Call me skeptical.  But I get a bit nervous when I see stories like this (Xinhua version):

 LANZHOU, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) — The first international
forum on Lao Tzu, known as China’s "father of philosophy", opened Tuesday in
Lanzhou, capital of northwest China’s Gansu province.

    Under the theme "Nature, Science and Harmony", the
forum would focus on the essence and relevancy to modern life of Lao Tzu’s
culture based on his work Tao Te Ching, said Gao Zhanxiang, a member of the
National Committee of the CPPCC and chairman of Chinese Culture Promotion
Association.

    The forum was attended by 120 experts and scholars
from more than 40 countries and regions who made a declaration on the status,
influence and future development of Lao Tzu’s culture, Gao said.

    Lao Tzu, the first philosopher in Chinese history and
father of Taoism, was born 2,500 years ago in the Zhou Dynasty (11th Century B.C
— 221 B.C.), said Zhang Bingyu, an official in charge of foreign affairs.

    "The reason for holding the forum in Gansu was that
Lao Tzu was said to have flown up to heaven from Linzhao town of Gansu, making
it a kind of pilgrimage center for Taoism," Zhang said.

    Tao Te Ching, the universal Taoist text book written
in only 5,000 ancient Chinese characters, contained the quintessential spirit of
Chinese thought and philosophy, Zhang said.

    It had been translated into dozens of languages and
studied by thousands of scholars all over the world, Zhang said.

    The Lao Tzu’ only work had more than 250 different
editions and hundreds of millions of copies in circulation, second only to the
Bible, according to UNESCO.

    The problem here, it seems to me, is that this could be a first step – or, I should say, just another step – along the road (way?) of the commodification of Taoism.  Can’t you just see it: Lanzhou is making itself into a Taoist tourist center.  Think of all the money to be made!  I know, this sounds cynical on my part, but cynics are made, not born.  Since just about every facet of traditional Chinese culture is now open for commercial exploitation, the leaders of Lanzhou are just doing what everyone else is doing and getting in on the commercial bonanza.  I wonder if they will have a Taoist-themed KFC there…

     The press toward commodification seems to require a more concrete personification of "Lao Tzu" than the historical record would warrant.  Although Vincent Shen, in The Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, argues that archaeological discoveries now allow us to believe that the Tao Te Ching was produced before the Chuang Tzu – something that the great sinologist A.C. Graham doubted – it is still not clear that the Tao Te Ching was produced by a single person or when the text came together.  Thus, the various legends of "Lao Tzu" remain quite cloudy.  Was the person who purportedly met with Confucius the same person, or a member of the group of people, who produced the Tao Te Ching?  David Hall and Roger Ames, in the introduction to their translation, accept the idea that the Tao Te Ching is an "authorless text." 

       If that is so, then why do we need to venerate a "father of Taoism"?  Perhaps it makes for a more effective marketing campaign.

     Don’t get me wrong.  I love the TTC.  It has provided me with a great deal of personal guidance and solace in recent years. I think about it often.   But why can’t we just except a more open-ended understanding of its origins?  Why must we have an individual, a creative genius, to whom we can ascribe the production of the text?  Why not just accept a more Taoist notion of the text emerging from a murky and complex past, not really created as a singular thing, but reformed and refashioned continually over time from an unfathomable past.  You know, just like Tao itself:

Way is vast, a flood
so utterly vast it’s flowing everywhere.

The ten thousand things depend on it:
giving them life and never leaving them
it performs wonders but remains nameless.

Feeding and clothing the ten thousand things
without ruling over them,
perennially that free of desire,
it’s small in name.
And being what the ten thousand things return to
without ruling over them,
it’s vast in name.

It never makes itself vast
and so becomes utterly vast.

Passage 34