Chapter 14.3: The Guiding Strand of the Way

If we go out to greet it, we cannot see its head; 

if we follow behind it, we cannot see its end.

Grasping the present Way is the means of navigating what is in the present;

It is the means to be able to understand the past and beginnings

– this is what is called the guideline of the Way.

Continuing with the description of the Way as unlimited, endless and infinite, we cannot get ahead of it or behind it.  It has no beginning or end, no head or tail.  It cannot be preempted and has no conclusion.  It is an endless and infinite network of solutions and options, opportunities and possibilities. 

But what is important for us is not how long it has been around or how many people have discovered it.  How someone else found their Way in the past isn’t as important as the fact that they did and because they did we can too.  It’s not the ancient Way that matters.  It’s the Way as it exists right now before us.  It is the first or next step that is presented underfoot at this junction and this moment in time that will lead us from where we are to where we want to be in our lives.  It is how we choose to see this crossroads, this opportunity, this choice that will enable us to navigate and traverse the specific challenges and obstacles that we face at this very moment. 

At the same time, there are lessons to be learned from the past – lessons that can be applied to the present.  Grasping the Way in this present moment is the means of unraveling and being able to understand the past and how things began, in our culture, in our society, in our families, and in our own lives.  Grasping and holding on to the Way today can provide us with needed perspective on our past.  This is the guiding strand of the Way, the ripcord for our parachute out, Ariadne’s string for finding our way through the Minotaur’s Maze of ancient Greek mythology. 

Etymology Note: The character for “guideline” depicts a silken strand binding bamboo slips together.  The left side of the character 糸 is a silk strand or string with three tassels at the bottom and the right side is 己, the weft thread, which also provides the sound (ji³).  In traditional weaving, the warp threads are the vertical strings and the weft threads are the horizontal strings that are woven back and forth in between them.  This is depicted in the character 己, which shows a horizontal line going back and forth.  Before the invention of paper, the ancient Chinese often wrote books and recorded the annals of history vertically on long bamboo slips, which were woven together at the top and bottom with silken weft threads.  The books were then rolled up into scrolls.  To date, thousands of bamboo slips have been unearthed by Chinese archaeologists.  Two of the most famous bamboo manuscripts of the Dao De Jing were discovered the Mawangdui 馬王堆 archaeological site (modern day Changsha 長沙), excavated from 1972-1974 and dating to the western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE).   

In an interesting parallel, after over two thousand years underground, the silk threads holding the bundles together had completely rotted away by the time the manuscripts were unearthed, leaving a giant jigsaw puzzle of broken and separated slips for archaeologists to piece together.  When we lose our Way, when the guiding thread that holds our lives together disintegrates, sooner or later, we tend to fall apart.  However, the “guideline” of the Way is that it is all-encompassing and ever present.  The Way provides a path forward from our present to our future and also provides clarity and perspective on our past, bringing all the separated pieces of our lives back together, unifying our fractured souls and binding our stories together in a coherent and unified whole.  The “guideline” of the Way is this – no matter how fragmented, cut off, fractured, or disconnected we may feel in our lives, there is always a Way – a Way to heal what is wounded, a Way to mend what is broken, a Way to restore what has been taken, and a Way to find what is lost and missing in our lives. ~ DCB

Translation Note: I have incorporated both the traditional reading of this chapter along with an opposing variant in my translation and commentary.  The traditional version of this chapter, the one passed down through history, the last line reads: “Grasping the ancient Way is the means of navigating what is in the present.  To be able to understand the past and beginnings – this is what is called the guideline of the Way” (執古之道，以御今之有。以能知古始，是謂道紀。). However, in the Mawangdui manuscripts of this chapter, it has 今 “present” instead of 古 “ancient” and separates the two clauses.  This is most likely the result of intellectual pressure to ground their ideas with the authority and precedent of the storied past rather than present their teachings as new, innovative, or groundbreaking.  For an excellent (albeit extremely dense) scholarly work on this topic, I recommend Harvard University professor Michael J. Puett’s work, The Ambivalence of Creation (Stanford University Press, 2001).