I'm looking for rigorous and systematic translations of the Dao De Jing with public domain or open usage rights that I can analyze and republish online. Although most translations with open right are quite old, are you aware of any that fit this criteria?

I've reviewed Legge 1891 and Suzuki/Carus 1913, and although I have an admittedly limited understanding of the Classical Chinese, I wasn't terribly thrilled by either. But they are what I've got at the moment.

One complaint I had were their attempts at making the translations poetic; although I understand the original is also poetic, I felt the poetic translations obscured meaning. I also was not satsified by some inexplicable omissions and additions in the translations.

Overall, regardless of whether or not they fit my (somewhat vague) requirements for rigor, which public domain/open usage rights DDJ translations do you enjoy, and why?

Thanks for your thoughts and opinions!

In Part 7, I looked at wu wei and the difference between an action that belongs to the situation and an action we take because we cannot tolerate uncertainty. Once other people enter the picture, another problem appears. Even if we stop trying to force the situation itself, we can still be pulled into struggle by the need to defeat someone else.

This brings us to bu zheng, or not contending. Does it mean never competing, never refusing, never protecting our own interests, and always giving way? I do not read it that way. The more important question is what happens when solving the original problem is replaced by the need to win.

If you enjoy this series, please upvote, leave a comment, and share it with others. Every interaction helps us keep making the series and helps more people find it.

Does Not Contending Mean Wanting Nothing?

One common explanation of the early written form of zheng, meaning contention, describes two hands pulling at the same object. Duan Yucai later wrote in his commentary on the Shuowen Jiezi that contention means pulling something so that it returns to oneself. The image is simple: two sides both want the same thing brought over to their side.

Neither a character form nor one later commentary can decide the full meaning of Lao Tzu’s bu zheng. Still, the image gives us a useful entrance. The problem may not begin with wanting something. It begins when getting that thing becomes inseparable from pulling against someone else.

Not contending therefore does not require us to abandon every goal. Nor does it make every race, comparison, or disagreement wrong. People can compete without allowing the contest to control every choice they make. In this reading, contention begins when confrontation becomes the main road to the result and defeating the other side begins to matter more than the result itself.

Why Does Lao Tzu Use Water?

Chapter 8 says:

The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand things without contending. It stays in places that others reject, and so it comes close to the Tao.

Water is not powerless. It nourishes living things, changes the land through which it passes, and continues moving without needing to occupy the highest place. Its effect does not depend on proving that it is stronger than everything around it.

Chapter 22 says:

Precisely because one does not contend, no one in the world can contend with one.

This can sound like a promise that anyone who refuses a contest will automatically become unbeatable. I think the point is more practical. Contention is a relationship. It needs people to keep answering each other through the same struggle. If one person refuses to let every disagreement become a test of who must submit, that particular form of conflict can lose the condition it needs to continue.

That does not guarantee that aggression will disappear. Another person can continue to pressure, threaten, or harm us. Not contending is not magic, and it is not an instruction to remain in danger.

Chapter 73 adds another important line:

The Way of Heaven does not contend, yet it is skilled in prevailing.

Not contending therefore does not exclude results. But it should not be turned into a secret technique in which we pretend to step back so that we can defeat everyone later. If beating the other person still controls everything we do, contention remains at the center. It has only taken a quieter form.

When Does a Goal Become a Fight?

Contention often begins with a quiet change in purpose. At first, we may want a position, want to complete a piece of work, or want someone to accept a proposal. Once resistance appears, the purpose can shift. Getting the position is no longer enough. The other person must lose. Reaching an agreement is no longer enough. The other person must admit that we were right.

That shift is easy to miss because we can still use the language of the original goal. We may say that we are protecting the project, defending fairness, or insisting on standards. But more and more of our attention is now organized around the opponent’s next move.

Each side raises the stakes. More time, energy, and resources are pulled into the struggle. Eventually, the conflict is no longer serving the original purpose. The original purpose is serving the conflict.

This is one reason contention becomes difficult to stop. Every new move seems to require another response, and stepping back begins to feel like surrender even when the fight is already damaging the thing both sides wanted.

What Happens When Management Becomes a Contest?

Imagine that a company believes its employees are not committed enough, so managers begin measuring commitment through overtime. Employees learn to remain in the office while stretching out the hours. Management responds with cameras, records of how long people leave their desks, and checks on their computer screens. Employees find new ways around those controls, so the company introduces another rule.

The original question was how to bring more real attention and effort into the work. It has now become a contest between the company and its employees over who can control time and attention. The system grows more complicated, both sides spend more resources, and the work itself moves into the background.

Not contending does not mean abandoning standards or allowing an organization to drift. It may mean changing the structure so that good work connects more clearly with each person’s own rewards, responsibility, and growth. The goal is not to discover one perfect incentive system. It is to stop treating victory over the employees as though it were the same thing as running the organization well.

When management becomes a cat and mouse game, every new control teaches people to concentrate on the control. A better system gives them a reason to concentrate on the work.

Can We Refuse the Contest Without Doing Nothing?

A useful fictional example appears in the Chinese novel The Distant Savior and its television adaptation Tian Dao. After the company chairman dies, Han Chufeng faces two senior vice presidents who are competing for the top position. Ding Yuanying advises him not to contend.

Han does not give up the responsibility he wants, leave the company, or stop working. He refuses to join that particular struggle and continues doing the work in front of him. As the other two candidates fight each other, their choices damage the company and reveal what has become more important to them than the company itself. Once the cost of the conflict becomes visible, the person who can still do the work also becomes easier to recognize.

This is a literary example, not evidence for what the Tao Te Ching originally meant. But it shows the practical difficulty clearly. Once we enter a contest, our attention is repeatedly pulled toward the other side’s next move. Refusing the contest can preserve that attention for the thing we were trying to do in the first place.

This does not mean that stepping aside will always lead to recognition or success. Sometimes another person will take the position, the proposal will fail, or the conflict will continue without us. Not contending is not a guarantee that events will reward us. It is a refusal to let the contest decide what all our effort is for.

Can Not Contending Still Have Boundaries?

Not contending does not mean becoming unable to say no. We may need to refuse an unreasonable demand, leave a harmful relationship, protect our rights, or stop someone from causing harm. The concept should never be used to shame a person out of self protection.

The question is not whether an action looks gentle or forceful from the outside. The question is what the action is serving. Is it dealing with the situation, protecting something real, or restoring a workable boundary? Or has the desire to overpower and humiliate the other person taken control?

Sometimes the same outward action can come from either place. A firm refusal can end a cycle of contention. A polite silence can also hide a plan to punish someone later. Not contending requires judgment because it cannot be reduced to always yielding, always withdrawing, or always staying calm.

The struggle gives us a simple identity: I am the one who must win. Bu zheng asks us to give up that certainty without giving up the responsibility to act. Water benefits the ten thousand things without contending, but it never stops moving. It simply does not waste its strength proving that it deserves to stand above everything else.

In Part 9, I will continue with another idea that is often misunderstood: having fewer desires.

I plan to keep this series going, and you can find the other posts on my profile. I’m also building Verso, a tool rooted in traditional Taoist divination that aims to offer another perspective when people feel stuck or unsure. It’s under development; stay tuned.

AI disclosure: English isn’t my first language, so I used AI to translate and help edit the English.

Previous Posts

Part 1 of 23: How Should We Read It?

Part 2 of 23: Why Did Lao Tzu Choose to Observe the World?

Part 3 of 23: Why Do We Lose What We Try Too Hard to Control?

Part 4 of 23: Why Can the Soft Overcome the Hard?

Part 5 of 23: What Does “Reversal Is the Movement of the Tao” Really Mean?

Part 6 of 23: Why Do Names and Standards Push Us Toward Extremes?

Part 7 of 23: Does Wu Wei Mean Doing Nothing?

Hello.

I've been hanging around for a while now. Thought i'd make a post 😄

Does anyone here practice internal alchemy seriously ? If so, how far have you advanced in the alchemical process ? Do tell ! 😂

There is something undeniably enduring about the metaphorical imagery of the straw dog from Verse 5 of the TTC. Even if our Westernized and modernized sensibilities put our understanding of the homid-canid dynamic several degrees removed from those of Ancient China, the notion of constructing a little totem of something valued and cherished (such as a dog) out of something as blatantly worthless as straw speaks to a fundamental human experience on numerous anthropological levels. Even outside its historical context as an object of effigy ritual, the practicals of a straw dog follow the same reasoning as to why one made children's dolls of cloth: there is an implicit hazard to the object that means making its component parts out of that which is readily available (or even mendable) beyond pragmatic. The doll and the dog are the same. They are ritual objects in effigy, used to carry the gravitas of the focus without incurring the monumental cost their mortal counterparts carry.

But this is hardly groundbreaking opinion. From Dao De Zhen Jing Zhu ( https://ctext.org/dao-de-zhen-jing-zhu#n90484 )

"The sage is unkind and treats the people as cud dogs."
聖人不仁，以百姓為芻狗

This reading of unkindness persisted long through linguistic history, and in the future when effigy sacrifice became rather more passé for harvests or religious ceremony the term nevertheless persisted, going on in business jargon as a junk proposal serving little purpose outside prompting discussion between those involved. Therefore it persists even into the modern day that when neonates discover the text and see 'straw dogs' their rational minds effortlessly grasp what is being demonstrated: the object is worth nothing.

Alarmingly, there remains a persistent belief that this turn of phrase is somehow an endorsement for the negligence, or perhaps indifference, towards the people around the individual practitioner. The sage is like Heaven, after all, and if Heaven treats all things as straw dogs then so too must the sage and it is no difficult step to take from that a reading that everything should be treated as sacrificial. This is the reading that must be pushed back against, and it is precisely because many neonates come to this place and pose this very dilemma.

First, textual foundations. From He Shang Gong (https://ctext.org/heshanggong/5)
"The sage regards the common people like straw dogs and livestock, not expecting them to offer respect or gratitude."
天地之間空虛，和氣流行，故萬物自生。人能除情欲，節滋味，清五臟，則神明居之也

This passage clearly obligates the sage to the common peoples, equating the straw dogs to livestock. This character usage is quite deliberate, for livestock carries with it the unavoidable aspect of cultivation. It is not enough to have cows or goats, but the care of these animals for their utility is placed front and center in this phrasing.

Again from He Shang Gong:

Heaven and Earth give birth to all things, yet while humans are the most precious among them, Heaven and Earth regard them no differently than straw dogs or livestock—valuing them without expecting anything in return.

天地生萬物，人最為貴，天地視之如芻草狗畜，不貴望其報也

In the context of livestock, this might bear a question: how could someone not expect a cultivated result from something they are cultivating? What circumstances could exist that might cause that? The answer to such a thing is simply to consider the perspective of an ox herder on the Yellow River. Should the river decide, you may lose more than just your animals. At the whims of nature, even one's whole village could be swept away in a horrible torrent. Nevertheless, the ox herder must perform their obligations to the herd without any expectation that the oxen will reach maturity for slaughter, or even the herder themselves may persist to do the slaughtering. This is what it means to perform without expectation.

And the slaughter is an equally important component of the grand analogy at work here. Just like the straw dog of before, death is an absolute certainty for the domesticated cattle. It may be by the butcher's blade, or by the river's wrath, or even a barn sickness or insectile plague. Maybe even bandits. Only Heaven knows the end, and so for a practitioner to look at someone around them and see disposable straw is an utter shame, the height of arrogance. A human is not straw because of their worth, they are straw because of their commonality. They are straw because of their frailty. Further, irrespective of what they are made of, they are ordained by Heaven's Way to have a purpose. By being a witness, one is involved.

The author implores the reader to remember that when regarding someone as a straw dog, do not pay any attention to the straw. Be mindful that who you are looking at is heading into a fire, unavoidably, and so you must tend to them as long as you are able. Expect nothing in return, for this is the Way. Heaven will provide for them as it provides for everyone, and as a disciple of the Tao it falls to us to perceive the Way forward and bring it to fruition. Not for us, not for them, not for anyone, simply because it must be so.

Finally, from the He Shang Gong:
Too many words lead to exhaustion. Much activity harms the spirit; too much speech harms the body. When one opens his mouth and raises his tongue, misfortune is sure to follow. It is better to hold to the center (the emptiness within). Better still is to uphold virtue within, nurture spirit and energy, cherish breath, and speak sparingly.
多言數窮，多事害神，多言害身，口開舌舉，必有禍患。不如守中。不如守德於中，育養精神，愛氣希言。

May I be forgiven for running my mouth.

I feel like always I have to fix something in my life. That I don't exercise enough, or have a good system, or job, or I don't use my youth enough. I don't want to live like this. But if I let go and try to feel that everything is okay, then I do nothing but play my video games or relax and then I suffer because I feel I am living below my potential.

What is the way this has to naturally flow?

In Part 6, I looked at how names become standards, and how standards begin shaping what people desire. Once a result has been named as beautiful, successful, loyal, or good, it becomes easy to keep pushing toward it even after the pursuit has started damaging the thing we wanted to improve.

That leaves a practical question. If we do not want to be driven endlessly by the goals we create, how are we supposed to act? One of Lao Tzu’s best known answers is wu wei.

If you enjoy this series, please upvote, leave a comment, and share it with others. Every interaction helps us keep making the series and helps more people find it.

Wu Wei Is Not the Absence of Action

Wu wei is often read as passivity, withdrawal, or simply doing nothing. But the Tao Te Ching does not describe someone who has abandoned every responsibility. It keeps placing wu wei beside affairs, teaching, and government.

One common explanation of the early written form of wei describes a person guiding an elephant. There is disagreement over whether the animal in that form is actually an elephant, so I would not use the character alone to settle the meaning. Still, it offers a useful entrance into the problem. Wei can suggest more than an event simply happening. It can suggest directing something toward a result and trying to make that result occur.

This is why I find non forcing more useful than doing nothing as a starting point. In the reading developed through this series, wu wei does not remove action. It removes the belief that every situation should be made to obey our preferred outcome through more control, more pressure, and more intervention.

Lao Tzu Is Still Talking About Doing Things

Chapter 2 says:

Therefore the sage attends to affairs through wu wei and practices the teaching without words.

The sage is still attending to affairs. The line does not describe someone who has disappeared from the world. Chapter 3 says:

Act through wu wei, and nothing will be left ungoverned.

Governing is still taking place. What changes is the manner in which it is done.

Chapter 37 says:

The Tao is always without forcing, yet nothing is left undone. If rulers could hold to it, the ten thousand things would transform themselves.

Chapter 48 approaches the same idea through subtraction:

In pursuing learning, one adds each day. In pursuing the Tao, one subtracts each day. Subtract and subtract again until wu wei is reached. Through wu wei, nothing is left undone.

I read this subtraction as the removal of accumulated desire, control, and unnecessary interference. It is not the removal of every action. When those extra layers are reduced, a situation regains some room to develop through its own conditions rather than being constantly redirected by our anxiety.

This does not mean that wu wei guarantees success. “Nothing is left undone” is not a promise that every wish will be fulfilled. Sometimes conditions are bad, information is incomplete, and intervention is necessary. The point is not that events always work out by themselves. The point is that our interference can become one of the forces preventing them from working at all.

Governing a Great State Is Like Cooking a Small Fish

Chapter 60 says:

Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish.

Cooking a small fish requires action. You prepare the heat, watch what is happening, and turn the fish when it actually needs to be turned. But if you keep touching it because you are nervous, it falls apart.

That is what makes the image useful. The problem is not movement itself. The problem is the extra movement produced by our inability to leave a process alone. We make one adjustment, then another, not because the situation requires it, but because waiting makes us feel as though we have lost control.

Sometimes the hardest judgment is not deciding what to do. It is recognizing that we are able to interfere and that this is still not the moment to do so.

Chapter 17 describes the best rulers as those whose existence is barely known by the people. Lower down come rulers who are loved and praised, then feared, and finally despised. A well functioning order does not always display the manager’s fingerprints everywhere. The more a ruler needs to demonstrate power and prove that something is being done, the more likely it is that the order underneath is not actually working.

When More Effort Makes a System Weaker

Imagine the owner of a restaurant company with hundreds of locations visiting one branch. The owner personally changes the position of the tables, criticizes the refrigerator, rewrites the menu, and corrects every employee.

This looks responsible. It also avoids the more difficult questions. If the equipment is arranged badly, does the company have a usable standard? If the menu is wrong, who is responsible for it? Once the owner has fixed this branch, what will happen in the other hundreds?

The staff may learn only one lesson: wait for the owner to give us the answer. The owner becomes busier, everyone below becomes less capable of judging, and personal effort quietly replaces a functioning system.

This is one form that excessive wei can take. A person wants the result so badly that every problem calls for another personal intervention. Each intervention appears useful on its own, but together they destroy responsibility, initiative, and the ability of the system to correct itself.

Effort still matters. Action still matters. But effort is not automatically wise simply because it is intense.

What Does Wu Wei Look Like on a Content Platform?

The same tension appears in creative work. A creator can pay attention to the quality of the work, learn from the audience, and change when the change makes sense. None of that conflicts with wu wei.

The trouble begins when every rise or fall in traffic demands a new identity. One format becomes popular, so it is copied immediately. Another account grows quickly, so its language and structure are borrowed. The goal is clear: more views and more followers. Yet even if this produces a large audience, the creator may have no idea why those people arrived or what they will stay for.

The account has grown, but its choices have narrowed. Every new post must repeat the thing that once produced the number.

Wu wei does not mean having no direction. A goal can point somewhere. It becomes dangerous when it replaces observation and turns every uncertain moment into a reason to push harder. Sometimes the part we can genuinely do is to improve the work, publish it, learn from what happens, and resist rebuilding everything around each short term fluctuation.

Wu Wei Is a More Difficult Kind of Action

Policies that allowed people to recover during the early Han are often used as an example of wu wei in government. This did not mean that the state ceased to exist or stopped governing. After years of war, reducing disruption and easing burdens gave society space to rebuild. That recovery had many causes, so I would not attribute it to one philosophy alone. What the example offers here is a question of timing: what does this situation need now, and which additional actions would disturb the very recovery we are trying to support?

This is why I think wu wei is harder than simply doing nothing. Doing nothing can come from neglect, fear, or a refusal to understand the problem. Wu wei requires enough attention to tell the difference between an action that belongs to the situation and an action that only relieves our anxiety.

Sometimes responsibility means taking another step. Sometimes it means removing the step we added because we could not tolerate waiting.

In Part 8, I will continue with another idea that is often misunderstood: bu zheng, or not contending.

I plan to keep this series going, and you can find the other posts on my profile. I’m also building Verso, a tool rooted in traditional Taoist divination that aims to offer another perspective when people feel stuck or unsure. It’s under development; stay tuned.

AI disclosure: English isn’t my first language, so I used AI to translate and help edit the English.

Previous Posts

Part 1 of 23: How Should We Read It?

Part 2 of 23: Why Did Lao Tzu Choose to Observe the World?

Part 3 of 23: Why Do We Lose What We Try Too Hard to Control?

Part 4 of 23: Why Can the Soft Overcome the Hard?

Part 5 of 23: What Does “Reversal Is the Movement of the Tao” Really Mean?

Part 6 of 23: Why Do Names and Standards Push Us Toward Extremes?

TL;DR Things aren’t as clear cut as they seem, and this softens self-judgement.

The concept of non-doing or non-forcing helps us navigate life without unnecessarily straining ourselves. The parable of Zhuangzi’s butcher encourages us to master a trade. 

Another benefit that I think is fairly unique to Taoism that doesn’t get a lot of attention, comes from its insistence on ‘maybe.’ (This is my own terminology). Taoism is founded not on commandments, yes’s and no’s, but on maybes. 

“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

Whatever you say and think is not the eternal Tao - it’s temporary and fleeting - not something you can rely on 100% of the time. A probability, not a permanently definable thing. A maybe (or a ‘sort of’ or a ‘for now’ at best). Even saying something is ‘probably’ true depends heavily on the data sampled. This does not apply to logical relationships, like 5>4, or that I was born before my brother

But when it comes to judgements - good/bad, lazy/hard-working, success/failure - ‘maybe’ is the difference between seeing yourself as a failure, and seeing yourself as a dynamic person capable of reinventing themselves. It’s everything. It’s the ability to deflect negative judgements. “Yeah, I was sort of lazy, at the time, and I failed to graduate on time” is MUCH more fair and forgiving than “I’m a lazy failure and I’m doomed to fail again”. And so “Maybe” can indirectly boost your self-esteem, or at least not drag it down as far

It can be subtler than that. There are opportunities to see things as maybes all the time. “The people in this city are rude” makes you see things negatively. “Okay, maybe some of them, some of the time” gives new people you meet the benefit of the doubt and weakens the impact of judgement. 

Essentially what you’re doing is bringing some yin to soften the yang - some breathing room for your mind. All you have to do (though much easier said than done, and requires care and thoughtfulness) is pay attention, and when you encounter judgements, relax and note when you’re being overly divisive. 

The same blade of judgement slices against others and against yourself. If you weaken your judgements of others, you’ll weaken judgements of yourself (and vice-versa). 

Peace & Love

In Part 5, I looked at what happens when something loses its room to adjust and can only keep moving in one direction. But knowing that a pursuit can go too far does not always stop us. We can see the danger and still move toward it, one choice at a time. This time, I want to look at how that pursuit begins, through a word from the opening chapter: name.

If you enjoy this series, please upvote, leave a comment, and share it with others. Every interaction helps us keep making the series and helps more people find it.

What happens when we turn something good into a standard?

Chapter 3 says:

Do not exalt the worthy, and the people will not contend. Do not prize rare goods, and the people will not steal. Do not display what arouses desire, and the hearts of the people will not be disturbed.

Chapter 19 goes further:

Abandon sageliness and discard cleverness, and the people will benefit a hundredfold. Abandon benevolence and righteousness, and the people will return to filial care and affection. Abandon skill and profit, and thieves will disappear.

On a first reading, these lines can sound as though Lao Tzu wants to get rid of capable people, kindness, and wisdom. I read them here as a warning about what happens when a society takes one version of a good thing and makes it the standard everyone must meet. Once that standard is constantly praised, displayed, and rewarded, it starts shaping what people want.

Chapter 2 says that when everyone recognizes beauty as beauty, ugliness is already there, and when everyone recognizes goodness as good, what is not good is already there. A single accepted definition of beauty puts everything outside it on the other side. A fixed image of goodness can do the same to choices that do not fit.

That is the connection I want to follow in this part. We establish a standard, people begin pursuing it, and the pursuit can keep growing long after it has stopped helping them. This is one way of reading these chapters together, rather than the only explanation of what they mean.

What happens when beauty has only one answer?

Appearance makes this easy to see. We are shown how small a face should be, how thin a body should be, and which signs of aging should disappear. Very different people end up measuring themselves against the same narrow image. Looking good becomes something that can always be scored, compared, and corrected.

There is nothing wrong with caring about your appearance or choosing a cosmetic procedure. The trouble comes when there is no point at which you can feel satisfied. You spend more, accept more risk, or let the pursuit take over your daily life, and the answer is still that you are not close enough. A standard that was supposed to help you make a choice is now making choices for you.

Diamonds, luxury brands, and other status goods work in a similar way. Their appeal is not only in the objects themselves. We also attach love, success, and social standing to them. Enjoying something is one thing. Feeling that you cannot be complete without it is another. The useful distinction is between wanting the object and needing the identity it seems to promise.

Can a good reputation become another desire?

Someone can care very little about money and still be deeply attached to being seen as upright, loyal, or brave enough to speak the truth. That desire may be harder to notice because its name sounds admirable. Eventually, solving the problem can become less important than being remembered as the person who took the correct moral position.

The late Ming dynasty offers a difficult example. There were disputes over peace negotiations, moving the court south, and raising military funds, all under severe military and financial pressure. Those were real problems with no easy answers. But once supporting peace could be branded as weakness, moving south as disloyalty, or having money to contribute as proof of corruption, practical options became harder to discuss. People could end up defending their reputation for purity while the situation kept deteriorating.

I would not explain the fall of the Ming through reputation alone. The point is narrower: a moral label can make a course of action almost impossible to consider before anyone has properly examined whether it could work.

This is why I do not take “do not exalt the worthy” to mean that ability is bad. The danger appears when worthiness becomes an identity people have to win and defend. Benevolence and righteousness can also become badges, used to separate the loyal from the disloyal or to compete for recognition. Even a virtuous name can become something we cannot bear to lose.

What does “the name that can be named” mean here?

The opening chapter says:

The name that can be named is not the constant name.

The received text commonly read today uses chang, meaning constant or enduring. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts use heng. One common explanation is that heng was replaced with chang to avoid the personal name of Emperor Wen of Han, Liu Heng. That explanation does not settle every question about the wording or the meaning of the line.

For me, a useful starting point is that we need names. They let us communicate, share experience, and distinguish one thing from another. But naming also draws a boundary. A name does not contain everything the thing can be, and it becomes misleading when we forget that we drew the boundary ourselves.

Chapter 2 gives several pairs: being and nonbeing, difficult and easy, long and short, high and low, sound and voice, front and back. These are not all the same kind of relationship, but they draw attention to how much our distinctions depend on something else. Long is understood in relation to short. High depends on low. A name helps us recognize a difference; it does not make the two sides separate, permanent worlds.

Chapter 20 also questions the distance between good and evil. There are differences in wording between versions of this passage, so I would not build the whole argument on one English phrase. What matters for this reading is the habit of looking again at distinctions we have come to treat as obvious.

We still need to judge and act. The problem is forgetting how a judgment was formed and treating it as something that can never be reconsidered.

Does a different perspective make every judgment equally valid?

When a wolf kills a sheep, the shepherd sees a threat. Looking at the ecosystem, we see the wolf, the sheep, and the grass surviving in different ways. The wolf has not changed because the viewpoint changed. What has changed is the position from which we judge it.

Chapter 5 says:

Heaven and Earth are not benevolent. They treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs.

I read “not benevolent” here as a reminder that the natural world does not arrange itself around human preferences or grant special protection to the side we favor. Naming the wolf evil does not remove its place in the world. That does not tell us to be cruel or stop protecting what we care about.

Historical figures show another side of this. Dorgon was central to the Qing conquest and the establishment of the new regime. Within a story about the founding of the Qing, he could be remembered for his contribution. For Ming loyalists and communities harmed by the conquest, he represented invasion, oppression, and disaster.

Understanding those different memories does not make the facts interchangeable. It does not erase what happened or excuse harm. Perspective helps explain a judgment; it does not automatically justify it. I think that distinction matters whenever we talk about names, goodness, or moral reputation.

How can we use names without being controlled by them?

The movement I have been describing begins with something ordinary. We name things so that we can understand them. Those names divide the world into categories. Some categories harden into standards, and people begin pursuing what the standards reward. If that pursuit loses its limits, it can carry us toward an extreme.

There is no need to throw away language or pretend that all standards are useless. Life together would be difficult without either. But we can notice when a word stops helping us understand a situation and starts demanding that the situation fit it.

Beauty, success, goodness, loyalty, and strength can all express something worth caring about. They can also become images we spend our lives trying to satisfy. I take “the name that can be named” as a reminder to leave room to look again. The label may still be useful, but it does not get the final word on the person or situation in front of us.

In Part 7, I will continue with wu wei and the question of how to act without being driven by the standards we create.

I plan to keep this series going, and you can find the other posts on my profile. I’m also building Verso, a tool rooted in traditional Taoist divination that aims to offer another perspective when people feel stuck or unsure. It’s under development; stay tuned.

AI disclosure: English isn’t my first language, so I used AI to translate and help edit the English.