* yin sheng: text and voice

Although both yin and sheng have clear musical connotations, the exact contrast here is harder to establish. Yin has been variously translated as ‘tone/note/sound/pitch/treble’, and sheng as ‘voice/melody/mood/silence’. Since the two terms must be in some kind of opposition to each other, given the immediately preceding contrasts, the difference between the written word (‘text’) and the sung or spoken word (‘voice’) may offer a reasonable interpretation.

** qian hou xiang sui: before and after follow one another

qian and hou can also be translated as ‘front’ and ‘back’, or ‘future’ and ‘past’. Whichever rendering is preferred, the underlying image is of the unbroken cycle of a circle, where any moment of time, or any point in space, are simultaneously both before and after all other moments and points in the circle.

* chu gou: dispassionately…equally

the literal meaning of chu gou is ‘straw dogs’, a reference to the ritual whereby a straw dog is treated with the greatest care and deference before being offered up in sacrifice, only to be discarded and trampled upon once it has served its purpose. The image conveys the sublime impartiality of heaven and earth, as well as of those who are enlightened, towards all living things.

* wu se…wu yin…wu we: too many colours…notes…tastes

literally, wu means ‘five’. Wu se [the five colours] are red, yellow, green, white, and black. Wu yin [the five notes] are the five notes of the Chinese musical scale (C, D, E, G, A, in Western notation). Wu we [the five tastes] are salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and pungent. By extension, wu also takes on a wider meaning of ‘numerous/many/too many/all’, which is the sense adopted here. The overall implication of the lines is that too much involvement with sensory experience will cause inner truth to atrophy.

* chong ru ruo jing, gui da huan ruo shen: favour and disgrace both cause anxiety / High rank, just like the body, causes great troubles

These are some of the most difficult characters to translate in the entire text, which may itself be corrupt at this point. The absence of word-inflections, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs in the original mean that chong ru, for example, can be construed as ‘favour and disgrace’, ‘favour is a disgrace’, ‘one should favour [i.e. welcome] disgrace’. Similarly, gui da huan can be interpreted as ‘high rank and great trouble’, ‘high rank is a great trouble’, ‘one should rank great trouble highly [i.e. not minimise it]’. The translation here attempts to present a reasonably coherent meaning, though the implications of the words still remain elusive.

* 20 ye zai!…zhao zhao…hun hun…cha cha…men men: indeed indeed…bright bright…dark dark…sharp sharp…dull dull

Chinese often conveys intensives by repeating words, as above. Since such repetition is not a natural English idiom, the intensives in these lines are translated either by ‘so very’ (‘Ordinary people are so very bright’) or by adding a closely related adjective (‘I alone seem dull and dark’).

* yi ci: by means of it

the Chinese here (which is repeated in the final line of section 54) may appear particularly bald and gnomic, literally meaning ‘by this’. Several translators have attempted to clarify the uncertainty by various elaborations: ‘by what is within me’, ‘by inward knowledge’, ‘by intuition’, ‘exactly by this phenomenon’, ‘by the nature of the DAO’, and so forth. It may seem best, though, to retain the ambiguity. If the ‘it’ is indeed the DAO, it is after all unnameable.

* ren: humankind

literally, ren means ‘man’. But an alternative character presented in some texts is wang, specifically meaning ‘the king/royalty’ but also, more broadly and figuratively, ‘the best of…the highest of…the most representative’. The denotation and connotations of the word ‘humankind’ may evoke the implications of both Chinese characters.

* zi zhong: the laden baggage-cart

almost certainly, the image here has a metaphorical resonance, suggestive of some unspecified inner resource or treasure. However heavy or burdensome it may be, it is to be preferred before the glories of the material world, and both protected and nourished.

* fu yin er bao yang: carries on its back the shade of yin / and in its arms the sun of yang

the reference here is, of course, to the fundamental contrast and duality between yin, the negative, female principle, and yang, the active, male principle. A simple translation of the five Chinese characters would be ‘carries yin but enfolds yang’. However, such a baldly stated contrast can be effectively developed by drawing in two closely implied antitheses: ‘shade’ and ‘sun’, and ‘on its back’ and ‘in its arms’. And so the version here reads, ‘carries on its back the shade of yin / and in its arms the sun of yang’.

* se qui dui: block up all the openings

dui has the meaning of ‘mouth/opening/passage/aperture/hole’, and in this context refers to the physical and metaphorical openings through which the senses operate. Dui is paralleled in the next line by men (gate/door), a similar image of the passage-way of the senses.

* shi wei dao yu: this is the arrogance of thieves

there is a pun here on the word dao (or tao), which can mean ‘robber’ or ‘thief’, as well as the unnameable ‘Way’. The play on words occurs on three other occasions in the text (sections 3, 19 and 57), though arguably with a lesser emphasis than here.

* yi ci: by means of it

see section 21 above.

* xiang: an omen of disaster

xiang is particularly ambiguous character, since it can also mean the exact opposite of ‘disaster’: ‘blessing/good omen/propitious/beneficial’. All depends upon how the three characters immediately preceding (yi sheng yue) are translated. If positively (for example, ‘to increase life’, ‘that which is beneficial to life’, ‘improvement in health’), the obvious choice of apposition is ‘is a blessing’. But if the characters are rendered negatively (‘to force the growth of things’, ‘to hasten life’s growth unnaturally’, ‘to benefit one’s own life’), then ‘disaster’ is the equally obvious conclusion. I view xiang in this latter light, since the immediately following lines focus upon different kinds of excess, which are viewed negatively, and which are explicitly said to be ‘against the DAO’.

* men: doors

as in section 51 above, men has metaphorical rather than literal force, indicating the doors or gates through which the senses operate.

* sheng ren yi bu shang ren: those who are enlightened do not harm them either

a problematic rendering, since it raises the question, ‘why should those who are enlightened ever be considered to harm people in the first place?’ The difficulty of answering this point has led some translators to follow ‘those who are enlightened’ with a passive rather than an active voice: ‘those who are enlightened are not harmed either or are protected also’. Why such a statement should be made at this point, though, is equally unclear.

* zhi san gong: the three ministers installed

the three ministers, according to Star [see Further Reading and Links section], were the grand tutor, the grand preceptor, and the grand protector.

* qi zhi duo: because they know too much

zhi here has the sense of formal, mental, academic knowledge, rather than knowledge derived from the emotions or from life itself.

* wu bu gan wei zhu er wei ke: do not be the one to first attack, / but rather take up the defence

the basic meaning of zhu and ke in these lines is ‘host’ and ‘guest’. The sense of a ‘host’ as active and energising, and of a ‘guest’ as passive and receiving, leads by extension of meaning to the contrast between attacker and defender.

* wu xia qi suo ju: do not confine the homes where people live

often interpreted as political advice to a ruler, these lines have also been construed figuratively, either as a metaphor for the body (i.e. ‘do not limit your identity to your mere physicality’) or for the heart (i.e. ‘do not limit your heart’, ‘do not withhold your humanity from others’).

* she ji zhu: lords of its shrines to earth and grain

the phrase she ji zhu has been variously phrased by translators (‘lord of the community’, ‘gods of millet and earth’, ‘Master of the Altar of Soil and Grain’, ‘lord of its soil shrines’, ‘lord of the earth’s sacrifices’, ‘lord of every offering’). The version here seeks to evoke both the religious (‘shrine’) and the physical (‘earth’ and ‘grain’) aspects of the position.

** zheng yan ruo fan: true words often seem a paradox

not for the first time in the text, this line seems unconnected with the rest of the section, although its actual meaning is acknowledged throughout the Daode jing. Some interpreters have either moved the line to section 41 or 45, or eliminated it altogether.

* zhi zuo qi: mind what they owe others

literally, zhi zuo qi means ‘holds the left-hand side of the contract’, a reference to the ancient Chinese practice of recording a loan of money. The sum involved was drawn on a bamboo stick, which was then broken in half lengthwise, so creating two pieces that interlocked with each other. The left-hand side marked the side of the debtor, the right-hand the side of the creditor.

* shi you shi bo zhi: even if they have devices by the hundred

the character zhi here is ambiguous, and has been variously interpreted as evoking a domestic level (‘implements’, ‘utensils’, ‘vessels’), more military connotations (‘tools’, ‘machines’, ‘weapons’), to high human ability (‘people of enormous talent’). The choice of ‘devices’ here may be thought to occupy a middle ground between the extremes and, in its generalised meaning, to retain the ambiguity of the original.