If Laozi were alive today, how would he survive? He was China’s earliest philosopher—not exactly “philosopher,” a Western term—but a man wholly immersed in the Dao. The Chinese character Dao carries multiple meanings: road, speech, principle, the Way of Heaven, and more.

A road is visible to the eye; speech is audible to the ear. A simple principle may be understood by some, misunderstood by others. As for the Way of Heaven, most people cannot comprehend it. Laozi did not care about such distinctions. He single-mindedly conceived the Dao, eternal and boundless, existing before heaven and earth. Simply put, the Dao is comparable to the Western concept of “God.” “The Dao gives birth to One; One gives birth to Two; Two gives birth to Three; Three gives birth to all things.” Thus the world flourishes, rises and falls, becomes increasingly chaotic, eventually reaches joy to excess, declines, is destroyed, and finally returns to the primordial Dao.

Is our universe also within the Dao? Are modern theories of cosmic expansion within the Dao? If Laozi lived today, would he emigrate to the West and work quietly in an astronomical laboratory?

Laozi was born in the late Spring and Autumn period, about three thousand years ago. He served as the head librarian of the Zhou royal library, his profession devoted entirely to reading. Books were written on bamboo or wooden slips, strung together with hemp or leather cords—a painstaking process. First, bamboo or wood had to be selected, smoothed, and polished, almost like paper; then treated to prevent rot, insect damage, cracking, or warping; finally, the slips were strung into “blank” scrolls, which scholars with the privilege of writing would inscribe with text.

Nothing is recorded about Laozi’s upbringing or early employment. What is certain is that he was born into a chaotic era, when feudal lords constantly invaded each other, spilling rivers of blood. Laozi observed all this silently. Unlike Confucius, he did not gather disciples and wander the states. The royal library must have been enormous: a scroll of several thousand characters, or collections of scrolls, could be larger and heavier than a wheel, and tens of thousands of characters would require multiple carts and oxen to move. As the librarian, Laozi needed assistants to open, roll, store, and shift the scrolls. Reading as a profession in ancient times was no trivial task—no wonder the majority of commoners, and even many nobles, were illiterate.

Yet Laozi, full of knowledge, wrote nothing, occupying the library but not using it. Time passed in such idleness until he turned seventy, hair white. The new Zhou emperor, unable to tolerate it any longer, ordered the library’s relocation to the state of Chu. Facing imminent unemployment, Laozi quietly left, riding backward on a round, plump water buffalo, heading for the secluded Hangu Pass.

Passing the pass, he was stopped and imprisoned. Unable to escape, he was forced to compose his only work, the Dao De Jing, a text of five thousand characters. Laozi, formerly at the center of the state’s political apparatus, had never held office. Now, freed from society’s constraints, he reflected on the “political experience” of the vast universe.

Like many intellectuals living under autocracy today, Laozi accepted his salary and spent his days lightly. Yet internally he remained vigilant. He knew that he and the war-displaced commoners alike were weak. In the Dao De Jing, he praised the weak: infants, whose vitality is preserved and whose cries are loud but not tearing; flowing water, which adapts to terrain, enduring through time, capable of overwhelming obstacles; plants, rooted in the earth, outlasting weapons; dust, the simplest material closest to the Dao, drifting with sun and wind, neither born nor destroyed.

Having expounded his Dao, he submitted it to the gatekeeper and regained his freedom. Still riding backward on his buffalo, he vanished from public view, trusting the animal to carry him to a fertile, safe place, protected from greedy humans. To Laozi, all things have no future. If someone paints a bright and alluring future, it inevitably forces people to strive, remove obstacles, even kill—this is the procedure of dictatorship, the same as Marx’s Communist Manifesto: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to win.”

The future lies in the past. Over three thousand years ago, Laozi rode backward, observing the past. If modern Chinese valued their historical footsteps as Laozi did, we would already live in the future. Laozi said: “Governing a great country is like cooking a small fish.” That is, a great country should be governed gently; otherwise, the fish—or the people—will be ruined. The Communist Party, however, acted against this principle, countless political campaigns killing or crippling people, stirring society into an indigestible chaos.

Laozi also said: “Neighboring states see each other; the roosters and dogs are heard, yet the people grow old and die without visiting each other.” That is, people of different states can live harmoniously while staying apart, enjoying family and inner life. If a stranger arrives, it is a joyful surprise.

All of this returns to the Dao. Laozi used many metaphors: “The great form has no shape, the great sound is scarcely heard, the great fullness seems empty, the great skill appears clumsy.” In short, what cannot be seen or touched is higher, deeper, and eternal. “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao”—the Dao can be spoken of, yet not expressed in ordinary words.

Thus Laozi lived in his secluded, extraordinary Dao. He remained a librarian, but his “national library” was invisible and silent. He lived an exceptionally long life, reportedly 160 to 200 years. Sima Qian records in the Records of the Grand Historian that when Confucius visited him, Laozi said: “Though we have become old bones, our conversation still echoes in the ears of future generations.”