The Sayings of Lao Tzu

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Lao-Tzu, Lionel Giles (T) · Living the Life Series · 39 pages

The sayings of Lao Tzu in Lionel Giles's translation, thirty-nine pages, framed by Blavatsky's commentary and opened by an abstract and train of thoughts. A table of the semi-exoteric constitution of man is included.

The framing argument is comparative and is stated in the title: that the Emptiness of Lao Tzu is the Absoluteness of the Buddhist — no-thing yet every-thing, a state of perfect uncreated unconsciousness, a presence which ever was, is and will be. A preliminary observation sets up the comparison by distinguishing two Chinese traditions rather than treating them as one: that the Chinese mind is too philosophical to fashion a supreme being in its own likeness, and that the higher aspirations of Christ and Buddha have nothing to do with the cold, practical philosophy of Confucius, who is said to lack the depth of feeling and spiritual striving of his contemporary Lao Tzu. A second thread concerns transmission: that from Lao Tzu down to Hiuen-Tsang the literature is replete with allusions to the fair island of Shambhala and the wisdom of the trans-Himalayan adepts. The most specific claim is a structural one, and it is what the table at the back exists to show — that Lao Tzu mentions only five of the seven principles of man, omitting the highest, Atma, and the lowest, which is called no principle at all but the cadaver. Giles's translation then supplies the sayings themselves, so the reader can weigh the comparison against the text.

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