(East Asian mythology)

The ‘madman of Ch‘u’, the first of the ‘irresponsible hermits’, according to the Confucians, was Li Er (born 604 BC), but it has become usual in China to refer to the founder of Taoism as Lao-tzu, the Old Philosopher. Though he may have been keeper of the royal archives at Loyang, few details are known of his life. Lao-tzu was ‘a hidden wise man’, reluctant to found a school and gather a following.

According to legend, Lao-tzu simply decided to leave society. He would have vanished without trace had not the customs official on the border asked him to write a book before he retired from the world. So the sage wrote about ‘the proper way to live’. Then he went on. No one knows where he died. Later Taoist mythology was to claim of the final journey into the West that it allowed Lao-tzu to visit India as the Buddha. The reticence of both sages, their profound intimation of the way in which words limit what should really be said, encouraged such an identification, though this myth was put about in the hope of reducing the influence of Buddhist priests among the population. In dealing with competition from Confucianism Chuang-tzu (350–275 BC) had fallen back, too, on an archetypal encounter between Lao-tzu and Confucius.

Having washed his hair and left it hanging down his back to dry, Lao-tzu looked like a lifeless body on the arrival of Confucius. When the latter asked how it was that this impression arose, Lao-tzu replied that he ‘was wandering in the unborn’. When asked what was to be got by such wandering, he informed Confucius that the result was ‘perfect goodness and perfect happiness’. Chuang-tzu asserts that the revelation struck a chord in the visitor's breast, yet it is to be doubted that he would have appreciated the shamanism here, if ever an interview had taken place. The vastness of the universe, and especially the spiritual regions traversed by Lao-tzu, held little attraction for the reforming zeal of Confucius.

A Dictionary of World Mythology. Copyright © Arthur Cotterell 1979, 1986, 2003. All rights reserved.