Eric Woon

17 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Darned good job with that chapter Eric.

 

And now that I am learning a bit more as to your theme of translating the chapters I am able to see better why you translate certain characters/phrases as you do.

 

Thank you for your kind appreciation. Of the 19 footnote, 16 of them are Chinese proverbs, indeed, very old Chinese proverbs from the Pre-Qin era. I must retain these proverbs in order to indicate clearly the direct link from the old texts to my translations which are in modern vernacular Chinese.  

12 hours ago, Stosh said:

Did you say  your book was  Already in print or available?  I am a bit curious about whether the earliest versions are written in vernacular Chinese , or whether it can be shown to be formal. 

A) To bridge the gap between the classical Chinese (as old as 2500 years old) and modern vernacular Chinese, I added 745 footnotes. This shall ensure the modern Chinese readers can understand every single proverbs, phrases or some old characters which I used (really, out of no choice) by referring to the explanation given in the footnotes. Thread below tells it all, what I meant by no choice.

 

No! Not published yet. I m facing five minor problems. 

1) I have to get my Chinese translations proofread. Finally, I hired a Chinese lady from Beijing to proofread it. She just completed the first round of proofreading two weeks ago. I incorporated most of her suggestions and returned to her the corrected manuscript last weekend. She has to carry out a second time, final proofreading.

2) From her suggestions given in first proofreading, I am reviewing my original English translation, now. I am incorporating these minor changes. By tomorrow, it should be done. Next, I have to get a close buddy who is an author himself, to carry out the final proofreading.

3) To print in China (cheapest, of course) I must get a letter of approval from the Chinese government. Otherwise, no printer in China dares to print any book related to DaoDeJing, because it is considered the most Holy Scripture in China.

4) Well, the next best destination is to get a printer in Malaysia. It's cost of production is quite close to the printing cost in China. To me, it could be cheaper, after taking into considerations of the logistics, say, shipping the books from China to Singapore is not cheap.

5) I am the author, the publisher and distributor, all in one, at this juncture, for all my thirteen books.

 

Note: Perhaps some of you might be interested to partake in one of these activities. You are most welcome.  Well, this is not soliciting for business. You might be strictly doing it for you own group of friends or fans.  

  

 

12 minutes ago, Eric Woon said:

You are really great. Thank you very much. 

Btw, this late Ming Dynasty literature was written in vernacular Chinese. Perhaps, I may have to qualify my earlier statement. The vernacular Chinese written form was formally adopted as the national Chinese language or Putonghua in1920.

 

Or let's put it this way. 

1) This literature has the common people s its audience. Just like any books that we red today, the audience are the common folks.

2) Among the government officials and formal communications, the government officials, demands crispy short writings. This is akin to  CEO nowadays, who is very busy whole day long, demands  one-page summary for every report.  

3) Today, there is something called "An elevator pitch". This selling pitch must be completed in 7 seconds or less, before the elevator door opens, and the targeted venture capitalist walk past you.   

5 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

Yes it is recent. As in Ming dynasty recent.

《赴巫山潘氏幽欢　闹茶坊郓哥义愤》

You are really great. Thank you very much. 

Chapter 54: 善建者不拔。善抱者不脱。子孙以祭祀不辍。修之於身其德乃真。修之於家其德乃馀。修之於乡其德乃长。修之於邦其德乃丰。修之於天下其德乃普。故以身观身，以家观家，以乡观乡，以邦观邦，以天下观天下。吾何以知天下然哉？以此。

Chapter sub-title: Five levels of self-cultivation

^[MP35a]Those who are skillful in the construction of buildings will not pull them down. ^[MP35b]Those who had decided on a well-thought idea or ambitious decision will not easily put it off or abandoned it. ^[MP35c]Those children who on their first day in school had gone through a ceremony to pay respects to their teacher would not drop out of school.

There are five levels of self-cultivation.

1.      ^[MP36a]He who wishes to learn about moral and leadership skills for the sake of himself, his accomplishment suffices to assist him to build up exemplary righteous behaviors.

2.      ^[MP36b]He who wishes to learn moral and leadership skills for the sake of raising a harmonious family, his accomplishment shall benefit his children and grand-children.

3.      ^[MP36c]He who wishes to learn moral and leadership skills in order to return home in glory, his accomplishment helps him rise up the rank to a communal chief or nation leader.  

4.      ^[MP36d]He who wishes to learn moral and leadership skills for the sake of his country, his accomplishment facilitates him to lead the nation in the direction of peace and prosperity.

5.      ^[MP36e]He who wishes to learn moral and leadership skills for the sake of the world, his accomplishment enables him to bring peace to the world and hence, gains international acclaims and ovations by all the world communities.

^[MP37]Let’s go on to review the progress of one’s learning?

1.      ^[MP37a]Delve in self-cultivation, then go on to observe one’s result in social interactions and people-relationship building.

2.      ^[MP37b]Raise a harmonious family, then go on to observe one’s result in the administration of his public office.

3.      ^[MP37c]Build up strong social fabric in his community, then go on to observe one’s result in enticing new residents and how smoothly they integrate into his communal activities.

4.      ^[MP37d]Entrench the concept that citizens are the mainstays of a nation, then go on to observe one’s result in advancing the country, both in social and economic developments..

5.      ^[MP37e]Focus on an administration that aims to touch everyone’s heart and win them over, then go on to observe one’s result in the coordination of all races, in terms of coexistence, full integration and an united, peaceful world.

^[MP37f]How do I understand the fine details of the world’s state of affairs?

^[MP37g]The answer lies in the above five never-ending review processes and the definition for true leadership: leading people to get things done for the people!

 

Remark: It is impossible for me to list down the word for word translation for this long chapter, 91 characters in all. I am truly sorry. Only those who can read Chinese would be able to appreciate how the translation was done, and peek into Lao Zi’s ideal for this world.  

学说：修养的五个意向

^[MP35a]擅长建造建筑物的人，不会摆脱责任。^[MP35b]好谋善断[1]的人所决定下来的志向，不会轻言放弃。^[MP35c]子孙们按照入学时给老师先行拜师的礼仪，就不会半途而辍学了。

有五种不同层次的学习态度。

其一，              ^[MP3a]为了自身的修养而去修学习的人，他所修得的道德品行[2]才是真诚的。

其二，              ^[MP36b]为了宜家宜室[3]而去修学的人，他所修得的道德品行就能恩泽及于於子孙。

其三，              ^[MP36c]为了衣锦还乡[4]而去修学的人，他所修得的道德品行才足于使他成为领袖[5]。

其四，              ^[MP36d]为了国家而去学修习的人，他所修得的道德品行才足于使国家丰亨豫大[6]。

其五，              ^[MP36e]为了天下所有的人民百姓而去修学习的人，他所修得的道德品行才能使全世界的人普天同庆[7]。

^[MP37]再看一看怎样去评估这五个层次的修养。

1.      ^[MP37a]以修身齐家[8]，去观看立身处世[9]的成果；

2.      ^[MP37b]以宜家之乐[10]，去观看齐家治国[11]的成果；

3.      ^[MP37c] 以乡规民约[12]，去观看随乡入乡[13]的成果；

4.      ^[MP37d] 以民为邦本[14]，去观看立国安邦[15]的成果；

5.      ^[MP37e] 以怀柔天下[16]，去观看燮和天下[17]的成果。

^[MP37f]我为什么会知道天下[18]是这样的状态呢？

^[MP37g] 以此类推[19]，就是以上十个评介点。

 

9 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Yes, I have been made aware of the fact that the Chinese language is, in the most part, gender neutral.  But Yin and Yang seem to apply the poles of feminine/masculine where it is missing in the language itself.

 

 

Perhaps, it is out of respect for the other party to be gender neutral. But when there is a need to explain the Yin and Yang,  say, in traditional Chinese medicine, the Chinese doctors use it on every patient. Sort of easy to tell something nice to hear for the patients who don't understand why they are sick.  

Chapter 42 (truncated): 道生一。一生二。二生三。三生万物。万物负阴而抱阳，冲气以为和。人之所恶，唯孤、寡、不谷，而王公以为称，故物或损之而益，或益之而损。人之所教，我亦教之，强梁者，不得其死。吾将以为教父。

Chapter sub-title: Selfishness, corruption, Intolerance

^[MP29a]The three worst behaviors in mankind (人之所恶) are selfishness (唯孤), corruption (寡) and intolerance (不谷). ^[MP29b]Yet, the rulers and ruling technocrats (王公) openly accept these decadent and self-indulgent behaviors as commendable attributes (以为称).

^[MP30]Looking forward (故), these ghastly and unpleasant behaviors (物¹) can be perceived in two opposing ways (author’s supplementation). ^[MP30a]One, some people (或¹) possibly lessen the impact (损¹) of these shameless behaviors (之) and (而) gain much better benefits in return (益¹). ^[MP30b]Two, others (或²) conversely strengthen (益²) all or any one of them (物²) and (而) in the process, compound its destructive power (损²).

^[MP31a]Anything that I can teach mankind (人之所教), I have already taught them (我亦教之). For example, anyone who is tyrannical, brutal, cruel, vicious, a bully or ruffian (强梁者) who causes cruelty (especially, to fellow mankind) will die a miserable death (不得其死). ^[MP31b]I (吾) am preaching these warnings (将以为) as teaching lessons (教父) that all men and women must refrain from, totally (author’s supplementation).

Notes:

1)     Struck out texts discussed about the creation of Heaven and Earth.

2)     唯孤: 唯我独尊 (a Chinese proverb), meaning self-centered. It implies selfishness. (孤and 独, are interchangeable, or can be combined as a phrase 孤独).

3)     寡: 寡廉鲜耻 (a Chinese proverb), meaning shameless, brazenfaced. Among of kinds of shameless acts, corruption is the most brazenly shameful and yet, the most people easily succumb to it. Btw, today’s society does not detest shameless as much as corruption.

4)     不谷: 不虚怀若谷 (a Chinese proverb) meaning not open-minded or have a receptive mind. Intolerance is a simple antonym.

5)     或: some people, certain group of people.

6)     This chapter can be split into two chapters. The struck-out texts as a separate subtitle.

7)     Notice, the core elements of this chapter are three Chinese proverbs; namely, 唯我独尊, 寡廉鲜耻 and 虚怀若谷. In the past, few people (if not, nobody) ever suspected these characters唯孤, 寡 and 谷 are abbreviation for these proverbs.

It might be a surprise to you, Lao Zi discussed about human behaviors which we now classify as a study of the school of humanities (psychology, social science or etc).

4 hours ago, Marblehead said:

All I can say is that if you are female and call yourself male you are still female.

 

And I'm saddened to inform you that male and female are not equal.  In fact, they are opposite poles.

 

If you have white skin and call your self black you are still white.  Opposite poles.

 

This is not saying that one is better than the other, it is simply saying that they are different.

 

The female produces the egg, the male fertilizes the egg.  That's the way nature is.  To think otherwise is to be against nature.

 

The spirit of the valley is feminine.  It is Yin - the place for rest.

 

 

In the Chinese language, it does not really differentiate between male and female. For example, the word 她 is a very recent addition to replace 他. This is the result of the influence of the English language, perhaps. Btw, in any piece of works that was created during the Qing dynasty (1911) or earlier, did not make use of 她 which the author refers to a lady.   

1 hour ago, Marblehead said:

Nice work Eric.  Yes, you are taking advantage of the English language, aren't you?

 

 

Reminds me of Nietzsche in that he was disappointed with the German language as there were no words he could use to express his thoughts and concepts so he made up (created) his own German words for those expressions.

 

Yes, precisely that. I find that the English language is the most beautiful language. Of course, it has at least one critical weakness. That is, its vocabulary is far too large in number. A simple word 病 can give rise to more than a dozen words or phrases that allow me to precisely deliver what is in my thought.   

Chapter 71: 知不知上，不知知病。夫唯病病，是以不病。圣人不病，以其病病。夫唯病病，是以不病。

Chapter sub-title: Admit one’s mistake readily

^[LP194a]It is rather unusual for someone to acknowledge (知¹) that he had not clearly understood certain things (不知²) and openly declares it as a fact (author’s supplementation to知¹). Nevertheless, this is absolutely the correct attitude (上). ^[LP194b]Whoever does not understand something or certain knowledge (不知³), he better checks it up or carries out research (知⁴) in order to remedy his shortcomings (病¹). ^[LP194c]In humility, he admits (夫唯¹) there is a possibility of a personal oversight (病²), which is indeed an inadequacy in knowledge (病³). Henceforth (是以¹), he will not fret, or be apprehensive anymore (病⁴).

^[LP195a]A humble leader (圣人) will not be unduly worried over his blunder (不病⁵), since he readily confessed that (以其) his mistake (病⁶) is purely a fault of his own[1] (病⁷). ^[LP195b]In view of the fact that he had openly affirmed (夫唯²) that his slip-up (病⁸) is a personal lapse in judgment (病⁹), thereafter, he corrects that error immediately (author’s supplementation). ^[LP195c]This is the reason why despite having stumbled in his duty (是以²), he rarely feels fidgety (病¹⁰) about having committed a boo-boo (author’s supplementation).

 

Notes:

1)      There are 4 知, 10病, 2夫唯and 2是以. The superscripts indicate its sequence number.

2)      知 : acknowledge, understood, understand and check it up and carry out research.

3)      病 : shortcomings, oversight, inadequacy in knowledge, fret or apprehensive, blunder, mistake, fault, slip-up, lapse in judgment and finally, fidgety.

4)      All thanks to the beauty of the English language, 知 and病 can be explained in multiple, elegant and stylish terms.

5)      Please see picture attached below where the source of the meaning of 病 was obtained from the 《汉典》 Han dictionary at www.zdic.net.

6)      In modern Chinese, the character 病 is often used to describe ill or sick. 2500 years ago, where there were around 8,000 Chinese characters, the equivalent for the English words mentioned in (3) were non-existence. This was why the character 病 was a generic text used to describe these English words’ equivalent.

7)      Perhaps, you might agree with me now, 99% of today Chinese readers simply cannot understand classical Chinese, especially Pre-Qin Chinese characters.

8)      This is a piece of advice. Whenever you read a piece or a string of Chinese texts that does not fall in as modern vernacular Chinese language, please refer to the Han dictionary, diligently. Short of that, you are certainly, not able to get a proper understanding of what they mean. This is especially so, if it is Pre-Qin Chinese.

9)      To rub salt into wounds, by now, after having read the above English translation, you can beat all the Chinese flat out, even the top 1%. Why? Human, by nature is lazy. I doubt any one of them would do the same level of research as I did.

I am a perfectionist. This is why despite having written a series of books all related to DDJ, I did not publish any one of them for a simple reason. I am not happy with some of my translations of these 5254 pre-Qin Chinese characters. Today (Mar 26, 2018), I am fully satisfied. Yet, it still has to go through a proofreading process before it is ready for publication. Well, all the 13 book cover designs were completed in advance on Feb 14, 2018, Valentine ’s Day. It is sort of putting the cart in-front of the horse.    

7 hours ago, Stosh said:

You set me a task, and thats how I went about it.The behavior of others is no excuse of yours ,you get the full credit. If you wanted your own opinion ,you should have just kept it.  I regret taking my time to relate to you any of the meaning, since you appear to want to rummage around the text of a fairytale to be chinese. 

I am sorry. 

11 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

yes

which is strange because it contains the same phrase as DDJ

 

good, thanks)

Perhaps, I can give you a fair idea who 文子 (Wenzi) was. The following short texts are copied from a recent viral message.

《礼记》中说：“博学之，审问之，慎思之，明辨之，笃行之”。.... Note: .... means some other truncated texts from this speech. Please respect the word, privacy. I copied them without permission. Other than the word 之, the rest of the texts make perfectly readable, current vernacular texts. 

Why I am bring up this truncated message as an example?

I want to bring up this habit, which runs deep in Chinese history, across at least 2500 years, supposedly using Wenzi as an ancient example.

1) 99% of the mainland Chinese cannot read classical Chinese. Less so, texts that belong to the Pre-Qin era. When the speech writer picked up these 15 words, it was sort of a showmanship, telling the audience he reads a lot, knows a lot, and has substance, especially in Chinese history as ancient as the Pre-Qin era.

2) Perhaps, he might want to lend some phrases (in this case, 15 words) from this book to draw out a point. Interestingly, this ancient book is 《礼记》The Book of Rites, which is one of the Five Classics of Ruism (Confucianism is misleading). 

3) Perhaps, 80% of the readers would skip these 15 words. By the way, they could not understand them. No harm though. They can go on to read the other texts which were written in modern simplified Chinese.

4) Maybe, 1% would copy down these 15 words, and make a search in Baidu to obtain a better understanding what these five phrases mean.

5) To me, frankly, there is no harm done to his overall message. May I suggest, it could be better if the speech writer could add in five footnotes,  one each, immediate after each 之?

 

Now do you see the similarity between what Wenzi did and the above piece of message polished up by the above speech writer? 

 

Now, further down this book, I copied down these from 春秋-文子 （Chunqiu-Wenzi). The texts highlighted bold and in slightly bigger fonts size were copied from DDJ. I mean Wenzi copied them from DDJ. AND there is a distinguishing manner in which he imported these copied texts. He did not explain them, not even a single word. Likewise, the speech writer of the above message where he plucked the 15 words from 《礼记》 The Book of Rites, he too, did not explain any of the these words. This is why I suggested to add footnotes.  

 

1) 老子〔文子〕曰：天地未形，窈窈冥冥，浑而为一，寂然清澄，重浊为地，精微为天，离而为四时，分而为阴阳，精气为人，粗气为虫，刚柔相成，万物乃生。精神本乎天，骨骸根于地，精神入其门，骨骸反其根，我尚何存！故圣人法天顺地，不拘于俗，不诱于人，以天为父，以地为母，阴阳为纲，四时为纪。天静以清，地定以宁，万物逆之者死，顺之者生；故静默者，神明之宅；虚无者，道之所居。夫精神者，所受于天也；骨骸者，所禀于地也。故曰：「道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物。万物负阴而抱阳，冲气以为和。」

2) 老子〔文子〕曰：以不义而得之，又不布施，患及其身，不能为人，又无以自为，可谓愚人。无以异于枭爱其子也。故「持而盈之，不如其已；揣而锐之，不可长保。」德之中有道，道之中有德。其化不可极，阳中有阴，阴中有阳，万事尽然，不可胜明。福至祥存，祸至祥先。见祥而不为善，则福不来；见不祥而行善，则祸不至。利与害同门，祸与福同邻，非神圣莫之能分，故曰：「祸兮福所倚，福兮祸所伏，孰知其极。」人之将疾也，必先甘鱼肉之味；国之将亡也，必先恶忠臣之语。故疾之将死者，不可为良医；国之将亡者，不可为忠谋。修之身，然后可以治民；居家理治，然后可移官长。故曰：「修之身，其德乃真；修之家，其德乃余；修之国，其德乃丰。」民之所以生活，衣与食也。事周于衣食则有功，不周于衣食则无功，事无功德不长。故随时而不成，无更其刑；顺时而不成，无更其理。时将复起，是谓道纪。帝王富其民，霸王富其地，「上无为而民自化」。

 

Summing up:

1) The word 老子 as in 老子〔文子〕曰：is most misleading. The compiler of this book tried to fool the readers that Laozi said all these.

2) No! This book did not explain a single word that the author imported from DDJ. Please do not refer to this book as having substance that you can understand DDJ better. Most often than not, you are misled. 

3) He merely muddled through with his own thinking, his own ideas and whatever he wanted to expressed as was shown in the body of the texts (other than the DDJ verses). Yes, he muddled through. Got it!

4) I would not refer to this kind of writing. It is not doing any good to those imported words. There were there to show-off the author has read DDJ. 

5) Btw, in Singapore (where I am living) now, I can find a few folks who read classical Chinese, often write this this manner. I do not give them attention. Why?  For reason of (4) above.

6) In Taiwan, perhaps, you can find a much larger number of older folks who write in this same manner.

7) Now is the final answer. This is not strange. It is a habit dies hard. And it has been running among the educated Chinese people for at least 2500 years.

8) I do not qualify myself to make a comment on this. Perhaps, the religious texts that you might come across, were written in this manner. Some of you, might be able to land on some of these religious texts. Please forward them to me. Let me take a good look. Thank you.

 

 

This is the theme for which I translate the remaining 69 of the 81 chapters. Please read the book cover page of "True Leadership". It is an abridged version of "The Wisdom of Lao Zi", whereby I removed the twelve chapters that related to the discussion pertaining to Heaven and Earth. 

21 hours ago, Marblehead said:

When I first started reading I thought I was reading "The Art Of War".

 

Yes, good research Eric.

 

RE your summary:  Differentiating between Dao and Way, I would have said:  Way means leadership.

 

But then we have:

 

Man follows Earth,

Earth follows Heaven,

Heaven follows Dao,

Dao follows itself.

 

I am sorry. I am not going to discuss on the twelve chapters that describe Heaven and Earth because they has nothing to do with the theme leadership. It is not because I did not make a full translation on these twelve chapters. I just find that it is quite useless. Should anyone of you want to read my translation on these chapters, you have to wait until I published this book, title, "The Wisdom of Lao Zi" authored by Woon Chok Thin. This is my birth-given name.  

9 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

Good research Eric.

From your prospective how you explain 反者道之常也，柔者道之刚也，弱者道之强也。?

1) May I know where you get these texts?

2) Who wrote them?

3) Before we read a book, we must get the theme right. Because all author must have a theme. If not, his writings will be all over the place. This is exactly what Zhuangzi is. His compilation <Zhuangzi > writes about almost anything under the sky. 

4) Second, we must also try to get the Chapter theme. This is most important before we can start to decipher what the meaning of each word or phrase. Especially, classical Chinese is horrendous because any Chinese character can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or you name it.

4a) For example, I kick of Chapter 40 with this theme: When to use the Leadership principles.

4b) If a Taoist (from a religious practice point of view),  give it a good chapter theme, perhaps, he can make up a good short story that is interesting.

 

Did it come from 春秋-文子 （Chunqiu-Wenzi？

I  glanced through briefly. Yes, this is very old classical text in the era of Lao Zi or a few hundreds years later. Wen Zi is definitely not Lao Zi. The way he expounded on some of the phrases taken from DDJ points to a very different theme (leadership) that I chose. Anyway, I have to spend a lot more time to understand this book. To me, its style of writing is not coherent with Lao Zi style as in DDJ. This is as far as I think, as of now.      

Chapter 40: 反者道之动。弱者道之用。天下万物生於有，有生於无。

Chapter sub-title: When to use the principles of leadership

[LP115]When you run into someone who opposes or does not want to follow your order (反者), it is about time to draw upon the principles of leadership (道) and deploy them diligently (动).

[LP116]On the other hand, when you run into someone who does not have the will to follow your order (弱者), you can also draw upon the principles of leadership (道) and apply them assiduously (用).

[LP117a]When a determined leader (天下) wants to do something (万物) and ensures its completion, he has a purpose (生), that is, to acquire it (有). [LP117b]Moreover, what he is going to obtain (有) arises (生) from naught (无).

Notes:

1)     In modern vernacular Chinese language  the two characters, 之 and 於 can be dropped with no detrimental effect to modern sentence construction.

2)     LP is the abbreviation for Leadership Principles. I label each sentence or clause in this way for ease of referencing later.

3)      道, as is explained here, means leadership.

4)     天下, supposed to means anyone under the sky. In view of this chapter, I must limit it to apply to leaders.

5)     万物, means things. Hence, something is proper.

6)     First 生, here it implies to sprout an idea. Therefore, purpose is appropriate.

7)     First 有 means to possess. Acquire makes more sense here.

8)     Second 有, means to obtain. Well, you must obtain something before you can own it.

9)     Second 生, means to grow. Over here, arises is more appropriate.

10)  无, nothing, or naught.

Btw. The English language is the most beautiful language in the world, today. At least this is my personal opinion. I can choose from a choice of words. For examples: 有 possess, acquire obtain; 生 sprout or grow or arise.

This is truly mind-boggling to you. In the official online Chinese dictionary, zdic.net, there are 14 different meanings given for 道. Yet, I am not happy with any one of them. Therefore I choose to create a new meaning that is hard for just anyone to accept. Here is the reason why I am certain means leadership. Please read the detail explanation below.

 

The Chinese characters are basically built up from graphical blocks to form ideographic characters called hieroglyphs. Chinese characters are more like pictograms which are rich in associative wisdom through which a reader at first sight can interpret or decode each character semantically. For example, the word 道 (pinyin: dào) is a combination of two root characters 辶 and 首.    

1.      首 means a person who is leading, or is ahead of the rest of the people.

2.      辶 signifies the left graphic block for characters associated with the verb run or walk. It is similar in meaning to the word 辵 (pinyin: chuò) which means stop and go repeatedly.

The word 道 when decoded by the combination of 辶 and 首 gives rise to the meaning of leadership. Why?

When a leader is walking ahead of the rest and the people behind him are following closely, stopping and going repeatedly, it gives you an impression that this person is leading the rest and there is leadership ability in him. On the contrary, when no one walks, stops and goes repeatedly behind a person, whichever way you look at this person walking all alone by himself, he is definitely not a leader. The contrasting difference between these two situations points out clearly that the word 道 correctly implies leadership.

In real life, how do you observe whether one is a leader or has leadership quality?

Whether a person is a leader or not, the three criteria observable by a third party are: one, someone is behind him; two, one or more people are following him closely and paying attention to his every word and/or noting it down; and three, they then go about executing his instructions. Even if only one of these three criteria is present, there is sufficient proof that he is a leader or has leadership ability.

By the way, leadership is quite a recent word. As late as thirty years ago, the word management was almost exclusively used to describe the behavior and execution abilities of corporate leaders. Leadership qualities were often intermingled with management abilities.

Summing up, Dao means leadership. 

 

4 hours ago, Stosh said:

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

 

Frankly this "chapter" -40- is not any kind of self contained explanation , its more like a summary statement. One can impose the meaning on this from comprehension of the larger Taoist message. I see that some translators settled on leaving the word ' weakness' as such, but that for some it has the connotation of 'loss though death'. From these it isn't really important to divine one of these as more correct than the other they are both simplified in the act of translation. 

A)

Considering 'weakness' in a non-moral context, , that it is not a trait implying failure, and the same for death as not a 'failure to continue'... it can be described as a non-insistence of the continuation of a particular character... as in 'failure to yield a right-of-way results in a traffic citation' is not suggesting that yielding is undesirable. 

B.)

As a thing is refined , to a purpose, from a non-specific origin ,,, like a sword might be made from an iron blob , the many other potentials of the iron drop away . The fullest "potential" is in its blob state , and AS it becomes less and less ANY of those items  ,,

it becomes the item we call a sword.  Bonsai is another example , where one starts with huge potentials and over time the plant is developed to represent an aged tree. 

c) 

it is a normal or conventional mindset to consider the dulled or rusty sword as being not as good as the sharpened version , and that the sharp version , is the fullest expression of the iron blob , but the destiny according to dao is that the sword returns from whence it came , it gets dulled , rusty falls apart and so forth, until it is completely not a sword anymore.

It returns to its full potential of resource , when it is no longer any developed item at all. 

 

SO, the chapter is merely stating that the way of the world is for things to return to the situation of greatest potential , its greatest entropy . Lowest common denominator and so forth. 

Simultaneously or conversely , with this entropy -trend ,  it requires more and more effort to exert an influence , to be special , to excel , to get yet older.

Its a Situation of Diminishing returns , and unending rebirth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are you talking about? In the Confucianism group, I wrote this comment, Rubbish. And they kick me out. This is sort of how a Taoist (practitioner of daojiao), from a religious point of view would have interpreted Chapter 40.  

I just posted my interpretation of Chapter 40 under topic 道家学说。

8 minutes ago, Stosh said:

Personally , I don't think it actually discussed any gods whatsoever , I figure 1) it was written in a time when one had to be careful about what one said , and 2) as a philosophical component of the work overall , the text was intended to be overtly readable from nonexclusive perspectives. ( but I believe these are unequal ultimately ) 

Shaman Flowing hands , I would group as being with those of  Daojiao perspective , certainly has different views than I , but .. he actually has done some really nice translations , to my ear. So my gut feel is that while there are differences , I think they aren't actually alienating. 

Being a work of ' creative writing ' I think its best to recognize that things like the intent of a chapter , can be 180 degrees reversed, of an initial blatant reading, but certainly accurate renderings of text such as they stand in print is always helpful. 

Why not, ask some of these guys (daojiao) to translate chapter 40, the shortest chapter with only 21 words. I bet you, they can't. If they can't, it means only one thing. They just pick on some words or phrases that somehow, can be turn to their advantage. That all. Perhaps, this could be another challenge for these daojiao guys. Just pick 12 words in a row, from any chapter. Let them explain what they understand from this string of twelve words. I am not asking them to explain the entire chapter (other than chapter 40), though. I am already very generous.       

11 hours ago, Eric Woon said:

DDJ is mystical because partly,  it discussed about Shangdi. This is the Archilles' heel that made DDJ fits in as a Scripture. Therefore, it is tough to put my point across that it is not mystical. Frankly, I accept your argument. However, when you had deciphered all the related 12 chapters, having understood what he wrote, it clears up, and is no longer mystifying.  These are Chapter 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 25, 39, 42, 52, 62 and 67. I  beg your pardon. I am about to carry out final editing two weeks later for the English translations. Personally, I would not like to discuss about God, and its whatever messages related the creation of the universe. It is not useful at all. Btw, I was a management cum leadership consultant before I started writing. Therefore, in my eyes, the leadership principles and moral principles have great value. Not these mystical stuff expounded in the above-mentioned 12 chapters.  I would like to drop the discussion about dao being God and Taoism, the religious aspect which does not hold water (since it picked a few hundred words (much less than 500 words, indeed) of DDJ and went on to make a big claim that their religion is based on DDJ. This proclamation is not convincing at all! I want to focus purely on daojia, that's its philosophy.    

Btw, you can try. ask any Chinese who profess he had read a lot on DDJ. He wil ltell you, he could not understand DDJ. Why? I tell you some hard facts.

1) 2500 years ago, there were around 8000 Chinese words. Today, there are 46,000 words. Assume half are seldom used words, it still gives us 23,000 words. That is three times more that 2500 years ago.

2) Because of its limited number of words, most Chinese characters has more than one meaning. You can do this. Go to zdic.net which is the official Chinese online dictionary. Type in the word 道. You shall find 14 different meanings.  Type in 无、爸, these two words, each has only one meaning. Most of the rest, has more than one meaning.

3) Few (none, I supposed) suspect some of the words in DDJ are an abbreviation of Chinese proverbs. I found slightly more than 200 of them. Some of my students were stunt！They argued, "Btw, Chinese proverb wasn't in existence in the Pre-Qin era. At most, the earliest Chinese proverbs appears around the later part of the Han dynasty, and perhaps, a later Dynasty." I explained to them, "Most Chinese proverbs have their on history, especially, the Chinese proverbs though which were formalized as mostly 4 characters nowadays. therefore, you have to be very careful. You must not pick Chinese proverbs that did not originate historical stories from the Pre-Qin era. The 200 plus Chinese proverbs which I found out were from the Pre-Qin era, mostly much older than Lao Zi and some around his time, and perhaps one to two hundreds years later.

4) Some of the words indeed meant different thing. For example, the word 谷 as in 谷神, means Valley God today because 谷 means valley today. However, after careful research, I found that it actually meant plain, especially after cross-examining chapter 39 and the Chinese proverb, 虚怀若谷.

5) Chinese language grammars appears only lately, least than 50 years old.  The vernacular Chinese language which most Chinese read and write today was a very late creation and officially adopted in 1920. Meaning, the Chinese language that most Chinese read today, is only 98 years old. Other than the less than 1% Chinese who picked up the study of classical Chinese in university, I can safely say, the other 99% of the Chinese could not understand classical Chinese. They merely make guesses. Often, I found that there understanding were not accurate, and often, off by quite a lot.

6) Since classical Chinese, anything written from year 1919 and backwards, were not written with proper grammar, the 99% of the Chinese today, simply cannot understand it.

7) Classical Chinese way of writing were horrendous in another way. It sometimes quote the name of a historical person. If you do not know the history of that particular person, you can never understand what that particular phrase is expounding. Here is a simple example. 萧规曹随。The first character refer to the Han Dynasty' first Prime minister Xiao. The third word refers to the Prime Minister who took over from him when Xiao passed away. There are many more which are much more difficult.

8) Before an author write a book, he must first lay down its theme. Today, no one know what was the theme of DDJ. Was it written with one them, or two themes, and perhaps, three. I can point it out to you. It was two themes. 

9) DDJ was erroneous translated as poetic. This was a horrendous mistake.

10)  Punctuation marks was a very recent addition to the Chinese language. As late as the Song dynasty, the breaking of phrases was by use of a new line. No even a full stop or comma was invented then. The full stop was used perhaps, during the Ming dynasty, the earliest. The full set of punctuation marks in use now, was a direct copy of the English language and this did not happen earlier than 50 years ago.

11) You have to be care when you read two Chinese character laid side-by-side. You have to decide to break them up as two individual words, or a phrase, or worse, it could be a Chinese proverb. Here is one good example. 配天。Actually, it was an abbreviation for 德配天地。This is another one. 无德 which is an abbreviation from a very old phrase 无德不贵，无能不官。This can be traced back to assume the originator was Xunzi, a contemporary of Mencius. This does not mean, this phrase actually originate from him.  It could be a phrase used in verbal communication or discussion much earlier than his writing.

12) Since the introduction of simplified Chinese characters in the late 1950, 99% of the mainland Chinese cannot read traditional Chinese characters which are still in use in Taiwan.  Therefore, they can't read DDJ in its originate text. Taiwanese on the other hand do not read simplified Chinese characters. The residents of Hong Kong are eloquent in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters. They read and write in both. Next best are the Malaysian Chinese who read Chinese. This is because the newspapers in these two places, dedicated certain sections to traditional Chinese texts, while the majority uses simplified Chinese characters.

       

Summing up, these 12 points are enough to give you a fair idea why most of the Chinese people cannot read classical Chinese, and that includes DDJ.

             

17 hours ago, Stosh said:

Its hard to understand your overall point in this post.

Am I to take it you essentially agree, that going all the way back to Shang dynasty and beyond,  there were those who believed in gods, Gods which had names already ? That much later a philosophical branch evolved out from those original beginnings and leaning on the teachings of Lao ? And that alongside this philosophically oriented group , there is another group which is believing of that which is mystical , gods and so forth? which still exists?

 Because that is in fact what I indicated , right? 

 

You see, the confusing part is why you would consider the ,more educated , less numerous, Daojia , to be wrong for two thousand years. That , they couldn't read the Chinese language of their own era. That the DDJ explicitly says , in their language , the name of a Supreme god , and yet they decided that they would consider the texts not to be mystical and religious, but in fact philosophical. 

You say that , in China , this is a very clear distinction , so this is not, in your view , a subtle departure of opinion. 

Frankly I don't see how 1) one can reconcile , a sentence like "The humble, open-minded and receptive God incessantly nourishes the livelihood of all forms of life and He does not drop this role. Let’s call Him ‘Xuanpin'[1]."  with the idea "There is nothing mystical about DDJ. "

You clearly differentiate religious reading from philosophical ." The other branch is 道教 （dao jiao） or Taoism (English) which is a religion akin to Christianity. " 

2) How is it they were not able to read their own language ? and why would they not use the name of the god they already had? 

Is "Xuanpin" a proper name for the god which appears in some other text , maybe in conjunction with some pre Laoist symbol .. something like that ? Maybe a poem ? 

DDJ is mystical because partly,  it discussed about Shangdi. This is the Archilles' heel that made DDJ fits in as a Scripture. Therefore, it is tough to put my point across that it is not mystical. Frankly, I accept your argument. However, when you had deciphered all the related 12 chapters, having understood what he wrote, it clears up, and is no longer mystifying.  These are Chapter 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 25, 39, 42, 52, 62 and 67. I  beg your pardon. I am about to carry out final editing two weeks later for the English translations. Personally, I would not like to discuss about God, and its whatever messages related the creation of the universe. It is not useful at all. Btw, I was a management cum leadership consultant before I started writing. Therefore, in my eyes, the leadership principles and moral principles have great value. Not these mystical stuff expounded in the above-mentioned 12 chapters.  I would like to drop the discussion about dao being God and Taoism, the religious aspect which does not hold water (since it picked a few hundred words (much less than 500 words, indeed) of DDJ and went on to make a big claim that their religion is based on DDJ. This proclamation is not convincing at all! I want to focus purely on daojia, that's its philosophy.    

20 hours ago, Marblehead said:

There is no such option for me to invoke.  Just messing with you.

 

My primary opposition to the use of "God" in the TTC is that it is so tempting after that to personify this "God" that we created.  We, at least most of us, acknowledge that Tao is beyond defining.  That's the way it should remain.

 

My guide for clarification of verbiage in the TTC is Robert Henricks' translation.

 

What you are defining as "God", in my understanding, is when Henricks translated the Chinese character as Tao.  Other times he translated it as "Way".

 

I just don't see why it is necessary to translate the Chinese character to "God" when there is already the word "Tao" which, if viewed from a certain perspective, is the God-seed for all essences - both manifest and potential (wu and yu).

 

And to say that Lao Tzu meant to say "God" but didn't or he forgot is not acceptable, in my opinion.  Nor is adding characters to the original Ma-wang-tui text.

 

Nor is it valid to suggest that he just left things out assuming that we would understand what he wanted to say.  If the information about him is valid, he was a rather educated man.  He was likely amongst the top 1% of Chinese people regarding reading and writing Chinese.

 

Now granted, it was written in poem manner so he had to write it in the acceptable Chinese poetic manner.  I feel very comfortable thinking that Chuang Tzu filled in the empty spaces where Lao Tzu couldn't expound on what he said.  And to my recall Chuang Tzu never used the word "Tao" in and manner that could be regarded as equal to the common definition of "God".

 

 

 

Btw, Lao Zi is 2600 years by now. It is very difficult to understand what was this theme for DDJ in the first place. Least so, to pick on a particular word, dao. For example, Zhuangzi picked up two words wu wei and gave it a very different meaning as supposed to be an abbreviation of five words, where the last four characters forms a Chinese proverb. Shall we say, Zhuang Zi is wrong? If I insist, you might want me to prove it. This is not difficult, though. But to prove Dao is God, it is much more difficult.  There is a humongous wall of 50 million strong CCP members who are all atheists. They would never accept dao is God. I am facing this problem now. Lao Zi, to them is the wisest Chinese philosopher of all, and they hold him in much higher regards than Confucius! Sine the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Confucius has been thumbed down for at least half a century by now. 

11 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

your Chinese quote says, it is the other way around : bud is derived from “帝”.

 

In reality though, “帝” is depicting a central column and the panoply of a primitive dwelling such as a tent, and is derived from a "tree" character.

 

 

http://www.vividict.com/WordInfo.aspx?id=1733

 

You are right. Except that the bud 蒂 has a double cross on top which denote grass as in Chinese. 

27 minutes ago, Eric Woon said:

Dawei, this should be the original Chinese version. To those who do not read Chinese, the link given by Dawei is quite a good translation, but lacking in depth. For example, the word  “帝” is derived from the word “蒂” which means bud. This word has an intent to infer that the beginning of all things in Heaven and Earth begins in the like of a flower bud.

在商朝的甲骨卜辞中，就已经有了“帝”这个字，据近代学者王国维的考证，“帝”是“蒂”的初字，即花蒂之蒂，即万物之始。于是，商朝的商民族就用这个字来尊称他们的始祖神。而在神人合一的时代，始祖神也就是至尊神，即是民族之始祖，又是众神之主，所以又被称为“上帝”。

    

Dawei, to answer your comment that it is also a constellation origin of di, here are some of my research findings. I am sorry, I could not translate them into English. These are very old classical Chinese. It is very difficult to translate. Btw, I do not have the time on had at this juncture.  

1）请参考《礼记·礼运》：“必本于太一，分而为天地，转而为阴阳，变而为四时。”其注：“太，音泰。”疏：“太一者，谓天地未分混沌之元气也。”

2）《呂氏春秋．大乐》：“道也者，至精也，不可为形，不可为名，強为之名，谓之太一。”于此，可以用它来很直接地解释“道”是“太一”，然后，很清淡又写意地给“太一”一个名字，叫“上帝”。

 

3）中国古代上帝信仰有两种起源：其一，是对“天”（天空、宇宙）的崇拜；其二，是对北极星（北辰、帝星）的崇拜。太一，又作太乙、泰一，原是中国古代天文学中的星名，即北极星，后成为先秦汉民间信仰的最高神明，奉为天帝，相当於上帝。知识份子則把太一哲学化，想像为永恒不变的法則，即“道”，或宇宙的本源。

 

4）《晉书‧天文志》：太一星在天一南，相近，亦天帝神也，主使十六神，知風雨水旱、兵革饥馑、疾疫災害所在之国也。“太一”，是“天神之最尊贵者”。

On ‎3‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 12:17 AM, Marblehead said:

I just set up an ignore function so that any post that contains the word "God" the post is automatically ignored.

 

If this is your decision. then the discussion of DDJ is meaningless. Are we looking forward to understand what was in Lao Zi's mind when he wrote DDJ? Or simply, DDJ must go in-line with your line of thought?  That is, rule out the discussion of the possibility that Lao Zi actually used the word, dao in DDJ to describe God.

On ‎3‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 11:45 PM, dawei said:

 

Oh boy.. don't get some of us started on this [so-called] distinction !   

 

Added TDB threads for reference:

 

Classical Daoism is there really such a thing

 

What Defines a Daoist

This could be a rude awakening, though. Among the Chinese (mainland and in Taiwan), they make a very clear distinction between these two phrases,  道家 and 道教. In fact, most of the scholars are 道家, the school of philosophy. The majority of the uneducated or lesser educated Chinese are mere followers of 道教, the religious practice that has its origin at around the later part Eastern Han period (the second century AD). I am afraid, you might have to clear your mind, which side are you on. Read DDJ from a philosophical perspective or read it from a religious point of view? 

 

To rub salt into wounds, I might have to tell you in advance, the religious perspective of Taoism as a religion, does not (or did not) borrow more than 10% of DDJ (around 500 words) to kick start a religious practice. Up until today, dao as a religion (Taoism, as the West would like to call it) evolved around, and had muddled through these 500 words, for almost two thousands years. As a religion, it could not muscle in the philosophy (a whole set of 260 leadership principles and 67 moral principles) that were laid down by Lao Zi.