The Daodejing that is punctuated is not the eternal Daodejing

[Taomeow]

By Deng Ming-Dao

 

SEGMENTATION AND TRANSLATION

 

 

See this block of text? It’s the arrangement of the first chapter of the Dàodéjīng before the last hundred years. If you open an old Chinese version of the Dàodéjīng, each chapter will be a block of text. No punctuation, word spacing, capital letters, or paragraphs.

Distinguishing between single words and compound terms remains as much of a problem today as it was in ancient times. Imagine reading chapter 1 without the punctuation added in the early twentieth century. Reading the Dàodéjīng in its old form thus began with a practice called segmentation.

You can find red dots, hóngdiǎn, 紅點, in the margins of used books, indicating where past readers began dividing, deciding, and decoding. This practice was called “sentence division,” jùdòu, 句讀, and is still done today when reading the received classics—and with only partial consensus:

“Many researchers have tested Chinese native speakers’ word segmentation; a common finding is that participants can only reach about 75% agreement, and have difficulties replicating their own previous segmentation.” (Zhang, 2024)

Even after the segmentation process, the text continues to challenge modern readers. The Dàodéjīng lacks plurality; past, present, or future tense; pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions; gendered nouns; or punctuation, word spacing, or paragraph indents. Sentences might not have a subject. Verbs lack conjugation.

Moreover, Chinese ideograms are sometimes used singly and sometimes combined to make compound terms. Lǎozì may employ a compound term in one case and then use those constituent words separately in other cases. For example, line 71.1 uses the word for “know,” zhī, 知, four times: 知不知上不知知病. This translates to: “know don’t know superior; don’t know, know sick.” Bùzhī, 不知, means “not know.” Otherwise, zhī, 知, should be read as a single word.

If you combine the issues of segmentation with the multiple-meanings of words, you can see that no single, absolutely “right” version is possible.

Reading the Dàodéjīng in Chinese is like getting a box of ideograms on tiles, and then trying to assemble them as if it was a Scrabble game. This makes translation an interpretive as much as a critical process. Of course, everybody today will use the punctuated versions, but it’s worth remembering that segmentation is arbitrary and once had to be provided by each reader.

Nevertheless, gaining the wisdom of the Dàodéjīng is well worth the effort! That's why it's survived for 2,600 years and has spread around the world.

 

 

 

[chuangzu]

I agree there are many problems with modern translations of the Tao Te Ching, one being the lack of punctuation found in ancient copies. Ironically, you have chosen the very chapter that appears to focus on writing or speaking about the Tao.
However, in my humble opinion, we need to look at this factor also in the context of other issues to gain perspective.

Can you read Shakespeare? Probably, it's only a few hundred years ago.
Chaucer, fourteenth century ie six hundred or so years ago, now it's starting to get problematic. 
Beowulf, a thousand years back, is where most educated people will have to draw the line.

Now, the Tao Te Ching was written over a thousand years before this, more than double the time span.
There are no original copies available.
The type of language is completely different to our modern English language, which is phonetic; this was closer to hieroglyphics, a pictographic language.
In the oldest known version we have available, hidden in a tomb in 300 BC, there is no 'chapter one'.
I am guessing chapter one is a kind of caveat or editor's preface added later on and saying,
"Don't believe everything you read."

Edited 19 hours ago by chuangzu
added an image

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, chuangzu said:

Can you read Shakespeare? Probably, it's only a few hundred years ago.
Chaucer, fourteenth century ie six hundred or so years ago, now it's starting to get problematic. 
Beowulf, a thousand years back, is where most educated people will have to draw the line.
 

 

The point Deng Ming-Dao was making and I agree with is, anyone who claims a better understanding of DDJ solely on the merit of being fluent in Chinese, or being a respected Sinologist, or even a lineage taoist, is ultimately in the same boat as a native English speaker dealing with Beowulf, only a bigger one.  I.e. knowing the modern version of the  language, by itself, or knowing the culture and traditions, or their development through the ages, is still nowhere near enough to make claims about presenting "the correct version." 

 

Even the meaning of the very first line, which became a meme of sorts, is the product of interpretations rather than of Laozi's calligraphy brush -- which produced only this opening: "Tao can be told, tao is not eternal."  So one has to superimpose the kind of grammar (absent from the original) that will allow to ascribe to Laozi a statement that not only was never made by him but is the opposite of what he actually wrote verbatim.  And then just repeat it for two and a half thousand years.  That beats Lewis Carrol's "what I tell you three times is true" with a vengeance.  

 

But what if we don't do that?  What if we take those words for face value instead?  Then this line can be read as, say, the opening manifesto of a writer who asserts his right to write about tao.  Tao can be told.  I, Laozi, can tell you about it.  I can tell about it here and now.  I am not an eternal being, and so I'm not tackling an eternal subject -- just the here-and-now tao which is what I can tell you about.  How's that?

      

[Apech]

3 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

The point Deng Ming-Dao was making and I agree with is, anyone who claims a better understanding of DDJ solely on the merit of being fluent in Chinese, or being a respected Sinologist, or even a lineage taoist, is ultimately in the same boat as a native English speaker dealing with Beowulf, only a bigger one.  I.e. knowing the modern version of the  language, by itself, or knowing the culture and traditions, or their development through the ages, is still nowhere near enough to make claims about presenting "the correct version." 

 

Even the meaning of the very first line, which became a meme of sorts, is the product of interpretations rather than of Laozi's calligraphy brush -- which produced only this opening: "Tao can be told, tao is not eternal."  So one has to superimpose the kind of grammar (absent from the original) that will allow to ascribe to Laozi a statement that not only was never made by him but is the opposite of what he actually wrote verbatim.  And then just repeat it for two and a half thousand years.  That beats Lewis Carrol's "what I tell you three times is true" with a vengeance.  

 

But what if we don't do that?  What if we take those words for face value instead?  Then this line can be read as, say, the opening manifesto of a writer who asserts his right to write about tao.  Tao can be told.  I, Laozi, can tell you about it.  I can tell about it here and now.  I am not an eternal being, and so I'm not tackling an eternal subject -- just the here-and-now tao which is what I can tell you about.  How's that?

      

I’m interested in the word for eternal which is chang isn’t it?  Does it have other meanings?  Or nuanced meanings?

 

 

[Taomeow]

4 minutes ago, Apech said:

I’m interested in the word for eternal which is chang isn’t it?  Does it have other meanings?  Or nuanced meanings?

 

 

 

Ah, it gets complicated.  The earliest excavated version of DDJ has a different word in that spot --  恒, heng.  常 chang, a synonym (with somewhat different shades of meaning) appeared later.  Here's how:

 

  In modern Chinese, the common meanings of chang 常 are "ordinary," "usual."  The word has undergone a number of permutations -- the earliest meaning was "skirt," "undergarment.'"  From there social norms and rituals were later inferred -- skirts as a sine qua non element of ceremonial dress.  Therefore it became associated with "constancy," "regular propriety," "permanence" as opposed to "fashion trends" if you will.  It existed in this context for a while -- not in the DDJ though --  but then 常 was substituted.  That's because Heng happened to be the name of Emperor Liu Heng (劉恆), and using the emperor's name was taboo.  So, to avoid writing the emperor's personal name character 恒 heng, scribes systematically replaced it with 常 chang in copied texts, including the DDJ.

 

Thus, the version that has been standard for the last 2,000 years uses 常 chang, but with the meaning of 恒 heng.  Eternal, constant, unchanging.  

      

That chang is therefore interpreted as heng, while it doesn't exactly mean the same thing.  Chang is not about things eternal as much as things "accepted," "proper," apropos.  

[chuangzu]

57 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

The point Deng Ming-Dao was making and I agree with is, anyone who claims a better understanding of DDJ solely on the merit of being fluent in Chinese, or being a respected Sinologist, or even a lineage taoist, is ultimately in the same boat as a native English speaker dealing with Beowulf, only a bigger one.  I.e. knowing the modern version of the  language, by itself, or knowing the culture and traditions, or their development through the ages, is still nowhere near enough to make claims about presenting "the correct version." 

 

etc      

 

I know Deng Ming Dao has written some fantastic books, and I read them all when I was younger; however, he is not a Taoist, he is a Buddhist, so I treat what he says about Taoism with reserve.

I agree there's really no way we can tell at the moment exactly who will have the best take on the Tao Te Ching. Personally, I favour the Hendricks translation of the Guodian Chu slips. I think the more recent translations even the Mawangdui exhibit marked sections which differ in style and content and are more formulaic and aphoristic, less Taoist and more religious or even Buddhist, they may have been transcribed or rewritten but not original copies. I think the Guodian Chu Slips is probably close to an original until we find the next dug up in a tomb version from closer to the date.

I dont think lineage is a Taoist concept so there's really no such thing as a lineage Taoist but in my own expereince people who live according to Taoist principles have practical feedback and experience about the Tao straight from the source, and anyone who has tried this will testify to it, and so they are probably likely to be the most trusted sources over academics and other armchair Taoists.

[Taomeow]

26 minutes ago, chuangzu said:

I know Deng Ming Dao has written some fantastic books, and I read them all when I was younger; however, he is not a Taoist, he is a Buddhist, so I treat what he says about Taoism with reserve.

 

Reserve is good -- I for one don't care for his politics -- but he's a taoist, associates himself with Quanzhen school, and is not a buddhist.      

 

28 minutes ago, chuangzu said:

I dont think lineage is a Taoist concept so there's really no such thing as a lineage Taoist 

 

And what am I, chopped liver?    

 

[ChiDragon]

Moved to another thread.
 

Edited 13 hours ago by ChiDragon