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'''Lao Tzu''' (also known as Lao Tsu) was a Chinese philosopher who wrote the book: "The Tao Te Ching" ("The Way" or "The Path") which became the foundation for the philosophy of [[Taoism]]. <ref> http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html </ref>

'''Lao Tzu''' (also known as Lao Tsu, best transliterated as "laozi", 老子) was a Chinese philosopher who wrote the book: "Dao De Jing" 道德经 ("The Classic of the Way and its Virtue") which became the foundation for the philosophy of [[Daoism]]. <ref> http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html </ref> The current consensus in sinology is that there was not a single author known as "Lao Zi", and instead, the Dao De Jing had multiple authors, working together.  The work is also seen not as a mystic and spiritual text, as it is often seen by laymen, but as a practical work of political philosophy, developing out of the chaos (乱,the most feared word in the Chinese language) of the [[Warring States]] period of Chinese history.  The work is notoriously difficult to translate, due in part to the inherent difficulty in translating classical Chinese, which has no punctuation, and where meaning depends massively on context, and partly due to the lofty concepts and subject matter.

== Biography ==

== Biography ==

His exact date of birth is not known but he is believed to have lived during the Eastern Chou dynasty. Lao Tzu was not his true name, but a title of honor that was given to someone considered to be a wise sage; it translates as "Old Master." <ref> http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/laotzu.html </ref>  

His exact date of birth is not known but he is believed to have lived during the Eastern Zhou dynasty in some traditional "biographies" of him (based predominantly on folk tales), although as aforementioned, the consensus is that he was not one human, but many, and he likely lived quite late on in the [[Warring States]] era (战国，in [[simplified Chinese characters]]. Lao Zi was not his true name, but a title of honor that was given to someone considered to be a wise sage; it translates as "Old Master." <ref> http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/laotzu.html </ref>   In the [[Daoist religion]], separate from the philosophy of the Dao De Jing and the rest of "daojia", 道家, or [[Daoist philosophy]], Lao Zi is seen as a prominent religious figure, and possibly related to the Buddha, due to the influx of Buddhist thought on Daoist religion in the [[Tang dynasty]].  Although both Chinese and western academics agree that there was no single "old master" or single sage who wrote the Dao De Jing, religious Daoist clerics continue to believe in this figure, and revere him as many revere(d) Confucius.

According to legend, Lao Tzu worked as custodian of archives in the Emperor's library. At the age of 80, disillusioned by the wordliness of men, he decided to leave civilization and embark on a journey into the desert, riding a water buffalo. When he arrived at the final gate of the great wall protecting the kingdom, the gatekeeper persuaded him to record the principles of his philosophy in a book (The Tao Te Ching) for posterity before he left. <ref> http://www.yakrider.com/Tao/laotzu.htm </ref>

According to legend, Lao Zi worked as custodian of archives in the Emperor's library. At the age of 80, disillusioned by the wordliness of men, he decided to leave civilization and embark on a journey into the desert, riding a water buffalo. When he arrived at the final gate of the great wall protecting the kingdom, the gatekeeper persuaded him to record the principles of his philosophy in a book (The Dao De Jing) for posterity before he left. <ref> http://www.yakrider.com/Tao/laotzu.htm </ref> This story comes from the writings of [[Mozi]], another Warring States philosopher, who originally worked as a siege engineer.  The story is also mocked by the great Chinese 20th century satirist, [[Lu Xun]], in his collection, "Old Tales Retold", written between 1922 and 1935, in which Lao Zi, leaving the central states (中国), is asked by the border guards to recount the tales of his love affairs and sexual misadventures, but instead recounts the Dao De Jing from beginning to end - Lao Zi's thick accent ("Shanxi mixed with Hunan") is misunderstood by the guards and the assembled audience, and they ask him to write down some of his lecture notes.  On reading the manuscripts after Lao Zi has left, the guard says, in a translation published by the Beijing Foreign Language Press in 1961: "The Way that can be told of is not the Unvarying Way! [the beginning of the Dao De Jing - '道可道,非常道']... Bah!  The same old farrago.  It's enough to make your head ache... The fact is, I went expecting to hear about his love affairs.  If I'd known we'd be in for all that mumbo-jumbo, I wouldn't have gone to sit there for hours in agony."

== Philosophy ==

== Philosophy ==

Lao Tzu believed that the way to happiness was for people to learn to live in harmony with nature. This idea is called "wu-wei", which means "doing by not doing".  <ref> http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/philosophy/taoism.htm </ref> His philosophy was that everything alive shares a universal life-force. The two sides to the life-force are called the [[Yin and Yang]].

Lao Tzu believed that the way to happiness was for people to learn to live in harmony with nature. This idea is called "wu-wei", which means "doing by not doing".  <ref> http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/philosophy/taoism.htm </ref> His philosophy was that everything alive shares a universal life-force. The two sides to the life-force are called the [[Yin and Yang]], although this is more a part of Daoist religion than Daoist philosophy, a subset and bastardisation of Daoist philosophy that began in the mid-[[Han dynasty]] period, inspired by the more esoteric and "spiritual" passages of the Dao De Jing. Small nations and little governance are part of the philosophy of the Dao De Jing - chapter 80, in particular, is intended to express an idyllic land, where the "states" (国) are small enough that "there may be another country in the neighbourhood so close that they are within sight of each other and the crowing of cocks in one place can be heard in the other" (from the John C.H Wu translation).  It is difficult, however, to fully understand the philosophy of the text without placing it in cultural and historical context, and without understanding both the classical Chinese language and the background concepts and ideas of classical Chinese philosophy as a whole - for instance, the lack of separation between "actor" and "action", coming from the lack of distinction in the classical Chinese language between noun and verb, in the same way that one cannot understand ancient Greek philosophers without looking at their context and cultural and philosophical assumptions. 

== Quotes from the Tao ==

== Quotes from the Dao De Jing ==

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". <ref> http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24004.html </ref>

"A journey of a thousand li (里) begins from where one stands". <ref> http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24004.html </ref> ("千里之行始於足下"), commonly translated as "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"; the former translation is the closest to the original, translated by renowned translator and sinologist, [[Wing-Tsit Chan]], the latter being a more westernised translation, that is not as close to the original language of the text as it could be.  The quote is from the 64th chaper of the Dao De Jing; the quote is translated by John Wu as "A journey of a thousand leagues starts from where your feet stand", which is also accurate and in accordance with the "於足下" section of the phrase, although the term "league" may not be an accurate translation of "里", a unit of measurement which is not equal to any precise measurement in English.

"Those who know do not speak, those who speak, do not know" <ref> http://www.thetao.info </ref>

"Those who know do not speak, those who speak, do not know" <ref> http://www.thetao.info </ref> "知者不言。 言者不知".  (This particular quote is of great use in the teaching of classical Chinese, showing the concision of its writing, and the use of the grammatical particle "者", meaning "one/those/he/she, etc, who...", as well as the use of mono-syllabic words in place of the di-syllabic modern Chinese syntax - and the two parts of the phrase, mirroring each other, are typical of the text of the Dao De Jing.)