Taoism 03 — Literal Translation Version

Let me first correct something for everyone. In the earlier handout on Laozi’s life, in Patriarch Lü Chunyang’s explanation, the board mistakenly showed the thirty-ninth year of King Jing of Zhou. That should be the nineteenth year. A student just pointed it out: otherwise the dates do not fit at all. In the nineteenth year Laozi would have been eighty; eighteen years later, in the thirty-seventh year, he would have been ninety-eight. So please correct “thirty-nine” to “nineteen.” In history, unlike fiction, even a small chronological error matters.

Now let us explain the text itself. Patriarch Lü Chunyang says that in the thirty-seventh year of King Jing of Zhou, 483 BCE, Laozi was ninety-eight years old. Seeing the Zhou house declining year by year, he went west as far as Hangu Pass. There Yin Xi climbed a tower and looked out in the four directions, saw purple qi moving in from the west, and knew that a true person would pass the gate. Sure enough, he then saw Laozi riding a green ox and asking to cross the pass. Yin Xi went out to welcome him with the ceremony of a disciple. Laozi then transmitted the *Dao De Jing* so it might be handed down to later generations, and after that he crossed the sands and went west.

The teacher then pauses to explain where Hangu Pass was and why it was so named: a dangerous pass between steep cliffs, narrow and deep like a trough, opened and closed under Qin regulations. The point is that by the time Laozi reached it, Zhou politics had become very weak. Yin Xi, watching the skies from the tower, recognized the sign of an extraordinary person and received Laozi as a disciple would receive a master. Only then did Laozi leave behind the *Dao De Jing* for posterity.

The teacher then consults the *Cihai* and identifies the western region in question with Kashmir, in the northwest of India near the Himalayas. He traces how the name changed across historical periods and notes its later political associations.

From this, he says, one could at least say that Laozi, in the traditional story, had already reached a region close to northern India. Later people told the story that Laozi went there to instruct or transform others—even to teach the Buddha—but the teacher is careful here. He says this is only a tradition, not something with firm proof, so he does not dare to state it positively. With Laozi’s life story now basically brought to a close, the lecture is ready to move into the main text.

So tonight’s purpose was to bring Laozi’s life to a stopping point, so that from now on the class can enter the text itself. The teacher says that in the past he explained the *Dao De Jing* by comparing many commentaries, but many people suggested that Patriarch Lü Chunyang’s explanation was the clearest. So for this round, he will mainly follow Lü Chunyang’s notes and omit most of the other schools. Anyone who wants the broader comparison can consult the older recordings. Now they are ready to begin with the opening page of the text.

Now the lecture begins with the first line: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao.” Following Lü Chunyang, the first *dao* means the constant Dao—the unborn, undying Dao that does not increase or decrease. The second *dao* means speaking of it, expressing it in words. The teacher says that this Dao can only be seen with the “Dao-eye.” One comes to know it through sudden awakening, not through verbal explanation.

He then explains the term “Dao-eye.” According to the dictionaries and religious sources he cites, it means the undefiled true wisdom by which one cuts through delusion and sees the Way. Only when the mind becomes truly bright can this Dao-eye open. To awaken suddenly means to cut off delusive thoughts at once and realize a mind of no attainment.

Lü Chunyang’s point, the teacher says, is that the two occurrences of *dao* in this line do not mean the same thing. The first refers to the eternal Dao that does not arise or perish. The second refers to speaking, naming, or verbally describing. The constant Dao cannot be fully explained by the mouth; it must be understood through direct realization.

He then cites the *Yijing*: “Writing does not exhaust speech, and speech does not exhaust meaning.” What one wants to say cannot be fully captured even in speech, much less in writing. This is why Laozi’s opening line is not some isolated oddity; the same principle appears elsewhere in the Chinese classics.

The teacher then turns to the *Diamond Sutra*. Its teaching on the “single integrating mark” is taken to mean true nature itself. If the mind has anything it grasps or attains, then it is no longer that true mark; only a mind without attainment accords with it.

So too with the constant Dao: it is formless and signless, not something language can adequately depict. It is known through inward understanding and awakening of the heart-mind, not through ordinary conceptual knowledge.

To show why the Dao must be realized rather than merely talked about, the teacher tells a Chan story. Dongshan asked Yunyan, “If the insentient expounds the Dharma, who can hear it?” Yunyan replied, “The insentient expounds the Dharma, and the insentient hears it.” Dongshan could not understand at first, but later awakened and offered a verse: “How marvelous, how marvelous. If one uses the ear to listen, one can never understand; only when one hears sound at the eye’s place can one know.”

The teacher explains that “the insentient” means mountains, sun, moon, tables, chairs, lamps—things without ordinary emotional consciousness. Their “preaching” is not spoken discourse. One must awaken by seeing through phenomena, not by waiting for words. That is why Dongshan eventually awakened.

The teacher says that entering the stream is like reaching a mind with no fixed abiding: sounds come and go without leaving attachment behind. To illustrate awakening by circumstances, he gives a worldly example. A man who repeatedly failed the civil examinations went to a stream intending to kill himself. There he saw a frog or toad repeatedly jumping for a branch, falling again and again, even nearly stunned, yet still trying until it finally succeeded. The man took that as a lesson in perseverance and returned to study.

That too is a kind of “insentient preaching.” True nature is seen only with a non-abiding mind. The truly awakened masters are often obscure in life and not self-advertising. So again, “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao” means that the Dao is not obtained from verbal explanation alone; one must realize it in one’s own mind.

The teacher then adds a supplement from the *Laozi Xisheng Huahu Jing* found in volume 54 of the Buddhist canon. Because many people ask whether Laozi really went to India to transform the Buddha or the peoples of the West, he says he cannot assert it on historical grounds—but he can at least mention that such a scripture exists.

In that text, Laozi goes west, sits upon a jeweled seat, summons many foreign kings to hear the teaching, instructs them to stop killing and eating meat, allows only naturally dead flesh for those unable to abstain entirely, and orders the shaving of hair and beards. The teacher presents this as a traditional text rather than a verified fact. He also notes that Buddhists generally reject the scripture as spurious, but since it remained included in the canon, it cannot simply be ignored as though no such text ever existed.

Returning to the opening line, the teacher repeats that the unborn, undying Dao cannot be conveyed by the mouth. It must be realized through one’s own nature, wisdom, and mind. He cites *Zhuangzi*: only when there is no calculating thought and no anxious concern does one begin to know the constant Dao.

He also cites later thinkers: the Dao is born in the mind; when the mind is free from burdens, that itself is Dao, and one should not seek it outside. From this he concludes that both understanding the Dao and practicing it are difficult.

He then brings in Buddhism for comparison. Even after attaining enlightenment, the Buddha did not immediately speak the highest truth directly, but taught through *upāya*, expedient means, adapting teachings to beings of different capacities. Such methods are temporary devices to lead people into the real Dharma. The teacher uses this to explain why so much religious teaching appears in forms, examples, rituals, and layered instructions: not because they are ultimate, but because people must first be led step by step.

The teacher then gathers parallels from several traditions. The *Diamond Sutra* says, “If by form one sees me, if by sound one seeks me, that person practices a mistaken path and cannot see the Tathāgata.” The *Doctrine of the Mean* says that Heaven’s operation has neither sound nor smell. *Guanzi* says of the Dao that in its movement its form is not seen, and in its beneficence its virtue is not displayed.

So the highest Dao leaves no showy trace. It is not grasped through outward form or noise. At the same time, the teacher warns his audience not to take this and go criticize every temple or ordinary religious practice. Lower forms of religion still have their use in guiding ordinary people. But if one truly wants liberation from birth and death, one must go beyond external form and understand why Laozi begins with “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao.”

The lecture then turns to the next line: “The name that can be named is not the constant name.” Following Lü Chunyang, the first *name* refers to the constant, unborn and undying “name”—really the nameless reality. The second *name* means a label, designation, or title. The constant Dao is originally without any fixed name. Whatever can be named is a later, forced, acquired designation that changes over time. Therefore, “the name that can be named is not the constant name.”

The teacher then cites the *Qingjing Jing*: “The Great Dao is formless, yet gives birth to heaven and earth. The Great Dao is without passions, yet moves the sun and moon. The Great Dao is nameless, yet nourishes the ten thousand things. I do not know its name, so I force a name for it and call it Dao.” He also notes that Christians speak similarly in saying, “In the beginning was the Word,” identifying that primal principle with God. The point is not that the terms are identical in doctrine, but that many traditions resort to provisional naming for what ultimately exceeds names.

The teacher continues by noting that every culture gives different names to first principles and first ancestors. One culture tells one story, another another, but all are attempts to speak about the same deep source in the language available to them. That is exactly why Laozi says that whatever can be named is not the constant name.

He cites the *Lüshi Chunqiu*: “Dao is the utmost subtlety. It cannot be made into a form and cannot be made into a name. Forced to give it a name, one calls it Dao.” He then turns to Buddhist vocabulary and says that what Buddhism calls *zhenru*—thusness—also appears under many names: the self-nature pure mind, the treasury of the Tathāgata, true mark, dharma-realm, dharma-nature, and so on. Even for one and the same reality there may be dozens of names. So names are provisional and useful, but none should be mistaken for the thing itself.

He then moves on to the next sentence: “The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth; the named is the mother of the ten thousand things.” Here “nameless” is linked with the undifferentiated source, like the limitless before manifestation; “named” is linked with the mother-body from which the myriad beings emerge. “Nameless” points toward Dao itself as origin; “named” points toward the realm in which things take shape and can be distinguished.

At that point the teacher stops for the evening, saying there is not enough board space or time to keep going further into the passage.

This literal version consolidates the lecture’s English material into continuous notes, keeping close to the spoken sequence while preserving explanatory detail.