Laotse, the Book of Tao

from The Wisdom of India and China, edited by Lin Yutang.

I feel like starting at the beginning. This is his own translation:

I. ON THE ABSOLUTE TAO

The Tao that can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given
Are not Absolute Names.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of All Things.

Therefore:
Oftentimes, one strips oneself of passion
In order to see the Secret of Life;
Oftentimes, one regards life with passion,
In order to see its manifest results.

These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same:
They are given different names
When they become manifest.

They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:1 (how do you do superscripts?)
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret2 of All Life.

1 Hsua[umlaut]n--This word is the equivalent of "mystic" and "mysticism." Taoism is also know as the Hsu[umlaut]anchao, or "Mystic Religion."

2 Miao may also be translated as "Essence"; it means "the wonderful," the "ultimate," the "logically unknowable," the "quintessence," or "esoteric truth."

I welcome smartass comments. I see "Miao" and I'm unable to concentrate on anything more elevated than my cat, who, as uppity (indeed, hostile) as she is toward anyone else, worships me as a god.

Wait a minute! Who's getting the meals and massages out of this deal?! Why that selfish &@#%$!

What commentary can a deistic, Lutheran, bourgeois philistine who has been accused of being a Buddhist come up with?

First, this is what I like about Taoism: it's lack of an attempt to place boundaries on the unknown; either to personalize it or impersonalize it. Taoism does have, perhaps, a tendency to discourage inquiry into the unknown, and [WOD] reify it, but I think that there is wisdom in both the acceptance and the rejection of this attitude. Which attitude, I think Laotse, as Mr. Lin spells it, is fighting against.

I won't go into the Eastern position on these things, because I don't [think that I] share it. [Though, perhaps I do without knowing. I like to think about human's similarities more than our differences. I think that peace and happiness are better pursued through that route.]

I'm weak on quantum physics, though perhaps not as weak as most people on this planet (I speak in absolute terms, including the unfortunately uneducated, teeming masses), but it seems that the Heisenberg Principle makes use of the unknown - and, perhaps, unknowable - and almost quantifies it and makes it usable, at least in the realm of particle physics. My caveat would be that future improvements in our knowledge and techniques of observation are also unknown and unknowable, and hopefully their perfection and precision, respectively, will also improve. I imagine that they will improve asymptotically, but they may do so in dramatic fits and starts.

The Tao of Physics is basically a comparison of this passage with recent theories and observations (as of the early 1980s anyway) in particle physics. It especially considers the interesting [false] dichotomy between the wave a particle natures of light. The interpretations of the nature of light are dependent on the method of observation: both are true, but incomplete - yet, so far, only imagination has provided anything like a bridge between the interpretations.

These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same;
They are given different names
When they become manifest.

They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret of All Life.

There was a sign on the wrestling room wall in our high school:

Always be satisfied with what you have
Never be satisfied with what you are.

Combine those two, and you will have the secret to humanity's destiny.