When I was in college, I took Chinese intellectual history. During the course, a quote struck me. It was from the Tao Te Ching. I remember some of the words “There was something that existed before all things .... its true name we do not know. Tao is the name that we give it.” It really felt like a direct strike – what I believed about God.
After the course, I kept trying to find this quote. When I searched, I found the quote about “the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao,” also an important observation for me – a core belief of mine being that the name of God is unpronounceable.
Tonight, finally, I managed to find the correct section. It was the beginning of chapter 25.
I started searching for translations. I found a lot of them. They were all different, each from the other, but clearly none of them was the same as what I remembered. Indeed, the “we” part now seems to me to be wholly wrong.
If I understand correctly, this is the original Chinese for the first part of the chapter:
有物混成，
先天地生。
寂兮寥兮，
独立而不改，
周行而不殆，
可以为天地母。
吾不知其名 ，
强字之曰道，
强为之名曰大。
大曰逝，
逝曰远，
远曰反。
Here are the translations I found. I should go back and attribute them.
There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.
Before the universe was born there was something in the chaos of the heavens. It stands alone and empty, solitary and unchanging. It is ever present and secure. It may be regarded as the Mother of the universe. Because I do not know it's name, I call it the Tao. If forced to give it a name, I would call it 'Great'.
"There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger of being exhausted! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao. Making an effort to give it a name, I call it The Great.
Something mysteriously formed, Born before heaven and earth. In the silence and the void, Standing alone and unchanging, Ever present and in motion. Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things. I do not know its name. Call it Tao. For lack of a better word, I call it great.
There was something that finished chaos, Born before Heaven and Earth.
So silent and still!
So pure and deep!
It stands alone and immutable,
Ever-present and inexhaustible.
It can be called the mother of the whole world. I do not know its name. I call it the Way.
For the lack of better words I call it great.
"There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger of being exhausted! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao. Making an effort to give it a name, I call it The Great.
There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way or Course). Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great.
There is a Being wondrous and complete. Before heaven and earth, it was. How calm it is! How spiritual! Alone it standeth, and it changeth not; around it moveth, and it suffereth not; yet therefore can it be the world's mother. Its name I know not, but its nature I call Reason. Constrained to give a name, I call it the great.
There is Being that is all-inclusive and that existed before Heaven and Earth. Calm, indeed, and incorporeal! It is alone and changeless! Everywhere it functions unhindered. It thereby becomes the world's mother. I do not know its nature; if I try to characterize it, I will call it Dao. If forced to give it a name, I will call it the Great.
There are things mixed together, born from innate and earth. Lonely and lonely, independent but not changed, travel around without danger, can be the mother of heaven and earth. I don't know its name, but it is called Dao if it is strong, and it is called Da if it is strong. The great is said to be gone, the distant is said to be far, and the far is said to be reversed. (This translation was a spontaneous effort by Google translate)
Something mysteriously formed, Born before heaven and Earth. In the silence and the void, Standing alone and unchanging, Ever present and in motion. Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things. I do not know its name Call it Tao. For lack of a better word, I call it great.
There is a thing formed in chaos Existing before Heaven and Earth. Silent and solitary, it stands alone, unchanging. It goes around without peril. It may be the Mother of the world. Not knowing its name, I can only style it Tao. With reluctance, I would call it Great."
Before the Heaven and Earth existed There was something nebulous:
Silent, isolated,
Standing alone, changing not,
Eternally revolving without fail, Worthy to be the Mother of All Things. I do not know its name
And address it as Tao.
If forced to give it a name, I shall call it "Great."
There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way or Course). Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great.
There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao. It flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns to the origin of all things. The Tao is great.
There is something[ that contains everything. Before heaven and earth it is. Oh, it is still, unbodied, all on its own, unchanging, all-pervading, ever-moving. So it can act as the mother of all things. Not knowing its real name, we only call it the Way. If it must be named, let its name be Great.
There is something that is perfect in its disorder
Which is born before Heaven and Earth.
So silent and desolate! It establishes itself without renewal. Functions universally without lapse.
We can regard it as the Mother of Everything.
I don't know its name.
Hence, when forced to name it, I call it “Way.” When forced to categorize it, I call it “great.”
There was Something undefined and yet complete in itself, Born before Heaven-and- Earth. Silent and boundless, Standing alone without change, Yet pervading all without fail, It may be regarded as the Mother of the world. I do not know its name; I style it “Tao”; And, in the absence of a better word, call it “The Great.”
In the beginning, before the formation of heaven and earth, Something had already existed amid the confusion. This lonely existence was totally independent of anything else, And it would not change, It only moved in its own way tirelessly. Only it could have been the mother of heaven and earth. I do not know its name, I would just call it “the Dao.” I could also call it “the great something.”
There is a mystery, Beneath abstraction, Silent, depthless, Alone, unchanging,
Ubiquitous and liquid,
The mother of nature.It has no name, but I call it “the Way”;
It has no limit, but I call it “limitless”.
Being limitless, it flows away forever;
Flowing away forever, it returns to my self: The Way is limitless,
Something existed unformed yet complete, Before heaven and earth were created. Silent! Empty!
Standing alone, not changing.
It circulates everywhere, and causes no danger. It can be considered the mother of the world.
I do not know its name;
Its symbol is called Dao.
If I tried to make its name, I would call it great.
******
Then I found this interesting blow by blow translation of the whole chapter in
The next block shows how the original text of Chapter 25 is formed with groups of words in the Tao Te Ching (dash sign “–” is used here within each group of words to show how the original sentences were formed with Chinese characters):
“有(there is)”-“物(thing)”-“混 (blurrily mixed)”-“成(formed)”，“先(before)”-“天 (heaven)”-“地(earth)”-“生(birth)”.
“寂兮(so quiet)”-“寥兮(so lonely)”，“独立(independent)”-“而(but)”-“不(not)”-“改 (change)”，“周(periodically)”-“行(moving)”-“而(and)”-“不(not)”-“殆(die)”，“可以为 (could be)”-“天(heaven)”-“地(earth)”-“母(mother)”.
“吾(I)”-“不(not)”-“知(know)”-“其(its)”-“名(name)”，“强(manage to do)”-“字
(naming)”-“之(it)”-“曰(calling)”-“道(Tao)”，“强((manage to do)”-“为(for)”-“之(it)”-“ 名(naming)”-“曰(calling)”-“大(big, great)”.
“大(great)”-“曰(is said)”-“逝(going away)”，“逝(going away)”-“曰(is said)”-“远(far)” ，“远(far)”-“曰(is said)”-“反(reverse, return)”.“故(so)”-“道(Tao)”-“大(great)”，“天
(heaven)”-“大(great)”，“地(earth)”-“大(great)”，“人(man)”-“亦(also)”-“大(great)”. “域(domain, universe)”-“中(inside)”-“有(there are)”-“四(four)”-“大(great)”，“而(and)”- “人(man)”-“居(occupy, take)”-“其(of)”-“一(one)”-“焉(ahh)”.“人(man)”-“法(law, restriction)”-“地(earth)”，“地(earth)”-“法(law, restriction)”-“天(heaven)”，“天 (heaven)”-“法(law, restriction)”-“道(Tao)”，“道(Tao)”-“法(law, restriction)”-“自(self)”- “然(this way)”.
...
The following is my English translation of Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching
Something misty was formed before the birth of heaven and earth. So quiet and so lonely,
independent and unchanging,
ceaselessly moving in its own recurring cycles,
it’s capable of being the mother of heaven and earth! I don’t know its name,
so I name it as Tao, and also urged to call it as Great. Being so great that it keeps moving away from me, moving away makes it afar,
yet it always comes back from afar.
So the Tao is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and man is also great. In the universe, there are the great four, and man is one of them.
Man is restricted by earth,
earth is restricted by heaven,
heaven is restricted by the Tao,
but the Tao acts at will.
The original has been called aphoristic. Now that I'm looking at the definition of aphoristic in wiktionary, I'm seeing that it just means an old saying. That's weird. I always thought that it implied ambiguity, a lot of blank spaces for the mind to wander…
In college, I also took a course in anthropological linguistics. I learned that words, in each language, have “semantic components.” Therefore no word is an island onto itself. It has different tendencies depending on the context in which is found, and how that context hooks into the various semantic complements of the word. When going from one language to another, it is almost impossible to find exact translations, because the semantic components are different.
I studied a little Chinese, though I don’t remember much. I do remember that the grammar is quite different from English. English has a number of grammatical structures like prepositions, articles, verb tenses with more than one word in them, and pronoun forms. Chinese tends to imply a lot of these things.
When people try to translate a Chinese sentence, they add English grammatical structure that may or may not correctly reflect the original intention. This is complicated by the fact that there’s been many commentaries over the hundreds of years, since the original book was published, purporting to interpret its meaning, its aphorisms. Those interpretations have their own biases, but they become part of how experts in the field read the original text. I noticed , in passing, one set of comments on the Tao Te Ching, referring to God and the Tao as being different things. I find that concept unattractive – as the original does not have the word God.
The one translation that struck me in college might well have been misleading, but it struck me. I wonder which of my textbooks it was actually in I've searched them and cannot find the language I remember -- tho I might have given away the particular one that I seek.
I wanted to do some calligraphy with computer art of this quote, but until I find the right wording, I can’t really do the calligraphy.
Emboldened by the word-by-word translation in the blog, noted in green above, I decided to try my hand at a translation -- not necessarily an academically correct one, but a more poetic one. I recognize that the line breaks don't correspond to the original Chinese
There was a thing
Nebulous
Formed
Before everything’s birth:
Utterly silent
Utterly alone
Independent
Unchanging
Coming and going
Undying
Perhaps everything’s mother.
I don’t know its name.
Try calling it The Way.
Try calling it The Great One.
"Heaven and earth” in the original have sometimes been translated as “all things” or “the universe.” That makes sense, because, historically, heaven and earth were understood to encompass all things. I remember a Christian hymn with the lyrics “Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory.” I suspect heaven and earth there meant “all things.” I have used "everything."
Some people have said "so silent" and "so alone," but I used utterly instead of "so." I wish I could convey, somehow, that mystical silent feeling that I'm trying to evoke. That's not so easy, to convey a mystical experience in words.
Colloquially, the universe has been understood to mean "all things;" however, one shouldn’t depend on that definition of universe, because cosmologists are now hypothesizing that there might be multiple universes. Lao Tzu was unlikely to have had that recent theory in mind, but why choose a word that might implicate the multiple universe hypothesis?
I’ve left out a lot of English grammatical structure, in my trial translation above, which is acceptable in poetry. This makes the sentences seem less like normal English and more like the original Chinese. Perhaps someone familiar with traditional Chinese and English would be able to definitively state which English helping words were intended; but I wonder if they would be correct. There is an inherent ambiguity to the Chinese language. Perhaps Lao Tzu intended to exploit that, to leave the reader not quite certain about what the Tao was.
My understanding of the nature of creation is also influenced by having heard Zen koans. These koans refer to apparent contradictions as both true. Apparent contradictions use concrete words to provoke a state of mystical contemplation. I love koans.
Also, I took a course in spiritual poetry, where the instructor said poetry was the exercise of rubbing words together to create impressions that could not be found in the original language sequence.
For me the sequence: nebulous/formed in my trial translation is like a koan. Contrasting opposites, when rubbed together, create a mystical impression. Perhaps that's not supported by the original Chinese, but I like it.
I wonder about the apparent meaning of one or more of the words as “lonely,” per google. That word implies an emotion that is, in my mind, not likely part of the Dao. "Alone" seems better.
The blogger’s word by word literal translation includes the phrase “periodically moving.” That's very ambiguous indeed. Is it periodically in the sense of having a fixed period of repetition, as in math or physics – or is it periodically as in intermittently, which is more colloquial? I feel like that blogger thinks the former. I chose “coming and going,” because that seemed more consistent with a later part of the chapter, and something that has periodic movement is likely rotating or revolving, which would include coming and going to the non-moving observer.
Many of the other translations look at the pronoun “I” in the third to last line of my fragment, and assume that the last two lines of the fragment are sentences also starting with “I.” That would be consistent with the ambiguous way the Chinese is written, but I haven’t assumed that that needs to be the case, so I’ve left out the “I” in the last two lines of the fragment. That makes it sound more like an English Language command -- implying the pronoun "you," but I like that.
Existence
Something
Indistinct
Formed
Before the beginning
Utterly silent
Utterly alone
Independent
Unchanging
Coming and going
Undying
Perhaps the all-mother
Unnameable
Try calling it -- The Way.
