/lit/ - Literature

>>15615376
"The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name."
*closes book*

>>15615376
Honestly? One of the few things worth reading if you are just looking for something outside of entertainment

>>15615386
Why?

Alright imagine existance is everything through a window but the tao is the wall the window is mounted on and everything behind it. Now imagine a large white readheaded futa with monster breasts furiously raping a crying black man tied in shackles with blood pouring out of his ass and sloshing onto the ground intermingled with tears, sweat, and drool. That is american history.

>>15615376
Interesting as an introduction into another school of thought than exists in the West, extremely important for anyone looking to understand Chinese and Japanese history, but not really important or applicable in practical terms in today's Western society. It's more political than philosophical, it's addressed to the ruling elite of nobles and state intellectuals of ancient societies, certainly not meant to be read by peasants, serfs or anyone like that.

>>15615558
you have a very fucked up and autistic view of reality if this is what you got out of the work

>>15615647
You are a midwit impressed by platitudes

It was probably ahead of its content have been integrated in western philosophy

>>15615386
You got filtered by that? Really?

Is it worth reading a translation? I've heard Chinese can be extremely hard to translate and there aren't really any good translations for the Tao Te Ching. Is that true?

>>15615753
Stephen Mitchell's translation is good.

>>15615558
>not important or applicable in practical terms
>it's more political than philosophical
you are a retard

>>15615558
The Wu Wei concept is pretty good and can be applied to your everyday life.

>>15615753
>>15615823
seconding Mitchell

I enjoyed the Tao Te Ching but like a fool I read it first. A better introduction to Taoism is the Zhuangzhi-I read the Brook Ziporyn translation and it had a fuckton of useful, added commentary in the notes-which lays out its concepts in great detail, mainly through parables and examples both historical and not. read that, then the tao te ching.

favorite chapters?

Eighty

A small country has fewer people.
Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster than man, they are not needed.
The people take death seriously and do not travel far.
Though they have boats and carriages, no one uses them.
Though they have armor and weapons, no one displays them.
Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing.
Their food is plain and good, their clothes fine but simple, their homes secure;
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
And crowing cocks and barking dogs are heard across the way,
Yet they leave each other in peace while they grow old and die.

very comfy

>>15615968
Is this Heidegger?

Untranslatable

>>15615968
probably this

Eleven

Thirty spokes unite around one hub to make a wheel.
It is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle.
Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel.
Doors and windows are chisel out to make a room.
It is the empty space in the room that gives its function.
Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial.
While the emptiness of void is what can be utilized.

>>15615968
Beautiful

>>15615968
>>15616098
I'm wondering how intelligent Laozi must have been to write this, while no one since in China or Japan has any where near paralleled its creative effort.

>>15615558
That is only one of the two books that make up the Dao De Jing.

>>15615386
holy shit nigga learn to abstract

Once again, I will remind them.

>>15616194
Is that the straight translationese of the original Chinese version?

>>15615376
One of the greatest works of wisdom ever written.

>>15616231

Yes, by the great Boodberg--a forgotten Socrates.

>>15616322
Did he translate the whole thing like that or just select excerpts? I'd be curious to try and decipher an entire version of the Tao Te Ching like that.

>>15615546
Or the chinese history...

>>15616460

If he completed the full thing, he kept it to himself.

You can find his chapter 1 in an article called "Philological Notes on Chapter One of The Lao Tzu. "

>>15615376
its the plebfilter of Taoism

>>15616542
Thanks! I'll check that out.

Absolutely beautiful. It has helped me find peace within myself and go through life in a far less anxious or stressed manner. I keep rereading it constantly and find something new every time.

>>15615386
Kek, based and taopilled.

>>15615968
what does this mean

please stop shilling stephen mitchell when he doesn't even know any chinese and interpolates gendered pronouns (always female) into his "translation" arbitrarily, completely obfuscating any possibly interpretation of the work. It's not like the ddj needs obfuscation when it is literally impossible to translate it from classical Chinese into modern Chinese let alone an indoeuropean language.

While it is true that the text is untranslatable, I can understand not everyone has the decade it takes to learn classical Chinese. The best version I can recommend is the Gu Zhengkun translation that has facing Chinese and pinyin with a good philosophical introduction. He was a professor at Peking U. Ok beyond that the Lau translation (1989) is good, also bilingual. For a socio-historical translation with relevant context see the LaFargue translation (1992). Henricks' 1989 translation includes the Mawangdui manuscripts while his updated 2000 translation also treats the more recent Guodian discoveries. Also see the Allan and Williams 2000 translation for Guodian analysis.

But those are just translations. If you are actually interested in the text a number of classical commentaries have been translated into English. Rudolf Wagner has written two monographs on Wang Bi, one of which has an excellent annotated translation of his metaphysical commentary on the DDJ. Wang Bi's text was absolutely central to subsequent understandings of laozi. Aside from this Stephen Bokenkamp published the Xiang Er commentary in his book Early Daoist Scriptures. That is more of a fringe commentary, but was important for the first form of organized Daoism, the Celestial Masters. And third, probably the most accessible commentary focusing on politics and self-cultivation is the Heshang Gong commentary, translated by Dan Reid. If you read a good translation with historical introduction and those three commentaries you will have more than a passing understanding of what is going on in this chronically misunderstood text.

Please please please /lit/ stop it with the stephen mitchell

>>15616722
Is Thomas Cleary a good translator?

>>15616743
he's fine. He knows Chinese at least.

>>15615386
Based and Laozi pilled

>>15615968
Chapter 40:

As socks cover feet,
shoes cover the socks.

Footwear means underwear,
underwear means socks.

>>15616124
There's a good chance it wasn't just one person.

>>15615386
>He has never heard of apophatic theology
The very beginning is exactly why it is better than anything Christian(or other Jewish religions) theology ever produced. Their mysticism is almost okay, because of negation.
>>15615376
One of the best religions, alongside Vedantic Hinduism and Neoplatonism.

>>15616669
>Absolutely beautiful. It has helped me find peace within myself and go through life in a far less anxious or stressed manner. I keep rereading it constantly and find something new every time
Nice, me too

>>15615753
all translations are different you must read four or five to really see how terribly bias each one is

i got the legge
what should i watch out for?

>>15616944
Legge is fine, he also knew Chinese.

I just want people to read actual translations and not whatever Stephen Mitchell produced (an interpretation?). Ursula Leguinn is in the same camp btw. Doesn't know any Chinese. Don't buy her book.

Ok here is an example of what is wrong with any translation into any language. Classical Chinese is an artificial language that was never actually spoken. It is purely literary. Think of it like mathematics. It is not tensive or declined, it is extremely abstract, and one of the great virtues of the ddj is how it takes advantage of the ambiguity baked into classical Chinese.

道可道 The Dao that can Dao/be Dao'd (voice is ambiguous)
非常道 Not constant Dao
名可名 Name that can name/be named
非常名 Not constant name

Ok that's pretty straightforward right? The uses of the term Dao in other classical Chinese sources are legion. In Mengzi he uses the term as a verb that basically just means "to speak," which is why the first line is often expressed the Dao that can be Spoken. It could just as easily be translated as Path that can be tread or mapped. All of these are not wrong. It's a virtue of the ambiguity of classical Chinese.

无名天地之始 no name heaven earth's beginning
有名万物之母 has name 10,000 things' mother

here's where it gets fucky. You can take the first two characters in these lines together to refer to the nameless 无名 and the named 有名, and this is what a lot of translations do, for example the Henricks translation I recommended above. This is not wrong.

However, and Wang Bi pointed this out in the third century, you can also separate those two characters, making the first a substantive and the second (name) a verb. So then 无名 becomes "non" (which Wang Bi fashioned into a philosophical concept similar to "nothingness" or "nonbeing") "is named" 名 the beginning of heaven and earth" 天地之始

Then in the next line 有名 "the named" when separated becomes 有名 "Being is called" 万物之母 the mother of the 10,000 things. So depending on how you pair these two characters this passage is either an ontological discussion of being and nonbeing or it is an expression of Laozi's linguistic skepticism. The reality is that both of these interpretations are present and valid in the classical Chinese, but when you are translating it (and as I mentioned, even when you are translating it into modern Chinese) you have to choose one or another, or you have to write a long winded post on 4chan explaining how both interpretations are valid. And this is just the first couple lines of the first poem. This sort of shit is absolutely everywhere throughout the daodejing. It is a profoundly multivalent text. The scholar Russell Kirkland writes about how Laozi was a great marketer, creating a totally deracinated text with not cultural references that could be picked up and transplanted anywhere.

>>15617100
What do you think of the Secret of the Golden Flower?

>>15617132
I love it and think it is a wonderful text. The Jung/Wilhelm version, while being a totally misguided translation of a corrupt recension of a truncated version of the actual text is totally fascinating. Thomas Cleary's translation is good. Monica Esposito has done excellent historical work on the text's different versions.

I do think it's completely an accident of history that that particular text has ended up becoming famous. In the context of Daoist alchemy it is a very abstruse text focusing mostly on highly advanced techniques, and as Esposito's historical work has shown, it seems at least sections of it were written down through fuji, or Daoist spirit writing, which is always at least semi-garbled. It shows clear Daoist-Manichaean fusion though, which is very rad, and I think future research will demonstrate the text was part of the white lotus or one of those wonky late-qing apocalyptic religions

>>15615945
Do you have any particular examples how it can be applied?

>>15616707
Most of it means that classes should know their place, and farmers especially shouldn't care about anything but the land they toil on. Peasants should be well fed and completely illiterate and unschooled in Laozi's opinion.

>>15615376
I dunno some parts seemed very political like trying to create a docile citizen who would make it easy for the ruling class to lord over

>>15615386
This and unironically.
No one has convinced me to even try reading past that.

>>15617194

“Coolidge made virtue of inaction” writes Amity Shlaes, on The ‘Scrooge’ Who Begat Plenty:

>It is hard for modern students of economics to know what to make of a government that treated economic weakness by raising interest rates 300 basis points, cutting tax rates, and halving the federal government — so much at odds is that prescription with the antidotes to recession our own experts tend to recommend. It is harder still for modern economists to concede that that recipe, the policy recipe for the early 1920s advocated by Coolidge and Harding, yielded growth on a scale to which we can aspire today.

Is this American Wu Wei?

>>15617212
that's depressing

>>15617212
Adding: the reason Laozi thinks this is how it should be is because he was a philosopher during a long era of warfare, rife with plague and starvation. To him, cultural differences between Chinese states of the same cultural sphere aren't important enough to warrant all the death, destruction and misery they bring. So, people should stop having superflous cultural values which bring conflict. If labour is made more efficient, people will have more time on their hands to develop strong opinions, and that will foster unrest and conflict. Laozi's thoughts are very much a product of the time and place he lived in, and much of China's history revolves around the exact same problem Laozi addresses: how do we Chinese, who are similar enough to be reasonably easy to annex by one another, yet different enough to have differences to kill over, supposed to live in peace with each other?

>>15615738
>>15616173
>>15616880
I think you may have missed something

>>15616194
>>15616231
>>15616322
>>15616460
>>15616542
>>15616653
Very interesting anons! This is why I love this board, you always end up finding something very valuable by the group-input of which one would never have found ever.

>>15615386
>>15617231
The map is not the territory, but that doesnt mean the map is not useful.

>>15616880
>One of the best religions, alongside Vedantic Hinduism and Neoplatonism.
You seem to have forgotten Christianity anon.

>>15615692
>It was probably ahead of its content have been integrated in western philosophy

>>15615376
>Thoughts
none

>>15617100
>>15617185
Thank you for this anon.

However, would it be so impossible for a few very adept scholars to write a page by page explanation given the right introduction and essays for the reader?

>>15617423
>>Thoughts
>none
Based Taoist.

>>15617426
I mean in a post above I recommended three commentaries that have been translated into English. There are over 100 commentaries on the DDJ in the Daoist canon. They all have different takes. No one can agree on the text and no amount of scholarly explication will remedy that.

Also at the end of the day it's poetry and nothing can replace that either.

>>15617454
What are your thoughts on Heidegger and the TTC?

>>15617470
i'm really interested in that subject but I don't know much about it. I think it is likely he stole a lot of his important ideas from Okakura Kakuzo. I also love Kyoto school philosophy which is heavily indebted to Heidegger.

I've seen selections from Heidegger's translation in Steven Burik's book The End of Comparative Philosophy and the Task of Comparative Thinking. I suppose I think Heidegger's engagement with ddj is an example of the text's polyvalence. Why do you ask?

>>15615376
Reminded me of the SNL sketch where they talk to John Lenin's ghost.

>>15615386
Based and enlightened.

>>15615386
fpbp

>>15616722
What about Ellen Chen or Red Pine?

>>15615386
By trying to name the infinite, you limit it. Even the term infinite cannot be used with full confidence

>>15615376
Its a classic for a reason. Zhuang Zhi is also good.

>>15615376
My all time favourite. Laozi is a genius. His observations on mysticism make the Tao Te Ching the spiritual classic after all these years.

>>15615376
It made me wonder, hard, whether I would have finished it or thought twice about it if it weren't famous. From a certain angle, it's a treasure trove. At the same time, it's full of such vague proclamations that half of what you read in it could be you projecting meanings that aren't intended.

Some idiot here could write a small section of this and I'd bash his ass for being a shitty thinker and saying blatantly wrong stuff. But people know Laozi was a genius, so that makes it worth looking twice at. And on a second look there's something to it.

I dunno. Still haven't figured out what to make of it. Worth a read anyway, I'd recommend it to anybody.

>>15617380
Christianity isn't a monistic/pantheistic spirituality. It has a personal god.
Those listed are also typically among negative theology/apophatic theology, which makes it a lot more spiritual and a lot less like a cult.

>>15618575
Come on, anon. Have you read any real theological book? The very Godhead is inscrutable. Read, for example, Dionysius.

>>15618575
Also,
>pantheistic spirituality
you are a retard

>>15616848
sounded so real I had to double check

>>15618624
Christianity cant be discovered independently in nature, even if you try to amend it with Neoplatonism.

>>15618635
You sure get hostile when people don't believe your childrens story book. Given what a gullible simpleton you are you really shouldn't be calling anyone stupid.

>>15618688
Christians are like that. It's not really a spirituality, but a cult. Also checked

>>15618694
They really shouldn't be able to discuss metaphysics given that they can't possibly theorize about it honestly since they've already drawn conclusions before they even started. You can't experience earnest introspection when you've already given away your mind and soul to some guru.

>>15617423

>>15615823
Aside from the fact he shoehorns in his personal philosophy & biases, tainting the overall “”translation””

Discuss the TTC as a text is great, but how does one practice Taoism as a philosophy/religion?

>>15615386
Anybody who continued to read past that line was filtered.

>>15617933
>Why do you ask?
Sorry took so long, I don't know too much about the subject either but I know that there's a lot around Heidegger and east Asian thinkers like Laozi, one example of this would be that Heidegger was working on a translation of the ddj but I believe either died before he could complete it or gave up considering it impossible.

>>15618575
>and a lot less like a cult
Oh shut up anon, stop being such a LARPer. You seemed to have never attempted to understand the mystery of the image of Christ, but I'm sure as hell not trying to convert you now. It would be a very long conversation, and I know the exact thing I would begin it with and how you would reply and how it would stretch out. The point is, you don't actually have a belief in the mystical if you're just happy with what you believe in the self-value it gives to you. So at least try to look into it and not be such a fedora on the topic.

>inb4 not an argument
Obviously it's not proving Christianity, but it is your own ignorance and lack of thought on the subject, but you did that yourself by using the word "cult" debasing the truth of the matter.

>>15619447
>stop being such a LARPer.
>attempted to understand the mystery of the image of Christ
couldnt bare the cringe to read further

>>15616098
It's incredible how similar this part is to Heidegger's conference Das Ding.

>>15615823
I prefer Thomas Cleary's.

>>15615386
How such a short sentence can contain so much power to unlock the human mind's own potential is beyond me, its beyond dense in its meaning.

Such a line would make Nietzche sweat.

>>15617100
holy shit i didn't know ambiguity could be so based. tired of westoid autists thinking a language must be a fixed and discrete taxonomy of all that can and will ever be. absurd nonsense.

>>15615386
>filtered by standard eastern spirituality
ahahahahaa

>>15618290
...You just did the same

>>15615386
Based

>>15615823
>>15615959
Mitchell is literally a hack.

>>15618680
>what is the numen, nothingness, creature-consciousness
you are unironically a proud idiot

>>15615968
20
The difference between a formal “yes” and a casual “yeah” – how slight!
The difference between knowing Truth and not knowing it – how great!
Must I fear what others fear?
Should I fear desolation when there is abundance?
Should I fear darkness when that light is shining everywhere?
Nonsense!
The people of this world are steeped in their merrymaking as if gorging at a great feast or watching the sights of springtime
Yet here I sit, without a sign, staring blank-eyed like a child
I am but a guest in this world
While others rush about to get things done
I accept what is offered
Oh, my mind is like that of a fool aloof to the clamour of life around me
Everyone seems so bright and alive with the sharp distinctions of day
I appear dark and dull with the blending of differences by night
I am drifting like an ocean, floating like the winds
Everyone is so rooted in this world yet I have no place to lay my head
Indeed I am different. . . .
I have no treasures but the Eternal Mother
I have no food but what comes from her breast

>>15618680
oh forgot to add that the Trinity reflects all unfolding of creation and is imprinted in nature itself. Check that Tesla quote about the number 3 and its multiples

>>15615968
The movement of Tao is to return
The way of Tao is to yield
Heaven, Earth, and all things are born of the existent world
The existent world is born of the nothingness of Tao

>>15618680
>Neoplatonism
Platonism fits perfectly with Christianity not by chance, but it only reflects its relation to creation in a natural way, not in a transcendental one. This is one of the many motives why Christianity preserves better the transcendental element and therefore is spiritually superior - not to mention that Platonism relies too much on reason.

>>15617100
What are your (very general, sorry for the obscure question) thoughts on the Zhuangzi? I've read Watson and some of Ziporyn, and i sense that i've read one of many multitudes of understandings, akin to the complete morphability of the Daodejing.

>>15618721
>>15618694
>>15618688
>metaphysics
>theorize
imagine being such an absolute retard. do you think the void, darkness, the One, Trinity, Tao, Logos can be theorized, positively comprehended, rationalized?

>children story book
no wonder you can read and see nothing beyond the concrete words your eyes reach.

remember the thread in which you are.

also, read >>15619447, >>15621780, >>15621795, >>15621822

>>15619447
>you don't actually have a belief in the mystical
Exactly, anon. These people regard themselves to be inclined to spirituality but they can't get rid of their distorted conceptions regarding whatever they have been brainwashed to hate.

>>15615968
81, the last one

Truthful words are not pleasant,
Pleasant words are not trustworthy;
Those who are good do not dispute,
Those who are disputatious are not good;
Those who know are not learned,
Those who are learned do not know.
The Sage does not store up things,
The more he does for people, the more he has;
The more he gives, the more he gains.
The Way of Heaven,
Is benefitting, not harming.
The Way of the Sage,
Is acting, not contending.

>>15619399
High IQ and enlightened post

>>15615376
"The biggest dump
is often softest."

- Low-key

>>15615386
Kek

>>15621884
>brainwashed to hate.
People don't hate you or your cult because others have been told to do so, they do it because you are repugnant faggots. Just look at the way you retarded cock smokers derail a thread about Taoism because you are absolutely incapable of other people not being similarly programmed NPCs.

>Imagine reading TTC without this
https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,jc,rh

>>15622611
Read the thread you peabrained subhuman. We are discussing it because a neurotic poster must needs mention how Christianity is somehow (he does not know) inferior. You have been brainwashed to the point of cherishing the mentality of an unironic fedora. You can’t even conceive how absurd it is to proclaim yourself “spiritually connected” and reject whatever you don’t like (or think you don’t because you can’t even think for yourself). You are merely another idiot who has not bothered to actually think about what you say.

>>15622614
Thanks for that.
Why do translations differ so much? Reading different translations is like reading an entirely different book.

>>15622849
>a neurotic poster must needs mention how Christianity is somehow (he does not know) inferior.
They expressed a preference without saying anything about Christianity, you threw a big fat tantrum because you're a brainwashed faggot and couldn't handle not being given e-props on 4chan like the retard you are.
Kill yourself my dude.

>>15622849
Please get over yourself. I dont know why Christians have to shit up every thread and put on that 'graceful and kind' act with each other.

>>15621851
My opinion of Zhuangzi is that he is the greatest philosopher of all time and it's not even close. If you ever want to study classical Chinese, I advise going through Paul Rouzer's New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese. You begin with short lines out of Sima Qian and end by reading an entire chapter of the Zhuangzi and it is the most satisfying language-learning experience you can imagine.

The watson translation is excellent. So is A.C. Graham's. Most translations you will find only have the inner chapters, so make sure you get a copy that has the outer and miscellaneous chapters. Again to understand Zhuangzi, after reading a good translation, it is advisable to read classical commentaries on him, for example the Guo Xiang, see Brook Ziporyn's Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang.

>>15622857
Because of different interpretations. Chinese is a very ambiguous and context-reliant language.

untranslatable book
no worries, classical chinese is a top tier language and you will have no regrets learning it

>>15623162
Even if this is true then it is an irrelevant argument. It wouldn't matter if the actual Tao was a Chinese manual on how to safely lubricate your boyfriends butthole because when somebody in an English forum asks what we as English speakers think about the English Tao we are obviously referring to the very un-gay philosophy that is laid out in English Tao te Ching and not whatever ridiculous -what if's- you are referring to.

>>15616707
being one of the last passages from the work it encompasses a lot symbolically, but i believe it emphasizes the tao or Way's natural tendency toward the simplest most peaceful means

>>15622914
and I don't know why fedoras need to bring in literally every thread how much they don't know about Christianity apart what he learnt from common sense and hate it regardless.

>>15622882
>without saying anything about Christianity
read the first mention of it in the thread: >>15616880
The braindead fedora doesn't even know what mysticism is if he thinks they don't refer to the exactly same numinous identity.

>>15623365
>wahhh bu-but muh bible though