My copy is a cheap paperback. Harper Perennial. The spine is broken in three places and there are coffee rings on the cover. I have owned it since 1998 and opened it in probably fifteen countries. The underlines are in pencil, then ballpoint, then a red gel pen from a Moroccan stationery shop, then pencil again. I can tell which reading I was on by the ink.
I am not going to review the Tao Te Ching the way people usually review the Tao Te Ching — the way where they pretend to have understood it. I have not understood it. I have circled it for thirty years. The book does not reward the posture of understanding. That is half its point. So instead I am going to walk you through the passages I underlined, and tell you what I was doing in the margin, and let you make of it what you make.
Chapter 1. The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. Underlined in 1998, in pencil, with the margin note “OK but then why write the rest of the book.” I was 26. I did not get it. I did not get that the book’s first line was an apology for everything that followed and a warning that everything that followed was still worth the failure. The book is failing on purpose. It wants you to notice.
Chapter 8. The supreme good is like water, / which nourishes all things without trying to. Underlined in 2003, in ballpoint, with the margin note “see Rough Living ch 4.” I was in a VW bus I was living in. I thought I was writing about how to live on nothing. I was, eventually. But the sentence was about something more specific. Water doesn’t argue its way in. It finds the lowest place and fills it. I did not yet know how to not argue.
Chapter 11. We join spokes together in a wheel, / but it is the center hole / that makes the wagon move. Underlined in 2009, in red gel pen, in Sefrou. Arabic for “empty” is farigh. I had just learned the word. I wrote it in the margin. The room I lived in was largely empty. I thought the emptiness was a problem. The chapter was telling me it was the point.
Chapter 17. When the Master governs, the people / are hardly aware that he exists. / Next best is a leader who is loved. / Next, one who is feared. / The worst is one who is despised. Underlined in 2016, in ballpoint, margin note: “All four happening simultaneously now.” I was back in America. I stopped writing margin notes for a while after that.
Chapter 20. I drift like a wave on the ocean, / I blow as aimless as the wind. / I am different from ordinary people. Underlined in 1999 and again in 2011 and again in 2023. Different pens each time. Same sentence. This is the closest the book comes to autobiography. It also happens to be the closest the book comes to my own life, which may be why I keep coming back to it. I have always read this chapter not as a boast but as a confession. Most people know where they are going. I never did.
Chapter 33. Knowing others is intelligence; / knowing yourself is true wisdom. / Mastering others is strength; / mastering yourself is true power. Underlined in 2011, and then, underneath, the words “this is cold comfort at 3 a.m.” I had been arguing with my wife in the courtyard of our house in Sefrou for an hour. The chapter was not wrong. It was just not helping at that moment. Both things were true.
Chapter 44. If you look to others for fulfillment, / you will never truly be fulfilled. / If your happiness depends on money, / you will never be happy with yourself. Double-underlined. Dated 2018. A very bad year. No margin note. Some underlines are their own margin note.
Chapter 63. Act without doing; / work without effort. This one I have crossed out and re-underlined twice. I have been fighting with it for twenty years. Mitchell translates it as wu wei — effortless action. Every time I think I have figured it out I turn out to have been doing effort the whole time. Which, I think, is also something the chapter predicts.
Chapter 81. The last chapter. True words aren’t eloquent; / eloquent words aren’t true. The margin note, from last year: “so stop.”
Stephen Mitchell’s translation is not the scholarly one. Scholars have issues with it. It is loose. It Americanizes. It is, in places, a paraphrase more than a translation. I do not care. The Mitchell version is the version that stays with you. The scholarly ones sit respectfully on the shelf. His goes with me.
If you are new to the Tao Te Ching, start with Mitchell. Then, in five years, pick up Red Pine’s translation and have an argument with yourself. Then, in ten years, put them both down and sit by a river for an afternoon and see which one you remember.
A related thread on vagobond.com is Thoughts on Returning Home to Japan: Spring Begins in Hokkaido — written in a register the Tao Te Ching taught me, whether I noticed at the time or not.
The working name for the philosophical framework I’ve been building out of thirty years of this kind of reading is Baoism. Bao Ji — Bring Your Own. No gurus, no courses, no ladder. Your teachers, your practices, your answers.
Readers and fans of the Tao Te Ching will really enjoy Liminal Travel: The Spaces In Between — my travel philosophy book, which includes a chapter on Baoism and draws heavily on the Tao Te Ching‘s idea that the useful part of a thing is the emptiness at its center. Written for people who found Mitchell’s version and wanted to know what to do with it once they’d closed the book. Have a look and let me know what you think.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
