Laozi

Laozi (c. 604 BCE - c. 500 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher and writer traditionally regarded as the founder of Taoism and the author of the Tao Te Ching. Ancient accounts place him in the state of Chu during the Zhou dynasty and describe him as an archivist at the royal court, though modern scholarship treats his historical existence and dates as uncertain. ^[1][2]

Traditional account

The earliest sustained account of Laozi appears in the Records of the Grand Historian compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BCE. It gives his personal name as Li Er and places his birth in the state of Chu, and states that he served as keeper of the archives at the court of the Zhou dynasty. ^[1]

The same source relates a meeting at which the young Confucius sought instruction from Laozi and came away comparing him to a dragon. Sima Qian himself reported conflicting traditions and identified more than one candidate for the figure, an ambivalence that has shaped every later discussion of his biography. ^[2]

The Tao Te Ching

Tradition holds that Laozi, dismayed by the decline of the Zhou order, travelled west and was stopped at a mountain pass by a gatekeeper who asked him to set down his teaching before departing. The result was a short work in some five thousand characters, later known as the Tao Te Ching, or "Classic of the Way and Virtue". ^[3]

The text is composed of brief, often paradoxical chapters in a compressed poetic style. Its central term, the Dao or Way, names an unnameable source and pattern underlying the natural world, which human beings are urged to accord with rather than resist. ^[2]

Ideas

Among its best-known concepts is wu wei, action that does not force or contend, often translated as effortless or non-coercive action. The work praises softness, emptiness, humility and the yielding strength of water, and advises rulers to govern lightly and reduce interference in the lives of their subjects. ^[3]

Questions of authorship

Most scholars now regard the Tao Te Ching as a composite text assembled over time rather than the work of a single hand, with material reaching its present shape by the fourth or third century BCE. Manuscripts recovered at Mawangdui and Guodian in the twentieth century have pushed the textual record back considerably and shown significant variation in the ordering of chapters. ^[2]

Legacy

Together with the Zhuangzi, the text became the foundation of philosophical Taoism, and Laozi was later venerated in religious Taoism as a deity under the title Taishang Laojun. The Tao Te Ching is among the most translated books in the world, and its ideas influenced Chinese art, medicine and statecraft as well as Chan and Zen Buddhism. ^[4]