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Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the ancient Chinese wisdom book called the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. I shared with you some verses, and I’ve shared with you the means by which I translate it into Gnostic terminology.
Since beginning this series, one of my most regular and faithful followers wrote to tell me that David Bentley Hart has a new 2026 edition of the Tao Te Ching that he calls A New Translation. So I immediately purchased the book, and it’s good. You know, David Bentley Hart loves the big words. He doesn’t care if you know the vocabulary or not, but he uses the most perfect words that he can.
Another thing that’s amusing about this book is that he co-authored it with his son, Patrick Robert Hart. And there’s a picture of the two of them on the back flap of the book cover. And it’s so funny to me. The reason I’m laughing is because Patrick looks exactly like his dad, only 40 years younger. It’s worth buying the book just to look at those two pictures. It’s really something!
Anyway, this week I picked at random one of the verses from the Tao Te Ching, verse 53. And today I’m going to read to you out of David Bentley Hart’s version of verse 53, and also Jonathan Star’s version of verse 53.
I mentioned previously that in the Jonathan Star edition, called the Tao Te Ching, The Definitive Edition, there’s a very special section at the back of the book that gives you the pictograms of all of the verses, every pictogram in every verse. And then to the right of that, there is a chart. To the right of those pictograms is probably not every possible translation, because you can see that there are probably as many translations of these pictograms as there are readers, because they’re pictures, abstract pictures, with no definitions. So you can interpret the picture for whatever it means. So what I’ve been doing is reading the Tao Te Ching from the chart that Jonathan Star provided.
And I have found that if you read along that right side of the chart of all possible translations of each pictogram in any verse, your own gnosis will guide you to the interpretation, to the words to use, if your gnosis is far enough along to do that. Otherwise, you can stick to the definitions or the translations that the people who have been paid to write and publish these books put out.
So what I’m going to do today is read to you Jonathan Star’s version and David Bentley Hart’s version, and then I’m going to read to you my version of verse 53, interpreted using my Simple Explanation of Gnosticism vocabulary that I hope you are becoming familiar with by now.
And if you’re new to Gnostic Insights or to the Gnostic Reformation, I urge you to go back and read and listen to as many of them as you can because they’re all there in the archives at GnosticInsights.com. I urge you to go back and acquaint yourselves with the earliest episodes that you can find at GnosticInsights.com. They go all the way back to the very first episodes I posted in 2021.
So let’s begin today by taking a look at the Introduction to Tao Te Ching, A New Translation by David Bentley Hart, and we’ll see what he has to say by of introducing the Tao Te Ching to the readers.
In his Introduction on page three, Hart says,
Among the crucial texts to have reached us from that epoch, moreover, the Tao Te Ching is one of the most relentlessly subversive of the common tendencies and categories of human thought and ambition. True, in one very important sense, it advances a metaphysics that is familiar from the speculative and mystical grammars of many peoples. Sometimes it does this in a mythic or metaphorical idiom, sometimes in oratory maxims, sometimes in unadorned philosophical assertions.
But at its heart, it offers a vision of life as a single, pervading power present in all things, of a world charged with spiritual forces, and of an original and ultimate participation of all things in a single source that is inexhaustible precisely because it is perfectly empty, perfectly pure of any discrete essence that the mind or the will can fasten upon. The Tao is not a thing among things, but rather the nothingness, or better, the no-thingness, from which all life emerges, to which it returns, and in which it exists as part of an eternal spiritual communion. The Way of Heaven is not some kind of being among all other beings.
One might instead say that it is, to employ a more Western and scholastic turn of phrase, the act of being as such, in its most original and perennial unity, not a being but rather the let-there-be that is the fountainhead forever pouring itself out in all that is, without ever being depleted or waxing jealous of what it gives. Or, to adopt an older Platonic or Neoplatonic terminology, and one closer to the language of the Tao Te Ching itself, it is that which is beyond being, or beyond essence, the nothingness, or again, the no-thingness, from which being is born. And that same unity dwells within each and every one of us, and in all the living things around us.
So let’s pause there for a moment, and I hope you can recognize how close this is to the type of Gnosticism that I share with you here at Gnostic Insights. This Tao Te Ching is literally the ancient Chinese version of a Gnostic book. And just as we had buried in the Nag Hammadi, in that big six-foot pot that they dug out of the ground in 1945, just as we had all of those various types of Gnostic books, including books of Plato, I’m so surprised and disappointed that the Tao Te Ching wasn’t among them, because it would have fit perfectly with the Gnostic books.
And that is exactly why I am sharing it with you here now, so that you can see that this Gnosticism has nothing to do with the history of the Middle East or the history of Egypt. It has to do with the nature and source of being. And that knows no human history. That transcends history. It transcends groups and peoples. And that the ancient Chinese had this same vision of the source as the Gnostics later did, and as Plato did, is confirmation that this is a universal force.
Hart says,
In a world that has always been the plaything of violent and avaricious buffoons, as we’ve been reminded with special vividness in recent years, the saint or sage who represents the human ideal in this book is someone who instead refuses to strive for mastery or ownership or personal aggrandizement. Instead, he or she seeks to imitate the flow of nature and of life as a gift that arrives from a source beyond itself and moves toward an end over which no one at the last can wield control.
When Hart is saying the sage or the saint, that could just as easily be translated as the Gnostic. Skipping down the page, he says,
And the book tells us that we find this Way of Heaven, and that is a translation of the word Tao, Way of Heaven, and live according to its power, [and power is a translation of te], not through heroic effort, force of will or spiritual conquest, but rather through wu-wei, not striving, or in the term of the great 13th, 14th century Christian Rhineland mystic Meister Eckhart, Gelassenheit, letting go. But neither wu-wei nor Gelassenheit is merely a matter of passive disengagement. Each is an active ethos whose nature is one of charity and constant concern for others. One lets go of one’s self so as to embrace the world.
And of course, in the terminology that I use here at Gnostic Insights, I use Self with a capital S to distinguish it from ego. And I think when most people are writing and they talk about letting go of one’s self, they’re actually talking about letting go of your ego. But we use the word Self as a fractal representation of the One Source. So we have a slightly different slant on how to use these words. But early on, when I was writing out these Gnostic thoughts, it was important for me to put together a consistent vocabulary so that I’m not in one article writing about self and in another article writing about ego and meaning the same thing. We needed to be able to distinguish the true Self or the fractal part of our unit of consciousness that represents and reflects the Fullness of God.
So the Self with a capital S is our personal embodiment and reflection of the Fullness of God. Whereas our ego is also part of our original unit of consciousness, but once we’re incarnated into this world, our ego becomes confused and lost and forgetful in the same manner that the ego of the fallen Aeon Logos did. So ego is not inherently bad. It’s simply easily confused and deluded by the chatter around us.
Later on, on page eight of the Introduction, Hart says,
This is not a book about finding the smooth middle course between ethical extremes. The saint or sage, [or I would say Gnostic], of the Tao Te Ching is not an Aristotelian or a Confucian, or for that matter, an English gentleman, but rather something of a lunatic, by most worldly standards at least, or perhaps something of a holy fool. As much as the Tao is often described in these pages as a path of natural prudence, restraint and equilibrium, it is also a path of paradoxical extravagance, utterly uncompromising in its rejection of many of the seemingly indispensable supports of worldly life, and in its embrace of an altogether unworldly ethos of self-abandonment and unremitting generosity.
And you see, here’s an example of where I would be saying ego abandonment and unremitting generosity. Hart says,
The Tao Te Ching did more than any catechism ever had to make me keenly conscious of how unconditional the moral commands of the New Testament were, the insistence on humility, charity, and self-denial, the refusal of wealth and even of any personal possessions at all, the dedication to the least of these, the militantly guileless trust in divine largesse, and how much more disturbing Christ was than Christianity so often is. Similarly, when one looks to the Tao Te Ching, one finds that, as much as wu-wei is a practical ethos, allowing peace and humility to absorb and thereby conquer the violence and ambitions of men—and occasionally women—it is also a scrupulous avoidance of the balance of the ideal mean.
And this realization also helped awaken me to something about the real nature of the agape, the love of the Gospels. I would never wish to subordinate this book’s genius to the dogmatic or ethical categories of Christianity, but it remains startling in its power to make other traditions come to life in a new way.
Wu-wei, again, means non-striving. There’s a saying amongst Christians that says, Let go and let God. That’s wu-wei.
Okay, we’re going to jump to verse 53 now. Hart’s translation says,
If I have only a little common sense,
I shall walk upon the great Way
and dread only to stray from it.The great Way is so very even and easy to walk,
and yet so many people prefer the byways.When the royal court is drowned in gauds and splendors,
the fields are thronged with weeds,
and the granaries are desolate.Some there are who disport themselves in sumptuous finery,
wearing keen swords at their hips,
gorging themselves on food and drink,
storing up ever more possessions.
This is just the gross extravagance of brigands.
Nothing could be more contrary to the Way.
Now we’ll hear the same verse translated by Jonathan Star.
If I had the least bit of wisdom
I could follow the path of Tao quite well
My only fear would be trying to go my own way.
The Great Path is simple and direct
yet people love to take the side routes.See how magnificent the courts have become
The women dress in colorful gowns
The men carry well-crafted swords
Food and drink overflow
Wealth and finery abound
Yet in the shadow of all this splendor
the fields grow barren
the granaries are all but emptyI say this pomp at the expense of others
is like the boasting of thieves after a looting
Surely it is contrary to Tao
Surely it cuts against the grain of the whole empire.
Now here’s how I translate Verse 53. A Simple Gnostic translation.
If our leaders remembered only a little of their gnosis
They would walk the great path of Tao in accordance with the will of the Father and dread putting their egos first.The path of Heaven’s truth and righteousness is straightforward and smooth
Yet people become sidetracked by worldly desires and cling to their treasured memes.Our government buildings are exceedingly splendid
While the farmers’ fields lie fallow and choked with weeds—
The silos and storehouses all but empty.People wear designer clothes and ornate jewelry
And carry gleaming phones at their belts as if they were sharpened blades;
They gorge themselves on rich food and drinks
And accumulate an abundance of material possessions.Surely, this is nothing but larcenous pride at others’ expense.
It is the opposite of the Father’s Will. Truly!
Star’s footnote under the first stanza describes the word shih as “the raising of a banner,” which implies a claim to individuality and name. Star says,
Thus, shih is associated with personal or ego-motivated action and is the opposite of wu-wei, non-action. Acting individually—seeing your action in a limited context—is a by-road, a path leading away from the truth.
The second stanza contrasts the Way of Heaven with ching. Ching is variously translated as
by-paths, side roads, deviations, to be sidetracked, “devious paths,” “by-roads of the mind—too many thoughts.” [and in modern parlance, ‘going down a rabbit hole’]
I translate this concept as our egoically-constructed meme bundles we gather and wear as cloaks that obscure our true Self. Every person has their unique meme-bundle composed of the thoughts and values they love and the thoughts and values they hate. Our meme bundles define who we are in society and what information we gravitate toward and those we run from. Our meme bundle serves as a filter that frames and limits our ability to reason and think for ourselves. [Next week’s episode will review, in depth, my Simple Explanation concept of memes.]
The fourth stanza speaks of the people carrying sharp swords at their sides. I interpret this as our cell phones. The phone is the modern belt-sword and serves the same function for us as the blade did in olden days. The phone is carried everywhere, like the sword. It signals status. It is used for display and ego enhancement. The phone is the personal talisman of modern life, just as the sword was in ancient China. It signifies readiness to do battle. It is required for participation in society.
Thus, verse 53 points to the division between operating out of the true Self that is a fractal of the Fullness of God, versus acting out of ego and pride—fractals of the fallen Demiurge. It aligns ego-enhancing riches such as lavish lifestyles, expensive clothing, and the latest and greatest electronic gear to bad government policies that encourage slothfulness and eventual poverty and starvation.
I feel like launching into some politics here, but I will hold myself back until next week when we will review what memes are and what they have to do with our Gnostic self.
Until then, onward and upward, and God bless us all.
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