00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page i DAO DE JING . 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page ii 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page iii A BOOK The Philip E. Lilienthal imprint honors special books in commemoration of a man whose work at the University of California Press from 1954 to 1979 was marked by dedication to young authors and to high standards in the field of Asian Studies. Friends, family, authors, and foundations have together endowed the Lilienthal Fund, which enables the Press to publish under this imprint selected books in a way that reflects the taste and judgment of a great and beloved editor. 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:16 PM Page iv 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page v DAO DE JING The Book of the Way LAOZI Translation and Commentary by MOSS ROBERTS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page vi University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2001 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, Moss, 1937– Dao de jing : the book of the way / translation and commen- tary by Moss Roberts. p . cm . ISBN 0-520-20555-3 1. Laozi. Dao de jing. I. Laozi. Dao de jing. English. II. Title. BL1900.L35 R628 2001 299Ј.51482—dc21 2001005077 Manufactured in the United States of America 9876543210 10987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum re- quirements of ANSI/NISO Z39 0.48-1992 (R 1997) (Perma- nence of Paper).᭺ϱ 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page vii DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IT WAS THE LATE Professor C. N. Tay who suggested that I try my hand at a translation of the Dao De Jing. Professor Tay was a friend, a colleague, and a mentor, and I was enthusiastic at the pros- pect of working with him on this project. Suddenly, on Easter Sun- day 1994, Professor Tay passed away. Work on the project had hardly begun; my hopes for a sustained collaboration vanished. I re- solved to continue with the translation, in part as a mark of my re- spect for his memory. Other unexpected and keenly felt personal losses soon followed. Professor Eric Holtzman died that same month, and then in January of the following year Professor Bernard Fields, a friend since high school, passed away. Another close friend, Leo Cawley, a Vietnam veteran, had died of bone cancer at the age of forty-seven in 1991. Three variants of the Dao De Jing have been found buried in tombs: the Guodian text in a Warring States tomb dated to about 300 b.c., and in a Han tomb at Mawangdui, two texts that date to about 200 b.c. The version published by Fu Yi, a scholar of the Tang period, is also based on a Han tomb text. It is likely that more Dao De Jing manuscripts will be excavated. At whose behest was the Dao De Jing buried, and with what thought in mind? Was it intended as a comfort to the dead? A spiritual companion among the more practical and ornamental grave goods usually found? Was it seen as a work devoted to the fecund earth mother, which creates all living things and receives them again? Or was the text entombed as a con- solation for the living, its meditations on mortality and time and on . vii . 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page viii the passage from shadow to light to shadow (and to the light again?) serving as a bridge to the other realm? Working on the translation became for me a way of keeping close to lost friends whose companionship I had shared over the better part of a lifetime. In 1999, another noted scholar, John S. Ser- vice, passed away. I was privileged to have had a warm relationship with him in the last decade of his life, and I benefited from his thoughtful observations on China and on America. It is to these five friends and scholars that this translation is dedicated. In 1993, about the time I began thinking about how to approach this project, the Warring States Working Group was getting orga- nizedundertheleadershipoftheresearchteamofProfessorE.Bruce Brooks and Taeko Brooks. These two scholars had been studying and analyzing the entire Warring States corpus for several decades. With the collaboration of Professor Alvin Cohen at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Brookses summoned into being a new and exciting regional symposium on a wealth of topics rele- vant to the history of Warring States texts. The group provided a much-needed focus for research work and free-wheeling discussion and has now become an important national and international fo- rum. I was fortunate to have been present at the creation of the group and to have participated in many of its meetings and other activities, and my association with it was quite helpful to my re- search. I would also like to express appreciation for the indirect but significant contribution of my colleagues at New York University. The senior and junior scholars in our East Asian program have cre- ated an intellectual environment that I have found stimulating. Their generous collegiality and energizing spirit of free inquiry have often lifted my own spirits; but beyond that, they have served as a trustworthy point of reference against which to correct one’s angle of vision on a wide range of questions. Many a time they have made me think again. Another person I would like to thank is Professor Fang Ping. In the fall of 1995 I spent a semester at Shanghai Teachers University teaching English. During that time I was fortunate to make the ac- . viii . 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page ix quaintance of Professor Fang, who is the main living translator of Shakespeare into Chinese. I would like to thank him for reading over a number of my stanzas and for his valuable suggestions on in- terpretation and style. My thanks go to my two editors at University of California Press. Doug Abrams encouraged me to pursue this project and spent countless hours trying to put my drafts into presentable shape and discussing with me strategies for the introduction and the transla- tion. His faith in the outcome has been in constant conflict with my own skepticism. Reed Malcolm has skillfully guided the manuscript through its later stages. Carolyn Bond’s careful copyediting caught many minor errors, and I thank her for that. But more importantly, she acted as a conscientious and constructive colleague: her persis- tent and pointed queries often prompted me to rethink and rewrite parts of the translation and the critical apparatus. My final word of appreciation is to my family: my wife, Florence, whose untiring service as an attorney for the poorer citizens of New York City sustains my faith in human decency, and our chil- dren, Sean and Jenny, who have followed her example and in so do- ing set an example of their own. ix . 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page x 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page xi CONTENTS Introduction 1 DAO DE JING . 25 Notes 189 Selected Bibliography 223 00-C1919-FM 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page xii 00-C1919-INT 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page 1 INTRODUCTION Moss Roberts THE POEMS AND SAYINGS of the mysterious book of wis- dom called Dao De Jing have powerfully affected many aspects of Chinese philosophy, culture, and society. In the realm of aesthetics the idea of Dao, or the Way, a transcendent natural principle work- ingthroughallthings,hasinspiredartistsandpoetswhohavesought to represent nature in its raw wholeness or have depicted vast land- scapes within which human structures and pathways, overwhelmed by mists, mountain faces, and water vistas, hold a tiny and precari- ous place. With regard to personal spiritual cultivation Daoism of- fers techniques of concentration and self-control, while in the realm of physiology the Daoist theory of natural cycles points toward sys- tems of internal circulation and techniques of rejuvenation.1 In its ethical application Daoism teaches self-subordination and frugality and warns of the self-defeating consequences of assertiveness and aggrandizement, whether political, military, or personal. In the realm of governance political theorists influenced by Laozi have advocated humility in leadership and a restrained and conces- sive approach to statecraft, either for ethical and pacifist reasons or for tactical ends. The well-known line that opens stanza 60, “Rule a great state as you cook a small fish,” has been used in China and in the West as an argument for a “light touch” in governing: the Way creates sufficient order. In a different political context, one medi- ated by legalist theories of government, a transcendent Way has served to legitimate state builders in constructing impersonal insti- tutions and formulating all-powerful laws. Indeed the marriage of the Way with law ( fa) is one of the earliest transformations and . 1 . 00-C1919-INT 9/10/2001 2:04 PM Page 2 adaptations of Laozi’s thought.2 On the popular level, by contrast, various anti-authoritarian movements have embraced the Dao De Jing’s teachings on the power of the weak. Thus the Dao De Jing, in the world of philosophy a small kingdom in its own right, has spawned diverse schools of thought, and these have elaborated upon and spread widely the original teachings— often in ways that might have surprised or distressed their creator.