by John Welford

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: July 10, 2009

There is much about Asian philosophy and religion that can confuse the Western observer who likes to see everything in nice, neat categories. Especially when looking at the history of belief systems in China, this approach is virtually impossible.

For example, Tao cannot be understood without reference to both Confucianism and Buddhism, with the word "Tao" having come to be used as a blanket term to cover everything in Chinese religion that cannot be assigned to either Confucianism or Buddhism. However, Tao as a philosophy and Tao as a religion have little in common apart from the name, and there is much in philosophical Tao that the religious Taoist would not recognise.

Tao is supposed to have originated with a thinker called Lao-Tzu who lived in the 4th century BCE, who met Confucius, and who wrote his philosophy in a book called the "Tao Te Ching", which was later divided into two books, known as the "Tao Ching" and the "Te Ching". Whether such a person existed has never been proved, with the first recorded mention of his name only being made 300 years after he was supposed to have lived. It may well be that the Tao Te Ching was the work of many people and not just one.

One difficulty in understanding the roots of Tao is that the Tao Te Ching was written in a form of early Chinese that is open to many interpretations. It was written without punctuation and with many abbreviated characters. There have been many attempts at translation into English, but with some of them it is hard to imagine that the same text is behind them. For example, whereas a 1963 translator could translate the opening lines as:

"The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way, the name that can be named is not the constant name",

a 1979 translator offered:

"Lodehead lodehead-brooking, no forewonted lodehead. Namecall namecall-brooking, no forewonted namecall".

Personally, I find that the first version at least makes some sort of sense!

The other "founding father" of Taoism is Chuang Chou who is even more mysterious, in terms of personal details, than Lao-Tzu. His philosophy, expressed in the work that is usually known simply as "Chuang-tzu", is basically the same as that of Lao-Tzu but it is less mystical in tone and contains elements of humor in places.

Another problem is that the word "Tao" can mean several different things, and even the supposed works of Lao-Tzu are unclear as to its meaning, which seems to be different in different contexts.

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