It always struck me how much of the writing is dedicated to statecraft. — Isaac
I sing this to my stonemason knees when they complain: — Valentinus
It's trying and failing to understand that leads to the mystery. — T Clark
Right from around 50ish, we get a lot of, essentially, advice about how to govern. Is that too simplistic a reading, is it meant to be allegorical, or is he literally speaking to governors and generals? — Isaac
[2:1] The Master said: “If you govern with the power of your virtue, you will be like the North Star. It just stays in its place while all the other stars position themselves around it.”
[Comment] This is the Analects' first statement on government. Scholars of Chinese thought have commonly placed great emphasis on a supposed radical distinction between Confucian “authoritative” government and Daoist “laissez-faire” government. But numerous Confucian passages such as this which suggest of the ruler's governance by a mere attunement with an inner principle of goodness, without unnecessary external action, quite like the Daoist wu-wei are far more numerous than has been noted. This is one good reason for us to be careful when making the commonplace Confucian/Daoist generalizations without qualification. — Translated by A. Charles Muller
To me, being and non-being are very central. In oversimple terms – Non-being = Tao; Being = 10,000 Things. — T Clark
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
I am ambivalent about this stanza. Maybe I mean confused. — T Clark
The Tao Te Ching can be read as a conversation with the Analects of Confucius in this regard. There are agreements and disagreements between the two but they share a sensibility regarding the defects of Draconian approaches to order. — Valentinus
Objective reality and the Tao are both metaphysical entities. They aren't true or false. They are useful or not useful in a particular situation. — T Clark
Lao Tzu is sometimes considered the "anti-Confucius." — T Clark
1The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonder
I read the importance of wu wei as recognizing that there is a process underway that is generated by the play of opposites but does not consume the opposed elements that keep reproducing the things that are. — Valentinus
I don't agree that "consciousness interferes with action." I think it is more like "talking about action" interferes with consciousness. — Valentinus
I wonder if this means in choosing to think a thing good or bad, you create a reversal by this very thought action. — Tom Storm
Maybe it means that the more you conceptualize life along these lines, the more you create its opposition. — Tom Storm
‘Objectivity’ is a modern idea. The word itself came into use around the time of Leibniz. It is associated with the emergence of the exact sciences. Taoism is not objective in that sense, but allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic. — Wayfarer
Note the juxtaposition of 'without desire' (which is related to wu-wei, not acting, the detachment of the sage) and the 'observation of the essence', with those who are 'with desire', who 'observes it's manifestations (i.e. the 10,000 things). 'Differing in name' - the named being 'the conditioned', the domain of phenomena. — Wayfarer
I guess I don't see this as a choice, at least not a conscious one — T Clark
My reading - It's the resistance to something bad that leads to its growth. If you want to stop something, stop fighting it. This stanza really resonates with me personally. — T Clark
My newbie take on this comports with yours. There seem to be a lot of these sorts of intriguing constructions. Do not do the thing you think, it is the reverse of what you think. I can't quite formulate this. — Tom Storm
The big question is, is something lost in the translation? — TheMadFool
Well, I did major in Comparative Religion, and although we didn’t spend a lot of time on Taoism, in particular, there are analogs for the ‘unmanifest’ or ‘the nameless’ in other cultures as I’ve tried to point out.
In the Semitic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - the ‘supreme principle’ is idealised as a deity, God, or Allah. In Taoism, the ‘supreme principle’ is idealised as ‘the Way’. — Wayfarer
This is not to say that ‘the Tao’ is like, or is, a creator deity or God. It’s a different conception, but it’s still concerned with the ‘origin’ or ‘the source’ of ‘all things’. So it occupies a similar role in Chinese culture that God might in earlier Christian culture, but without saying that ‘the Tao’ is, therefore, a God, because plainly it’s not. — Wayfarer
I think the reason you find it confusing is because it is indeed a very hard notion to grasp. It has to be allowed that the sages - such as Lao Tzu - are accepted to have insights that we, the hoi polloi, do not. — Wayfarer
As such it has a depth of meaning which is not at all obvious. You have to allow for the cultural context. — Wayfarer
In some of the Abrahamic faiths, didn't they have prohibitions against speaking the name of God? The idea that the name of God is unspeakable seems similar to how Taoism handles it. Is that you are saying? — T Clark
I think it's quintessentially Chinese in many respects. My Anglo physiology doesn't really suit it. — Wayfarer
Sure. That's why it's good to read more than one translation. Also, I think differences in translations mirror differences in meaning in the TTC itself. I'm not sure about that. For me, the whole exercise is impressionistic.
Most importantly - this is not an intellectual exercise and I don't think Lao Tzu intended it to be. I think he was trying to transmit an experience to us. The Tao is not a thing, it is an experience. If you can experience that, it can really clarify what he's trying to say. The Tao is a pathway. That is how TTC is often translated - The Book of the Way. — T Clark
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
This is the heart of it. The TTC is about reality before concepts. If it is put into words, it's no longer the Tao. The Tao is unspeakable. It's what was before there was anybody to think about it. It's also a joke. In this book, we're going to talk about what can't be talked about. I see the TTC as a bunch of snap shots of the Tao. Lao Tzu is trying to show it to us without letting the words get in the way. We're supposed to get our view of the Tao in our peripheral vision. — T Clark
All in all, the political verses are not my favorites. — T Clark
I think it is both in the sense that the "Empire" is presented as a condition that involves all those who participate in it rather than a result of a specific class pursuing articulated ends — Valentinus
Here’s a link to a great website that has a whole bunch of translations, including Mitchell’s
https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html — T Clark
Another thing your commentary to "a good man is a bad man's teacher" reminded me of was the legal positivist idea of a Grundnorm. That last one might seem really strange considering what it attempted and was concerned about but the implication is the Grundnorm stays out of reach without a possibility to really name it. — Benkei
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