As for nirvana, do you suppose one of 'em options is via dolorosa (the problem is the solution — Agent Smith

Intelligence - Bang your head on the table - Bang, ow! Boy that hurt. I won't do that again.

Wisdom - Bang your head on the table - Bang, ow! Boy that hurt. Bang, ow! Bang, ow! Bang, ow! Bang, ow! Bang, ow!.... Bang. Hey... wait a minute!

Have patience. Wait until the mud settles and the water is clear. Remain unmoving until right action arises by itself. — frank

Alas, I am not Lao Tzu.

Just expressing my thoughts about it. We are free to criticize, n'est pas? I think it's a bunch of $##%^$. — Hillary

You've made your opinion clear. Now all you are doing is sniping with no substantive content. As I said, it's harassment. Please stop.

Brother Smith! T Clark is serious!.... — Hillary

You're right, I do take this thread seriously. Please stop harassing it.

the way out of the maze of suffering/agony/angst/pain. — Agent Smith

• Alcohol and drugs
• Death
• Enlightenment

The first two are easy.

Sorry - I should point out that my personal experience of democracy is external to the US system. I wasn’t referring to the ‘separation of church and state’ as such, but to its common (mis)interpretation as the ideal of secularism: as Wayfarer pointed out, the difference between ‘freedom of’ and ‘freedom from’ religion. — Possibility

Separation of church and state is intended primarily to protect religion from government influence rather than the other way around. One obvious way that could happen is that government will restrict religious practice. Surprisingly, to me at least, many Christians also believe that churches' involvement in politics leads to a corruption of faith.

This is another one of those philosophical enigmas that I haven't been able to crack for, what?, the last 30+ years. — Agent Smith

Avoiding attachment without trying not to try to avoid it is the hardest part. Please don't imagine I know how to do it.

Many religious writers are in complete agreement and sometimes go further than atheists on this subject. Just read Christian writers David Bentley Hart or Bishop John Shelby Spong, or one of the best more recently by a Christian writer Kristen Du Mez Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. This is important stuff and can't really be minimized with vague 'straw man' claims. — Tom Storm

Wayfarer has quoted this text several times on the forum. St. Augustine, one of the Catholic Church's Church Fathers, wrote it in 415. It shocked me the first time I read it.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

What's your take on suffering...in an out of Buddhism? — Agent Smith

My own reading of the ancient Sanskrit texts indicates that the correct translation is "All life is surfing."

But seriously, here's one brief explanation from the web:

A common, sloppy rendering of the Truths tells us that life is suffering; suffering is caused by greed; suffering ends when we stop being greedy; the way to do that is to follow something called the Eightfold Path.

In a more formal setting, the Truths read:

The truth of suffering (dukkha)
The truth of the cause of suffering (samudaya)
The truth of the end of suffering (nirhodha)
The truth of the path that frees us from suffering (magga)...

The Second Noble Truth teaches that the cause of suffering is greed or desire. The actual word from the early scriptures is tanha, and this is more accurately translated as "thirst" or "craving."

We continually search for something outside ourselves to make us happy. But no matter how successful we are, we never remain satisfied. The Second Truth is not telling us that we must give up everything we love to find happiness. The real issue here is more subtle; it's the attachment to what we desire that gets us into trouble. — Learn Religions

So, who did you ask was committing the Scotsman fallacy? — Merkwurdichliebe

I think you are committing the No "No True Scotsman Fallacy" Fallacy

Gautama, in my humble opinion, was cursed with hyperalgesia (his pain threshold was low) and hence, I suspect, his description of existence as hellish (1st Noble truth: Life is suffering). — Agent Smith

This shows a pretty egregious lack of understanding of what "suffering" means in Buddhism.

Thank you for the opportunity to use "egregious" in a post.

A truly religious person will likely have a fanatical certainty of the general law that is to be observed... I would go so far to say that there are exceedingly few examples of truly religous individuals, — Merkwurdichliebe

This is certainly not true from my experience.

that is true, but when it comes to well-funded lobby groups taking legal action to prohibit displays of religious iconography in store windows then it amounts to rather more than that in practice. — Wayfarer

I haven't heard of anything like that? Was it in the US? Australia?

Though I love the poem. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Definitely powerful. "The power of will" is not just a cliche.

Kazantzakis' epitaph: I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. — ZzzoneiroCosm

When I first read that I thought - "Yes, he means exactly the same thing that Lao Tzu did." Then I read the poem. It's the anti-Tao. For me, the Tao is about surrender of will. Wu wei is action without intention, without will. Kazantzakis' poem is a paean to Will with a capital "W." He has taken hope and fear and wrestled them till they were bloody carcasses lying on the sand. Then he held up their severed heads for the crowd to see so he could hear their roar. Lao Tzu saw through their illusion and didn't think about them any more.

And it means we include secular institutions, devoid of religious values. So non-religious values are given the power. — Hillary

The people who originally set the rules made the government a secular institution because of the problems they saw with religions intimate involvement with government. For better or worse, that's what we have now. I think the separation is important.

I'm wondering about your take on desire. To my view, desire, broadly defined, is the prime motivator for artistic creation and spiritual aspiration. I get that Toaists and Buddhists (I'm a self-made universalist syncretist of sorts) have a beef with desire, and I understand that unregulated desire, untempered irrational desire, can cause a lot of psychical suffering. But I put desire at the heart of inspiration and inspiration at the heart of a life fully lived. — ZzzoneiroCosm

As I see it, for Lao Tzu, desire denotes our craving for worldly treasure - acclaim, success, money, power. On the flip side, our fear of pain, death, dishonor, poverty. From Verse 24, one of my favorite lines:

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

The alternative is "wu wei," non-action, acting without acting. Acting without intention or desire. Acting spontaneously from our true selves.

If you're acting to achieve something or avoid something, that's desire. If you're acting from your heart, it's the Tao. Or actually, maybe Te. I get confused by that.

Keeping in mind, please, that this is my understanding. Lao Tzu gets pissed when I put words in his mouth.

For that reason, the idea of secularism - that we can exclude religious values from this process, which includes discussions of morality to develop an inclusive ethical framework - is naive at best. — Possibility

Separation of church and state doesn't mean we exclude religious values, it means we exclude religious institutions from government.

To find depth, you have to wander. You have to risk irrelevance. You have to be brave, but most of all, you have to be fascinated. You have to be fascinated by people, by the world, in other words, you have to be fascinated by yourself, Because you are the domain of depth. It's what you think and feel: that's where it starts. It's how you connect the dots. It's how you name the planets. — frank

For me, depth comes from awareness. To the extent that thinking and writing increases our awareness of ourselves, the world, and other people is the extent to which it has depth. In philosophy, I think the focus is on awareness of how we think, how we understand the world, how we know things.

I don't think my way of seeing things is all that different from yours.

Well-thought-through and well-expressed.

Good post. What you wrote makes a lot of sense and is well-put.

If a proposition (herein that causality is logically necessary) can't be proven true but feels true, it could be a self-evident truth! — Agent Smith

I think it's the other way around - if it feels true but we can't prove it, we call it self-evident. That's my problem with the whole concept of self-evidence. It lets people be lazy with the illusion of knowledge.

Have women's movements not been rife with just that? Pointing out that: men were allowed to vote while they weren't; men had superior opportunities to pursue education, etc.... When women point out the double standard in condemnation of their promiscuous behaviors in comparison to men, would you say they're putting men down and if so why? — Valued contributer

Women should have the vote because they are adult citizens of our country with as much right to the benefits of citizenship as anyone else, not because men have it. Ditto for education. For what it's worth, college enrollment is significantly higher for women than it is for men. People who are denied what they deserve just for being citizens, residents, human beings should get it, independent of who else gets what.

As for a double standard for sexual behavior, that's a social issue that it's not much use complaining about. It will require a change in attitude. It also would probably be helpful if both men and women were more responsible sexually. I wonder how many women apply the double standard you are talking about to other women. I don't know the answer to that.

Didn't you like our excited debate? — javi2541997

If the discussion were substantive, that would be fine, but...

A post of serious interest as a pleasant interlude in the knucklehead tennis match taking up most of this thread. Thanks for that.

I defined philosophy as: thinking about knowledge. — Varde

For me, personally, philosophy is the practice of becoming more aware of how my mind works. How I think, feel, act, know. Self-awareness is the destination of every path. I acknowledge that's a non-standard definition, but, in practice, I don't think it is so different from more standard ones.

Why is it putting them down as opposed to bringing them back down to your level? — Valued contributer

That doesn't make sense to me. If it's wrong to put men down, it's wrong to do it to women too. Women are people before they're women. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

With race for example, the outrage over the use of slurs being uneven between certain races. The common explanation for this is that the use of those words don't always carry the same weight given history, political power etc. So things can sometimes seem superficially uneven but not be in reality. — Valued contributer

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth - Are you saying that the situation for black people is "superficially uneven?" If so, you and I couldn't disagree more.

Otherwise however, isolating and condemning hypocrisy is typically considered an egalitarian activity. It is establishing what is generally accepted to be a core tenet of most moral systems: equality. — Valued contributer

You're argument isn't with women, it's with people who show disrespect for men. In my experience, that doesn't include most women.

I appreciate the side-by-side commentaries and translations. So much to puzzle over in this cryptic poem. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I started out just reading the Stephen Mitchell translation, which is very Americanized, colloquial. Many don't like that. I acknowledge he leaves things out and rounds corners, but sometimes his interpretations are those that reach me the best. They are what attracted me to the TTC first and I still like it a lot. If you just want one translation to read, I would suggest that one.

If you've seen my posts here on the forum, I bring up Lao Tzu a lot. After a while it felt like I was presenting myself as more knowledgeable than I am, so I decided to start digging deeper, looking at more translations, reading commentaries. That's what lead me to this thread. I wanted to put some discipline into my ideas.

So, I'm glad you like it. The extra depth has meant a lot to me.

This should be in the Lounge.

A critique

"He who tiptoes can see over the wall and do ballet
She who strains his strides can escape
He who reveals herself shows beauty
She who justifies himself shows resilience
He who boasts herself can win the game and be given a lot of credit
She who prides himself can be powerful"

The "dregs and tumors" turned into gaseous benevolence! — Hillary

That remains to be seen. His advocating of non-desire doesn't mean he's free of it. He surely had the desire to express this. — Hillary

I won't object to your comments, but until you're willing to respond seriously, I won't respond to you further.

Verse 24

Lin Yutang

He who stands on tiptoe does not stand (firm),
He who strains his strides does not walk (well)
He who reveals himself is not luminous,
He who justifies himself is not far-famed,
He who boasts of himself is not given credit.
He who prides himself is not chief among men.
These in the eyes of Tao
Are called ''the dregs and tumors of Virtue,”
Which are things of disgust.
Therefore the man of Tao spurns them.

Stephen Mitchell

He who stands on tiptoe
doesn't stand firm.
He who rushes ahead
doesn't go far.
He who tries to shine
dims his own light.
He who defines himself
can't know who he really is.
He who has power over others
can't empower himself.
He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.

If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.

Ellen Marie Chen

One who tiptoes cannot stand.
One who straddles cannot walk.
One who sees himself is not enlightened (ming).
One who justifies himself is not outstanding.
One who shows off (fa) his deeds is not meritorious.
One who boasts (ching) of himself does not lead (chang).

These to a Taoist are called:
Excess nature (yü te) and superfluous actions (shui hsing),
Avoided (o) even by things.
Therefore the Taoist does not indulge (ch’u) in them.

I think this verse is straightforward, familiar. It something we’ve heard before. Don’t reach for acclaim or success, it will backfire. Do what needs to be done, what your true self tells you to do, without regard for what other people think. If you want to have people’s regard, you can have it. All you have to do is stop wanting it, stop struggling for it.

This from Ellen Marie Chen’s translation of Verse 10:

To give birth, to nurture,
To give birth yet not to claim possession (yu),
To act (wei) yet not to hold on to,
To grow (chang) yet not to lord over (tsai),
This is called the dark virtue (yüan te).

This is from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Verse 13:

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

Derek Lin’s translation of Verse 34:

The great Tao is like a flood
It can flow to the left or to the right
The myriad things depend on it for life, but it never stops
It achieves its work, but does not take credit
It clothes and feeds myriad things, but does not rule over them
Ever desiring nothing
It can be named insignificant
Myriad things return to it but it does not rule over them
It can be named great
Even in the end, it does not regard itself as great
That is how it can achieve its greatness.

Lin Yutang selection from the Chuang Tzu

'He who boasts of himself is not given credit. The man who claims distinguished service falls and the man who achieves fame will be defamed. Who can abandon distinction for service and reputation and return to the common level of men? Tao pervades everywhere, and yet does not show itself, Teh (Tao manifest) influences everything and yet does not make its name known. Live sincerely and plainly like the others and suffer yourself sometimes to be called a fool. Avoid being conspicuous and keep away from a position of power. Do not live for service and fame. Thus you will not criticize others and others will not criticize you. The perfect man has no (thought of) reputation."

Derek Lin’s commentary:

The one who stands on tiptoes, in order to raise himself or herself above others, cannot stand for long. The one who straddles in an exaggerated gait cannot walk any significant distance for long. The one who shows off himself or herself will, ironically, not be clearly perceived by others. The one who thinks he or she is always right will not be considered respectable or admirable by others. The one who incessantly praises himself or herself is not the person with true merit. The one who is always bragging about his or her achievements is not the person with lasting power. Those who are on the path of Tao speak of such things as if they were leftover food or useless growth, like a tumor. They despise such things and regard them with contempt. This is why those who possess the Tao do not engage in such activities. They do not show off, presume, or boast.

I think the reason we can make sense of the Way is more to do with the logical and qualitative structure of the text in relation to the world than anything to do with differences in time or culture. — Possibility

As we've discussed before, and as I've noted in one of my recent posts, I don't see the Tao Te Ching as logical or qualitative. For me, it is metaphorical. Poetic. Experiential.

For myself, I’m reluctant to attribute such intentionality or desire to the original author. — Possibility

I don't think Lao Tzu, as a good Taoist, wrote TTC with intentionality or desire. Or maybe that's what you're saying.

I get that your approach is to make some definitive distinction between metaphysical and physical understanding, but I don’t subscribe to this duality myself. — Possibility

That distinction is at the heart of my understanding, perception, of reality.

Having said that, I don’t feel like we have to go there in this discussion at all. — Possibility

I don't particularly want to talk about metaphysics in general, but it's open season on the metaphysics of the TTC and Taoism in general.

Again, Lao must have had an instinct feeling for the nature of reality. All these poetic lines, except the last nonsensical ones, show a truly striking similarity with quantum field theoretical considerations. Although not expressed in mathematical language, both descriptions certainly have a common. Aren't we all made from the quantum vacuum? — Hillary

I've had my say more than once about this.

If the Tao precedes God, it also precedes the quantum vacuum and any higher dimensional structure. — Hillary

Yes, as I've noted before.

Fritjof Capra was praised and criticized for his Tao of Physics... Capra was on the right track. — Hillary

Capra is another one who doesn't know his metaphysics from his physics. Reading "Tao of Physics" was the first time I remember recognizing that.

English doesn’t lend itself very well to this non-conceptual structure. Most English translations of the TTC have something of the translator’s own life experience and value structures in them, as well as their conceptualisation of Chinese history and culture - none of which can be found in the original text. It makes it difficult to get a clear sense of the text by comparing only one or two English translations. — Possibility

We've had this discussion before. I'm more confident than you are that we can hear what Lao Tzu is trying to say even 2,500 years later from a very different culture. We are all human. There is only one world. Of course different cultures have different kinds of minds, so there is plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding. At bottom, though, it is the experience of the Tao that matters, not the concepts.

For what it's worth, I don't compare one or two English translations. I look at at least five, often more if they seem inconsistent.

FWIW, I think there is some sense in the parallels to be drawn between the TTC and quantum physics. But I also think we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions about ‘knowledge’ Lao Tzu may have had (verses 18-20). — Possibility

I strongly reject this. There may be metaphorical similarities, but people are always ready to mix up metaphysical and physical understanding.

Still, the soft whispering of Nature can be compared with the whirling emptiness of the quantum vacuum. Sift words, not yet fully fledged, ready to be firmly spoken when interaction is there, or measurement, or particles are pulled out of their virtual vacuum state into reality. Sometime with a primordial birth cry, which is a kind of dramatic particle physics... :fire: (whatever the fire means, but seems appropriate) — Hillary

You take something different from this than I do, which is fine.

AS is on to something! Lemme tellya! — Hillary

Nostradamus wrote
Patriots by 10, nuff said
Put your bets down now

Would you say that pointing out a form of hypocrisy in society's treatment of the two genders is standing up for one by putting the other down? — Valued contributer

Yes, I think it is. I've taken exactly the position you're taking in previous discussions. I came to realize that setting this up as a men vs. women thing hurts more than it helps. That's what infuriates me about a lot of feminist ideas.

Lao Tzu was onto something i.e. his mind did know about whatever the hell quantum vacuum is. — Agent Smith

[irony] Yes, and Nostradamus predicted the Patriots will win the Superbowl this season.[/irony]

Let's analyze rationally and offer rational critique. — Hillary

My approach to the TTC tends to be intellectual, rational, but that's me, not Lao Tzu. I don't see it as a fundamentally rational document. It's not irrational either. For me, it's about experiencing the world without words or concepts, if that's possible at all. Can't get much more non-rational than that.

Nature says a lot of words, whispers constantly, screams at times. — Hillary

As I see it, nature may scream sometimes, but briefly, then it stops. We should be like that. None of this whispering. Just be quiet. Say what needs to be said, then shut up. Do what needs to be done, then stop, leave it behind, and go on to whatever's next.

I think this chapter refers to recognising and trusting our temporary nature within Tao. The previous chapter described how the sage manifests effect without intending or desiring to BE the effective agent. — Possibility

I think that's right. I think that "temporary nature" you're talking about is hard to attain. Or at least it's easy to forget. I went back and reread Verse 22 since you brought it up. For me, it was much clearer in what it was saying than this one.

A violent wind or a sudden downpour are temporary events within an ongoing directional flow of energy, or ch’i - Feng Shui meaning ‘wind and water’. If we consider our life event in a similar way, then we have three basic options: we can focus on attracting energy, on losing it, or we can position our being according to the Way, which neither gains nor loses but rather effects an unobstructed flow of energy. — Possibility

Chi, c'hi, qi, energy; is like yin and yang - People say that it is central to understanding the Tao, but it rarely or never is mentioned in the Tao Te Ching. I have some sense of what it means based on my experience with tai chi. I think it points to the fact that Taoist practice includes meditation. That's something I don't generally take into account.