Book Review - Stephen Mitchell's "The Second Book of the Tao"

By the time characters such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzu appeared on the earth, the set of poems known as the I Ching or Yijing ("The Classic of Change") was already, well, a classic. It was not only known and admired throughout the culture and the nation that had spawned it, it was also frequently worshiped. This problem would only get worse with time.Yet the wise fellows named above rarely (if ever) mentioned the I Ching in their own work. They just used it. If the prophets, saints, and religious leaders of our Western culture had taken the same approach to our Bible, much error, not to mention vast slaughter, would have been avoided.I was visited by this thought while reading through Stephen Mitchell's newest book, The Second Book of the Tao, his rendition of selections from the collections known as the Chuang Tzu and the Chung Yung. As Mitchell explains in his Preface, he settled on a division of 64 chapters, because "it is the number of hexagrams in the I Ching,
the number of squares on a chessboard, the number of sexual positions in the Kama Sutra, and the only two-digit number ever to star in a Beatles song."What Mitchell has created is truly a wonder -- a sequel that is fresher and more vibrant than the original. For as limpid as his 1988 translation of the Tao Te Ching was, it seems strained at times, as if it's attempting to be a translation, even when he knew that such a thing was impossible. I have, incidentally, had the same impression of my own rendering of Lao Tzu's poems, so perhaps that is merely a projection on my part.But this Second Book of the Tao is an untrammeled dance into the joys of Tao. As Mitchell points out, "if Lao Tzu is a smile, Chuang Tzu is a belly-laugh." Mitchell appears to revel in the bawdy dignity of Chuang Tzu; he delights in the wacky irony and self-satirizing spirit of the Old Master. The renderings of both the prose and verse are spontaneous, exuberant, bursting with unadorned beauty. As Mitchel
l says of the original texts, they "cut close to the bone."This quality is evoked in Mitchell's Chapter 19, the story of Hui-Tzu's attack on Chuang-tzu, in which this proto-pundit compares Chuang-tzu's teachings to an old tree whose "trunk is so gnarled and knotted that no one could cut a straight board from it." Hui-tzu concludes: "Your teaching is like that: big and useless. That's why everyone ignores it."Well, Chuang-tzu responds with a delightful rant on wildcats and yaks and Nothingness. Mitchell comments:[Hui-tzu is] like a mosquito biting an iron bull. His criticism is entirely correct, but it's beside the point...We love to see the sage get the best of it, coming to his conclusion like a tonic chord. How can it matter if he's useful or not? He is planted in his own integrity, and there he stands, gnarled and knotted, perfectly at ease with himself, his roots deep in earth, his branches held up to let the light in.This humor, precision, and gentle rejection of ideolo
gy permeate this Second Book of the Tao, just as they do the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. Another example can be found in Chapter 61, which is the account of Chuang-tzu's behavior after the death of his wife ("he found Chuang-tzu sprawled out on the ground, pounding on a tub and singing"). The story actually echoes the third line of Hexagram 61 from the I Ching ("now he sobs, now he sings. If he stops beating the drum, he finds a comrade"); except that Chuang-tzu has turned the metaphor topsy-turvy. Mitchell's commentary reveals his understanding of this very point:In his reply [to Hui-tzu's shock at his behavior], Chuang-tzu is the soul of patience. It's amazing what lies come out of his mouth. He speaks as though he had waited for his wife to die in order to understand about death. That would have been to close the barn door after the horse was stolen.Throughout this book, Mitchell's commentary is shimmeringly clear, honest, and fun. I can't think of a more delightful and
unobtrusively insightful book on the Tao than this Second Book of the Tao.

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