randy_byers: (2010-08-15)
As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and gives to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,
who use force to protect their power,
go against the direction of the Tao.
They take from those who don't have enough
and give to those who have far too much.

The Master can keep giving
because there is no end to her wealth.
She acts without expectation,
succeeds without taking credit,
and doesn't think that she is better
than anyone else.

-- Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

QOTD

Sep. 3rd, 2010 08:33 am
randy_byers: (2010-08-15)
For Dao begets but does not keep,
Works its way but does not bind:
Authority that does not rule.
Such is the meaning of "hidden power".

-- Laozi, Dao De Jing, trans. Moss Roberts

(Roberts: 'This is what sublime favor or power means: it goes unacknowledged; there is no way to reciprocate.')
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
'Evolving simultaneously with these various currents of thought was that represented by the text presented here, the school known as Taoism. Like many of the other schools, it looked back to an ideal age in the past, but one that predated the dawn of Chinese history and written culture, a kind of dream of Neolithic simplicity and innocence. Addressing the ruler, as did many of the thinkers of the period, the Taoists counseled him to spurn both the earnest moral strivings of the Confucians and Mo-ists and the harsh and meddlesome measures of the Legalists and instead to adopt a policy of inaction, or laissez-faire. Speaking to the ordinary men and women of these troublous times [in the Warring States period], the Taoists instructed them how to survive by crouching low and keeping out of the line of fire. What in particular sets the Taoists apart from the other schools of philosophy is the marked strain of mysticism and quietism that underlies so much of their thought, a strain that seems to reach far back into the roots of Chinese culture. It is this strain that in a Taoist text such as the Tao Te Ching engenders its most potent symbols: water, darkness, the valley, the female, the babe.'

-- Burton Watson, introduction to Tao Te Ching (Shambhala Publications, 1993)

QOTD

Jul. 7th, 2010 08:07 am
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
'This chapter is full of words like huang (wild, barren; famine), tun (ignorant; chaotic), hun (dull, turbid), men (sad, puzzled, mute), and hu (confused, obscured; vague). They configure chaos, confusion, a "bewilderness" in which the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way. It can't be found in the superficial order imposed by positive and negative opinions, the good/bad, yes/no moralizing that denies fear and ignores mystery.'

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, notes on her English version of the Tao Te Ching
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
The empty hub at center
Allows a wheel to roll
The vacancy within defines
The function of a bowl


One of the reasons I turned to Lao Tzu is that I started thinking about the pleasures of emptiness. Specifically, I started to feel that my mind was full of nonsense and needed to be emptied. By nonsense I mean worries about things I don't understand, imaginary political arguments with people that leave me furious and humiliated, emotional feedback loops that never resolve and simply fill me with unhappy noise. I got stuck in an imaginary mental scenario on my walk to work this morning, involving somebody I haven't heard from for months, and it was essentially a projection of my worst fears into a situation about which I have almost no information. And I think that's what most of my mental noise is: an attempt to create meaning where there is no real basis for meaning or understanding. Which is something I think humans do a lot. The brain is a pattern-seeking device, and if there is no obvious pattern, it still attempts to find one, even if it has to generate a false pattern of its own.

Thus the Tao Te Ching constantly reminds us that it's better to be empty than full. It's better to let meaning come to you than to try to force it onto a murky situation. The hard thing is to accept that I don't know. The hard thing is to keep my very active mind from just making shit up out of sheer business/busyness. And that, I suppose, is why people meditate: to empty the mind of nonsense. That's why gardening is therapy for me: a simple task that clears and calms the mind.

Lao Tzu

Jun. 11th, 2010 09:30 am
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?


-- Lao Tzu (trans. S. Mitchell)

When I find myself in times of trouble, Taoist masters come to me. A few years ago I read several translations of Chuang Tzu. Now I'm starting to look at Lao Tzu more closely. One thing that immediately becomes apparent is that the Chinese text is a kind of Rorschach test for English translators. The sense of it varies vastly from one translation to another, and every translator projects their own preoccupations. There are also a huge number of English translations of Lao Tzu. Does anybody have any favorites? I've got one by Moss Roberts that includes commentary on the Chinese words, which I think is the kind of thing I'm looking for at the moment. I want to get a sense of the problems/ambiguities the translator is wrestling with. Some interesting comments on various translations here.
randy_byers: (Default)
Chuang Tzu, as I have said, rejects all conventional values, and as a result, like so many mystical writers, he rejects the conventional values of words as well, deliberately employing them to mean the opposite of what they ordinarily mean in order to demonstrate their essential meaninglessness. When a writer does this, he of course invites misunderstanding, no matter how dazzling the literary effects he achieves. This is what has happened to Chuang Tzu. His grammar is regular enough; his sentence patterns are for the most part like those of other writers of the period; but, because what he says is so often the direct opposite of what anyone else would say, commentators have again and again been led to wonder if he really does not mean something other than what he says, or if the text is perhaps corrupt.

-- Burton Watson, Introduction to Chuang Tzu -- Basic Writings

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