Tao Te Ching chapters 73 to 81: original text, transliteration, translation and line by line commentary

The character cảm means to dare, to charge forward. The chapter sets two kinds of courage side by side: daring to act and daring not to act. The strength to hold oneself back, not to strike before the time is right, is here also called courage, and is said to be the way that keeps one alive.

The next two lines lower the tone at once: of these two ways one brings benefit and one brings harm, and no one knows the reason for what heaven dislikes. The line thị dĩ thánh nhân do nan chi is regarded by some commentators as a line that strayed in from chapter 63. The library keeps the Wang Bi text and notes this clearly.

Before the two closing lines come four clauses that sketch how heaven works: it does not contend yet prevails, does not speak yet answers, does not summon yet things come of themselves, is unhurried yet plans far ahead. The character thiện in all four clauses means skilled, good at that thing. The character mưu is not scheming but the order that has already, of itself, been worked out in advance.

Khôi khôi means vast and broad, sơ means loose or sparse. The two closing lines correct the whole passage above: heaven does not contend, speak or summon, but loose does not mean leaky. This must be distinguished from the familiar saying that heaven's net is wide and loose yet nothing escapes, because the last character of that saying is lậu, to escape, while the original text has thất, to let slip or miss.

The opening line is a pointed question: when the people no longer fear death, what use is there in threatening them with it. The argument starts from something very simple, that punishment only has force while those who suffer it still care to live. Push the people to the point where they no longer care to live, and even the heaviest punishment becomes empty words.

This is a piece of Warring States argument. In the same period there was a school that held punishments should be heavy and clearly known, and chapter 74 stands on the opposing side. The library explains the text and sets out that context, and stops there.

Ty sát giả is the one who holds the office of killing. The line says that this task already has someone charged with it, and it is not one's own part. Who that one is, commentators understand differently. One reading, found in Heshang Gong, takes it to be heaven, that is, the natural order. Another takes it to be the officer of penal law who already exists in the state, which is to say the ruler should not overstep the rules and carry out executions by his own hand.

One who hews in place of the master carpenter rarely fails to wound his own hands. The line is memorable because it argues not from principle but from consequence: it does not say that taking over another's task is morally wrong, only that doing so wounds oneself.

The first three lines of the chapter are built on a single mould: name an ill of the people, trace it to an excess of those above, then repeat the ill. The people go hungry because those above consume too much in taxes. The people are hard to govern because those above set too much in motion. The people take death lightly because those above seek to live too richly.

Thực thuế means to consume the tax revenue. This chapter must be read in the Warring States period, when the levies of the various states had gone far beyond the one tenth of the older system. The library stops there and does not turn this line onto any later age.

The chapter says that when those above are excessively concerned with nourishing their own lives, the people come to take death lightly, because what is scraped away to make that richness is precisely the people's means of living.

The last two lines are terse and hard. The character hiền here means better, superior, not gentle or kind. The line does not teach throwing one's life away. It says that the more one makes one's own life the center of every calculation, the less one is able to keep it, in the same vein as chapter 13 on favor and disgrace.

This is an observation anyone can check: the living body is soft, its joints still flex. The dead body stiffens. Chapter 76 takes that as evidence and draws a broader rule from it.

One easily confused point needs to be made clear. Nhu nhược in this book does not carry the disparaging sense of feebleness that the words have in Vietnamese today. It names the state of being still soft, still flexible, still with room to change. Nor is cường quite strength in a good sense. It is hardness, something already set in shape and no longer able to shift.

The second clause brings in grass and trees as a second piece of evidence: in life they are soft and tender, in death dry and withered stiff. Nhu thúy is soft and tender or brittle. Khô cảo is shrivelled and dry, stiff as a stick of firewood.

In this line the Wang Bi text has the four characters vạn vật thảo mộc. Many commentators hold that the two characters vạn vật are an intrusion, since the previous clause speaks of people and this one should speak only of grass and trees for balance. The library keeps the Wang Bi text and notes this point clearly.

The two clauses apply the rule above to two cases: an army that is hard and strong does not win, a tree that is hard snaps. The army clause easily raises doubts, since usually it is the strong who win. The point here is strength that has already hardened, that can no longer change, and that breaks when it meets a place where it must bend.

This is the most seriously corrupted passage in the nine chapters. The Wang Bi text gives the second clause as mộc cường tắc binh, which yields no sense. Nearly all commentators treat it as a copying error and correct it to chiết, to snap, following other editions and the places where early books quote the line. The library prints chiết and states plainly that it is an emended character.

The two closing lines invert a very familiar ranking: the strong and great take the lower place, the soft and yielding take the upper place. Read through the image of a tree, it is immediately clear: the thick hard root and trunk are below, the tender tips and young leaves are above.

Commentators read the two characters thượng and hạ in two ways. One takes them as describing the actual position on a tree. The other takes them as higher and lower rank, that is, saying that the soft holds the higher rank.

Trương cung is read in two ways, and this is a place where commentators genuinely differ. One reading is stringing a bow: to fit the string, the end that is high must be pressed down and the end that is low raised, so the two ends come level. The other reading is drawing a bow to shoot, aiming true and then releasing.

The first reading fits better with the four clauses that follow, since those speak of bringing things level, not of taking aim. But both readings lead to one meaning: the way of heaven is the work of evening out. One textual point to note: the clause bất túc giả bổ chi appears in some editions as bất túc giả dữ chi, meaning where there is shortage, it is given to.

This line states the way of heaven as a compact proposition: take from surplus and make up shortage. The next line sets the opposite against it very directly: the way of man is not so, it takes from shortage to give more to surplus. This is one of the few places in the book that says outright that the way people act runs against the way of heaven. The question that follows gets a short answer: only one who has the Tao.

The last three clauses of the chapter: he acts without relying on his merit, completes the work without staying to occupy the place, because he does not wish to show himself as able. The character kiến in the last phrase is read hiện, meaning to show or display. Misread as kiến, to see, the whole line becomes he does not wish to see the able, which is quite off the thread.

Chapter 78 takes water as its evidence. Water is the softest and most yielding of things, taking the shape of whatever it is poured into. Yet in wearing away hard stone nothing surpasses it. The power of water lies not in a single hard blow. It lies in the fact that water never stops and never resists.

The clause dĩ kỳ vô dĩ dịch chi is read in two ways. One: because nothing can take the place of that softness of water. The other: because water offers nothing in exchange to the things it meets, so there is nothing for the other thing to push against.

Four characters to each clause, two clauses as compact as a proverb: the weak overcomes the strong, the soft overcomes the hard. The character cương is hard in the sense of firm and rigid, paired against nhu, soft.

The two lines that follow are the sharp point: no one under heaven fails to know it, yet no one is able to practice it. The difficulty lies not in understanding but in doing, because doing means accepting the lower share, the share that bears, the share that does not contend.

Cấu is dirt, the soiled place. Some editions write cấu with a different character meaning abuse or reviling. Bất tường is misfortune, what is inauspicious.

The two clauses say that whoever takes upon himself the filth and the misfortune of a country is the true master of that country: the place people avoid is the place that settles who holds the title. These two clauses are introduced by the three characters thánh nhân vân, that is, quoting the words of an earlier figure, which shows they were already a handed-down saying and not a line the author newly composed.

These four characters stand on their own as the closing line of the chapter, and they speak neither of water nor of kings. They speak of the way of speaking. Chính ngôn is straight words, right words. Nhược phản is to sound like the opposite. This is a key to reading the whole book, because a great many lines in the Tao Te Ching have exactly this shape: great accomplishment seems incomplete in chapter 45, the bright way seems dark in chapter 41.

The four characters themselves have two readings. One: right words sound wrong to ordinary ears, that is, a statement about how the listener feels. The other: to speak rightly one must say the reverse of what people are used to saying, that is, speaking in reverse is a corrective method and not a game with words. The second reading explains why the book keeps that tone through all eighty-one chapters.

Khế is a contract tally, inscribed and then split in two, each party keeping one half so that they can be fitted together as proof when needed. The character trách here means to demand or press for payment, not to scold. The chapter opens with a cool observation: reconcile a great grievance and some grievance is sure to remain. Holding the tally without pressing the claim is precisely the way not to let the grievance arise in the first place.

Whose half the left half is, commentators do not agree. One reading says it is the creditor's half, so the sage holds the proof in hand and has the right to demand yet does not. The other says it is the debtor's half, so the sage takes the lower position upon himself.

Before these two lines comes a matched pair: one who has Te keeps the tally, one who lacks Te keeps the collecting. The character triệt is read two ways, one taking it as collecting or extracting, the other linking it to the triệt tax system of the Zhou.

Vô thân means having no private favorites. But the next line says heaven is always with the good, which sounds contrary to the line before it and to chapter 5, which says heaven and earth have no partiality. Commentators resolve this by reading dữ as to go along with rather than to bestow favor, and by reading thiện nhân as one skilled at following the natural order rather than a good person by some list of virtues. Understood so, heaven chooses no one: whoever follows the order is carried along by it.

The four characters that open the chapter describe a condition, they are not a rallying cry: a small country, few people. The Wang Bi text has the character quốc. The two Mawangdui silk manuscripts have bang, which also means country or state. The usual explanation for this difference is that Han dynasty copyists had to avoid the character bang because it was the personal name of the Han founder, Liu Bang.

The next line has a difficult phrase, thập bá chi khí, read in two ways. One takes thập bá as the military units of ten men and a hundred men, so the phrase means the gear of those units. The other takes thập bá as tenfold and a hundredfold, so the phrase means implements ten or a hundred times more effective.

This is the place to read with care, because it decides how the whole chapter is understood. The two characters tuy hữu mean though there are, that is, they are still there: boats and carriages are still there, armor and weapons are still there. The chapter does not speak of smashing boats or burning carriages, nor does it say this country has not yet learned to make boats and carriages. It says vô sở thừa chi, vô sở trần chi, that is, there is no occasion to ride in them, no occasion to set them out.

The stress therefore lies on the character sở, on the occasion for use, not on the object. The line sử dân phục kết thằng nhi dụng chi, on the other hand, is hard, because phục means to return and kết thằng is the method of knotting cords to record matters from the time before writing. That is the one place in the chapter that speaks of returning to an old way.

Four clauses of four characters, each with a verb placed before the character kỳ, that is, before what is one's own. The fine point of the line lies in its grammar: cam means sweet, and here it is used as a verb meaning to find sweet. Mỹ means beautiful, and here it means to find beautiful. So the four clauses do not describe the quality of the food, clothing, dwellings and customs. They describe how the people of that country look at their own food, clothing, dwellings and customs.

Understood that way, the line does not say the food is good and the clothes are fine. It says there is no comparing with the food and clothes of somewhere else.

Neighboring countries are within sight of each other, the sounds of roosters and dogs carry across, yet the people grow old and die without going back and forth. The collision between being so near and not going back and forth is exactly what has been debated for two thousand years.

The reading that takes chapter 80 as advocating a return to primitive life, giving up boats and carriages and even writing, is a real reading with a long history in the commentarial tradition, not something invented by modern readers. The Peach Blossom Spring of Tao Yuanming is the most famous literary descendant of that reading.

The second reading rests on three points in the text itself: the two characters tuy hữu show that the boats, carriages, armor and weapons are still there. The two characters vô sở show that what is missing is the occasion for use, not the object. And bất tương vãng lai can be read as having no need to run to one another because neither lacks anything the other has.

The library sets out both readings and does not choose on the reader's behalf. It adds only one purely textual observation: in the whole chapter there is not a single character in the form of a prohibition or a destruction. Every clause is in the form sử, to let or cause, and vô sở, there is no occasion.

The three pairs that open the chapter are built on the same antithetical mould: true words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not true. The good do not argue, those who argue are not good. Those who know are not wide-ranging, the wide-ranging do not know. The character biện means to dispute, to argue a case. The character bác means knowing many things.

The third pair is the most likely to provoke, since it sounds like a slight against wide learning. The contrast here is between knowing one thing to its root and knowing many things on the surface, not between learning and not learning. Placing these three pairs at the head of the final chapter is deliberate: having just spoken for eighty chapters, the book puts its own words in the place of being questioned.

Tích is to pile up, to gather and keep. The character ký here is mostly read in the sense of tận, to give out entirely. The character dũ means all the more. Some editions have vô tích in place of bất tích, with no change of meaning. The character vi in the phrase vị nhân is read vị, meaning to act for the sake of, not vi in the sense of making or producing.

The reasoning sounds paradoxical but fits the thread of the whole book exactly: what is piled up and kept becomes hard, becomes something that can be lost. What is given out stays in a state of moving freely. This is the last line in the book that says what the sage does, and it says it with a negative.

This clause gathers the way of heaven into four characters: it benefits and does not harm. Those four characters echo chapter 77 and chapter 73.

Placed in the closing line, this clause does something the book has rarely done before: it speaks of heaven in an affirmative proposition. Through eighty chapters heaven is mostly described by negation, it does not speak, does not summon, has no partiality. Only here is there a clause saying what heaven does.

The final clause of the whole book speaks of the human being, and the character to stress is vi: to act, not to refrain from acting. Throughout the book it speaks of wu wei, and in the last line it makes clear that what must be dropped is contending, not acting. The closing line thus corrects precisely the most easily misunderstood point of the whole work, and does so in the very last line.

Chapter 81 closes the book in its own way. It treats of words, then of not hoarding, then sets down two matched clauses on heaven and on the human being. Those three things make the chapter read like a preface placed at the end.

One point of form needs to be stated clearly. The count of eighty-one chapters and the division into two parts, the Tao section and the Te section, belong to later transmitted editions, among which the Heshang Gong text already has the full count and gives each chapter a title. The two Mawangdui silk manuscripts place the Te part before the Tao part and do not divide the chapters as they are read here. So what is called the last chapter is the end of a later arrangement.