Laozi On The Campaign Trail

Ken Liu's new translation of the Dao De Jing is anti-depressant balm on troubled waters. Did Joe Biden get an advance copy?

Dao is a vessel from which the flow never ends.

Unfathomable! Like the origin of all things.

Today is the publication date for a new translation of Laozi’s Dao De Jing, a foundational work of Daoist philosophy. I was delighted to receive an unsolicited advance review copy two months ago. Of course I was receptive: I already own half a dozen different translations of the Dao De Jing, and I am always ready to resubmerge myself in Laozi’s teachings. The cover even boasts an illustration of a butterfly!

But this June, I was particularly, painfully, receptive to the main thrust of the “new interpretation” offered by translator Ken Liu.

Liu is a science fiction and fantasy author who made a major contribution to the introduction of contemporary Chinese science fiction to the English-speaking world when he translated Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. In his introduction, Liu writes that he started delving deep into Laozi during the darkest days of the pandemic.

… Months had passed since I last wrote a word. I had never run out of stories since the age of five. But here I was, taleless.

The world’s reaction to the pandemic had destroyed Liu’s faith in the future.

The disease itself didn’t scare me, but the politics did. All around me I saw saber-rattling, finger-pointing, paranoia, jostling for power, calls for war. Lies were the most popular stories, varieties of hate the loudest voices, acts of violence the most memorable deeds.

In desperation I began to read the Dao De Jing. I read it because I could no longer read or tell stories. I read it because the future seemed absolutely hopeless. I read it hoping to find a way out of the darkness.

He discovered a life-saving resonance. In Liu’s view, the Dao De Jing is a self-help manual for preserving and nourishing mental health in a world gone mad.

Laozi’s priorities reflected the contous of his own time — a period constant turmoil — the Era of the Warring States.

Laozi was writing at a time of great invention and technological and social change, when everyone fumbled in the dark for the emergence of a new world order, when grand lords celebrated war and wise counselors fretted about hegemony and vassalage, when beauty contended with terror, chaos danced with cleverness, and the world was rocked by grand theories and petty rivalries, and the way through the dark wood, for individuals as well as nations, seemed impossibly obscure.

Doesn’t sound all that different from our time, does it?

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The image of Dao draws the hearts of all.

They come to it, unguarded, at peace.

Tasty food and pleasant music make all passersby stop,

But a description of Dao sounds plain, devoid of flavor,

For Dao is impossible to see, impossible to hear,

Though its power is limitless in use.

If, like me, you are one of the millions of Americans for whom the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president again is an invitation to existential despair, then June was a dark time. Swing state polling numbers were sending alarming signals even before Biden’s disastrous debate performance, and there was little solace to be found in any other news headlines. Gaza, Ukraine, one abominable Supreme Court decision after another… I spent the entire month averting my eyes.

And, like Liu, I found refuge in Laozi, again.

Laozi does not show us the path to fixing the world. Instead, he hints at ways to negotiate dangerous rapids without harm. “The Dao-aware” (Liu’s formulation for a word usually translated as “The Sage”) are equipped to roll with all transformations, to not be crazy when everything is insane, to maintain equanimity through chaos.

But that’s as far as I can travel along this train of thought in late August, because the story I wanted to write about Ken Liu’s new translation – how the words of Laozi can help us survive troubled times – suddenly doesn’t seem appropriate to the moment.

As I write this morning, on day two of the Democratic National Convention, I am filled with a sense of hope that just one month ago would have seemed completely ludicrous. I am scouring news sites for the latest polling numbers, laughing at Tim Walz dad jokes, sharing Kamala Harris memes with my family. And I am not alone. Who needs Laozi when you hear the roar of the crowd’s reaction to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lambasting Trump as a “two-bit union buster”?

My whole working thesis for this review has been disemboweled.

Upon reflection, I think back to the moment when all this started, when President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign. I submit that his self-abnegation was an act that Laozi would have applauded, (if Laozi was the kind of the person who did things like applaud, which is doubtful.)

There is a concept in Daoism – wuwei – usually translated as “non-action,” which is often misunderstood. It does not mean, as I grasp it, to simply do nothing, to renounce all engagement with the world, to let affairs take their own laissez-faire course. It means to figure out which way the world needs you to go, which way the water is flowing, and then to ride that wave, align yourself with that force, take action that feeds and channels the strength of the flow rather than builds a damn blocking it. Go with, not athwart.

When Biden stepped down, he was embodying this interpretation of non-action. Yes, it may have taken him a while to get there; but in the last analysis, he didn’t try, out of ego or hubris or stubbornness, to force the issue. He acceded. Not to belabor the obvious, but it was an act of grace unthinkable for a man like Trump.

And it was an act that instantly unleashed a power which has stunned everyone – friend and foe alike. We are living through a political moment unlike any in memory; a transformative torrent of passion and joy that few believed possible has shaken up the political kaleidoscopic with unprecedented delirium. I am body-surfing this wave with every fiber of my soul.

I don’t know where this is headed; I don’t where this ends; I don’t know what the lay of the land will look like when the sun rises on November 6. And I do know that heartbreak and turmoil are guaranteed, if not now, then further down the line. So there will always be plenty of room for Laozi’s advice, and I urge anyone curious to pick up Ken Liu’s translation. It is wonderful, fluid, contemporary and convincing.

It just might not be as necessary right this second as I was convinced it would be a few weeks ago.

To be content with what you have is to never be disgraced,

And to know when to stop is how you avoid catastrophe.

This is the only way to endure.