Ziporyn argues that chang and its cognate heng, used in the first line of the Laozi, mean something more like “ordinary” or “everyday”, rather than “constant” in the sense of unchanging, hence “eternal”. (p 213)
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They also suggest a normative value: “authentic”—consistent with our experience. Bringing these two together he suggests that a more accurate translation would be “sustainable”.
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“A dao that is spoken is not a sustainable dao.” A spoken dao is a fixed dao, but all things are in flux, including our opinions on what is Dao. Every “Dao” is only just a dao. There’s no need to imply “the Dao” is even mentioned here.
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“Zhuangzi said to Huizi, ‘Confucius went along for sixty years and transformed sixty times. What he first considered right, he later considered wrong. . . .’ Huizi said, ‘Confucius certainly devoted himself to the service of knowledge.’ Zhuangzi said, ‘No, Confucius had let go of such things. . . . Let’s just say I am no match for him!’” (27; p 115)
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This curious apocryphal exchange gives us a sense of how our spoken daos can be informed of their unsustainability and be thereby returned to their validity. Their validity rests in their self-understanding that they are but temporary and tentative understandings. Daos are unavoidably spoken; the point is to not cling to them as fixed, sure and true.
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Ziporyn offers: “Guiding courses [daos] taken as explicit guides cease to provide sustainable guidance.”
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This was at the heart of the Daoist revolution. With the political world in chaos everyone was looking for the True Dao—absolutely reliable Guidance. Daoism realized there is none. It does not just say that there is none, however, but also that the lack of such Guidance can itself guide us. (Following some personal dao—guidance—is unavoidable.) Stepping through this gate can be a mind-expanding experience, an adventure in “our homeland of not even anything”. We are released into “far and unfettered wandering”.
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Returning to the Tianxia’s representation of Laozi as having founded his dao on “the constancy of Nonbeing”, we see that the author did not understand how this renders this dao unsustainable. But then he was at heart a sympathizer with the more historical Confucius who was indeed “devoted to knowledge” fixed and sure.