one in translation. Its root meaning is to lie flat, to crouch, to hide. It describes a relation that is already inside and not yet visible: misfortune does not stand beside fortune, it lies right in the belly of fortune and waits.

Only the two lines together give the full picture: seen from the side of misfortune, fortune can be seen leaning on it in order to stand. Seen from the side of fortune, nothing is visible, because misfortune is hiding. The second half is heavier than the first: it does not console, it warns.

Cực 極 is the far end, the limit. The question is rhetorical, because the cycle of misfortune and fortune has no stopping point to measure. The three characters that follow are where the editions disagree: Wang Bi reads 其無正 as a statement, it has no fixed standard. Some editions read 其無正邪, adding a question particle so that it must be read as a question. Others read 正 in the sense of định, to settle or fix.

The last four lines draw out the way to conduct oneself, all four on the pattern of having without using to the full: square without cutting anyone, edged without wounding anyone, straight without being unrestrained, bright without dazzling.

The character sắc 嗇 is the key to the whole chapter. Its root meaning is tied to farming: reaping grain and storing it in the granary, begrudging every kernel. From this comes the meaning sparing, careful, not wasteful, and here it carries no negative tone. The phrase sự thiên 事天 is understood differently by different commentators: the rites of worshipping heaven, or guarding the portion of heaven lodged in one's own body.

The two characters tảo phục 早服 in the next line are the most disputed point in the chapter. One reading takes 服 as to submit, to come over early to the Tao. A second takes 服 as a loan for 復, to return early to the root. A third, that of Han Feizi in the chapter Explaining Laozi, reads it as setting to work early in accord with the Tao.

Căn 根 and đế 柢 are two different kinds of root, not one word said twice: 根 is the lateral root that spreads sideways and keeps the tree from toppling, 柢 is the taproot that drives straight down. Wang Bi reads 柢, while many later printed editions read 蒂, the stalk of a fruit, because the two characters share a sound.

Cửu thị 久視 literally means to see for a long time, that is, to keep one's eyesight. Joined with trường sinh, long life, it forms a phrase about living durably, not about not dying. The text speaks only of deep roots and a firm taproot.

Phanh 烹 is cooking in a pot with water, boiling or simmering, as opposed to roasting or frying. Tiểu tiên 小鮮 literally means a small fresh fish. Some commentators broaden it to any small dish, but only the sense of fish makes the simile hold.

Why does the simile speak of not turning it too often? Because a small fish has soft flesh and fine bones, and keeps falling apart if you keep flipping it. To keep it whole you must leave it alone and only watch the fire. Heshang Gong's commentary says: when cooking a small fish you do not gut it, do not scale it, and do not dare stir it. The point lies in how many times the hand moves.

The character lị 蒞 means to arrive at a place, to step forward and take charge, and is also written 莅. The point that must be read correctly is the character thần 神: here it is not a noun meaning a deity but a verb meaning to show power, to manifest as numinous.

So kỳ quỷ bất thần means the ghosts cannot show their power, not that the ghosts disappear, and not a statement about whether ghosts exist. The library explains this strictly according to the text, without borrowing the pantheon of other religions to fill the gap.

The middle of the chapter is built from two stacked negations, a form of argument that narrows step by step. Level one: to say the ghosts show no power is not quite right, one must say that their power does not reach people. Level two: to say only that their power does not harm people is not enough, one must say that the sage too does not harm people. This way of writing pulls the focus away from ghosts and spirits and onto the one who holds power, and what is being compared is whether or not one harms people.

The closing line is short but unsettled, because commentators disagree over which two parties lưỡng 兩 refers to. Wang Bi takes it as the ghosts and spirits and the sage: neither harms the people, so the Te of both sides flows back to the people. A second reading takes it as the spirits and the people. A third takes it as the sage and the people.

The character giao 交 is mutual exchange, quy 歸 is to flow back and gather. Whichever reading one accepts, the proposition stays the same, and this is what links it to the chapter's opening line: what is not stirred is not depleted.

Hạ lưu 下流 keeps its literal sense here: the low reach of a river, where every stream and brook flows down to. It carries none of the pejorative sense that the same words have in Vietnamese today. Tẫn 牝 is the female, mẫu 牡 is the male, and the character thắng, overcome, here means that the still side is the one left standing in the end.

Two textual variants: the Mawangdui silk manuscripts read 邦 where the received text reads 國, to avoid the taboo name of Liu Bang. And the order of the two phrases thiên hạ chi giao and thiên hạ chi tẫn, as well as where the sentence breaks, differ between editions.

The two lines differ by a single character, dĩ 以 and nhi 而, and that one character is what commentators still argue over. The common reading takes 以 as marking purpose and 而 as marking result: the large state goes low in order to win, actively, while the small state goes low and is thereby taken in, passively. A second reading treats the two characters as variations on a single idea. Others suspect one of them is a copying error. The chapter's closing line leans toward the first reading: it is the large one that ought to go low.

The character áo 奧 originally means the southwest corner inside a house, the most secluded and also the most honored spot in the old household, where the ancestral altar stood and where the most venerable person sat. From this the character carries both shades of meaning, and both apply here. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts read 注, which many scholars read as 主, master or lord. The line then becomes the Tao is the master of the ten thousand things, a quite different direction. The two lines that follow are where this chapter stands apart: the Tao is the treasure of the good and also the refuge of those who are not good.

Here the wording differs between editions to the point of changing the meaning. Wang Bi has eleven characters, 美言可以市，尊行可以加人: fine words can be traded, honorable conduct can be bestowed on others. Many other editions, including the Heshang Gong line and most modern critical editions, have twelve characters, 美言可以市尊，美行可以加人: fine words can buy respect, fine conduct can be bestowed on others.

The difference lies in one 美 more or less, and in whether 尊 belongs to the first phrase or the second. The Vietnamese translations of Nguyễn Hiến Lê and of Thu Giang Nguyễn Duy Cần both follow the twelve-character reading, so the difference is in the source text, not in the translators.

Củng bích 拱璧 is a jade disc so large it takes both arms to hold. Tứ mã 駟馬 is a carriage drawn by four horses. By Zhou custom, the precious jade was presented first and the horses and carriage followed. Set against that whole procession are the four characters tọa tiến thử đạo: sitting still and offering up this Tao. The two closing lines also vary: Wang Bi reads 不曰以求得, some editions read 不曰求以得. The character da 邪 at the end is a question particle used like 耶, not the word for wicked.

The four characters đại tiểu đa thiểu are the most obscure point in the chapter, and it should be said plainly that no one has settled them. Some read them as treating the great as small and the many as few. Some read them as making the small great and the few many. Others hold that the four characters have lost some accompanying words.

The line báo oán dĩ đức, repay resentment with Te, is debated for a different reason. The Analects, in the chapter Xian Wen, records someone asking Confucius about repaying resentment with kindness, and he replies: then what would you repay kindness with? Repay resentment with uprightness. Some scholars, such as Ma Xulun, suspect this line originally belonged to chapter 79.

The character đồ 圖 originally means to draw a map, and from that comes the sense of planning, arranging in advance. The character tế 細 is fine, small. These two lines are not about working gradually but about choosing the moment to act.

The argument lies in the two lines that follow: every difficult thing was once at an easy stage, every great thing was once at a small stage. So what decides the outcome is not the strength of the one who acts but the moment at which that person touches it. Chapter 64 continues with the image of a tree too wide to embrace growing from a tiny shoot.

This line has the shape of a paradox, but it follows directly from the two lines before it. If every great thing begins from something small, then a person who always acts at the small stage will never have anything great to do. Seen from outside, such a life has no notable feats. Seen by its results, the great thing is still accomplished. The character chung 終 means whole, throughout, to the end, stressing that this is a lifelong way of working, not a momentary stance.

The character nặc 諾 is a word of assent let out by the mouth. Khinh nặc is agreeing lightly, before weighing how heavy the task is, and so it leads to quả tín, seldom keeping one's word. The next line extends the same fault to every kind of task. The closing line ends on the character do 猶, meaning still: the sage still treats everything as difficult, not out of weakness but because that very attitude keeps things from having the chance to become difficult.