Taoist classics

I have been reading Tao Te Ching for a couple of days and, honestly, the whole thing looks like an amalgamation of contradictions sewed together. The fact that I'm reading the translation of a translation (Ancient Chinese -> Chinese -> English) and the fact that each translation has some kind strange bias towards a particular point of view doesn't help either. Still, I refuse to believe that a book that has survived over 1000 years and regarded as a classic is simply nonsensical rubbish so I'm making this thread to post my own interpretations of the verses and hopefully read what others think of them. Here is the second verse (Jonathan Star's translation). >Everyone recognizes beauty >only because of ugliness >Everyone recognizes virtue >only because of sin >Life and death are born together >Difficult and easy >Long and short >High and low— >all these exist together >Sound and silence blend as one >Before and after arrive as one >The Sage acts without action >and teaches without talking >All things flourish around him >and he does not refuse any one of them >He gives but not to receive >He works but not for reward >He completes but not for results >He does nothing for himself in this passing world >so nothing he does ever passes And here is my superficial interpretation: The Sage here (and in the rest of the text) is some kind of ego ideal. That is, the (You) you want to become. The first part teaches about perception. The concept of "success" doesn't make sense in the vacuum. It only carries meaning when we can compare two objects (in this case, people) and say "this person is more successful than most people, therefore we can say he is successful". Thus, attaching yourself or your happiness to these relative concepts is meaningless because you can only be on one side if there are enough people in the other. For example, the only way you can be considered "highly successful" is if most people are unsuccessful, therefore what exactly are you achieving? And that's about it. I can talk to myself but I would rather discuss this with someone else so any other interpretation of this verse (or anything related) would be appreciated. (pic unrelated)

>>12160 > refuse to believe that a book that has survived over 1000 years and regarded as a classic is simply nonsensical rubbish Honestly, I think reading Tao te Ching without preparation that is not going to be very helpful. Taoism (like other religions) has a lot more that just its scripture. Other scriptures, practicies, interpretations, apocryphal texts and so on. If you are going to just read text written in different times by people of different culture and traditions, you will not get most of it. Heck, for westerner from the street, even the Bible (= the foundational scripture of their culture) is often and inaccessible. I tried reading it ten years ago, when I was still curious. If I tried that again, I would look for version with explanation comming with it, aimed at college juniors. (Different level might work better for you.)

>>12161 >. If I tried that again, I would look for version with explanation comming with it, aimed at college junior I found a translation with commentaries. It's still someone's opinion but it's much better than bashing my head against the text without any kind of guidance. Thank you.

>>12160 I've read it as well. What I think the book does is point to a truth that can't be expressed with words, "beyond duality". Buddhist koans are kind of similar. When you can grasp non-duality and let go of the things you're attached to, the things you do can become almost effortless, something like if you keep your mind empty there are no worries that can arise, if you don't desire anything you are rich, if you don't "do" anything, you're never tired etc. >He works but not for reward >He completes but not for results This is like this completely unconditioned state that you can achieve, imagine god being beyond all meaning, so for god everything is the same, and whether the universe exists or not is irrelevant, but god cant have any preferences anyway so what does he do? he makes the universe flicker in and out of existence in infinitesimally small intervals, so the world exists but it doesn't. something like that. Another thing which you kind of understood was the yin and yang thing of for example success not existing without failure, but there's also "emptiness is form, form is emptiness" where the inherent lack of something has meaning in itself. >is simply nonsensical rubbish This kind of dismissive attitude and the text being difficult to grasp is referenced in verse 41, it's pretty funny. scroll down https://sacred-texts.com/tao/taote.htm but yeah even if we can't understand it it's not like we can make something like this up ourselves so it is definitely expressing some kind of meaning I guess it's not related but read zen mind, beginners mind next if you want to understand a bit more. I'm not sure how you can read the tao te ching for multiple days, it's like 2 hours of reading. I don't think you're gonna get any more out of it by staring at the verses for long.

The dao that can be spoken is not the eternal dao. If you can't assimilate the bipolarity of the world as an expansion of unity you have a long way to goでしゅ

>Verse 7 >Heaven is ancient >Earth is long-lasting >Why is this so?— >Because they have no claims to life >By having no claims to life >they cannot be claimed by death >The Sage puts his own views behind >so ends up ahead >He stays a witness to life >so he endures >What could he grab for >that he does not already have? >What could he do for himself >that the universe itself has not already done? At glance, this verse seems to be discussing the absurdity of life (i.e. "why do anything?") but, considering the concepts illustrated in the other verses (non-action, non-duality) we can deduce that it's referring to the state complete detachment. This point of view is quite interesting because everywhere you hear that "more" is better. > More knowledge > More ambition > More money However, Lao Tzu seems to imply that you actually need "less". Or, more likely, that you need just "enough".

>>12164 >I'm not sure how you can read the tao te ching for multiple days, it's like 2 hours of reading I'm reading multiple translations + comments translations to reduce bias, and I re-read the same chapter/verse several times to make sure I have at least a faint understanding of what's being said. I'm not in a rush since regardless of whether I finish today, next week, or in a month, I will forget most of it in 1-2 years.

I was going to explain exactly what the daodejing means but then realized that I would have missed the point by not missing the point. Next time I'll probably just not do it and not mention it, or else where would I stop? Here. I can't become the sage because I am me; me is made of 'positive' and 'negative' aspects but I can harmonize their manifestations with 'the dao.' If you cut eyes and a mouth into a guy with no face he's just gonna die. We can't control or really understand the way the world works, just like I can't control or understand the way you interpret things. If I tried to force you to understand the daodejing my way then I'd probably just spoil the fun of it all for you. Better to just let things to grow their own way. p.s. cute picture i like it

>>12177 >Teaching by not-doing Also, I think the point of "The Sage" is that you can't become "The Sage".

Actual daoist here, this translation is bullshit. Try reading translations made by daoists or with daoist commentary.

>>12232 I would rather learn Chinese. I want to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Art of War as well. >this translation is bullshit All translations are bullshit.

Everything can be translated because nothing can be said.

Native Chinese here, I think Dao De Jing is not translatable, because, different from Analects which was written as prose, it was a kind of poetry (韻文). And Dao De Jing itself is the essence of Daoism and thus you can not understand it without enough contextualization. To understand the philosophy of Daoism you should at least know some history of the period of Chunqiu.

taoism and other ancient eastern philosophies are often difficult for westoids to digest because western thinking is very mechanical, reductionist, binary either/or thinking that interprets any complimentary symbiosis as a contradiction, any relationship between two things that are diametrically opposed is a war where either one side must ultimately prevail over the other or both sides must ultimately come to some kind of compromise and be unified into one thing. taoism explicitly rejects this notion right out of the gate in the first paragraph: "tao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Tao; names can be named, but not the Eternal Name." in other words, the unification of reality is forever beyond our reach, it is forever unknowable and unspeakable, whatever names we come up with it, be it tao or god or singularity or whatever, are just empty placeholder words that don't really describe anything because what they are trying to describe cannot ever be described in any capacity. western thought interprets every duality as a contradiction, but a contradiction by definition is two things that cannot coexist, i.e. two things that must be reduced down to one. and the universe is full of dualities that cannot be reduced down to one, all the way down to the fundamental structure of reality. consider an individual electron, a particle that is, according to our current understanding of physics, fundamental and irreducible. every electron has its own intrinsic spin and electric charge and therefore every electron is actually a permanent magnet with a north and south pole which are totally inseparable and irreconcilable. you cannot separate a magnet's north pole from its south pole, you cannot have a particle that only has one pole, such a thing would be logically absurd, it would be like a stick with only one end or a polygon with only two sides. this isn't some kind of weird ancient mysticism, this is measurable proven science, this is the basic universal logic that holds all of reality together. and yet, despite all of this, westoid physicists are still hopelessly searching for magnetic monopoles, some theoretical particle that violates basic logic and could never possibly exist in reality. they are still hopelessly searching for some grand unifying theory that will reconcile the ordered geometric determinism of gravity and spacetime with the chaotic unstructured probabilities of particles and quantum fields. they are still searching for god. why? because they can't get it through their heads that reality is fundamentally composed of irreducible and irreconcilable dualities and cannot be reduced to just one thing, one force, one god, whatever it might be. they can't accept a universe that cannot be understood through traditional westoid reductive reasoning, a universe where we cannot find god and we cannot become god.

>>12232 was laozi a daoist too?

>>12267 What parts of the history do you think would be most relevant? >>12282 >"tao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Tao; names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. I feel like that means that words simply can not truly convey reality and it must be experienced to be understood to any degree. Words only try to convey but they really don't. So it seems the entire book is just saying you wont get it till you get it.

>>12170 >7 > >heaven and earth last forever. >why do heaven and earth last forever? >they are unborn, >so ever living. >the sage stays behind, thus he is ahead. >he is detached, thus at one with all. >through selfless action, he attains fulfillment. Feng and Jane English is the only good translation. The #1 mistake westerns make is trying to cram spiritualism and jesus into taotejing, but in reality, there is nothing like that in it. >when a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone. >when a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done. >when a disciplinarian does something and no one responds, >he rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order. > >therefore when the tao is lost, there is goodness. >when goodness is lost, there is kindness. >when kindness is lost, there is justice. >when justice is lost, there is ritual. >now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion. >knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of the tao. >it is the beginning of folly. > >therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real >and not what is on the surface, >on the fruit and not the flower. >therefore accept the one and reject the other.

>>12160 that is awesome there is so much interest in daoism on this board!! 2 things i would recommend i didn't see mentioned: firstly, familiarity with other works of daoism, in particular the yijing/i ching/已经/book of changes. many people have problems with how dense the tao te ching is, but the i ching (you will probably find it under the wades-giles name) is incredibly lengthy and the version i have has annotations from the modern translator, annotations from wang bi (a 200ad-ish daoist-confucian), and the original text.. so 3 layers of text relentlessly explaining the dao. it has greatly enhanced my understanding of daoism in ways the tao te ching couldn't alone for me. i believe if the tao te ching isn't clicking for you there's no point bashing your head against it reading between lines. better to expand the scope of your educational journey and go around the obstacle rather than get stuck going through. very early in the i ching there is a paragraph on how futile text descriptions of concepts can be, and i think getting stuck analyzing a few dozen sentences with a massive time and culture gap demonstrates that truth. secondly, there are many secondaries to help you understand the tao te ching and daoism as a whole. you said you are reading it in english, and the stanford encylopedia of philosophy has a number of english-language entries on daoism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/daoism/ other people in this thread already mentioned the difficulty of approaching daoism with western theological "mechanical" thinking. this is true of course, but you will not adapt to eastern spirituality by just telling yourself to think less westernly and less mechanically. actually daoism in many respects is more mechanical than western theism. with enough depth of familiarity, the systems of contradiction, similarity, sameness, and oneness will become infinitely more translucent, even if you don't agree with them. good 2hu poast 少女待機中