PATIENT
The Tao Te Ching
FORM
81 short chapters
ATTRIBUTED TO
Laozi (may not be one person)
COMPILED
c. 4th century BCE, possibly earlier
CHIEF COMPLAINT
How do you live well without forcing everything, including yourself?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Eighty-one short chapters attributed to Laozi, a figure who may or may not have been a single historical person. In the traditional account he was a keeper of archives at the Zhou court who left civilization to the west and wrote the text at a mountain pass when a border guard asked him to. It is the most translated book in history after the Bible. It resists being read: its paradoxes are pointers, not puzzles. A good deal of it was written for rulers, and much of it is practical.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
TAO
The unnamed beginning, before heaven and earth: soundless, formless, depending on nothing. Laozi says he does not know its name and calls it Tao.
WU WEI
Acting without forcing. Often translated 'non-action', but not doing nothing: acting in alignment with the natural flow of a situation.
TE
Virtue: the inherent power of a thing fully being what it is. Chapter 38: the highest virtue is not virtuous and therefore has virtue.
REVERSAL
The weak overcomes the strong, the low becomes high, losing is finding. Yield and overcome.
GOVERNANCE
The best ruler is barely known to the people. Governing a large country is like cooking a small fish: do not over-handle it.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Water is the most repeated image: it gives life to the ten thousand things, does not strive, and flows where people reject.
- —Chapter 11 on emptiness: thirty spokes share a hub, but the hole in the center makes the wheel useful.
- —Pu, the uncarved block, is wood before it is shaped, still holding all possibilities.
- —Chapter 6 on the valley spirit, six lines, is one of the most concentrated in the text.
- —The text's own warning: those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Start with Chapters 1, 8, 11, 17, 33, 44 and 67. Read two or three chapters a day. Do not try to solve it. It is a non-denominational reference guide. The full guide recommends Stephen Mitchell (poetic), Ursula K. Le Guin (literary) or D. C. Lau (scholarly): each emphasizes different qualities of the original.