The Doctrine of the "Mysterious Female" in Taoism

All the people are glad and joyfull

as if they are celebrating upon the great sacrifice of oxen, as if they are mounting a tower in spring.

O! I am the only who is quiet and silent, like a baby who is not yet a child.

O! 1 am fastened and tied

and I have no place to return.

All people behave themselves as if they have more than enough

and I alone am bereft.

O! I have the mind of a fool!

O! Muddled and mixed!

All people are luminously clear

and I am the only one who is dark and conhised.

All people are exact and definite

and I am the only who is obscured and vague. O! I am wavering like an ocean.

O! I am flying in space and I have no place to stop in.

All people behave themselves

as if they have a purpose

and I alone am uncouth and simple.

I am quite different from others by honoring the mother-nurse.

This passage is worthy of careful analysis. It appears to me to offer a key to the understanding of the most essential features of Taoism. And the sentence: "O! I am the only who is quiet and silent, like a baby who is not a child yef' (in Chinese: wo tu p'o hsi ch 'i wei chaoju ying erh chih wei 'wi) is a key to this passage. So, it is best to begin an analysis of the passage with this phrase.

What is the meaning of the words "a baby who is not a child yet" or "a baby who did not become an infant yet"? I think that the text is speaking about the foetus in the maternal womb. In fact, even those commentators and translators who think that the hai (infant, child) here must be changed into its phonetical and practically graphical omonym (the difference between two characters is only one classificator "mouth" written before the original grapheme) agree with this interpretation. The second character hai means baby's cry or baby's smile. But a not-yet-crying baby is a not-yet-born baby.

Therefore, Lao-tzu here compares himself with the nonborn baby. What does he inform us about this baby? This baby-sage is "fastened and tied" by his embryonic "clothes" and umbilical cord, which unites him with the maternal body. This holy foetus has "the mind [or heart-the thinking and conscious organ according to Chinese tradition] of a fool," while at the same time it possesses the highest wisdom. This wisdom seems like nothing but stupidity to ordinary people proud of their common sense. This nonborn baby wavers in the ocean of the womb and "flies" in these maternal waves. The connection with the motherly body and nourishing and feeding the foetus is depicted quite clearly also at the end of the passage where "mother-nurse" (shi mu) is mentioned.If the baby of §20 is a sage, Lao-tzu himself; who then is the mother? The information above makes it possible to conclude that this mother is the great Tao itself; it is the eternal and unspeakable Way and mysterious ground of every existence; the hidden depth of this Tao is the womb wherein the baby-sage dwells. This image directly correlates with Taoist cosmology and cosmogony. It considers Tao to be something like a cosmic womb which embraces the whole universe. The universe enjoys absolute unity (chaotic unity - hun yi) with the maternal body of the Way until its birth, differentiation and divorce from the Way in the course of cosmogenesis. Nevertheless, even in the "born world" some unity with Tao is preserved: it is fed by the power of Tao, which is called Te or Power-Virtue. For example: "The Way gives birth to them and integrity [i.e., Te] nurtures them" (§51). Thus, the connection between birth in the course of the cosmic evolution world and Tao looks quite like the connection between a mother nourishing her child, and the baby itself But in the case of humans, there appears a self concept, an independent, self-containing "I," as an unchanging subject of actions. This kind of egoistic self-consciousness harms the original unity, and humans begin to counteract Tao. The predominant attitude of human actions is no longer the law and measure of the cosmic rhythm of Tao, but egocentric preferences, which change spontaneous natural life into purposeful activities based only on bare subjectivity. Taoism sees egocentricity as the cause of all human sufferings, pains, frustrations-from mortality to social collisions.