Chapter 56: The Life and Deeds of Laozi

Human philosophy has two primary origins: ancient Greek philosophy and the philosophy of Laozi in China. Owing to his profound philosophical insights, Laozi is revered by the world as the Father of Chinese Philosophy.

Laozi was a thinker during the Spring and Autumn period of ancient China, the founder of the Taoist school of thought, and the world's earliest great philosopher possessing rudimentary dialectical ideas. The details of his life are difficult to examine in full.

According to the Records of the Grand Historian, Laozi's surname was Li, his given name was Er, and his courtesy name was Dan. He was a native of Quyin Village, Li Township, Ku County in the State of Chu (located in present-day Luyi, Henan Province). Furthermore, he once served as the Keeper of the Archives for the Zhou Dynasty, meaning he was the imperial historian in charge of the royal library. It is said that in his youth, Laozi was intelligent and eager to learn, once studying under the Grand Master Shang Rong, who was well-versed in rites and music. Later, upon his teacher's recommendation, he traveled to Luoyi, the capital of Eastern Zhou, to pursue his studies, entering the archives where the Zhou Son of Heaven preserved classical texts and documents. The archives housed books and records presented to the Son of Heaven by various states across the realm. Here, Laozi read extensively and studied diligently, growing increasingly profound in his learning and ever deeper in his insights.

After years of study and work, Laozi was not only well-versed in institutional systems and codes of conduct, but he also gained extensive knowledge regarding the rise and fall, governance and chaos of political affairs. Gradually, his fame spread far and wide, prompting even Confucius, who had traveled to Luoyi for scholarly pursuits, to seek instruction from him regarding the system of rites.

Confucius placed great emphasis on the system of rites, advocating self-restraint and the return to propriety, and thus wished to go to Luoyi, the capital of the Zhou Dynasty, to observe the institutions of the former kings and conduct field research at the very source of the ritual and musical systems. As it happened, Confucius's disciple Nangong Jingshu was an aristocrat of the State of Lu. Confucius therefore entrusted Nangong Jingshu to report the matter to the ruler of Lu and apply for funds, carriages, and personnel. Seeing Nangong Jingshu's personal request, the ruler of Lu readily agreed to provide one carriage, two horses, a page, and a charioteer for Confucius's journey to the Zhou capital. Accompanied by Nangong Jingshu, Confucius arrived in Luoyi.

In Luoyi, Confucius met Laozi, the scholar he had long admired. Under Laozi's guidance, he paid a visit to Grand Master Changhong, toured the Mingtong (the Hall of Light used for sacrificial rites to deities) and the ancestral temple dedicated to former kings, and was shown the rare and unique editions preserved in the archives.

After Laozi guided Confucius on a tour of Luoyi, Confucius, accompanied by his disciples, paid a special visit to Laozi to earnestly inquire about the teachings of rites. Upon hearing Confucius's inquiry, Laozi smiled without speaking. He simply opened his mouth and asked, "How do you find these teeth of mine?" Confucius and his disciples looked perplexedly at Laozi's scattered and incomplete teeth, failing to grasp his meaning. Subsequently, Laozi extended his tongue and asked, "Then what about this tongue of mine?" Confucius examined Laozi's tongue carefully, and a flash of insight struck him like a sudden enlightenment. Grasping the underlying truth with a smile, he replied, "The Master's erudition is indeed well-deserved!" Thereupon, he took his leave and departed.

The disciple Zilu, however, remained full of doubts and could not set his mind at ease. When Yan Hui asked him the reason, Zilu said, "We traveled all the way to Luoyang originally hoping to study under Laozi, but he was unwilling to teach us anything at all, only letting us look at his mouth. Isn't that exceedingly discourteous?" Yan Hui replied, "Our journey this time has not been in vain; Master Laozi has imparted to us a profound wisdom unlearnable elsewhere. By opening his mouth to let us see his teeth, he intended to tell us: although teeth are hard, through prolonged grinding against each other, they inevitably become defective and incomplete. By letting us see his tongue, he meant: although the tongue is soft, it can overcome the rigid with the gentle, and thus it remains intact and complete to this day." Upon hearing this, Zilu was suddenly enlightened.

Yan Hui continued, "This is precisely like flowing water on a journey: although soft, when confronted with obstructing boulders in its path, it can pierce through mountains and shatter rocks, ultimately leaving the mountains and rocks behind. And the wandering wind, though intangible, when stirred to anger, can shake down great trees and uproot them entirely..." Upon hearing this, Confucius praised him, saying, "Yan Hui truly catches a glimpse of a leopard and perceives its entire pattern, hearing a single word and comprehending ten thousand miles!"

When Confucius was leaving Luoyi, Laozi came to see him off and said to him, "I have heard that those who are wealthy and noble send people off with wealth, while those of benevolence and righteousness send people off with words. I am neither wealthy nor noble, and have no wealth to gift you; I am willing to bid you farewell with a few words. In the present world, those who are clever and profoundly perceptive are mostly unable to preserve their lives, and the reason lies in their fondness for ridiculing the flaws and faults of others. Those who are eloquent and thoroughly understanding frequently invite calamity upon themselves because they love to publicize the misdeeds of others. As a son, do not consider yourself lofty; as a subject, do not consider yourself supreme. I hope you will keep this firmly in mind." Confucius listened, assented respectfully, and engraved it upon his heart.

Upon returning to the State of Lu, when Confucius's students asked him to explain the knowledge he had acquired from Laozi, Confucius wore an expression of admiration and said emotionally, "Laozi is well-versed in both ancient and modern lore, understands the origin of rites and music, and comprehends the ultimate destination of morality; he is truly my fine teacher." Seeing his disciples gazing at him in anticipation of more, Confucius added, "Birds, I know they can fly; fish, I know they can swim; beasts, I know they can walk. Those that walk can be caught with nets, those that swim with fishing lines, and those that fly with arrows on strings. As for the dragon, I do not know how it rides upon the wind and clouds to ascend to heaven. Today I have seen Laozi; he is surely like a dragon!"

In the third year of King Jing of Zhou (517 BCE), internal turmoil erupted within the Zhou royal house. Having long foreseen that the Zhou dynasty's fate was sealed, Lao Dan decided to leave the court and retire into seclusion. Riding a cyan ox, he intended to pass through the Hangu Pass and journey west into the State of Qin. Riding alone on a cyan ox, he headed toward the Western Regions. To reach the Western Regions, one had to pass through a strategic defile known as Hangu Pass, where two towering peaks pierced the clouds, facing each other with a deep, winding, sheep-gut path sandwiched between them.

One day, Yin Xi, the commander guarding the pass, gazed out from the top of the city gate tower and saw a wisp of purple Qi drifting slowly from the east across the vast azure sky. He deduced immediately that a sage would certainly arrive that day. Yin Xi was also a lover of learning and hoped to seek the Dao from the sage, so he dispatched men to sweep the road for forty li and burn incense along the path to welcome the sage. Sure enough, not long afterward, looking out into the distance from the pass, he saw a man riding a cyan ox approaching leisurely with an extraordinary demeanor. Looking closer, he realized it was none other than Laozi.

Yin Xi personally opened the grand hall atop the city gate tower, invited Laozi to be seated, and bustled about serving tea and water. Laozi seated himself neither servilely nor arrogantly. Gazing out the window, he saw the loess plains stretching endlessly to the horizon, vast and boundless. Hangu Pass occupied a strategically perilous terrain where travelers and carts on the road were visible at a single glance.

Yin Xi respectfully said to Laozi, "I admire your virtue and learning, and wish to take you as my master." Laozi replied, "I am already aged, with an empty mind and no particular learning; how could I presume to instruct others?" Seeing him decline, Yin Xi politely informed Laozi that in order to pass through the customs barrier, he must present official travel documents. Having resigned his post to live in seclusion, Laozi naturally possessed no travel documents, and instantly found himself in a difficult predicament.

Noticing this, Yin Xi eagerly said, "If you are willing to write down your teachings and principles to transmit them to me, this disciple will naturally permit the Master to pass through the barrier." Having no other choice, Laozi accepted the brush handed to him by Yin Xi and fluidly wrote down five thousand characters in one breath on bamboo slips. This was the book known to later generations as Laozi. Because the upper section of this book begins by discussing the "Dao" (the Way) and the first chapter of the lower section discusses "De" (Virtue), it is also known as the Classic of the Way and Virtue (Tao Te Ching). The reason Laozi authored these five thousand characters himself was, on the one hand, due to the "coercion" of the pass commander, and on the other hand, because a kindred spirit is hard to find. Yin Xi picked up the manuscript written by Laozi, read it earnestly and reverently, and ultimately decided to abandon his official post and journey together with Laozi into the Western Regions. From that time onward, Laozi drifted far away, his whereabouts unknown, vanishing into the vast mists and dust of history.

Laozi's Works

The Tao Te Ching is Laozi's representative work, divided into two parts: the Book of Virtue and the Book of the Way. It is the first complete philosophical treatise extant in Chinese history. During the Spring and Autumn period, this book was called Laozi; after the rise of Taoism, it was revered as a classic, hence the title Tao Te Ching. Because the book contains only about five thousand characters, it is also known as the Five Thousand Words or Laozi's Five Thousand Characters. Comprising eighty-one chapters in total, the book, despite its brevity, encapsulates rich philosophical content and harbors rudimentary dialectical thought, becoming a major source of Taoist philosophy.

It is said that when Laozi rode his cyan ox through Hangu Pass back then, Yin Xi, the commander of the pass, knowing that Laozi was about to retire into seclusion, requested that he leave behind a written work. Thereupon, Laozi penned five thousand characters, which became Laozi's only surviving masterpiece, the Tao Te Ching. Master of Chinese National Learning Hu Shi once evaluated Laozi as "the progenitor of Chinese philosophy and the first true philosopher in the history of Chinese philosophy." In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi revealed the unity of opposites between things: "Calamity is that upon which happiness leans; happiness is that within which calamity lies concealed." He also believed that "Being and non-being give rise to each other; difficulty and ease complement each other; long and short shape each other; high and low fill each other; sound and voice harmonize with each other; front and back follow each other—this is constant." In other words, the existence of all things is mutually dependent rather than mutually isolated.

The Tao Te Ching also embodies Laozi's political ideals, and his concept of "governing by non-action" (Wu Wei) forms the core content of Taoist doctrine through the ages. "Governing by non-action" is primarily directed against political "action" or "interference." In Laozi's view, the disasters brought about by interventionist politics are extremely severe. The more prohibitions and restrictions there are, the more impoverished the people become; the sharper and more stringent the laws and decrees, the greater the number of bandits and thieves. When rulers levy exorbitant taxes, it causes the people to starve; the more arbitrary actions rulers take, the harder it is for the people to submit in their hearts.

Laozi strongly opposed interventionist politics. He stated that while the great highways are extremely level and smooth, rulers prefer to walk on winding paths; the government is corrupt, leaving all farmland overgrown and barren; the granaries are exceptionally empty, yet rulers still wear fine garments and carry sharp swords; they are sated with exquisite food, yet they continue to plunder even more wealth. Addressing this issue, Laozi proposed that rulers should practice "non-action, yet leaving nothing undone."

"Governing by non-action" means that rulers adopt methods that follow the natural course of things when managing the people, maintaining fewer desires and taking fewer deliberate actions. Consequently, the living environment of the people remains relatively relaxed, and acts of rebellion are correspondingly fewer. Conversely, the more interventionist politics there are, the greater the oppression and pressure inflicted upon the masses, and the fiercer the people's rebellion, which is detrimental to the consolidation of political power.

The theories in the Tao Te Ching were not only applied to state governance and personal self-cultivation, but were also widely utilized in military strategy and even Chinese martial arts. To say that Laozi is the sole source of Tai Chi thought is not entirely accurate; rather, Laozi absorbed the Yin-Yang theory of the Book of Changes and combined it with his own understanding and realization of the universe. Passages in the book such as "The Dao produces One, One produces Two, Two produces Three, and Three produces all things. All things carry yin on their backs and embrace yang in their bosoms, blending these vital breaths to achieve harmony" represent concrete Yin-Yang theories concerning the origin of all things in the universe.

Applying Yin-Yang theory in military strategy and martial arts has been a longstanding custom in ancient China. Not only is the philosophy of Laozi applied in martial arts, but military strategy has also been profoundly influenced by him. The most famous military treatises of ancient China are Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Sun Bin's Military Methods. Yet, many strategic theories in Sun Tzu's The Art of War bear the unmistakable shadow of Laozi's Taoist doctrine. For instance, "Military formation is like water; for the shape of water is to avoid the high and race downward, while the shape of an army is to avoid the solid and strike the empty." The underlying principle of the mutual generation and mutual restriction of the void and the substantial contained herein is identical in origin to Laozi's principle of the mutual generation and restriction of Yin and Yang.

Therefore, the book Laozi has exerted a tremendous influence on martial artists and strategists throughout the dynasties; some even assert that Laozi is essentially a military treatise. What kind of military theory, then, is ultimately expounded in the book Laozi? Chapter 36 of Laozi states: "If you would shrink something, you must first surely expand it; if you would weaken something, you must first surely strengthen it; if you would overthrow something, you must first surely raise it up; if you would despoil something, you must first surely bestow upon it. This is called subtle illumination. The soft and weak overcome the hard and strong. Fish cannot be removed from the abyss, and the sharp instruments of a state should not be shown to people."

This chapter discusses the dialectical relationship between gain and loss, rise and fall, strength and weakness, and also contains the fundamental theories of military strategy—namely, what countermeasures a weak army should adopt when encountering a formidable force in order to defuse its own crisis.

When the disparity in strength between the enemy and oneself is vast, how does one preserve oneself and even turn defeat into victory? Laozi provides a definitive answer: "The sharp instruments of a state should not be shown to people." This is another expression of the concept that "the greatest form has no shape"—meaning that when an opponent wishes to find one's weaknesses, they cannot even catch a glimpse of a shadow, as one refuses to expose oneself to the adversary from the outset. Thus, one's flaws remain unknown to the opponent, let alone allowing them to figure out how to launch an attack.

Therefore, although Laozi never commanded troops in battle throughout his life, and the book Laozi does not explicitly mention any combat tactics, the Tao Te Ching expounds upon the fundamental principles of all things in the universe, making its philosophical thought applicable to any domain whatsoever.

Beginning in the 16th century, the Tao Te Ching was successively translated and published in German, English, Japanese, Latin, French, and various other languages. To date, there are well over a thousand foreign translations of the Tao Te Ching.

For many years, the Tao Te Ching has not only exerted a profound influence on Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, but has also deeply impacted numerous modern and contemporary Western writers and philosophers, including the great Russian literary master Leo Tolstoy, among others. To this very day, the Tao Te Ching continues to influence every single one of us.