This translation is a work in progress - and comments on clarity will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan

The Trail Marker

Lao Tzu

Tao Te Ching

With commentaries

Dan Lange

道 - Tao, Dao

Way, path or route.

Tao Te Ching

The pathway creates itself

“Walker, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more. Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking. Walking you make the road, and turning to look behind you see the path you never again will step upon. Walker, there is no road, only foam trails on the sea.”

Antonio Machado, from Spanish

道可道

“The Dao that you can Dao”

Verse One

The portion of the trail that you can follow

is not the entire trail,

Words or pictures could never describe

An individual route

Along the trail, let alone map the whole thing.

Everything in the sky, even out in outer space

And in any hypothetical

Alternate universes,

Everything in the world you have ever known about

Are born of woman.

Your Mother was the first one to start

teaching you words for everything.

Who were you before that?

You can think about what’s real,

If you let go of the words for things.

Put your attention on the process

Of things flowing away

As a result of their flowing towards,

Then your attention is in the place where

It’s all happening.

You have an inner model of what’s going on

Outside yourself.

Figuring out the difference between these two things

Is the mystery.

I could draw you a map,

I could give you accurate directions,

And it would never prepare you for the journey you would go on.

If it’s marked “Treasure Map”,

you’ll have certain expectations.

If areas are marked “Dangerous”, will you go?

Will you go alone?

Either way, you face mystery.

Verse Two

Everybody in the whole wide world understands

the beauty of the beautiful,

But that cuts things up badly;

Everyone knows the goodness of the good

But that is not good.

It is not evaluating for oneself.

Difficult and easy

One evaluates for oneself

And you get the task accomplished

Long and short

One evaluates for oneself

And that’s the shape of it.

Over and under

One evaluates for oneself

And tips them over.

Musical tones and noises

One evaluates for oneself

And makes harmonies,

Front and back

One evaluates for oneself

And they follow one another.

So…

The person you should emulate

Doesn’t do anything.

Doesn’t say anything, not even to teach.

Ten thousand things arise

Jump up and surprise like

A big yellow bird

And they keep steady, they don’t give up.

Live without holding on,

Be able to be in charge without being

An overprotective “Mother”,

Be able to be left in charge

without micromanaging.

Work until the job is complete,

But don’t live for the job.

A “so called grown-up” doesn’t live for the job,

but they get it done.

If you go along with what “everyone knows”, you’ll be wrong a lot of the time.

Look at the world with your own eyes, have your own experiences.

Perform your own experiments and start from first principles

you discovered for yourself.

Learn how to get things done without struggle.

Teach by example, not by talking.

When things go wrong, keep steady.

Throw your whole heart into your work, but take your heart home afterward

And leave work at work.

相 Xiang : to see for oneself; to evaluate by seeing for oneself

“Every American wants MORE MORE of the world… But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter… at the expense of what really counts… You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.”

Allen Ginsberg

Verse Three

Not holding good things in high esteem

Is how to keep people from arguing.

Not to go to the trouble of acquiring expensive goods

Is how to keep people from turning to thievery.

Don’t have a plan for how to control events

And people won’t get the idea of chaos and disorder.

It won’t occur to them to throw a monkey wrench into your works

Or commit sabotage.

When the right person is in charge of anything

people don’t feel the need to worry.

Put the truth in their bellies

And people won’t need anything.

Strengthen their bones

And people won’t want anything.

So called grown-ups representing someone else’s authority

And with their own wisdom

Won’t have any changes to make.

Do by not doing

Do nothing, don’t use authority.

Lead without leading.

If I brag at the bar, someone’s going to take it up and argue with me.

If I just have to have expensive things,

My house is more of a target for burglars

And I have more reason to watch out for pickpockets

And con men.

My big complicated get rich scheme

Might get copycats, competitors, even unwanted attention from the authorities

Don’t build the works, nobody can throw a monkey wrench into them.

If I’m in charge of something,

You don’t have to give it another thought

Don’t worry about it.

If I’m cooking a meal,

Don’t even think about it.

it’ll be delicious and healthy,

You’ll be satisfied.

You won’t go hungry

I might ask you to clear the table afterwards.

I like to handle things in such a way that

Nobody shows up and drags me away

Or otherwise interferes.

In Hamlet, it’s the authorities “next kingdom over”

Who intervene at the end of the play.

I try to keep my relationship with the authorities

At this kind of distance.

Nothing going on here, officer.

I’m not bothering anybody, so nobody bothers me.

If more people followed my example

The world would be a better place

But it would be unhelpful

For me to go around saying so.

I just try to keep out of everyone else's

Way, to make a space for them.

In years gone by

I had noted that language

Left to churn along by its own logic alone

Always seems to have the tendency to wind downward,

To become more uselessly pessimistic

As it goes along. You have to keep putting the inspiration,

The music back in.

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

— Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790 CE

Verse Four

The Trail is flushed clean

I’ve seen this, by seasonal rains and flooding,

You can see the marks left by this scouring.

You can’t horde or stockpile

The pathway that natural events follow;

You can’t really patent

a technique

That is there in the world to be learned.

道

This Dao, this pathway, is

A skillful abyss,

Resembling the scorpion dance

As it was done

in the ancient temple.

It’s edges are blurry.

It’s not fastened to anything.

It looks just like everything else; camouflage

And harmonized light, it’s difficult to see.

It’s dust is mingled with all the dust.

And yet, it very emphatically seems to exist!

I don’t know whose child it is,

Where its seed comes from.

Before there were symbols, or things symbolized,

or God as a concept or as a reality,

This is what was there.

All of this makes me picture

a well-worn, maintained footpath

That was once a deer trail

which follows the contours of the land in such a way

As to follow the watershed.

This is simply the natural way

For all kinds of living creatures

to go, even without the obvious path,

or markers of any kind.

A peaceful woodland trail

Created by all the varieties

of movement along its length.

Dust motes in a sunbeam

Harmonize light filtered through trees

It very emphatically seems to exist!

It was all there

Before there were any blazes marking it.

The bit about the scorpion dance

Is something I’m getting from the

Origins of the Chinese character

萬, wan, meaning lots, another way of saying ten thousand. Remember, if you see a cockroach in your dwelling, you don’t have cockroach. You have cockroaches. You only saw the one.

I’ve never seen myriads of scorpions, just ones or twos, but I did once see a hole with an uncountable number of baby rattlesnakes in it.

I saw this while hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

“The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say”

J.R.R Tolkien

Verse Five

The sky and the ground are not sentimental.

All those scorpions pouring out of that hole

Might as well be straw dogs, like Xmas trees

On boxing day.

The person you should emulate is not sentimental.

All the families, all their names,

Might as well be straw dogs, like Xmas trees

On boxing day.

Heaven and Earth are

Not the only thing that can operate like

A bag blowing a flute!

Empty when not in motion.

Move and a lot comes out.

A lot of words leads to a poor outcome.

You’re using up your resources

standing there yakking,

which does nothing to

strengthen your core.

Wasting too much time on definitions

Gets in the way of learning technique

And doing the things that have to be done.

Don’t put yourself in a situation where

What other people think

affects your decision making.

Make your own decisions, and let other people make theirs.

Too much time talking about bigger picture politics

Can leave your own household in disarray.

These seem like

Simple directions to avoid having things in general

Turn into a “real shit show”

I’d prefer not to have family meals

Turn into political battlegrounds

So - let’s not get into it.

Verse Six

The Valley has a spirit, it is not dead

Depth itself

Is a mystery a man could learn about

By learning from Women.

The deep female mystery is the gate

The root and foundation

of heaven and earth

Soft softness, compliance,

shaping to fit circumstances,

shapes that harbor and retain

Function without effort.

I'm remembering my father

Teaching me to catch

A spiral pass with a football

Yelling “soft hands” across the field.

“when spirit began to degenerate into intellect, there set a reaction against it, … the dark, earth-born, feminine principle with its emotionality and instinctiveness reaching far back into the depths of time and into the roots of psychological continuity.”

— Carl Jung

Verse Seven

The sky is far and the Earth has endured,

The Sky and the ground are so big,

and have existed for as long as they have

Because

They have no separate existence

apart from one another

So, they have endured

since times long past.

This is the reason

A the person you should emulate

Is behind their body

But their body advances

They perceive themselves as if

From outside their body

But they still get along

And take care of things

That need taking care of.

What they don’t have

Is the fault

Of a flawed private self

They have the old ability

The skills, the techniques

To fend

For themselves.

能 Neng

The original letters almost

Seem to say that they are

some kind of mythological

Bear like creature

That the sage is like an old bear

Or better still,

A mythological

Bear like creature

Who knows how to fend for themselves.

Without evil personal flaws,

They are able to just

Do what they need to

Pick berries, catch a nice salmon,

Just wander around

Being some kind of bear like,

Mythological creature.

Verse 8

The best thing is to follow

the rules that water does.

The good thing about water;

It benefits all living things

And does not play favorites.

It lives in the places

all people find a hostile environment.

It flows along to where everything winds up going!

Look, the river flows right beside

the trail.

It is good to live on the land

It is good to have a deep heart

It is good to give with compassion,

To speak truth

Take care of the things you are in charge of

In an upright manner.

Work up to your level of ability.

Do things in their season,

Timing is essential

Then the so-called grownups

Will have no reason to bother you.

Verse Nine

Being able to gather things and hold them

Is not the point of anything.

Brandishing a sharp tool

Is not the point of a sharp tool, not even

A weapon.

A warehouse full of valuable metals

And precious stones

Is useless if you’re just hoarding resources.

Being wealthy is expensive

Horses are expensive to maintain

And arrogant pride comes with all that territory.

It focuses your attention

on everything one can possibly lose.

Work to satisfy the body

And step back.

The sky, the weather, the planets in their orbits

follow this same trail.

Verse` Ten

Your life is just a thing you carry from campsite to campsite.

You are not your skills and memories, not really.

How could those things stay?

Taking specific, fine control of your breath will make it soft and supple.

Is this the skill that old bears and newborn babies have?

If you make your thoughts a deep clear pool

how will you see your defects?

Love people, learn the skill of getting along.

Heaven's Gate opens and closes.

Does this mean it is female?

If you can train animals, how can you not get this flash of insight?

Live with it, Raise it.

Live and do not be possessive of your life,

Or even of the things you use every day.

Work on the wordless techniques.

Lengthen, do not cut -

once you start, continue,

practice basics repeatedly

throughout your life

and it will be longer.

These are the deep inherent qualities to develop.

Verse Eleven

Thirty spokes together,

A wheel has one hub.

It’s the nothing in the middle that makes the wheel useful.

Clay is fired and made into utensils;

But it’s the nothing in the middle that

Makes them useful.

You chisel a doorway so you can use your rooms when you build them.

Look at the empty space to see it’s use.

There was nothing there in the first place;

The doorway let’s you into the original

Empty space that was there before we built the house.

Verse Twelve

Five colors dominate the eyes and blind them.

Five sounds dominate the ears and deafen them.

Five flavors dominate people’s mouths

So they don’t know what they are tasting.

Excitement over racing,

hunting and other sports

can dominate the people

and make them act crazy.

Going to a lot of trouble

to acquire goods dominates people,

makes them

Walk a crooked, cursed path.

This is why the the person you should emulate

Is in their belly,

not in the sights their eyes can see.

Verse Thirteen

To show favor to the disgraced

Will scare the daylights out of them.

It is very expensive to worry about your body;

About survival, about becoming poor,or even homeless.

So what do the disgraced have to be afraid of?

To show favor is to lower someone, to show that they are your subordinate.

Being singled out for

favor is as scary as disgrace.

This shows that being favored and being humiliated

Follow the same rules.

Why would someone tell big, expensive problems

To a subordinate?

The ancient city of Yunwu is in ruins.

It has vanished into clouds and mist,

The name is

Remembered as a quality of Tea still grown in the region;

Served at that moment that it is hot and steaming.

They had big, expensive problems.

The putative author of this account

claims to have been there,

Not identifying himself as acting as a “the person you should emulate ” in any way

At the time.

I suppose he was younger, and still foolish.

In order to achieve the same level that our putative author

Occupied at that time,

One would have to solve

An unspecified but finite

Number of fairly expensive problems.

Things pass by, into the past ,

under the sky;

If you are easy going

You may depend upon the sky

To remain overhead; for events to follow their natural course,

For water to flow downhill and so on.

Love the body which does the work.

It’s all of the power you have

under the sky.

云雾 yun wu

Yun, Clouds Wu, Mist

Shifting nothing

Clouds and mist

The “Cloud Tea” of Le Mountain

無 wu “it is not”

The thing that is not there.

Why should I tell some subordinate about

my big deal money problems?

In my younger days,

Before I was as wise as I am now,

I was there at Yun Wu

When the kettle came to boil;

I was lucky to get out with my skin.

They still grow tea there,

But under different management.

Verse Fourteen

When you look and you just can’t see

Might as well be from the land of Yi

Listen and cannot smell or hear

And it literally might as well be in Greek.

You’re just projecting your desires

If you can’t get a handle on an idea,

It might be too subtle for you to grasp.

Your sensory inputs don’t get along;

They keep needing to be scolded.

So mix them into one thing.

Let them settle so that

The upper bit is not bright white and clean,

The lower bit is not dim and gloomy,

Or invitingly dangerous.

The line, the rope has no name.

It turns back into nothing.

It has no form,

it has no physical image.

No name, so there’s no way to spell it.

It’s blurry and indistinct,

You won’t see the head

And you’ll never see the other end go by.

This is the way to understand the present, and the beginning.

This way of doing things is

following the trail marker.

道

Verse Fifteen

The good old ways were subtle, delicate, but no longer very well known.

People kept themselves to themselves, and they were strong.

They had self control, like they were crossing a stream in winter.

Cautious, like they were afraid of bothering the neighbors.

Respectful, like guests.

They made themselves scarce, like melting ice.

They were simple and useful, like a grain silo,

or like a piece of wood with the bark still on, unprocessed, unshaped.

They were broad and open like a valley.

It is hard to see through muddy waters.They learned to let them settle and had the practiced skill of maintaining their calm.

They had the ability to move through the green unripe world,To keep the trail clear.

They didn’t stockpile wealth, just made sure they had enough. They left wiggle room, and room to respond to changes and challenges.

Verse Sixteen

When you go into the empty places

Remain silent and sincere.

All the things in the world, the dancing scorpions and everything else, arise.

Look at them.

The so-called grown up gathers the flowers

And leaves the roots alone

To replenish.

Yes, return to the pathways of life.

See clearly what is coming; when you don’t know what’s going on,

Things get fierce, and ominous.

Keep learning, keep updating yourself.

The world is open to the public,

So the public is really in charge.

Being in charge is representing the workings of the universe,

and the universe is made of

how things work out on their own.

Things just keep on going! The trail is long,

but with no shape, no form - is it real?

Which one of the scorpions, which flower is apart from the whole?

The job of ruling is watching things happen in spite of you. The duty of the ruled is to live as if there were no rulers, or as if their edicts were weather, more or less natural obstacles to overcome.

Verse Seventeen

When people are in charge of anything, they should try to understand what it’s like from the other guys perspective.

At the very best, they won’t even realize you’re there.

A few people will notice you

when you make mistakes.

Some of those will understand.

If you do kind of a crappy job, they’ll start to worry.

Do a super crappy job and they’ll hate you,

they’ll make fun of you,

what do you expect?

If you don’t understand cause and effect,

You can’t teach anybody anything,

and you sure can’t put it into words.

At this point I imagine the author pausing and taking a deep breath before he says

“You see, my words are valuable -

I shall not waste them”.

“Act wholeheartedly

And be satisfied.”

“That’s what I call”,

says our author,

“ going with the

force of nature.”

Verse Eighteen

When people stopped following the Trail,

They lost their way.

They came up with the ideas of “Kindness” and “Benevolence”.

When wisdom and intelligence are on display,

So are lies and hypocrisy.

It’s natural for members of a family to love and support one another. When this is upset, families are in turmoil, and we hear about how important the family unit is, family values, filial piety, honor your father and your mother, whatever a society chooses to call it, when you start hearing these terms being used, it’s no good thing.

Same thing at the political level - when you start to hear about patriotism and loyalty, you know the wrong people are running the country. If they were handling things the correct way, those topics would never come up.

道

Verse Nineteen

Abandon the idea of absolute wisdom

And the people will benefit a hundred times - or twice that.

Abandon absolutes of right and wrong, and of goodness,

And families will treat each other with more love and respect.

Abandon the absolute ideal that your skills are primarily there to make a profit from,

And no one will be able to rip you off .

Just putting this into words isn’t enough; so pay attention, think about it, consider this as a rule.

Keep it plain.

Keep it simple.

The examples here are undyed silk,

and a piece of wood with bark

And maybe a little branch still on it,

Uncarved, unprocessed.

Be less selfish.

Have fewer desires.

Verse Twenty

Don’t worry about learning everything.

Phase geometry, where is Azerbaijan?

What is the difference between “Ah” and “Ah”?

What is the difference between good and evil?

Just because everyone else is afraid, doesn’t mean you need to be afraid.

A crowd of people can be an empty, desolate place.

Everyone so busy busy, making sure they have two

When I only have one.

So much fun, like Disneyland,

Literally, like a holiday in Chuntai in the springtime.

I stand alone, and it signifies nothing.

It seems like I haven’t grown up.

According to many people,

I am the one who is obstinate,

And , worse, vulgar.

I am alone, and different from most people.

I wonder what my Mother-in-law is cooking tonight?

Verse Twenty One

The quality that accomplishes everything

lives in a hole that the path goes past.

The path is because things are.

The mind reels, it gets confused.

I can’t make it out.

I can’t tell what it is.

It could even be an elephant,

Or just about anything else.

It’s indistinct, vague but there is something there.

Deep! Deeper than you expected,

Deep! Quiet, amazingly quiet.

It has a lot of fine detail

It has so much detail,

It is tempting to assume

that it must mean something.

From ancient times until now,

the wise rule to follow is

not what people in general think.

I can’t keep up with the trends -

Oh well, I guess I just miss out.

Verse Twenty Two

An instructional Poem like this that

Says it all

Is a complicated undertaking!

The rules for following something as simple sounding as ‘The Path” are twisted rulers for straight lines.

Empty spaces follow the rules for filling up.

Harmful things follow the rules for helpful things.

A scarcity mindset follows the rules for getting too much stuff.

Hug the person you should emulate .

I’m serious here; find someone you love ,

Someone you have learned from,

Hold them. Learn from that experience.

There’s no formula to go under;

Without seeing what’s coming next,

Without making anything happen;

Without merit, without credit,

Without sympathy or pity,

If a grown person will not fight, then even Heaven can’t fight them.

There’s an instructional poem like this

hidden in old place names that should be heeded.

How can you pay attention to lies?

Go back to honesty and sincerity.

“Hug the the person you should emulate ” is a real give away as to the

Identity of “The Sage”.

Verse Twenty Three

Hope speaks to one’s self

So the fluttering of wind does not cease.

Sudden rain does not last all day

What person can tell me why this is so?

Heaven and Earth cannot stay the same forever

So what about people?

So people who are following the Trail

Are the same, are part of the trail.

The moral person IS morality.

A loser is lost.

For a person following the trail,

The trail is fun.

For a moral person, morality is fun.

For losers, losing is fun.

If a person hasn’t done something,

They don’t understand.

Verse Twenty Four

Stretching out one toe

Is not standing.

Taking a step is not walking.

The person looking is not seeing themself.

The person who exists is not obvious.

The self centered person does not last longer.

Those who seek themselves seek nothing.

Following the trail is like this as well.

Telling me that there’s a buffet is useless - we can all see the table full of food.

Could be good, could be a problem,

The road doesn’t go to those places.

Verse Twenty Five

Things are a mixture. Start with the sky and earth and something will grow.

Lonely! Oh so Alone!

Standing erect, unchanging.

A guardian.

Like the sky’s own mother.

I don’t know the name -

Let’s call it the Trail, or by calling it anything, let’s call it a Trail Marker.

Because it is strong, we’ll call it big.

It’s big, so we can call it “Something that will pass away”

It will pass away, so we can call it “ Far away”

If it is far away, we can call it “accounted for”.

Therefore the Trail Marker marks something large. Bigger than any one viewpoint could take in.

The sky is big. Bigger than any one viewpoint could take in.

Earth is big . Bigger than any one viewpoint could take in.

The government is also big - Bigger than any one viewpoint could take in.

There are at least four great domains, four categories of things that are bigger than any one viewpoint could take in and politics is certainly one of them.

People’s laws represent the laws of earth;

The laws of earth represent the laws of the universe;

The universal laws of nature are what the Trail Marker is meant to indicate.

Because what we’re calling “The Trail”

Is just what’s there.

Verse Twenty Six

Weight is the root source of lightness;

Stopping for a long lunch break can make all the difference in the work day of a so-called-grown-up;

So a qualified leader

Keeps going all day

And then digs into the supplies.

Although they can see the glory,

a swallow just nests up there.

Why carry more than you need

In a world where distribution is essentially light?

When you forget to go lightly

You tire yourself out.

You lose your temper.

Verse Twenty Seven

Skilful hikers practice “leave no trace” trail ethics.

They say “Leave nothing but footprints

Take nothing but memories”

A skilful tracker and trail runner

leaves no footprints.

A person skilful with words leaves no room for disagreement.

Some people can do complex math in their heads, without even a pencil and paper.

A skilful carpenter can make a doorway with no metal parts, no pins, no nails screws or lock, and it’ll be secure and work smoothly.

You tie a boat to a dock

Without a knot, and the boat stays put.

The person you should emulate looks after the interests of all people

Appreciates their skills and learning ability

And abandons no one.

Everyone is taken into account.

Let’s shine a light on it.

The skilful teach the unskilled.

The unskilled learn from the skilled.

This is the mystery to solve - who can learn what from who,

Building this chain of respect and skill sharing.

If this isn’t in order, confusion arises.

Verse Twenty Eight

Knowledge is something you build inside and push into the world to effect change.

We’ll call this pushing “masculine”. We’ll call it “Yang” at some point, too.

Seeing - taking things in through any of your senses - involves being in a receptive state. We’ll call this receptivity “Female”. Sometimes, we’ll call it“Yin”.

Even the stars, the gods and the castles of gods, everything real and imaginary up in the sky, will follow the same rules when we look at them closely.

Virtue and morality have nothing to do with how everything real and imaginary up in the sky operates.

Let’s return to the infant, the newborn child;

It starts out in darkness, and doesn’t know it.

As soon as the child sees light, it soon understands that there is such a thing as “darkness”.

Because the sky follows a pattern.

Since the sky follows a pattern,

Often the “Right Thing” is...not so much.

No time of year, no part of any system, is

The “Best” part.

Forget that set of standards.

When you see the “Heavenly Glory”

You can see what’s wrong with that kind of thinking.

Heaven follows the same rules as the river valley.

Since Heaven follows the same rules as the river - as nature - then let your standard of behavior follow nature.

Go back to simplicity.

An uncut chunk of wood has no plan for itself. It could become anything in the moment. It can be cut up into anything; into containers,or tools. But then it is no longer an uncut piece of wood, still less a tree.

The person you should emulate maintains their unprocessed quality;

Remaining a tree

Rather than becoming a tool.

They do not destroy or disrupt

The big system Nature has in place.

Verse Twenty Nine

Someone wants to own the world,

I don’t see them succeeding.

The universe is outside of our control,

The person who tries to will be defeated.

So put things in whatever order you choose,

Suck it up, or blow it out,

Strong or weak;

Or load it up, or dump it out;

The person you should emulate does away with extravagance.

They don’t put on any kind of show.

Verse Thirty

When the main person in a group of people follows the Trail Marker,

They don’t put soldiers out under the sky.

There are better things to attend to.

Brambles grow in the places where

Soldiers have camped and trained.

In the wake of an army, bad harvests follow.

Do not use daring to take by strength.

Live and grow and do not pity;

Live and grow and do not kill;

Live and grow and do not be proud;

Live and grow and do not need credit for your deeds or

For the accidents of your birth:

Live and grow with no need to show your strength;

This idea that strength defeats weakness has been around for a long time, but it’s not what we’re calling “The Trail Marker”.

It’s not all there is to things .

Verse Thirty One

When healthy, useful people

Are turned into soldiers, armed with ominous, unlucky devices

Or other evil plans and machinations,

The people in charge are not following the Trail Markers.

A nice home, a good place to live, is expensive to maintain.

Keeping people under command as soldiers

Is expensive.

Soldiers with ominous devices

Cannot maintain that nice, comfortable home for themselves

Or anyone else.

Keep the victory fires cold.

Victory is not beautiful.

That so-called beauty is the music of

People being murdered.

The person who sings songs glorifying murder has poor standards, low aspirations.

So there is still luck; the fierce thing is one part, the angry, military, violent portion, put it here on the right.

Let’s stand over on the left side of the military

and watch them march by.

There they stand, at attention,

Celebrating a funeral.

Kill a lot of people,

It’s depressing, you will attend

A lot of funerals.

Victory in War; as much fun as a funeral,

As a memorial service.

Verse Thirty Two

The Trail Marker

Isn’t a label or a logo.

That uncut block of wood

Isn’t anything until we cut it up; nameless potential.

It’s simple.

A banner flying under the broad sky

Shows off a daring minister, so that

even the person in charge will be able to see what a great job they are doing.

So they can stand out from the rest of the ten thousand things. Look out for falling scorpions!

Otherwise, sky and earth would blend together. We couldn’t tell them apart

Without Mr. Important and his flag!

The sweet nectar, though, is that people are not like this.

They aren’t the things represented by symbols, badges, or names.

Grown ups need to understand where to stop,

When to stop seeing a plumber as a plumber, to see them as “Cheryl” or ‘Dave”,

Or just as a person, a hungry body, possessing a mind.

The Trail Marker is there to follow under the sky, over the plains, along the streams, into the rivers, through the valleys and out to sea.

Verse Thirty Three

The person who is wise about people

Knows who to select for each purpose.

To win victories, you look to strong people.

Since victors are strong,

They will tend to be wealthy, and to expect pay

Commensurate to their abilities and risks.

People who conduct their lives in terms of this kind of strength

Have their own way of thinking, and of doing things.

While one conducts their own affairs,

one will see that some of them live, some die.

Verse Thirty Four

The Great Trail Mark is everywhere, yes it is!

It’s there to the left and to the right.

Everything - all the ten thousand things, all the dancing scorpions,

Rely on it to exist.

It has merit

But no name.

Everything gets clothed warmly, taken care of, but not dominated. Nothing is left wanting.

This is treated as a small thing, given a small name,

But everything keeps cycling around, the ten thousand things keep coming back,

And they get the big name.

According to the the person you should emulate , the ending of things is a small matter;

So, transformation, not endings, is the big deal.

Verse Thirty Five

Putting on the big show .

Heaven’s movement is already

Laid out

And it flows along

safe , level, peaceful.

It’s only the big show

When you see it as a distraction;

As a passenger only.

Following the Trail Marker

goes out the window;

Look and it can’t be seen,

Listen, it can’t be heard.

No need to try to do something,

it’s already been done.

Verse Thirty Six

When you really want something, that’s when

You have to learn to wait.

When you want to weaken something,

Make it stronger.

When you want to abolish something

First promote it.

When you want to steal something -

Give it to someone. It has to belong to someone to steal it!

All while you count the time in fragments of seconds.

The soft victory

The easy victory

Is just winning without using your strength.

Fish cannot escape the deep.

The best things about your homeland

Aren’t in the brochures.

Verse Thirty Seven

The force we’ve been talking about,

The tendency to observe that things move in certain ways

That I’m calling the Trail Marker,

Translated from the word Dao,

Is the interrelation of so many processes that there is no way to name all the parts and movements.

It’s the pulsing, the suction, the peristalsis

of things happening.

Big hats, people of importance

Protect and defend and shout about

What’s happening anyway ,whether they desire it or not;

Change.

All the myriad things - all those scorpions - change

And become something different.

I would live in a town

With no name.

Not so mysterious as it sounds, just a place

With no reputation,

No reputation keeps things simple,

What else could one desire?

If you don’t want peace and quiet,

I’m certain that the sky will rain on you soon enough.

The Trail Marker

Part Two

Xia Pian

Verse Thirty Eight

Better than doing is not having to do anything.

Things that get done of their own accord;

Doing just what is required

To accomplish the task at hand

Is not the same thing as following the domination of a moral code;

Better not to deal with it as morality at all.

If the rules are there for a sensible reason, then that’s the reason to follow the rule.

Doing things that are considered “good”

Can involve doing things with a merely ceremonial purpose; even doing things that have wrongful effects under prevailing conditions.

Once we’re involved with figuring out what to do, we’ve lost the thread. We’re not following the trail.

Lose the thread, forget what to do, and you could still get lucky.

Forget getting lucky, and you can still do the right thing.

Lose doing the right thing and you can still have good habits.

A grownup can have good habits even when the reasons are dumb.

A dumb person can follow the trail more easily than a smart one can.

The great Trail Marker leads where dumb things go too.

You’ll meet dumb people on your journey;

A grownup - a really big grownup, like ten feet tall -

Gets under the thin surface , into the thick substance of things.

Some things are real enough to deal with;

Some things don’t go along, so discard them.

Verse Thirty Nine

In the past, people saw everything as one thing.

The sky has to be one thing, clear blue sky, in order to be seen as clear.

You have to see the land as one thing in order to see the life in the land.

You have to see the sacred as one thing in order to find tranquility.

The valley has to operate as a single system in order to provide for everything.

All of the ten thousand things share one life.

So - a big important official has to act like he represents the sky itself if he’s going to seem like he has any idea what’s going on.

When the sky is not clear, the sky has many elements, and the weather will change.

When the land is not at peace,

There is fear that the land itself can become unviable.

Magic spirits and religious ideas are not the same

As the life of the land.

But people lose faith and fear that the land will become unproductive.

When things start to die, there is fear that everything

Will die.

It costs a lot to get appointed to a big political office.

Just to live in fear.

Expensive, and couldn’t really pay enough

For all that fear.

Big important office holders all say “It’s lonely at the top”,

Few of them live peaceful happy family lives, or could be entrusted with the care of a mulberry tree.

So let them go by in their big fancy limousines; drive your beater, ride your bicycle,

That carved jade symbol of office is just a stone weighing them down.

“It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. Therefore, it is inconsistent to hear something of the Way of Confucius or the Way of the Buddha, and say that this is the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own.”

― Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Verse Forty

Moving against someone - that’s what a weak person does.

Everything under the sky is part of the world.

Whether it serves your purpose or not.

Verse Forty One

The superior scholar-warrior

Smells the pathway

And does their work diligently.

The fair to middling scholar-warrior

Smelled the pathway

And thought it would kill them to follow it.

The littlest scholar-warrior laughed out loud at the whole idea.

It wouldn’t be the right path, if nobody laughed at it.

Some suggestions;

When it seems like the pathway is concealed and difficult to follow - you’re on the right track.

The correct path can be a difficult choice.

All choices of what to do can seem polluted.

Great power can seem indifferent,

The loudest sound, a feeble cry of hope.

The big things coming

For good or ill

Are imaginary until they get here.

Just follow the pathway laid out before you

And you’ll be headed in the right direction.

You’ll get further.

Verse Forty Two

The Pathway gives birth to One.

One gives birth to two.

Two grows into three.

Three gives life to everything;

All the ten thousand things,

Even the dancing scorpions.

The ten thousand things are negative space;

They contain the positive.

Blend them and movement becomes pattern. This is peace, equilibrium.

(There are those who do evil; they get ahead by

Lonely machinations, even becoming the lords of the land, although they cannot even care for a pet or a plant)

Things that benefit; things that damage

Things can do both.

There are some lessons others have taught, and I agree. Those who rely on strength and brutality

Come to a bad end.

Verse Forty Three

Under the sky is open space and open space is soft;

Galloping speed races through.

Nothing goes into nothing.

I benefit from knowing nothing.

An unspoken teaching;

The benefit of doing nothing.

The universe expects nothing.

Verse Forty Four

Which is dearer and more precious to you,

Your reputation or your health?

Your health or your wealth?

Your possessions and commodities?

Gain and loss - which is the illness?

Being admired is expensive.

Going after treasure and wealth

Can make a person poor.

Just taking care of the basics is no humiliation.

Know the limits, rather than experiencing the dangers,

And survive.

Verse Forty Five

A big failure - a lack of success -

Is something big that we can’t see the use for, so we see it as something shabby.

But really, failure is a true teacher.

A big surplus, pouring out. The things it can accomplish go on and on.

Something big and straight - seems to bend.

Great skill seems clumsy.

Seems like a big argument.

Impatient for victory over the cold;

Movement banishes cold.

Quiet and calm cools things down.

Letting things happen is the correct path under the sky.

Verse Forty Six

When everything under the sky

Is following the pathway,

There’s a little horse shit all over town.

When events are not following the pathway,

War horses are bred in the suburbs.

The big crime is wanting things you don’t need.

It’s a far worse disaster than

Not having what you do need.

No blame for anything but wanting.

Know when enough is enough, often enough.

Verse Forty Seven

See the world without leaving home

You can know what’s under the sky.

Don’t look through the curtains and

You can still see the way.

It goes a great distance, comes from a great distance, and knows very little.

Be like the wise people;

They don’t know.

They don’t see names.

Effortless becoming.

Verse Forty Eight

In the pursuit of knowledge,

Learning something new every day is beneficial.

Following the pathway,

Every day you give something up.

Give up everything that you can lose;

Then there is nothing to do.

The world is moving under it’s own power;

The only mastery is to go with

What’s unfolding under the sky.

You and I do not have the power to change

The weather.

Verse Forty Nine

The sort of person you should be trying to become

Keeps an open mind and acts without intention.

They consider the feelings and wellbeing of the rest of their community.

If someone is good to me, I’m good to them.

People who are not nice to me - I’m nice to them anyway.

That’s how to do the right thing.

I keep faith with the faithful; I also keep faith with the unfaithful.

The best possible person still lives in the world with all the fears of fears; all the things that happen under the sky

muddle the heart.

People pay attention to what they see and hear.

The kind of people we have the potential to become

act from innocence, as young children would.

Verse Fifty

Birth is the first step

Towards death.

3 people out of ten are born to love life.

3 out of ten people are born to dislike life.

And another three out of ten people are born without strong feelings one way or the other.

A grown up wonders why.

People are born thick with the smell of life.

It’s good from many peoples point of view to cover up the smell.

But if you roll around in the stink of it all,

You can roam the land like an animal.

You can go to war without armor.

The animal can move and avoid attack; the tiger cannot place it’s claw.

The soldier has no place to put his blade.

The grown up asks why?

There is no death.

Verse Fifty One

Everything is born out of the pathway

And then it finds that certain things nourish it

Nurture it

And decides that these things are virtue.

But everything else is not part of this same moral frame of reference;

Using these kinds of moral rules becomes expensive.

Grown ups do not command the pathway into existence. The pathway is right there.

You learn it from experience, if you pay attention and if you live long enough.

Become this experience. Support it and add to it.

Things like morality - they are ideas, without a fixed existence. But they have a kind of life of their own - ideas, good and bad, can last for a long time, but this does not make them reliable.

Do what is here in front of you to do without moralizing.

Get over this fear of life and of death.

Verse Fifty Two

All existence begins with your Mother;

You come into the world and your experience begins, she teaches you and forms your earliest ideas before she gets down to teaching you language.

A mother knows what’s good for her child; keep your care for those in your care like this. This includes your attitude toward yourself; detached from your body, love and care for it.

Now exhale. Expel your breath.

You don’t work to get the breath you require.

Open the exchange. It helps itself.

In the end, it is not saved.

Put yourself in a still quiet place

And form no words, no thoughts - just take

The next breath.

Focus your attention.

Use it’s light

Illuminate what comes next - taking that next breath.

This lessens the problems

That come with having a body.

Practice this recipe

For compassionate self care

a lot.

Verse Fifty Three

I will show you the path; I will show you what I learned following the trail. I will even share my street smarts.

Here’s the part that scares me;

I show people the trail marker and they make up shortcuts. They love their shortcuts, their easy ways.

This leaves the fields full of weeds and the warehouses empty;

People wearing fashionable, up to the minute outfits

And showy weapons on fancy weapons belts.

Disgusting amounts of food go to waste

And people brag about how much money they have.

This is making out like a bandit, not following the path.

Verse Fifty Four

Good builders do not tear down their buildings.

The good ones maintain the structures.

Their children and grandchildren continue the work with great dedication.

Look after the maintenance of your body; this is the right thing to do.

Look after the maintenance of your home so it can be lived in into the future.

Look after the maintenance of your village so that it endures.

Look after the maintenance of the state so the good will be abundant.

Look after the maintenance of the whole world and the benefit will be universal.

Look at yourself in relation to yourself.

Look at your home in relationship to itself.

The same for your village and state; view all things under the sky in relationship to themselves and their own wellbeing.

How do I know the universe is like this?

This method. I looked.

Verse Fifty Five

Become wrapped up in your activities

Like a new born child.

Poisonous insects will not sting you;

The fierce beast will not stalk them.

The stooping hawk will not take you as a prize.

An infant's bones are weak, their muscles are soft, but their grip is strong.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about male or female here,

But they are with the very essence of life.

They can scream as loud as they can, for as long as they want, and not grow hoarse.

They will live a long time

And not become decrepit with age.

This is the result of following the Trail Marker,

Not doing things the natural way

Has consequences.

Verse Fifty Six

One who knows says nothing

The one who speaks knows nothing.

Debate accomplishes nothing.

Make things safe that need to be made safe.

Clear up the mess.

Give things that need it a lick of paint

Take out the trash

And clean up the dust.

This does the same thing that anyone’s mysterious plan could promise.

But you cannot do these things for those you love

Or for strangers

You cannot do them for profit yourself

Or to harm others.

You could not do it for any money, at any expenditure.

You could not get it for cheap, either.

The world is worth more than that.

Verse Fifty Seven

When you rule your kingdom

Correctly

The military can be a small, specialized thing.

You can deal with the world

And everything that happens in it

In the space between breaths

How do I know this?

Here it is;

When you have too many rules for the people to follow,

The people wind up impoverished.

They put what little they have into weapons.

This weakens the nation,

And many skillful ministers will show up with

Their solutions and they will

Run things right into the ground.

Strange things begin to happen.

The laws cause many people

To be criminals, thieves.

Look up - read the wise person’s

thought bubble.

I’d do nothing. That would cause

The people to change their ways.

I’m peaceful and quiet

And the people return

To the correct path.

I live simply and the people prosper.

I want nothing and the people are

Frugal and satisfied.

Verse Fifty Eight

Their politics is

Boring Boring

The people are

Mellow Mellow.

Their politics is

A big hairy eyeball

Into everything

And the people

Are poorer

Missing out in more ways

Than one.

It’s a disaster to rely on good things happening, good intentions and luck.

It’s real life impending disasters you have to deal with.

Can you see the difference?

It’s not about what should happen,

It’s about the unexpected.

Good things happening is

The realm of pixies and demons

Fairy tales, which have a lasting appeal.

The wise person will set things square,

Not from an angle.

They will tell you the truth

Straight

No chaser.

Frugal but not cheap.

Straight deals with no bureaucratic procedures,

Contracts, guarantees or any of that civilized stuff.

Bright without dazzling.

Verse Fifty Nine

If by chance you do get put in charge of anything,

For heaven's sake show some restraint.

Get up in the morning and do the same things you learned were the right things to do

And base your decisions on the same

Behavior and thinking.

This way of thinking can deal with anything that comes up.

It is not limited just to your personal daily routine.

It can be the foundation for

Nations, societies, ways of life

That have the power to endure.

Deep roots make solid stems.

And that is the way to a long life.

生 Sheng; life, raw, born, sprout

“He not busy being born is busy dying”

Bob Dylan

Verse Sixty

Ruling a large country

Is like cooking a small fresh fish

Do too much and you ruin it’s best qualities.

This is the trail marker to follow

In these matters.

Messing around with ceremonies

Creates the possibility of getting the ceremonies wrong -

Possibly invoking the bad luck

And evil intention of forces that may not even exist!

This isn’t getting into the nature of

Spirits or ghosts or gods

Or flying immortals or whatever,

we’re not playing with ontologies here.

The wise person doesn’t

Hurt anyone, real or imagined.

The Grownup Mommies and Daddies

Don’t get hurt or scared or cursed

Or demonically possessed

Or have the ground to do these kinds of

Harmful activities to one another.

Don’t play stupid games,

You won’t win stupid prizes.

Verse Sixty One

A great Nation is like the fertile bottom lands

That a river flows into.

All that land, spread out under the sky,

That’s female.

And females win over males by being

Receptive.

A larger nation wins out over a smaller

nation for this reason.

If the larger nation yields - it still wins in the end.

If the smaller nation gives in - they will still wind up

Being dominated and assimilated by the larger nation

Over time.

So - some who yield will conquer,

And some who yield will be conquered.

The larger country always needs more resources, more people.

The smaller country will wind up serving these

Realities.

So- the larger nation may as well yield.

Verse Sixty Two

The Way, the trail that we’re marking here, covers everything.

It’s the treasure of good people

And it protects the bad ones.

So, by following the trail, you can even find success in the world, and wind up in a position of influence.

By all means, continue to be an exemplar of the Way, continue to follow the Trail Marker in your dealings.

Even if they decide to treat you like Heaven’s Baby,

Or make you one of the three lord high

Muckety Mucks,

Stick you in a horse drawn carriage

With a BIG jade disk - a symbol of office, expensive, time consuming to make, and this one is too big to

Put your arms around,

Being displayed in front of your carriage,

That would not bring you as much honor

As the example you would set

By following the Way.

So the coach and horses, the Jade disk, the whole

Dog and pony show that goes along with authority

Just covers up the crimes

Of the evil men who followed the path just as far as political power, money and influence.

Which makes it too costly by far.

Verse Sixty Three

爲無爲

Wei wu wei.

Cause, nothing, cause.

Pause between actions, let the moment land.

Act, don’t act, act. Rhythm, peristalsis.

Chew, swallow, chew.

Large, small, many or few,

You can always use these as complaints.

But it is difficult to see the big map.

Look out for the fine details

And Heaven will take care of the rest

With ease.

Join the Wise Person in not worrying about the big things.

Deal with your own life, let the universe

Deal with itself.

A so called grown up

Who says too lightly what they will do

May not mean the words they choose.

Many things turn out easy, many turn out difficult.

Nevertheless, the Wise person

Treats it all the same

And just deals with whatever

difficulties come up.

Verse sixty four

It’s easy for things at rest to stay at rest.

It’s easier to keep track of a few things

Than it is to keep track of many.

Brittle objects are easy to break.

Small objects are easy to move.

Deal with potential problems

Sooner rather than later, before they get out of control.

Outside my window there are cedar trees, some as wide as I can get my arms around.

They started out as tiny seedlings.

A nine story platform starts out

As flattened earth.

And a thousand mile journey

Begins when you put one foot forward.

When this goes far enough, no mere human force can overcome it.

At this point, the wise person

No longer considers it their problem.

No wasted effort, no possibility of failure.

People with one plan for their lives

Often fail at that plan.

Be as careful about the ending as at the beginning.

Then there’s no defeat.

Be with the Holy Person,

Desire no desires.

No rare, difficult to obtain goods.

Don’t waste time on the latest ideas

Although everyone in the broad thoroughfare

Stops to discuss them.

Supplementing the ten thousand dancing scorpions, adding to all the junk concerns

You should already be taking your mind away from.

Don’t dare do this.

Verse Sixty Five

The benefit of following

This trail, this trail marker,

This path of wisdom, this Daoism

If I have to call it that,

It’s not for everybody.

Minds have different tendencies; some people are just stupid.

Stupid people influence each other, when they get ideas. They confuse one another, showing off their wisdom.

When all this knowledge and wisdom is applied to running a country,

It sabotages the country.

The country (or any other institution) that is not run by such wisdom and knowledge is blessed or lucky, take your pick.

Being able to tell people who are judging conditions for themselves

From the ones who are following mass confusion

And keeping up with trends

Is a useful technique.

Learn it; this technique is part of the

Mysterious means of deciding what to do

The ability to make these simple decisions can seem

Mysterious and distant.

It can even seem to go against reason.

This is the advantage of developing resolve

And self discipline.

Verse Sixty Six

The River flows down into the Sea - it is because it is the low place that the sea is where the waters gather.

All the streams come down from the mountains, and they flow into the rivers, which then flow into the sea.

It’s as if the Sea were the boss, with all of the tributaries

Reporting in order. Everything collects in the lowest place.

When the Holy Person wants people to do something,

They set the example and set the pace

Start working first

Sets their own needs last.

The Holy Person can’t be heavy, can’t be acquisitive, pompous or too involved in the rules for their own sake.

If you must set yourself up in front of

Other people and not do any harm,

Conduct the heavenly choir here on earth. Guide people to follow natures ways.

Never grow weary of this task - once you set up shop, the people are watching.

If you act the same in all of your dealings, and strive to improve your self as your means to helping others,

Your actions are indisputable. Therefore the world will not fight you.

Everyone call me, Lao Tzu, “Big Road Guy”, “Trail Marker Dude”, and “Originator of the Dao”, but I look nothing like that - just doing what I can to represent .

Any so called grown up does the same,

At least pretending that their behavior

Is correct and a good example to all.

One way or another, a leader sets the example.

Verse Sixty Seven

I have three treasures which I cherish.

One is called compassion. Kindness, pity,

Mercy.

The second is called thrift. Cheapness.

The ability to travel far

On a shoestring.

The third is called not daring to be

First under Heaven.

The kind develop the ability

To be brave.

The thrifty

Develop the ability

To be expansive.

Not daring to be first under heaven

Develops the ability to survive

And thrive.

Show your kindness and your courage.

Show that you are cheap

And generous.

Show that you are not afraid

To be the next to die!

Win the war by kindness.

With solid observation, discern

Where the protection of Heaven

Provides a merciful haven.

Verse Sixty Eight

The Military is not a worthwhile occupation for

An educated person.

Anger is not a worthwhile occupation

For a warrior.

Violence is not the worthwhile method

For attaining victory over ones enemies.

A person who can treat other people properly

Is occupying the low place, and that tells us that they will avoid violence.

That’s the way to treat other people.

This is called

Following the ancient compass - true North.

Verse Sixty Nine

Soldiers say

“Better to be a guest

Than to host the party”

They’d not dare to advance an inch

When they could retreat a foot.

Better not to engage the enemy at all, in other words.

They never know what you didn’t hit them with.

Move aside without engaging the enemy

Carry on without losing a soldier.

It’s a tragic disaster to underestimate an enemy

And I mean it is wrong to forget that they are as human as yourself.

It’s acting outside the Three Treasures mentioned above,

Lacking compassion, moderation and certainly involves putting

One's own interests ahead of others.

War just makes for sad people at soldier’s funerals

No real victory

Verse Seventy

What I’m telling you

Is easy to understand

And VERY easy to follow.

But I look around and everywhere,

There is misunderstanding.

I’m giving you what we knew

In ancient times.

I’m telling you how it is.

But even the so called grownups in charge

Have no idea, they’re ignorant.

My ideas are unknown.

There is hope, I suppose, for the person

Reading this, learning my ideas.

But people who even take the time to understand

Are becoming rare.

So there’s plenty of room

Under the faded, patched brown quilt

That my Mother In Law, the Holy Person, (Grandmother to Lao Tzu’s kids, and all)

made.

Verse Seventy One

The best thing is knowing

That you don’t know.

Not knowing that you don’t know is

A mental illness.

There’s a strong tendency among people seeking positions of authority to have this sickness.

Don’t be like this, don’t have this unhelpful affliction.

The kind of person you should emulate doesn’t have this disease.

In fact, talking to wiser people than yourself makes this sickness sick. They will show you the defect in the defect.

Once you realize you don’t know - you’re no longer sick.

“I’ve wrestled with alligators,

I’ve tussled with a whale.

I done handcuffed lightning

And throw thunder in jail.

You know I’m bad.

just last week, I murdered a rock,

Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.

I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”

Muhammad Ali

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.

Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77 (6): 1121–1134. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.64.2655. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121. PMID 10626367.

Verse Seventy Two

People aren’t afraid of prestige.

Authority, Star Quality, Fame, badges and signs of importance,

People should keep this stuff out of their homes.

Nobody wants to have the boss over for dinner

Or have the Cops at the door.

It’s all disgusting behavior.

Leave folks alone to live, grow, sprout

Do as they please.

The so called grownups in charge

Should leave everyone alone

And remember that they serve the populace.

Then maybe everyone wouldn’t find them all so disgusting.

Dear tiresome, authoritative human refuse;

Don’t. Didn’t your grandmother teach you any better manners? Mine did.

Don’t make a big show

About how important you think you are.

Act from caring about those in your charge, from love, not from rank or authority.

So - the takeaway here is not to pester people with your authority, but to serve quietly in the background.

Verse Seventy Three

The courageous who dare

Will often be killed;

The courageous who do not dare

Live to deal with the consequences.

I’m not sure which is better or worse.

What is evil under the sky? Even people wiser than me find this difficult.

The Dao, the path that even the sky follows,

Does not fight, but still wins in the end.

Does not speak, yet gets a good response.

Is not summoned, but arrives uninvited.

Calmy, peacefully seeking the right level

The sky is a wide, loose net

But nothing is able to slip through.

Verse Seventy Four

If the people aren’t fearful of death,

How can they be threatened with death?

If the people are afraid of death,

Then for the odd person here and there

I would have them caught and executed.

Then who is going to have the courage to break the laws?

The so called grown-ups

Always have guards, rent-a-cops, security, police…

None of these should be armed with deadly weapons

Or authorized to kill people.

There's an expert craftsman, the executioner.

Letting anyone else do his job

Is leaving it to poor craftsmen, amatuers, irresponsible dilettantes.

I would prefer not to hurt my hands

At skills I did not master.

Verse Seventy Five

The people are starving

And you tax their food.

This is the cause of famine.

The people are difficult to rule

Because of the yoke of laws put on them.

That is why rulers see people as resistant to rule.

Rulers talk about the people making sacrifices

Because they value their lives

So the people sacrifice

And only the so called grownups in charge

Reap the benefits.

The lives of the people should not be wasted to

Gratify the desires

Of the so called grownups in charge.

Verse Seventy Six

Human bodies are soft and weak

When they are born

And when dead

They are hard and brittle.

Living things tend to be soft and supple.

Everything dies and becomes withered and dessicated.

So - people who are hard and stiff in their ways

Are followers of death.

The soft and weak accompany life.

Putting violent strength first

Is no way to achieve a worthwhile victory.

The strong place is beneath the weak place.

Verse Seventy Seven

In what way is the Trail Marker, and everything under the sky that follows it, like a bow?

When a bow is shot,

Mister upper limb goes down,

Mister lower limb goes up.

The string goes tight, then loose.

The person who understands how this works can make use of it.

The Trail Marker, and everything under the sky that follows it,

Takes from one

And gives to the other,

Eating the fruits

While nourishing the roots.

This is not the path that most people follow,

They hoard and stockpile and play with markets;

Who can leave things in their natural state,

Taking what they need

Distributing to where things are needed

And no more;

At this point, it takes the effort to follow the Trail Marker.

Someone should have told you by now, like my Grandmother told me,

The world doesn't owe you a thing.

Make yourself more competent

And more patient.

Don’t rely on what you perceive as your station or your due in life.

Work towards immediate and straightforward goals

And don’t concern yourself with honors or praise.

Verse Seventy Eight

If you were going around, under the sky, looking for something soft and weak,

You wouldn’t find a better example than water.

If you were looking for a way to attack something solid and strong - water is great for that.

Water is weak but it’s no pushover;

It’s softness allows it to be victorious over many things.

Nobody in the world doubts this.

But nobody tries to emulate water.

The person we would like to emulate is like a cloud - their example rains down on the people she deals with, and their effect on the rest of society is like grain growing from the earth.

If a country goes through difficult times, it is the difficulty that is the ruler.

Not everyone understands this.

Verse Seventy Nine

When there’s been blame and recriminations between people, there will be some remainder of blame, of resentment.

Can there be a return to safety and kindness?

Follow the example my children’s grandmother sets;

Fulfill your obligations

Regardless of whether you think the other parties

will honor their responsibilities .

The path that winds beneath the skies

Favors no one

But those who follow it are on the right track.

Verse Eighty

A small country with a small population

Where they do things the simple, old fashioned way

They could use more sophisticated methods

But they prefer not to.

They’d prefer to die

Rather than move away.

They may have boats and wagons

But there’s nowhere they’d rather be.

Although they have armor and weapons,

They don’t display them.

They make their own rope,

All kinds of cordage,

and make it as they need it.

They eat delicious food,

Their clothes are beautiful;

Their homes are safe.

They play wonderful music.

If they have anything to do with

The country next door,

It’s hearing the noise from their chickens and their dogs.

The people keep mostly to themselves.

Verse Eighty One

True words are not pretty.

Pretty words aren’t true.

A friendly person is not looking for an argument.

Someone who is looking for an argument is not your friend.

The person who knows

Doesn’t show off their knowledge or credentials;

They may not have credentials, just the right mind.

An internet translation program I’m consulting

Actually says here

That a Blogger does not know.

One who shows off their knowledge

Does not know.

The kind of person we’re trying to become

Does not accumulate titles or degrees for their own sake,

They learn and teach by example.

The more we participate in teaching and learning

By example and experience, and interacting with people of all skill levels,

The more useful knowledge we have access to.

This getting along and going along with others

Is the pathway set out under the sky.

It will benefit anyone to learn of the pathway as the kind of person you should emulate has marked it.

Following the path will do no harm.

Of this, there is no dispute.

______________________________________________________________________

The New Ancient

An introduction to “The Trail Marker”, a personal translation and interpretation of Lao Tzu’s “Dao De Jing”

Dan Lange 2020

The Recently Retired Scholar is a time traveler identified in the novel “The Tower Of Myriad Mirrors” (Tung Yueh, 1620-1686). The fictional scholar was born, and had his scholastic career, during the Tang dynasty; he operated a restaurant called “The New Ancient” during the early years of the Qing dynasty.

Presumably, this restaurant exists in other points in space and time as well. It would have interesting takeout customers.

“The Tower Of Myriad Mirrors” is a novel that supplements Wu Chengen’s “Journey To The West”, the great Chinese Fantasy novel – four books in all – set at the junction of Taoism and Chan Buddhism.

During the course of reading these wonderful stories, I also probed more deeply into some of the philosophical literature that formed the seed bed for these colorful flowers.

Over the years, I’d read different translations of the “Lao Tzu “ and the “Chuang Tzu” . SO many ways to describe the books I’m talking about - is the first book better entitled Dao De Jing, and then I can use the tla “DDJ” as many do? Tao Te Ching? Or is it “The Laozi”? Is the other guy Zhuangzi? (The best reconciliation I’ve seen on spellings of names has been in Qiguang Zhao’s “Do Nothing and Do Everything; A New Illustrated Taoism” - although he doesn’t always stick to the convention he establishes. Forgive me if I am also inconsistent.)

At that point, I was comparing two translations of Chuang Tzu, when it occurred to me that it would be relatively relatively easy to translate the OTHER book - Lao Tzu, at 81 short (usually under a page) chapters - for myself, using internet resources, Kindle dictionaries and reading a lot of Taoist literature, Qi Gong manuals, Chinese history, philosophy, language and more as I went along.

This has been the springboard for much introspection, writing, exercise, sketching, and music making, as well as a renewed interest in working on my breath in moving and still postures.

For many years, my interest in backpacking had me viewing the first character in the title, 道, Dao, as a representation of a trail marker, like the blazes of white paint that mark the Appalachian Trail and, along with a few combinations and other signs (a blue blaze is a side trail, usually to water), can guide a hiker along the entire 2000 mile length.

I’ve maintained that conceit where possible, hopefully without twisting or wasting the text too much.

Some concepts I’ve adapted; 夫 , Fu, is “Husband” in traditional Chinese pictograms, representing a man wearing a traditional Han hairpin, so at least twenty years of age and eligible for the state examinations - a politically responsible citizen. I’ve stripped him of gender, ethnic identity and hairpin, referring to my basic unit of social control as a “so-called-grown-up”.

In the text, the putative author, Lao Tzu, writes in the first person often - but never identifies himself as his 聖人 Shengren, Holy Person, usually styled as sage. My inspiration here came when I read one passage as “Embrace the Holy Person” - not the ways of the Holy Person, embrace them, the Holy Person, personally. My reading of the sage is as our own most beloved people; the lessons rooted deep within our instinctive treatment of family. I decided long ago that the fountain, the spirit of the valley, is a woman, a mother, your grandmother, in the particular, not in any abstract sense. In my heart’s interpretation, Lao Tzu's great teacher is his children’s Grandmother, who I see through the mists of myth and history ruling the family from her kitchen, a source of wisdom, soup and love

Verse Twenty gives me:

‘A crowd of people can be an empty, desolate place.

Everyone so busy busy, making sure they have two

When I only have one.

So much fun, like Disneyland,

Literally, like a holiday in Chuntai in the springtime.

I stand alone, and it signifies nothing.

It seems like I haven’t grown up.

According to many people,

I am the one who is obstinate,

And, worse, vulgar.

I am alone, and different from most people.

I wonder what my Mother-in-law is cooking tonight?’,

This, after reading these lines from Verse 13 as:

The thing that is not there.

Why should I tell some subordinate about

my big deal money problems?

In my younger days,

Before I was as wise as I am now,

I was there at Yun Wu

When the kettle came to boil;

I was lucky to get out with my skin.

They still grow tea there,

But under different management.

My enthusiastic if inaccurate translation tells a story of humiliation in the public sphere, a familiar weariness of the marketplace, and a return to family, to a free meal with loved ones as recourse from a costly and daunting brush with the world.

I’m absolutely captivated by 能, Neng, a bear or a mythological bear-like creature, also a word meaning capability, can as in “can do attitude”. 能能, Capability Bear, so cute. His brother must be Constant Bear, 常能, a useful QiGong movement. The suggestion that I try living like a creature halfway between a newborn baby and a full grown bear - powerful imagery.

Some of my word choices are similar to those in many other translations; some bits were easy, not particularly ambiguous.

Other phrases wind up being twisted in a variety of directions; I’ve twisted them in my own.

Sometimes, I’ve outright taken words from another translator; Red Pine’s “Christmas Trees” for Verse Five’s “Straw Dogs” is a more useful explanation than anything I could come up with.

The purpose of this translation project has been to work with my understanding of the words of the Tao Te Ching.

If this is of any use or interest to anyone else, that’s a bonus.

Bibliography

SO many translations, transliterations, commentaries, cartoons, and everything else referring to the works I’m referring to as “Lao Tzu” , “Chuang Tzu” , “Lieh Tzu”, and “I Ching” that listing and documenting them all would be impossible. Ursula Leguin’s Tao Te Ching is particularly worth mentioning, as is the Chinese Thought Comic Series “Zhuang Zi Speaks: The Music of Nature”.

David Hinton’s translations of the above are all superlative.

Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming’s translation and commentaries, The Dao De Jing: A Qigong Interpretation Kindle Edition

by Jwing-Ming Yang (Author), Lao Tzu (Author)

is one of the most useful I’ve found, far beyond the intended scope of my own work.

Wu Chengen, “Journey to The West”,revised Edition, Anthony C. Yu Translator

Yueh Tung,’The Tower of Myriad Mirrors (Michigan Classics In Chinese Studies) 2nd ed. Edition” Shuen-fu Lin (Translator), Larry Schulz (Translator)

Daniel Freed, “Dao and Sign in History: Taoist Arche-Semiotics”

Livia Kohn, “Pristine Affluence; Daoist Roots in the Stone Age”

Damo Mitchell, “A Comprehensive Guide to Daoist Nei Gung”

Donna Farhi, ‘The Breathing Book”

Owen Barfield, “History In English Words”

Robert Bly, “A Little Book On The Human Shadow”

Shyhwhen Peter Jaw, D.V.M., Qi Gong for Health; Yi Jin Jing

Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems

Viktor Schauberger “The Water Wizard – The Extraordinary Properties of Natural Water”

Scott Meredith, “5g Tai Chi: Covert Training Methods”

Antonio Machado “Border of a Dream; Selected poems”

Danny Dreyer, “Chi Walking: Fitness Walking for Lifelong Health

Yamamoto Tsuenetomo, “Hagakure; The Way of the Samurai”

Thich Nhat Hanh, “Awakening Of The Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries” although other versions of the Diamond and Heart Sutras were looked at during this time period as well.

James Legge, “The Texts of Taoism”, Volume One and Volume Two

Mantak Chia, “Tendon Nei Kung”

Mantak Chia, “Taoist Ways to Transform Stress Into Vitality”

Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming, “Tai Chi Chi Kung”

Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming, “BaguaZhang Theory and Application”

Gary Snyder, “The Old Ways”

Do Nothing & Do Everything: An Illustrated New Taoism

Qiguang Zhao

Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir - Scott Parker Phillips

Vasubandhu’s “Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only”

The following translation of Vasubandhu’s “Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only” is one from the web, and the translation I felt like I “got”.

Trimsatika (Thirty Verses) of Vasubandhu

February 13, 2008 at 11:03 pm (Yogacara)

Everything that is taken as a self;

Everything that is taken as other:

These are simply changing forms of consciousness.

Pure consciousness transforms itself

Into three modes: Store consciousness,

Thought consciousness, and active consciousness.

The store consciousness holds the seeds of all past experience.

Within it are the forms of grasping

And the dwelling places of the unknown.

It always arises with touch, awareness, recognition, concept, and desire.

The store consciousness is clear and undefinable.

Like a great river, it is always changing.

Neither pleasant nor unpleasant, when one becomes fully realized, it ceases to exist.

The second transformation of consciousness is called thinking consciousness.

It evolves by taking the store consciousness as object and support.

Its essential nature is to generate thoughts.

The thinking consciousness

Is always obscured by four defilements:

Self-regard, self-delusion, self-pride, and self-love.

The thinking consciousness also arises with the mental factors

Of touch, awareness, recognition, concept, and desire.

This consciousness ceases when one becomes realized.

It also falls away when consciousness is impaired,

And when one is fully present.

The third transformation of consciousness

Is the active perception of sense objects.

These can be good, bad, or indifferent in character.

This active consciousness arises with three kinds of mental functions: Those that are universal, those that are specific, and those that are beneficial.

It is also associated with primary and secondary defilements

And the three kinds of feeling.

The universal factors are touch, awareness, recognition, concept, and desire.

The specific factors are intention, resolve, memory, concentration, and knowledge.

The beneficial factors are faith, modesty, respect, distance, courage, composure, equanimity, alertness, and compassion.

The primary defilements are:

Passion, aggression, ignorance,

Pride, intolerance, and doubt.

The secondary defilements are:

Anger, hatred, jealousy,

Envy, spite, hypocrisy, deceit…

Dishonesty, arrogance, harmfulness,

Immodesty, lack of integrity, sluggishness,

Restlessness, lack of faith, laziness, idleness,

Forgetfulness, carelessness, and distraction.

Remorse, sleepiness, reasoning, and analysis

Are factors which can be either defiled or undefiled.

The five sense consciousnesses arise in the store consciousness

Together or separately, depending on causes and conditions,

Just like waves arise in water.

Thought consciousness manifests at all times,

Except for those born in the realms of beings without thought,

Those in the formless trances, and those who are unconscious.

These three transformations of consciousness

Are just the distinction of subject and object, self and other–

They do not really exist.

All things are nothing but forms of consciousness.

Since the storehouse consciousness contains all seeds,

These transformations of consciousness arise

And proceed based upon mutual influence.

On account of this, discrimination of self and other arises,

All actions leave traces,

And because of grasping at self and other,

Once one seed has been exhausted, another arises.

That which is differentiated

In terms of self and other,

Or by whatever sort of discrimination,

That is just mental projection:

It does not exist at all

Appearances themselves

Which arise dependently through causes and conditions

Exist, but only in a partial and dependent way.

Ultimately, perfect nature, the fully real, arises

When there is an absence of mental projection onto appearances.

For that reason, the fully real is neither the same nor different from appearances.

If the perfected nature is not seen, the dependent nature is not seen either.

Corresponding to the threefold nature,

There is a threefold absence of self-nature.

This absence of self-nature of all dharmas

Is the secret essence of the Buddha’s teachings.

Projections are without self-nature by definition.

Appearances too are without self-nature because they are not

self-existent.

Perfect nature is without any differentiation whatsoever.

The true nature of consciousness only

Is the true nature of all dharmas.

Remaining as it is at all times, it is Suchness.

As long as consciousness does not see

That subject-object distinctions are simply forms of consciousness

Attachment to twofold grasping will never cease

By merely thinking

The objects one perceives are forms of consciousness

One does not realize consciousness only

One realizes consciousness only

When the mind no longer seizes on any object

When there is nothing to be grasped, there is no grasping

Then one knows – everything is consciousness only.

That is the supreme, world-transcending knowledge

Where one has no mind that knows

And no object that is known

Abandoning twofold grasping

The storehouse consciousness is emptied

That alone is the pure, primordial reality

Beyond thought, auspicious, unchanging

It is the blissful body of liberation

The dharmakaya nature of the enlightened ones

Adapted from English translations of the Sanskrit original

Saturday, September 12, 2020

The Trail Marker And New Ancient

Verse One

Verse Two

Verse Three

Verse Four

Verse Five

Verse Six

Verse Seven

Verse 8

Verse Nine

Verse` Ten

Verse Eleven

Verse Twelve

Verse Thirteen

Verse Fourteen

Verse Fifteen

Verse Sixteen

Verse Seventeen

Verse Eighteen

Verse Nineteen

Verse Twenty

Verse Twenty One

Verse Twenty Two

Verse Twenty Three

Verse Twenty Four

Verse Twenty Five

Verse Twenty Six

Verse Twenty Seven

Verse Twenty Eight

Verse Twenty Nine

Verse Thirty

Verse Thirty One

Verse Thirty Two

Verse Thirty Three

Verse Thirty Four

Verse Thirty Five

Verse Thirty Six

Verse Thirty Seven

Verse Thirty Eight

Verse Thirty Nine

Verse Forty

Verse Forty One

Verse Forty Two

Verse Forty Three

Verse Forty Four

Verse Forty Five

Verse Forty Six

Verse Forty Seven

Verse Forty Eight

Verse Forty Nine

Verse Fifty

Verse Fifty One

Verse Fifty Two

Verse Fifty Three

Verse Fifty Four

Verse Fifty Five

Verse Fifty Six

Verse Fifty Seven

Verse Fifty Eight

Verse Fifty Nine

Verse Sixty

Verse Sixty One

Verse Sixty Two

Verse Sixty Three

Verse sixty four

Verse Sixty Five

Verse Sixty Six

Verse Sixty Seven

Verse Sixty Eight

Verse Sixty Nine

Verse Seventy

Verse Seventy One

“I’ve wrestled with alligators,

I’ve tussled with a whale.

I done handcuffed lightning

And throw thunder in jail.

You know I’m bad.

just last week, I murdered a rock,

Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.