Passage 6
The Tao of Power, R.L. Wing.
The mystery of the valley is immortal;
It is known as the Subtle Female.
The gateway of the Subtle Female
is the source of Heaven and Earth.
Everlasting, endless, it appears to exist.
Its usefulness comes with no effort.
The author says that the Tao is the Subtle Female because it has the characters of the stereotyped female; it is passive, receptive, and tranquil. The Tao leads from the source of creation into the valley where its actions are visible in the everyday world.
The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu by Brian Walker.
The heart of Tao is immortal
the mysterious fertile mother of us all.
of heaven and earth,
of every thing
and not-thing.
Invisible yet ever-present,
You can use it forever without using it up.
The book has the translations but no comments. I prefer this translation over the first one, as I like the reference to the “heart of Tao” and its immortality. It gave birth to everything (as females give birth). The translation seems to differ a lot in the last sentence, though. The first translation says it can be used without any effort, but the second translation says that you can use the Tao forever, but never use it up which, again to me, is the better thought.
The Illustrated tao Te Ching
The translation in this book is similar to the one above and is quite poetic in its nature.
The Tao
is the breath that never dies.
It is a Mother to All Creation.
It is the root and ground of every soul.
-the fountain of Heaven and earth, laid open.
Endless source, endless river
River of no shape, river of no water
Drifting invisibly from place to place
...it never ends
and it never fails.
The length of the stanzas differs according to the author. One source had section 6 as being only five lines long; this translation is one of the longer ones. Again, it notes that the Tao is forever and that it is that which creates everything.
It never ends, and it never fails. This is a slightly different way of saying what the second translation said, that it can never be used up.
All the translations that I looked at tend to agree that the Tao is forever, that it will never be used up, and that it is female in nature. Yet the way of saying that can differ quite a bit from author to author. Some are much more poetic than others, and some seem far less poetic:
The Way of Life by R.B. Blakney.
The valley spirit is not dead
They say it is the mystic female
Her gateway is, they further say
The base of heaven and earth.
Constantly, and so forever
Use her without labor.
I personally don't really like this translation very much. It lacks poetry and takes a different approach. Instead of saying that the Tao is immortal, it says it isn't dead yet. I also don't like the “they say” aspects, because that always raises the question of who are “they?” and why should “they” be listened to?
It's interesting to compare this approach to creation with creation myths of other spiritual systems. This one emphasizes the female nature of creation. The Judeo-Christian approach is that of a male god. The Japanese has a male and a female god at the start of things. The Pagan approach tends to emphasize the feminine as the creator. Giving birth to living things is a female activity (in higher life forms and with few exceptions), yet many religions start off from the basis of the creation not being a female activity, or not being an exclusively female activity.
The skeptic might hold that the Tao is used up, in fact, since we are using the precious resources of the earth, most of which cannot be replenished. This would be an unnecessarily narrow approach, in my thinking. The earth is, in all probability, not the only planet in the entire universe with life. It's probably not the only planet with intelligent life. And that just deals with the now, not with the past of the universe (the earth is maybe about a third the age of the known universe), nor with the future (which will be many times longer than the earth's existence). The creative force is vast on a scale that our minds cannot really comprehend and, in some form or another, it will probably last for eternity, just as will the Tao.
|