Laozi

Laozi the ancient Chinese philosopher traditionally regarded as the founder of Daoism and the author of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), a short and enigmatic book of aphorisms that teaches a way of life and government based on the Dao, on naturalness, and on the power of non-assertive action.

The Man and the Legend

Laozi, whose name means the Old Master and whose personal name is given as Li Er, is traditionally said to have been a keeper of the royal archives, a scholar and contemporary of Confucius, living in the sixth century BC. The classical historian Sima Qian, writing some four hundred years later, admitted that the notices of him were uncertain and gave several conflicting accounts.

According to the most famous story, he grew weary of the decadence of his age and set out westward to leave China. At the frontier pass a guard named Yin Xi persuaded him to write down his teaching before departing, and he produced a book of some five thousand characters in two parts. Then he rode off on an ox and was never seen again.

Modern scholarship does not accept the legend as history. The Daodejing is a composite work, compiled over several centuries and probably completed around the fourth or third century BC. Whether a single historical Laozi existed, and how much of the book derives from him, are questions scholars continue to debate. The book, rather than the man, is the foundation of the tradition.

The Daodejing

The Daodejing, or Classic of the Way and its Power, is a brief text of about eighty-one short chapters written in terse and often paradoxical verse. Its central term, the Dao, means the way or the course, and it denotes the nameless and ineffable source and pattern of all things, which cannot adequately be captured in words: the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao.

The book speaks often of wu wei, non-action or effortless action, the practice of acting without contrivance, without forcing, and without the grasping that creates resistance. The wise ruler and the sage act in accordance with the natural course of things, doing less and thereby accomplishing more, yielding and thereby overcoming.

Many of its images are drawn from water, which is soft and weak yet wears away the hard and the strong, and from the valley and the female, which are low and receptive and yield life. The low place, the book teaches, is the place of strength, for it is what the high and rigid ultimately depend upon.

The text is also famous for its apparent primitivism, its praises of simplicity, of small communities, and of a life without the elaborate rituals and ambitions of the ruling classes. Whether read as mystical poetry, political advice, or a manual of self-cultivation, it resists any single interpretation, and this openness helps to explain its enduring influence.

Philosophy of the Way

The metaphysical core of the Daodejing is the idea that all things arise from and return to the Dao, which is prior to the distinction of being and non-being. The Dao is not a personal creator but an inexhaustible process, the source and the pattern of the ten thousand things. To know the Dao is not to hold a proposition but to be attuned to the way things happen.

From this follows the ethical and political teaching. The sage practices ziran, spontaneity or naturalness, acting without artificial striving. The ruler should govern lightly, not by multiplying laws and punishments but by reducing interference, so that the people may flourish on their own. The best government, the book suggests, is the one whose existence is barely noticed.

It also contains a distinctive critique of conventional morality and of the Confucian emphasis on benevolence and ritual. The book remarks that when the great Dao is abandoned, benevolence and righteousness appear, implying that the loud praise of virtue is a symptom of its loss. This irony unsettled Confucian readers, who found in Laozi a provocative alternative to their own moral earnestness.

Daoist Religion and the Cult of Laozi

In later centuries Laozi was transformed from philosopher to divine figure. During the early imperial period he was worshipped, and by the Tang dynasty he was honoured as an ancestor of the imperial house. A complex religious tradition grew up around him, with temples, priesthood, ritual, and a scriptural canon that far exceeded the Daodejing.

The organised Daoist religion, which took shape around the second century AD, looked back to Laozi as its founder and elaborated techniques of meditation, alchemy, and self-cultivation aimed at longevity and spiritual transcendence. Its practitioners also developed liturgies for blessing the community and for harmonising the human world with the rhythms of the cosmos.

This religious development should not be confused with the philosophical text itself. Yet the two strands remained connected, for the Daodejing was recited by monks and adepts as a sacred scripture as well as studied by scholars as a work of wisdom and by rulers as a treatise on statecraft.

Influence and Legacy

The Daodejing is among the most translated books in world literature, and its influence extends far beyond China. It was studied by the emperors of China as a guide to government and by poets and painters as a source of imagery for tranquillity and retreat from the world of affairs.

In philosophy it gave rise to the tradition known as Daoism, which Zhuangzi developed into a rich body of imaginative writing and which influenced the way Chinese thinkers understood nature, knowledge and language. It also entered into a long dialogue with Confucianism, so that many educated Chinese of later ages drew on both traditions, one for the conduct of public life and the other for consolation and perspective in private.

In the modern era the book has been read as mystical poetry, as ecological wisdom, as a manual of psychological insight, and as an alternative to the restless striving of technological society. Its terse and paradoxical sayings have made it endlessly re-interpretable, and its image of a life lived in accord with the way of nature continues to attract readers across the world.

See also

• Daodejing
• Wu wei
• Daoism
• Zhuangzi