LAO TZU

Laozi may be the most influential person who possibly never existed. The earliest accounts, written centuries after his supposed life, are already legendary. Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BCE) offers three possible identities and admits uncertainty. Either the confusion is historical, or Laozi successfully practised what he preached — becoming nameless.

The traditional story: Laozi was born in the state of Chu around 571 BCE, named Li Er or Lao Dan. He served as keeper of archives at the Zhou royal court — a position giving access to ancient wisdom. He watched the Zhou dynasty decline, its rituals hollow, its virtue exhausted. He concluded that civilisation itself was the disease, not the cure.

Confucius, the story goes, visited Laozi to ask about ritual. Laozi’s response devastated him: “The bones of those you quote have long since rotted. Strip away your proud airs and many desires, your ingratiating manners and excessive ambitions. They are of no use to you.” Confucius left saying he had met a dragon — something beyond ordinary categories.

Aged and weary of the Zhou court’s decay, Laozi departed westward. At the Hangu Pass, the guardian Yinxi recognised a sage and refused to let him leave until he had written down his wisdom. Laozi produced 5,000 characters — the Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Virtue) — then rode his water buffalo into the west and was never seen again.

The historical truth: the Daodejing likely reached its current form around the 4th century BCE, compiled from earlier sayings by multiple hands. “Laozi” may be a title applied retroactively to a foundational text. But this hardly matters. The book exists. It has shaped Chinese thought as profoundly as any single work. Whether one author or many, the voice is coherent: ironic, mysterious, subversive, profound.

What speaks through the Daodejing is a vision of reality as Dao — the Way, the flow, the source that cannot be named. To live well is to align with Dao: yielding rather than forcing, emptying rather than filling, governing by not governing. The soft overcomes the hard. The low receives the high. The sage teaches without words and acts without acting.

The Dao is the central concept — and immediately, language fails. The Daodejing opens by declaring its own impossibility: the Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao. Ultimate reality exceeds all categories. It is not being, not non-being, not something, not nothing. It is the source of heaven and earth, the mother of all things, prior to any distinction.

Yet we can gesture toward it. The Dao is like water: soft, yielding, flowing to low places, yet wearing away stone. It is like an empty vessel: useful precisely because of what it lacks. It is like an infant: weak, flexible, alive. It is like the uncarved block (pu): simple, natural, before culture has shaped it. These images do not define the Dao but point toward it.

De (virtue or power) is Dao manifest in things. When a person or society aligns with Dao, de flows through them. The sage has de not through effort but through effortlessness — wu wei, non-action. Wu wei doesn’t mean doing nothing; it means doing without forcing, acting without acting, achieving without striving. Water doesn’t try to find the lowest point; it flows there naturally. The sage doesn’t try to be good; goodness flows through non-interference with nature.

This inverts conventional values. The Daodejing praises weakness over strength, ignorance over knowledge, emptiness over fullness, femininity over masculinity, softness over hardness. “The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest.” “The sage puts himself last and finds himself first.” “To have little is to possess.”

Politics follows: the best ruler is barely noticed. “When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.'” Govern by not governing. Keep the people simple, their bellies full, their minds empty. Complexity creates problems; law creates criminals; morality creates hypocrites. Return to the natural village, where people live and die without traveling far, hear the roosters in the next village but feel no urge to visit.

Is this primitivism? Mysticism? Anarchism? All and none. The Daodejing resists reduction. Its paradoxes are not puzzles to solve but koans to live. The point is not understanding the Dao but flowing with it.