There is a thing-kind made up of a mix.
It emerges before the cosmos.
Solitary! Inchoate!
Self grounded and unchanging.
Permeating all processes without extremity. We can deem it the mother of the social world.
I don't know its name. When put in characters we say dao.
Forced to deem it as named, we say 'great.'
Being great, we say 'comprehensive.'
Being comprehensive, we say 'far reaching.'
Being far reaching, we say 'reverting.'
So our dao is great;
Nature (heaven) is great,
Earth is great,
and kings are also great.
Within a region are four 'greats.'
And the King occupies one of those [lofty] statuses.
Humans treat earth as a standard.
Earth treats constant nature as a standard.
Constant nature treats dao as a standard.
Dao treats being so of itself as a standard.
**************
I appreciate Christopher's distinction between "metaphysical" and "mystical." As Bryan notices, I do think that there's some *thing* acknowledged in this and other chapters, and my favored interpretation is that this thing is the cosmic process of transformation itself. I'm not completely sure if this should even count as METAphysical--maybe it's just physical?--but it certainly isn't "mystical."
As for the relation of this thing to "dao," Bryan says:
>Perhaps your claim is that the term "DAO4" is still being used in one of its earlier senses (namely, "way of acting"). In other words, the point of ch. 25 (on your reading) would be that the metaphysical entity has its own way of acting. The problem with this interpretation is that, if that is what the author(s) of the text had wanted to say, I think he (or they) would have written YOU3 DAO4 ("it has a way"), or possibly YI3 WEI2 DAO4 ("[I] regard it as a way") rather than WU2 BU4 ZHI1 QI2 MING, ZI4 ZHI1 YUE1 DAO4 ("I do not know its name, [but I] style it, 'way'").
This is indeed my contention. I'm afraid I don't find your "they could have said it more clearly" argument very convincing, at least on its own, given the nature of the _DDJ_ itself. If you could tell me more about uses of the relevant "zi4" as a verb in other texts, that might help. (I wonder, in this connection, if there's any significance to Chad's not having put "dao" in quotes in line 7 of his translation?)
**************
I also don't think that the [meta]physical entity in question, which the text argues we should take as a model for own action--i.e., as a dao--drops out in the end of the passage. Bryan writes:
>Unless
>DAO4 is a term for the metaphysical entity referred to earlier in the chapter, it looks like that entity has dropped out of the cosmology. (I take it that "that which is naturally so" [ZI4RAN2] does not refer to a distinct entity, but rather describes the manner in which the DAO4 acts. )
My instinct, in apparent disagreement with *both* Bryan and Chad, is that "zi4ran2" does indeed refer to the cosmic process, or at least to the way that process is, of itself. Precisely in keeping with my suggested reading of the beginning of the passage, we are to take the way the cosmic process unfolds as our dao: that's to say that (this) dao takes this process's unfolding of itself as its standard.
Steve AngleDate created: 10/28/96 Last modified: 10/28/96 Questions? Contact: Stephen C. Angle