treebuffalo

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  1. Posted

    Some translations of Chapter 60 have ghosts swirling around in it. Pretty silly if you ask me, especially after the chapter opens with a cooking metaphor. Here's my best effort at making sense of it (based on Jonathan Star's Definitive Edition):

     

     

    Govern a big country like you would cook a small fish. 

    Use a natural approach, so deceptive thoughts of the world will not have power. 

    Not only will deceptive thoughts not have power over you, but their power will also not harm other people. 

    And just like their power will not harm other people, a wise person will not harm other people. 

    This is why the two of them will not harm each other. 

    Because unified virtue restores where it converges.

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    On 6/9/2022 at 5:46 PM, awaken said:

    In ancient China, only the nobility had the right to education

    Nobles usually have titles

    If you call yourself "King", it would be very rude to Zhou Tianzi, which shows that he is provoking Zhou Tianzi.

    Because only Zhou Tianzi can be king

    However, in the Spring and Autumn Period, Emperor Zhou's power declined greatly.

    Therefore, more and more nobles call themselves "kings"

     

    So i guess he was addressing specific people. But are passages like these trapped in historical context? And how much else of the DDJ is trapped? I assume universal applicability. Otherwise, why talk about Tao as a thing at all, other than in historical context? 

     

  9. Posted

    Does anyone think the very short Chapter 40 is part of another chapter? Henricks says it's usually inserted between 41 and 42. Pine says some authors merge it with other chapters (but doesn't specify who). But most interestingly it ends with language that starts 42. 

     

    If other discussions about 40 exist please link them. 

     

     

  10. Posted

    Whenever I see this phrase in the DDJ (or its equivalent, like Dukes and Princes), I interpret it as "powerful people" and "leaders." I don't think a case can be made that Lao Tsu was directly addressing these types of titled people. Which opens the door to other phrases and other interpretations. That's why the DDJ is so great, not because of what it doesn't mean, but of the form that it created for people fill in with their own experience. It opens definitions rather than closing them. 

    • Like 1

  11. Posted · Edited by treebuffalo

    Yeah, I know 38 is another anti-Confucian chapter. But the average reader won't know that. Which means most English translations are just a soup of non-sequiturs that don't seem to relate to each other. 

     

    Losing the way of Nature loses virtue; 

    losing virtue loses kindness;

    losing kindness loses morality;

    losing morality loses behavior (ritual).

     

    The chapter starts strong (superior virtue vs. inferior virtue) and ends strong (fruit vs. flower, etc), but this interior part is weak. Not to mention Lao Tsu is playing the critic, which is a weak stance to begin with (by his own admission). Critics criticize, where creatives create. 

  12. Posted

    7 hours ago, Cobie said:


     

    “ … just think of the degree of cultural chauvinism necessary for someone to suppose that he or she can translate the Daode jing without knowing Chinese.  (... Chinese people don't try to translate Shakespeare without knowing English.)  The only way would be if you had convinced yourself that you already know what the text says. ... “ (my old)  (Paul Golding)

     

     

     

    So there's a billion people in China right? And how many are aware of Shakespeare? Probably some. You don't think any of those people are a little confused about something good ole Bill wrote and looked up the definition in English?! Talk about cultural chauvinism. Yeesh.

  14. Posted

    22 hours ago, awaken said:

     

    The Tao is always inaction and inaction. If the princes and kings can guard it, all things will be transformed by themselves. If I want to make it, I will keep it simple and unnamed. Nameless simplicity, the husband will also have no desires. If you don't want to be quiet, the world will be self-determined.

     

    'Fu' is a spoken word, such as  that, well, en...

     

    亦 also

    將 will

     

    This passage of Lao Tzu is talking about "no desire", which is the same as the "elimination of greed" that the Buddha said.

     

    The core of cultivation must be "no desire". If one pursue the power of Qi with desire, it is impossible to get "Dao".

     

    Yeah, I know desire is bad and the root of all suffering, AND there is probably overlap into the DDJ. But Lao Tzu's is a master of language. He writes a lot of paradox and double meanings. I'm looking for more applicable interpretations than "desire is bad." That sort of translation I think underestimates Lao Tsu's skill with words. 

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    Chapter 37 contains a strange phrase "fu yi" (characters 37 and 38). which don't seem to fit well into the flow of the chapter. According to J. Star it means "truly/now/what follows is true" and "in turn/again/moreover/also," respectively. I tried to ignore them as utility words, until I switched definitions of "yu" (character 41/ 43) from "desire" to "habit." Both are listed among the definitions for "yu" along with "tendencies." 

     

    So now the sentence might read "now again free of habit," which is a paradox. And as we all know, the DDJ is nothing if not paradoxical. I like this translation better than "desire." We all know desire is a bad thing, but habit? It makes sense to me that forcing habit on the world may just be as bad as desire. The desire to have predictability in an unpredictable world. 

     

    • Like 1

  18. Posted · Edited by treebuffalo

    I mentioned before I like Robert Henricks translations because they are so dry and uncreative, you can't help but add water and watch them grow. I translated chap 33 this morning for myself and found the perfect example: 

     

    Henricks (lines 3-4): 

    To conquer others is to have strength;

    To conquer yourself is to be strong. 

     

    The logograms used are li (strength) and ch'iang (strong) (according to J. Star). These are CLEARLY different characters, but Henricks has force-fed both into one definition. This not only is a mis-translation IMO, but also deadens the impact of the chapter. This is very common for Henricks.

     

    And as much as I rely on Henricks for a leaden interpretation, he is a beginning, not an end to comprehension. Something I'm not sure was his intent in the first place (helping people comprehend). 

     

    Henricks is an excellent translator and sinologist, but he is no Daoist. 

  19. Posted

    Yeah I've been on Dao is Open. The sites been up for years. But as Wandelaar points out, there are no citations or bibliography. And the site admin doesn't respond to inquiries. So its even less reliable than say, me, since I at least tell you what editions I'm looking at. 

     

    There's another website called earlywomenmasters.net that also has a lot of seal script translations, which is only a step up from DIO. They post an extensive bibliography, but none of which seem to source the seal script. They also do not respond to inquiries. 

     

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    Do we only have two forms of punctuation in the DDJ? The period and comma? I've noticed Henricks skips right over a lot of periods to link two sentences together. 

  23. Posted

    12 hours ago, wandelaar said:

    Was the book with the original characters this book?

     

    https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/f/the-bamboo-texts-of-guodian/9200000004725749/

    I got a look at the first volume of this book at a local university, and like Cobie says, it's pretty dense. But it was a disappointment for me. There were only a couple images of the bamboo strips, and the transcribed seal script was just little bits from here and there, only some from the Laozi. And even those were out of order. The book is not really about translating the Laozi as much as it is about studying the discovery at Guodian and putting it in historical context. I would've been interested in the second volume only to get a look at the bibliography. 

     

    If you want an image of a publication that has all the strips pictured I can post it. 

  24. Posted

    On 5/20/2022 at 2:19 PM, wandelaar said:

    @treebuffalo

     

    Thank you very much. My own impression of the book from reading the preview was the same. Didn't he mention any dictionary or internet site as a source for the supposed earlier meanings of the characters that as he claims were ignored by all scholars before him?

    He claims he is the only Westerner to translate the DDJ according to the original characters. But he never writes the term "seal script" or "small script." He takes the lid off the subject but doesn't drill down or even include any original script.

     

    I can personally vouch for at least one author who has access to a seal script source, Red Pine. He actually loaned me one of his books that has the entire Guodian DDJ in seal script. 

     

    Which puts us in Goldberg territory. You got all these authors making translations, all pretty close, but all still pretty impractical. How many do we have to read before we try and ingest the meaning over the words? I think that's what Hoff was trying to say. He duffed it a little, but it's nice to crack the window at least on all these stuffy translations. 

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    I bought this book and read it when it came out. He makes some good points about writing utensils, but the book as a reference doesn't hold up. He offers no citations, bibliographies, or examples of the original brushwork. The commentary is separated from the translation. And the writing could have gone through several more revisions, and had better editing. 

     

    I liked the commentary as a casual read but I don't run to it very often if I am curious about a chapter. As for the Chapters he deleted, I only really agree with one of them (Chap 58). But I did appreciate his attention to tone and vocabulary throughout the DDJ as a whole, something I never paid much attention to before. 

     

    It's more like a translators private journal of the translation process. 

    • Like 2