The Inner Light
George Harrison

"About a century after Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was inspired to write his poem 'The Ancient Sage' (1885) by reading the first English translation of The Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue (Daode jing), the most popular rock band of the 1960s recorded a song in Bombay, India, whose lyrics are derived from chapter 47 of that work: in 1968 'The Inner Light' appeared on the B-side of the Beatles' single 'Lady Madonna.' The chapter came to the group's attention when Juan Mascaró (1897-1987), a noted translator of Sanskrit and Pali texts — including the Bhagavad Gita (a version still in print in the Penguin Classic series), the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada and other Buddhist texts — wrote to George Harrison (1943-2001).

"As Harrison recalled in his autobiography, after hearing 'Within You Without You' (1967), a song heavily influenced by Indian classical music, Mascaró sent the guitarist Lamps of Fire (1958), his anthology of inspirational religious texts from different parts of the world. Many of the selections are translated by Mascaró a number of chapters from The Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue are said to be 'rendered by J. Mascaró,' a label indicating that — like Martin Buber, who 'translated' the same text — he arrived at his 'version' by introducing stylistic revisions to translations by others. Mascaró himself did not read or understand Chinese. In the letter accompanying the book, Mascaró suggested that Harrison write a song using 'a few words of Tao' and pointed him to chapter 47 as an example. The musician did just that, using Mascaró's rendering with only minor changes for the lyrics of 'The Inner Light.'

 
"Without going out of my door
I can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows

Without going out of your door
You can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of your window
You could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows

Arrive without traveling
See all without looking
Do all without doing"