Interpretation & Translation of Tao Te Ching:

The Tao Te Ching is written in classical Chinese, which is in itself difficult even for normally educated modern native speakers of Chinese to understand completely. Furthermore, many of the words used in the Tao Te Ching are deliberately vague and ambiguous. At the time the Tao Te Ching was written, educated Chinese who could read it would have memorized a large body of fairly standard Chinese literature, and when writing it was common to convey meaning by making allusions to other well-known works which now may have been lost. Few people today have the full command of the vast body of ancient Chinese literature that would have been common in Laozi's day, and thus many levels of subtext are potentially lost on modern translators.

There is no punctuation in classical Chinese, and thus often no way to conclusively determine where one sentence ends and the next begins. Moving a period a few words forward or back or inserting a comma can profoundly alter the meaning of many passages, and such divisions and meanings must be determined by the translator. Some Chinese editors and some translators, indeed, argue that the text is so corrupted (as it was written on one-line bamboo tablets linked with a silk thread) that it's not possible to understand some chapters without moving sequences of characters from one place to another.

The Tao Te Ching is perhaps the most translated book written in the Chinese language, with over 100 different translations into English alone. The combination of being mystical and obscure means that sometimes different translations have nothing in common, suggesting that getting a deep understanding of the text requires reading more than one. A common way to do this is to pick two translations and read them side by side.

The following are some concepts and principles which may facilitate understanding of the text.

The Return

"When he is born, man is soft and weak; in death he becomes stiff and hard... the hard and mighty are cast down; the soft and weak set on high." (chapter 76) 

This quote shows again Laozi's focus on softness, but in another pair of counterparts: the newborn baby and the old man. Rigidity is the attribute of death, while weakness is the attribute of life. When things or beings are at their beginning, everything is possible. When things have not yet developed, it is the right time to act on them with a better chance for good results. A kind of return to the beginning of things, or to one's own childhood, is required.

This focus on the importance of beginnings also has social ramifications. As in the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Tao Te Ching assumes that ancient times were those of happiness, purity of intentions, and full communion with nature: "the times when anyone could look inside the nests of all the birds". Problems arose when humanity "invented" culture and civilisation. The Tao Te Ching proposes a return to the more natural state, for example in chapter 80, where the text argues the people should "come back to the usage of knotted ropes" in place of any other form of writing.

However, the "Return" shouldn't be understood as a simple or reactionary way back to the past, but as a "contraction," a "reduction," a "withdrawal" or even a "retreat" in oneself. This is illustrated in the anti-Confucianist saying: Learning consists in adding to one's stock day by day; the practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day (ch. 48) and in this strategic adviceI dare not advance an inch but retreat a foot instead. (ch. 69) Diminishing one's ego, instead of "improving" it through studies, is the path to real wisdom. Letting the enemy take the first step (thus reducing his range of possiblities) is the way to gain the upper hand.

Although this idea of a "Return" is close to some modern psychological practices such as introspection, what is to be reached through "Return" is not the self but nothingness, a return to that-which-is.

The Sage has no heart on his own...

The Search for Vacuity is a common concern for many different Asian wisdoms including Taoism, Buddhism, and some aspects of Confucianism. In the Tao Te Ching, nothingness is the theme of many chapters and one could see the entire book as a suite of variations on "the Powers of Nothingness", echoing the ancient Buddhist philosophy of 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'. An explanation on how nothingness has power can be found in chapter 11:

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing

that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing

that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing

that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is,

we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

Chapter 11, tr. A. Waley

Looking at a Chinese landscape painting, one can understand also how nothingness (the unpainted parts) has the power of giving life to the beings - the trees, mountains, and rivers - it surrounds. Being nothing for a man means having no heart on his own, having no fixed preconceptions on how things should be, and having no intentions or agenda. For the ruler's point of view, nothingness is not far from the liberal laissez-faire approach: letting things happen by themselves is the best way to help them grow. As the Tao te Ching would say:

So a wise leader may say: I practice inaction, and the people look after themselves.

Knowing Onself

The pursuit of the knowledge of the self appears in many variations throughout the Tao Te Ching. One example in chapter 33:

Knowing others is wisdom;

Knowing the self is enlightenment.

Mastering others requires force;

Mastering the self requires strength;

He who knows he has enough is rich.

Perseverance is a sign of will power.

He who stays where he is endures.

To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

Chapter 33 tr. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English