Taoist Texts

Thanks Daeliun for quoting Zyporin. I see that he did not recognise this sentence Without that there would be no me, to be sure, but then again without me there would be nothing selected out from it all. As being a paraphrase of a well known 2.2 Hard and Whitehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-names/#2.2 paradox from the school of names. Not recognizing that Zy and the rest of them veered as far away from what ZZ says as humanly possible, while he says 5 fairly simple things. 1. What am I, where is the core of my personality? I can not find it in my body. None of my functions or body parts are central to me. 2. If there is no core then a human being certainly disintegrates after death. 3 There are some people who talk about immortality arts but they are useless. 4. So whole human life is one big tragedy. 5. But although my personality dies, still in a human being there is something that does not die.

Right you are Rara:) There is none to see in this translation. Its bunkum. Marblehead managed to catch a good glimpse of what the original says, though. The original meaning goes like this. A master practices breathing and enters into a trance (loses himself) For whatever reason his student wants to learn this 'losing himself' and asks the master how it is done. The master explains that it is done using breathing techniques of which there are 3 kinds (he calls them 'pipes') - man pipe (ordinary human breath), wind pipe, and heavenly pipe. Then master explains that in order to 'lose himself' he has to progress through three stages of this breathing, of which in the second one, in the wind pipe stage, he still retains his consciousness (the wind-maker). The student asks - what about the heavenly breathing? And the master replies: that's the thing, once I go to the third stage there is no one to control the breath ('something else to stimulate ' in Mair's transl.), the breath is spontaneous and I have achieved my goal of 'losing myself'.

Good question. Yes, it was thought to be a special plant 蓍生七十岁生一茎，七百岁生十茎。神灵之物也，故生迟留，历岁长久，故能明审。 If it grows for 70 years, it has one stem, if 700 – 10. It is a spiritual plant, that’s why it grows slow and long, and can divine. 夏殷欲卜者，乃取蓍龟，已则弃去之，以为龟藏则不灵，蓍久则不神。 The diviners of Yin dynasty hunted fresh millefoil and turtle, divined only once and threw those out, because the stored turtle has no soul, and kept millefoil has no spirit. It is the latter Achillea sibirica Ledeb. — The Plant List Achillea sibirica Ledeb. is a synonym of Achillea alpina L.

This bit is not about the futility of life in this world. Its a lament about not knowing what happens in the hereafter. Mair garbled it up.

Guo, the butcher of Zhuang Guo Xiang (Chinese: 郭象; pinyin: Guō Xiàng; Wade–Giles: Kuo Hsiang; died 312 AD) is credited with the first and most important revision of the text known as the Zhuangzi which, along with the Tao Te Ching, forms the textual and philosophical basis of the Taoistschool of thought. He was also a scholar of xuanxue. The Guo Xiang redaction of the text revised a fifty-two chapter original by removing material he thought was superstitious and generally not of philosophical interest to his literati sensibilities, resulting in a thirty-three chapter total.

I agree, its a turtle. as to the Pathetic Peng it goes like this (The turtle and the tree live thousand of years) 而but彭祖 Peng乃今nowadays以久特聞 is famous for his longevity、衆人everybody 匹equates之 him (to turtle and tree)、不but is not he亦also 悲 pathetic乎?。 (because he lived mere 800)

Also, this bit is a incongruous plug, inserted by the earlier editors, who did not dare to throw out the meaningless sentences, and which the translators pretend to make sense ever since. It does not belong here and it does not have any meaning either in the original or in transl. - It's a galloping heat haze! - It's a swirl of dust! - It's some living creature blown aloft on a breath of the air! And the blue on blue of the sky - is that the sky's true color? Or is it just the vast distance, going on and on without end, that looks that way? When Peng looks down, he too sees only this and nothing more. 野马也，尘埃也，生物之以息相吹也。天之苍苍，其正色邪？其远而无所至极邪？其视下也亦若是，则已矣。

而我犹尸之 ..i am like the impersonator of the dead..

There are fairly significant mistakes here 尧治天下之民，平海内之政， Yao governed the people of Underheaven, administrated all withn Four Seas 往见四子藐姑射之山，汾水之阳，窅然丧其天下焉。 Went to visit the 4 immortals on Miǎogūshè, south of Fen River, and abdicated the Underheaven there.

the exact term is 时女 shínǚ (time-woman), 'someone before woman age' , which probably includes both teenage aspect and virginity aspect. The woman character 女 also is used as a pronoun 'you', hence the confusion between translations.

Disappointingly - no. But years later i saw Dan Akroyd on tv, describing exact same thing that we saw that night.

hehe thats amusingly complicated but not true, both the notes and the transl. the original says in that regard. But still kudos to Zy for not mis-translating "This expert speaks like a naive teenage girl." as "It would appear that Chieh Yii's words were directed at you." as Mair did.

Yes, thats one concept here, the second one is that a real man does not care. As to the transl. of this para, only Zyporin got it right. Properly, the dialog goes like this A:somebody told me there is a spirit man who helps the well-being of people. I did not believe him. B: You are right in disbelieving him. He is blind and deaf intellectually. why should the spirit man bother himself with such things? I did:)

but i did! whats the big idea here?

These two seem to talk past each other. A:somebody told me there is a spirit man. B: you are blind and deaf intellectually. why should the spirit man bother himself with such things? wat?

Yes you did Daeluin thanks. Anybody else thinks that the fishbird is the ecliptic? It flies from north to south and up from Earthly ocean to Heavenly ocean during spring-summer, there it descends, turns back into fish and swims back from south to north. is the ecliptic. It flies from north to south and up from Earthly ocean to Heavenly ocean during spring-summer, there it descends, turns back into fish and swims back from south to north.

May be). unfortunately not. like i said, in translation industry the groupthink reigns. Mair wanted to provide something new but it turned out same old. In general, while the recognized translators get the most of ZZ's text right like 75%, they certainly do not understand the overall meaning, and they certainly get 1/4 of the text wrong. The piece you posted contains some more translating mistakes. i can correct those if there is interest.

Of course it is, its plagiarism and group-think all around. Take this para: None of them (or their readers) ever understood that this non-sequitur of If you 're going on an outing to the verdant suburbs you only need to take along three meals and you'll still come back with a full stomach. If you 're traveling a hundred tricents, you need to husk enough grain for an overnight stay. But if you're journeying a thousand tricents, you've got to set aside three months' worth of grain is actually a continuation of the cicada's and dovlet's speech and should be included in the quotation marks. Then instead of a non-sequitur it will become a coherent argument by the cicada explaining why shorter trips are preferable to long ones. You dont need food supply on shorter trips, thats why.

Another gap in logic is between these para: Whats the reasoning between 1 and 2?

Thats a totally reasonable explanation based on these 3 translations. Except the three tenors translators, got the meaning wrong. I looked at the original closely and here ZZ says that Peng-zu who lived mere 800 years is pathetic compared to the turtle and the tree, who live thousands of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Zu

why is that pathetic?

i will send you a PM.

Hehe, There was this master of Single Yang or whatever, who had a sarcastic retort to those who claimed having the EB: "You say you obtained embryonic breathing? Where is your embryo then?" (He is an irritable dude.)

I totally agree. Yours is a good achievment, congrats on that. Please make sure you dont overdo it. I understand, but sorry, no can do. This stuff is secret for a number of reasons. Absolutely, no argument there. Btw, thats one of the reasons for secrecy. If i told here my personal experience here it would be just another story adding to confusion, nothing more.