The TAO TE CHING Revised

On the morning of August 16th, 2023, in the southwest corner of Oklahoma, two teenage brothers who were hunting for rattlesnakes discovered in a small opening beneath a formation of large granite boulders, a piece of flattened bronze with ancient Chinese symbols inscribed into it. Scholars now believe this to be the final poem of the Tao Te Ching, The Book Of The Way And Its Virtue. The piece date

s back to the Chou dynasty around 1100 B.C. and the bronze can be traced back to an area of the Yellow River in north central China. So much speculation surrounds this artifact that only now has it been translated and published in English by Gordon And Busket. Dr. C.B. Wootinflaurt’s recent translation of the Tao Te Ching is the first to include the poem. Dr. Wootinflaurt theorized that the poem must’ve been so controversial at the time and out of step with the rest of the teachings of the Tao that at some point, a king, most likely a Chou king, must have banned it all together. “It was basically a slap in the face to all the other teachings,” said the Dr. in our interview. The artifact is the only known documentation of what is now called Poem # 82. I asked Dr. Wootinflaurt if he had a theory as to why and how the artifact wound up in Oklahoma. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. Here is the English translation of the passage:

82

And now that we know the Way
We know the Way to also be not
Is the Way not the Way because
There is no Way because why?

Because there is no because
Because there is no Way
Because. Because why?

If there is no Way there is no Way

Are we not between the Way
And other Ways we do not know?
Will we not then be between others?
Are we not dreamers in a dream
That we have not awakened from?

If we awaken, are we not awake
From the dream we must dream
To be dreamers of the dream?

If we know that the fish knows not
That he is a fish
If we know that the sky knows not
That it is the sky
How then do we pretend to know
What we ourselves are?
Are we not what we are
Only because we know
Not what we are?

The Way is not the Way
Because there is no Way
Because there is no Way
There is no other Way