Five Views of Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu, the "Old Master"

 FIVE VIEWS OF LAO TZU

In the late 60s I discovered the Tao Te Ching, a 2500-year-old Chinese text attributed to Lao Tzu, the "Old Master", which forms the basis of Taoist philosophy and is one of the world's most translated books. Over the years I've collected about a dozen versions of this Chinese classic and would like to share five of my favorites here.

"Tao Te Ching" literally means "Way Virtue Book"or "Book of the Virtue of The Way" and its 81 concise chapters concern themselves with eliciting the nature of The Way (Tao) and how and why one might best follow that Way. Tao might also be construed to mean "Nature", both physical nature and especially human nature. The Tao Te Ching tries to capture the unspeakable elusiveness, ambiguity and power of human and physical nature, The Chinese character "Tao" is also  the "-do" in Aikido, Tai Kwan Do and similar oriental martial arts. Spontaneous dance, jazz improv, surfing: each a splendid embodiment of the Tao. Especially surfing.

The popular philosopher Alan Watts never attempted a translation of this ancient Chinese text. But Watts did write a book on Taoism naming it "The Watercourse Way."

Bushido (Japanese): the way of the warrior.

In keeping with the quirky nature of this sacred Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching begins with a pun. The Chinese character "Tao" can mean both "the Way" and "to speak". So the first line of the watercourse way can be rendered "The tao that can be taoed is not the tao." From then on it just gets deeper.

Here I'm posting five different versions of Lao Tzu's first short chapter by five very different translators (including myself).

First up is Ursula Le Guin, a prolific author of science fiction and fantasy, whose NAFAL (Nearly-As-Fast-As-Light) starships and her instant ansible communicator entered the sci-fi canon and has been adopted by other writers. Le Guin's stories, however, are not primarily about hardware but about people, and about cultures depicted in empathetic and imaginative prose. Of the five translators, Le Guin, because of her sympathetic treatment of so many of her fictional people,  seems best positioned to express the human nature of the Watercourse Way.

Taoing

The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
Isn't the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things: one origin
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

US postage stamp honoring Ursula Le Guin

When I was working at Memorex in Silicon Valley, on my long drive home to Boulder Creek, I would sometimes stop for hot tub, tea and conversation at Stillpoint, a mountain top retreat center presided over by Gia-fu Feng, who taught Tai Chi and kept the books on his abacus in the early days of Esalen Institute. Gia-fu christened my son Khola at Stillpoint and gave him a Chinese middle name "Shou" which means 'long life". Gia-fu and his wife, physicist/photographer Jane English put together one of the most physically beautiful versions of the Tao Te Ching illustrated with Jane's evocative black-and-white photographs and Gia-fu's hand-drawn calligraphy. Of all five translators (including me) Gia-fu is the only one that spoke Chinese.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name:
     this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

Gia-fu Feng at Stillpoint

 Next up is former Harvard professor and LSD advocate Timothy Leary. I interacted many times with Leary (never got stoned with him) in several different contexts. Leary holds the unusual distinction of being arrested and imprisoned for carrying (a tiny bit of) marijuana INTO MEXICO. Even after drugs Leary was an instinctive academic and wrote lots and lots of books about his experiences with these then-outlawed mind-altering substances. Leary's version of the Chinese classic, Psychedelic Prayers, imagines that the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching describe the perfect acid trip.

That Which is Called The Tao

Is Not The Tao

 

The flow of energy .  .  .  .  .  .

Here  .  .  .  .  
              It  .  .  .  .  .  .
              Is  .  .  .  .  .  .

Nameless  .  .  .  .  .
Timeless  .  .  .  .  .
Speed of light  .  .  .  .  .

Float  .  .  .  .  .  .  beyond fear  .  .  .  .  .
Float  .  .  .  .  .  .  beyond desire  .  .  .  .

Into  .  .  .  .  .  this Mystery of Mysteries
through this Gate  .  .  .  .  .  of All Wonder 

Dr. Timothy Leary, PhD

My first literary introduction to the Pathless Tao was via The Way of Life by Witter Bynner. Bynner was a Harvard graduate, a scholar and writer who divided his time between Sante Fe, NM and Chapala in Mexico. Bynner was a close friend of D. H. Lawrence with whom he explored Mexico and gathered experiences that inspired Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent. Bynner's version of the Tao appears a bit dated compared to Ursula Le Guin's splendid modern rendition, but I first fell under the spell of the Tao through his particular words. And first loves are often our most memorable.

Existence is beyond the power of words
To define:
Terms may be used
But are none of them absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words.
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.

Witter Bynner by Rockwell Kent

My own version of the Tao Te Ching is inspired by the crazy paradoxes of quantum theory. Here we have a perfect mathematical representation of the world. But not even the smartest physicist can explain to his kids "what Nature is actually doing" at the sub-atomic level. Nor can we really justify how this unvisualizable quantum reality turns into the ordinary reality we experience every day. I hoped eventually to devise a physics version of all 81 chapters of the Chinese classic, but only managed to compose the very first. To follow the tradition of beginning with a pun, I use the term "quantum state" as a physicist's customary way of representing the invisible quantum world. None of us really know what sort of "reality" corresponds to a quantum state, but a good deal of modern technology (this computer for instance) directly grew out of our increasing ability to manipulate these mysterious mathematical objects.

THE TAO OF PHYSICS

The state you can state is not things-as-they-are
Language, like highway, goes only so far
Unnamed is the Source from which everything springs
Naming gives rise to the "Ten Thousand Things"
Unlooked at: She exceeds what can possibly be
What you get when you look? No more than you see
Yet the world She is One whether looked at or not
Nature's own nature's not something that's taught
But reach out to feel Her invisible flesh
Hear, see and smell: everything fresh!

 

Nick Herbert composed this post

 

 

 

The Life of Gia-fu Feng

Gia-fu Feng, teacher, translator and Taoist rogue

In 1970, I was working at Memorex and driving every day "over the hill" from Boulder Creek to Santa Clara. Some evenings I would stop at the very top of Bear Creek Road at Stillpoint, a Taoist community founded by Gia-fu Feng. Sipping tea, enjoying the hot tub and conversing with Gia-fu and his companions was a pleasant contrast to my role as a physicist overseeing research into the technical details of making better magnetic tape.

On one of my many trips to Esalen Institute in Big Sur in the '60s, I had heard that if you got up early (not easy for me), you could learn Tai Chi from a crazy-wisdom master from China. As long as I was there I showed up for Gia-fu's classes which seemed to be an original recipe of classic Chinese forms plus Esalen-inspired sensory awareness techniques. Outside of Esalen our paths would sometimes cross due to Gia-fu's friendship with Elizabeth Kent Gay, "the lady from Vermont" who introduced me to SF dancer Betsy who eventually became my wife. I liked Gia-fu. He was cheerful, smart and unpredictable.

I recently discovered that Carol Ann Wilson, the sister of the woman to whom Gia-fu left his estate (including a stream-of-consciousness story of his life) has written a biography called Still Point of the Turning World.

published by Amber Lotus, Portland, Oregon

Since Carol had never met Gia-fu and was merely carrying out her sister's legacy, I expected a fact-filled book without much spirit. I was pleasantly surprised by Carol Ann Wilson's ability to capture the essence of this unusual man. Reading her book (it is written in the present tense) feels like following Gia-fu himself (and his thoughts) through the daily adventures of his extraordinary life.

Born in 1919 as the third son of a successful Shanghai banker, Gia-fu and his eight siblings were well-educated in both modern and classical Chinese subjects. Near the end of his career, the father's greatest pride was a wall in his house displaying his children's many academic degrees.

The Feng family's life is soon disrupted by the Japanese invasion and occupation of China. With her ability to put the reader into the thick of things, Carol Wilson brings to life (thru Gia-fu's eyes) the chaos in China caused by the strife between three warring factions, the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt but US-backed Free China army plus the growing Communist forces led by Mao Tse-tung. Shortly after the war ends Gia-fu and his younger brother Chao-hua board a ship for America, the first intending to study international finance, the other engineering. Thirty years pass before Gia-fu is able to return home. Meanwhile Carol Wilson relates the fate of the formerly wealthy Feng family under the new Communist government -- an intimate look at modern history through its effect on people whom you have come to care for.

Gia-fu enrolls at the Wharton school in Philadelphia but, becoming increasingly disoriented by American culture, he "hops in an old jalopy" and wanders across the United States, a trek which eventually leads him to San Francisco where he finds a position with Alan Watts at the American Academy of Asian Studies both as student and translator. Arriving in the midst of the San Francisco Renaissance, Gai-fu becomes friends with writers Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac, poets Lew Welch, Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other talents, among them fellow student at the Academy and future cofounder of Esalen Institute, Dick Price.

When Mike Murphy and Dick Price tentatively began their "human potential center" in Big Sur, Gia-fu showed up as Esalen's accountant (using an abacus), Tai Chi teacher, and "keeper of the baths".

Gia-fu eventually finds Esalen too hectic for his tastes and starts his own center called Stillpoint on Bear Creek Road high above Silicon Valley. There he meets Jane English, a physicist from Berkeley, and they begin a life together and collaborate on two books: Gia-fu's translations of the Tao Te Ching -- the most translated book outside the Bible -- and Chuang Tzu's Inner Chapters. Jane produces stark black-and-white photographs reminiscent of Chinese paintings which Gia-fu decorates with calligraphy. Their Tao Te Ching is an immediate success and has gone through innumerable printings.

Gia-fu's Bear Creek neighbors however are not happy living next to a Taoist tea house and Gia-fu is pressured to leave, eventually settling in Colorado where Stillpoint finds a more congenial home. His Tai Chi lessons become popular in Europe where he and Jane travel to give workshops. Eventually they separate, Jane moving to Mt. Shasta and Gia-fu remaining in Colorado. As a physicist I find their union fascinating -- the energetic meeting of yin and yang. Also notable from the science and mysticism perspective is the fact that Gia-fu and Jane helped Fritjof Capra find a publisher for his ground-breaking Tao of Physics. And that Gia-fu and Jane were also able to meet with Joseph Needham, author of the multivolume work Science and Civilization in China.

Nearing the conclusion of this engaging and well-researched biography, I am reminded of my last meeting with Gia-fu. My wife and I had just birthed a son in Boulder Creek, whom we called Khola (a short form of Nicholas) and Betsy felt that he should be christened and given a middle name. Neither of us belonged to a conventional religion so we decided that the "most sacred person" we knew was Gia-fu Feng up at Stillpont. (I can hear Gia-fu laughing in his grave at being called "most sacred person"). So we hard-boiled a bunch of eggs, decorated them in Ukrainian pysanky style and the three of us drove the few miles up winding Bear Creek Road to Gia-fu's community in the hills.

Gia-fu was pleased by our visit and improvised an appropriate christening ceremony. We had not yet chosen a name so Gia-fu opened a drawer and pulled out a Chinese character carved from wood. "This is the character 'shou'," he said, "which means 'long life'. And it's also the name of my brother who is a banker in Hong Kong." So that's how Khola got his middle name. How Khola himself came to become a San Diego banker is another story.

Thank you, Gia-fu Feng, for being such an unforgettable part of my life. And thank you, Carol Ann Wilson, for the immense care you took in producing this remarkable book about a most remarkable man. 

Nature is my teacher: Gia-fu Feng: Photo by Jane English