THIS MAY SOUND fanciful, but Lao Tzu is said to have lived in his mother’s womb for sixty-four years before emerging with his flowing white beard to join the ten thousand things. “Mother,” here, is quite possibly a metaphor. And by the “ten thousand things” is meant all the trouble and sparkle of this place we know as home, the material world, the mountains and streams and animals and computer screens of it.
When Lao Tzu was finally born -- in 604 B.C., or maybe 571 B.C., the record is not clear -- he was already quite an articulate fellow. This qualified him well for the career path he was to follow as Keeper of the Archives for the Imperial Chinese court. It seems nearly incidental that eventually he became known as the founding sage of Taoism, which initially developed as a philosophy known as Quietism (a word worth whispering).
Lao Tzu’s actual name -- if indeed Lao Tzu was actual; he’s not a little like Aesop in this regard -- was Erh, meaning ear. The name Lao Tzu itself means Old Master, which he was, and a few pages that he wrote at the end of his stay in history formed the beginning of a text which was later expanded (new, revised, no longer in first edition) into a magnificent though slender volume entitled the Tao Te Ching, which is sometimes simply called the Lao Tzu out of respect.
After an unusually long life (some say 90 years, others an unqualified 200 years) Lao Tzu became disillusioned with society -- I can tell you, too much handling of obscure documents and dusty old tomes can do this to anybody -- so he hopped on his ox and headed out of town. It was the last gatekeeper at the edge of the Middle Kingdom who persuaded him to write down his thoughts on the world, before quietly disappearing into the mists of time. His last journey on the ox can still be seen to this day on Chinese silk tapestries.
There is something about characters such as Lao Tzu, and the lively likes of Aesop, that both intrigues and disturbs me. It has to do with a sense of reality. With one’s trust of what is “known.” We get up each day and look around and eat and have our existence amongst the ten thousand things; this is our lives, the way it is to be alive in the world. But we can also close our eyes and have a vast mental space and much of what is in there is inherited, archetypical, and also distorted and downright make-believe. In a case like mine, it is not always clear what is real and what is not. I know I am not alone in this.
But that is part of the genius of Lao Tzu, and the Chinese imagination. It is understood that there is a limitless unknowable foundation to our lives. The Tao. And at the same time there is the human necessity and urge to speak, to name and to specify, and therefore to tell tales. From memories and dreams, from traditions and deep culture come pouring forth countless stories and legends filled with zany characters, austere teachers, speaking to us and reassuring us. Telling us, “Yes, this world is a marvelous place and here is how it came to be, and here is what it means, or one way to understand it.” A comfort, a rhythm, a profound conundrum, spun in poetry. All the ancient religious texts seem to begin in this way: elusive ghosts speaking in soft human voices from long ago.
