Taoist Texts

李仲强－－吴君确－－马炳文、马寿俊

 

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4953b81b0101hvd7.html

 

 

 

吴君确

http://baike.baidu.com/view/10583481.htm

 

存: accumulate　　　deposit　　　exist　　　keep　　　live

存

 

agreed. accumulate and deposit is better than guard

Why not just work the Received Version to avoid lots of misunderstanding, mistranslation,misinterpretation, misleading and arguments....???

'cause we really really like all of those

also... work is a four letter word

with references to sex, femininity, immortality (the absurdity of), and of course Tao..

 

you had me at sex

Ascribe it to the simplicity I've been cultivating, perhaps, but I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not...

I am genuinely laudatory and elated at your insight

Also I am sarcastic about all poor souls who held forth on the subject of valley spirits. What can you do thou? Elvis has left the building.

Guodian

 

30

不谷以兵强於天下 Are without desire to wage war

57

我谷不谷而民自樸 I desire no desire and the people simplify themselves

46

咎莫僉唬谷㝵 No fault is more common than greed

 

The GD author, at least, very certainly used 谷 as desire

 

Excellent, excellent Dusty, that finally settles it. One mystery less, there is no valley spirit in TTC, there never have been, and 2500 years of cryptic vocabulary is owed to a simple misread. Brilliant.

 

 

 

I had 綿綿 as "continuous" -- where does 'guard' come from?

 

hmm i just noticed that ctext does not GD for ch. 6. By guard I meant 存

 

道德經6

《道德經》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。

《列子·天瑞》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地之根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。

《老子河上公章句·成象》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。

《馬王堆·老子甲道經》: 浴神□死，是胃玄牝。玄牝之門，是胃□地之根。縣縣呵若存，用之不堇。

《馬王堆·老子乙道經》: 浴神不死，是胃玄牝。玄牝之門，是胃天地之根。縣縣呵其若存，用之不堇。

also in favor of neigong theory from a roughly contemporaneous text

 

容成公者，自稱黃帝師，見於周穆王，能善輔導之事。取精於玄牝，其要谷神不死，守生養氣者也。髮白更黑，齒落更生。事與老子同，亦云老子師也。

 

http://ctext.org/lie-xian-zhuan?searchu=%E7%8E%84%E7%89%9D#n285625

 

take semen send to the Dark Female wanting the gushen not to die

浴神不死 The desire to be immortal [a god that does not die]

 

i would love 浴 or 谷 to be variants of 欲 but is it supported elswhere?

Why instructive?What instruction?

 

to guard 'it' non-stop 綿綿若存，

 

Gu Shen is also in Liezi and Baopuzi... have you see these? I can send this as needed.

 

Liezi just quotes TTC so its not an independent source; could not find it in BPZ on ctext

http://ctext.org/baopuzi?searchu=%E8%B0%B7%E7%A5%9E

so yes please if you could

 

 

. This makes me think of the Central Scripture of Laozi...

me too, since they belong to same tradition but different strands of it since TTC nomenclature is not in Zhongjing

道德經6

《道德經》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。 《列子·天瑞》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地之根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。

《老子河上公章句·成象》: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。綿綿若存，用之不勤。

《馬王堆·老子甲道經》: 浴神□死，是胃玄牝。玄牝之門，是胃□地之根。縣縣呵若存，用之不堇。

《馬王堆·老子乙道經》: 浴神不死，是胃玄牝。玄牝之門，是胃天地之根。縣縣呵其若存，用之不堇。

 

 

This chapter is a mess on a completely different level from the rest of the TTC which is a fine mess in its own right. Almost none of its terminology is attested anywhere else besides TTC and is not repeated within TTC.

 

Its two lines are different in purpose. The first one appears to be definitive,

 

谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。

 

in the same format as formulas in other early texts like

三面之人不死，是謂大荒之野。(Shanhai jing)

… here is a three faced man who doesn’t die, he is called the savage of great wilderness

 

The second one seems to be instructive.

 

綿綿若存，用之不勤。

 

The first protagonist in the chapters is a ‘valley spirit’, which is not attested at all besides as in TTC, which makes it is a dismissible misunderstanding. The second variant, ‘a bathing spirit’ is not attested either, however there is a rare combo graphically similar to the latter

 

內官不過九御，外官不過九品，足以供給神祇而已，豈敢厭縱其耳目心腹以亂百度？.

 

《國語 - Guo Yu》 [Warring States (475 BC - 221 BC)]

 

to feed spirits 給神.

 

The first sentence then would be a short hand for: The place where the spirits are fed is called 玄牝 (a combo unique to TTC). However 玄 is an alias for Heaven 天

 

指海。 汉 扬雄 《太玄·饰》：“次五，下言如水，实以天牝。” 司马光 集注：“牝，谷也。天牝，谓海也。

http://www.zdic.net/c/9/3f/99771.htm

 

玄牝 is the same as 天牝 which is a sea, in this case a sea inside the human body as per

 

天牝從來，復得其往，氣出於腦，即不邪干。

 

..what comes from the Heavenly female send back again, let qi rise to the brain then no evil will interfere.

 

《黃帝內經 - Huangdi Neijing》《素問 - Suwen》

 

Further, this sea within the body precedes a location of 天地根 as in Wenzi

 

體本抱神，以遊天地之根 …embrace spirit within body, travel to the root…

 

http://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han?searchu=%E5%A4%A9%E5%9C%B0%E4%B9%8B%E6%A0%B9#n58545

 

which must be some vestige of ancient cosmogony later relocated within the body.

 

The second part of the chapter is garbled and obviously cut short since there is no description of the results anticipated from the instructions in the chapter.

So you say it is basically an energetic process?

Yes, and the end result, 'the root' is a state of pure eternal energy. Paradoxically this process is decribed as both 'most simple and easy' and 'the hardest thing possible'.

 

Great post. Timeconstraints, but reading your thoughts about how the senses are limited, I recall Chuang Tzu´s notion of listening to the tuneless tune, and this is seen as the way "home". However, beyond the senses, what is really "there"? My girlfriend lost her vision on one eye, and that made her aware that losing the sense of sight is also losing a part of the world.

 

h

 

I am very sorry for her loss and hope not to appear insensitive but this seems pertinent to the subject of return as well as Chuang Tzu you quoted:

 

 

Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (beginsRepublic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

 

 

 

Democritus | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

... and that, in order to master his intellectual faculties, he blinded himself with burning glass

So, beyond the riddle, and beyond ideas, if we are allready That, how do we return to it?

 

Question: they say that each person has everything that he needs (for enlightenment) in sufficiency, then why do we need training?

Answer: if you don’t train your heart it will be like gold hidden in mineral ore, if the great melter puts it into a kiln, melts away the dirt, refines out the true thing, then it will become gold, if not it will remain ore. The practitioners also can stay in the state of ore if they keep dimness and pollution in their heart. But if they make their correct intent into the great melter, their saintly wisdom into the great carpenter, till not a hair of pollution left, this would be your initial unpolluted true heart. Once the true is complete it will not return into falsity anymore, protect it properly, guard it firmly, so it is self-sufficient and fit to use, which is a timeless, eternally bright, priceless gem.

 

(Wáng zhì-jǐn, 1177—1263, Yuan dynasty, first generation teacher of Quanzhen)

 

 

 

 

What part of alchemical practice are you pointing to?

 

The reason I inquire about this is that there is very little consistency about this very central point of the "root" (no pun intended), and the notion of "return".

The return is the true practice process; the root is the end result of that practice. It is defined variously as 'rising to Heaven', 'obtaining the yang spirit-body', 'the body in the mundane world, the heart in Heavens' etc.

 

 

In my experience, this is where all practices in Daoism point; the return, the root, the origin.

very true and consistently so.

What does returning to the root, or origin mean for you guys?

 

h

It is a techinical formula in alchemy and is not possible or comprehensible without a successful practice of alchemy.

Based on the Chinese linguistic structure, 谷神 means the "spirit of the valley". 谷(valley) is an adjective or modifier and 神(spirit) is the subject. 谷神 is one term with compound characters. They are not two entities. It should be interpreted as the "spirit of the Valley"

 

oh noes....!!!!

 

 

Prayers Against Spirits of the Valley † His Kingdom Prophecy

 

Dear friends,

 

I have found another sentence that I am not quite sure about its meaning. Could you please help me?

 

渾淪無際

 

Thanks a lot,

Luciano.

Hunlun (the primal chaos) without borders

Just be gentle with my Valley Spirit. I rest with her often.

Absolutely. No worries thats a totaly different spirit in a completely different valley i am talking about.

 

Excellent! Well in the spirit of the season lets do the 'valley spirit' next, may be we can glean more from it.

If, on the other hand, one just follows the Way and stops micromanaging, gods go out the window and everyone stops fighting. Virtue returns.

 

Thoughts?

Questions

 

who is that 'one'?

what is 'following the Way'?

what is 'the Way'?

 

and last but not least

"everyone stops fighting" . How so?

 

 

these are delicious tidbits;)

What does it say, exactly, then?

 

TTC is a governing manual. Governing is always religious since there is no such thing as an atheist nation, a vociferous sliver of over-privileged libertines notwithstanding. Throughout the history any state was a theocracy: be it Aztek or Roman empires where the emperor was the head priest or a living god, or modern day UK sovereign appointing the head of the state church. Ancient China was a polytheistic theocracy, with many local and familial gods (manes) backed by powerful local clans vying to become state-level gods. Concurrently, in those axial times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age the humans were curiously terrified by an onslaught of foreign spirits which threatened to overran the human world, hence i.g.

 

Psalm 81:9 You shall have no foreign god ... - Bible Hub

You must never have a foreign god; you must not bow down before a false god. ... "Let there be no strange god among you; Nor shall you worship any foreign ...

 

Or

 

Thou shalt have no other gods before me - Wikipedia, the ...

“Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you

 

Or

 

《論衡 - Lunheng》

 

《解除》

貴人之出也，萬民並觀，填街滿巷，爭進在前。士卒驅之，則走而卻；士卒還去，即復其處；士卒立守，終日不離，僅能禁止。何則？欲在於觀，不為壹驅還也。使鬼神與生人同，有欲於宅中，猶萬民有欲於觀也，士卒驅逐，不久立守，則觀者不卻也。然則驅逐鬼者，不極一歲，鬼神不去。今驅逐之，終食之間，則舍之矣；舍之，鬼復還來，何以禁之？暴穀於庭，雞雀啄之，主人驅彈則走，縱之則來，不終日立守，雞雀不禁。使鬼神乎？不為驅逐去止。使鬼不神乎？與雞雀等，不常驅逐，不能禁也。

 

When a royalty exits into a city, the crowd of commoners rush to gawk at them, filling the alleys and the street. When the royal guards are quick to chase them away – they retreat; and when the guards return to the royal train – the crowds come back; but if the guards would only protect the perimeter in place then the crowds would never leave and they can only be made to stop at the perimeter but can not be made to go away. Why is that? Because the crowd’s desire is to gawk, not a desire to go back and forth.

Likewise, would the ghosts and spirits be on the same plane with the living people, would they have a desire to dwell among us, then the commoners would like to see them, and if the guard chases them away, and then stops to guard the perimeter then the gawkers would not retreat on their own.

So if the chasing out of ghosts would ever stop, then in less than a year the ghosts and spirits would crowd us and would never leave. Even if we chase them away and then stop for as short as a time for a meal – the spirits and ghosts would come back, so how to banish them?

Here is another example: if there is a patch of wheat in the yard, and birds flocked to peck it, then the owner rushes out and chases them away; when he leaves – they fly back in. And unless you guard your yard all day long – there is no banishing the birds.

Now lets take those ghosts that are gods. Those should not be chased away or stopped from coming. But those ghosts that are not gods should be treated like the pest birds. If we constantly do not chase them away there would be no banishing them.

 

 

Such was the historical backdrop against which the chapter 60 recommends to use the local ancestral sacrifices as a regulatory instrument based on following reasoning:

 

Governing of the state must be based on local sacrifices with each family sacrificing to its ancestors only and not elevating a ghost of an individual family to the state of a god. Why not? Because such a god would be a partisan of his clan, giving preference to it and hurting other people. Also the familial gods would fight among themselves (hurting each other), which in turn will imbalance the government of the sages causing it to inadvertently hurt people as well. All that is needed to prevent this havoc is to use the local sacrifices properly, resulting in profusion of beneficial De.

 

 

So, that’s what chpt 60 says in a simple and elegant pronouncement (as opposed to mind –boggling gibberish produced by the expert translators.) Small fish fry for everyone!

Could be, but thats a small issue. Important thing is that we, after 3000 years have reconstituted the original. Now we can answer the million dollar question: religion or not?

Being that the 非其鬼 is exactly the same in both texts, we'd do well to translate it in the same way. The Confucius translation makes sense.

 

Could Laozi be using C's words to make a different point?

sur...this iteration is much closer to the original.

 

what i find fascinating is that even in

 

The Huáinánzǐ (Chinese: 淮南子; Wade–Giles: Huai-nan Tzu; literally: "The Masters/Philosophers of Huainan") is a 2nd-century BCE Chinese philosophical classic

 

this passage is glossed over, evincing poor understanding, while the famous 'small fry fish' line is completely misunderstood. It means either a radical cultural shift that broke the transmission, happening in 3rd century BC; or that Lao-zi is older by several centuries, dating not from 4th century but from much earlier.

治大國若亨小鮮。Governing a great nation depends on sacrificing 亨 small (family-level) ancestral sacrifices 鮮.

以道蒞天下，In order to make the Under Heaven orderly

其鬼不神；family-level ancestral ghosts should not be (sacrificed to) as nation-level gods

非其鬼不神，and non-family 非其鬼 ghosts should not be (sacrificed to) as nation-level gods.

Thus

其神不傷人；domestic gods would not harm people

非其神不傷人，and foreign gods would not harm people

聖人亦不傷人。the sages also would not harm people

夫兩不相傷，when these two (foreign and domestic gods) do not harm,

故德交歸焉。 (Heaven) will send down its beneficiary De.

 

Notes:

 

On struggle against proliferation of non-family and foreign ghosts:

 

子曰：「非其鬼而祭之，諂也。見義不為，無勇也。」

Wei Zheng: The Master said, "For a man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him is flattery. To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage."

 

 

公冶長:

子曰：「臧文仲居蔡，山節藻梲，何如其知也？」

Gong Ye Chang: The Master said, "Zang Wen kept (worshipped) a large tortoise in a house, on the capitals of the pillars of which he had hills made, and with representations of duckweed on the small pillars above the beams supporting the rafters. Of what sort was his wisdom?"

 

On relationship between sages ghosts and spirits:

 

禮運:

故聖人參於天地，并於鬼神，以治政也。

Li Yun:

Hence the sage forms a ternion with Heaven and Earth, and stands side by side with spiritual beings, in order to the right ordering of government.

 

禮運:

故聖人作則，必以天地為本，以陰陽為端，以四時為柄，以日星為紀，月以為量，鬼神以為徒，…。

Li Yun:

Thus it was that when the sages would make rules (for men), …to use... the spirits breathing (in nature) as associates

 

 

I never claim any ownership so no.

Nope, though I know a few people who do...

I'd position myself agnosticly as I do with God/gods.

 

Why do you ask?

 

Given that this chapter is about ghosts I thought I would better understand yours and MH's POV knowing if you ppl treat the subject as fact or fiction. Also I am a mystically inclined dreamer who loves a weird story.

 

Do you?

Yes, I had experinces with ghosts and saw a spectacular UFO once.

If that plate got close to me it would be empty in no time. No beer though, thanks. Wine? Sure.

ooh a gentleman of distinction.

 

So MH have you ever see a ghost? Or a UFO? Or anything weird that cant be explained?