steve

Loved the series, including the finale! Not sure what everyone else is talking about…. 🙃

My heartfelt condolences! I pray for healing for your family. And for your dear young doctor. I apologize for the order of my replies, I often reply from latest to earlier… 🙏🏼

If you trust wu wei as a principle, you must let it happen. The more you is there, the less it happens. I am a straw dog, and will be stashed away between performances, Dao continues to flow. Feel the Dao in every moment. I trust this moment more than I trust what I think about it.

Dao treats us like straw dogs, no? Positive or negative is a human judgement, Dao does not play favorites.

Your entire post above is gold. And there are layers of understanding and realization, just as there are relative and absolute truth. Reading and studying alone, even a scripture as perfect as Daodejing, can only take us so far. The mind, its activity, and its contents can only take us so far. We must make room for practice, for simply being, to appreciate the wisdom hiding behind the words. And we must be patient and kind with ourselves and each other if we want to discover something new together. Although, if we trust the old masters, an occasional swift kick in the arse or thwack on the shoulder with the keisaku can be helpful too.

I think you would also need to translate Wu in that case but it has potential.

agreed

What if you kill to eat?

PS It reads just like one of the 21 Nails, a dzogchen scripture. I love the connections And hell if it isn’t poetic, The highest form!

Sorry, but I think that is too restrictive a definition of wu wei. What if I step on a toad as I'm saving a drowning animal? I'm playing with you a little here. Forgive me.

Understood, I didn't think you said that. That's a reasonable translation. If a human saw a wild animal drowning in a storm and rescued it, would that be interfering with nature? In other words, is a human following nature trying to help other living creatures in a natural disaster? I think the definition of wu wei is more complicated and sophisticated to explore than what can be contained in a phrase or two characters. I think that wu wei is not so much about what I think, more about what I do and what I am. Thinking does have its place, however, to a point. Words can be a good guide but also an obstacle.

I think we’re saying the same thing but finding it hard to understand your meaning here.

Wu wei has many dimensions. I’ve learned from translations, commentary, other authors, meditation, contemplation, and most of all trying to live it. I’m grateful for it all.

Nor do I.

Was that the forum that started up after the split here?

What is OD?

Happy New Year to you Luke, and to the rest of you Bums. May 2026 bring out the best in us!

A perfect and succinct instruction for meditation A description of the realization Transformation, nonduality, immortality

Yes, to the English ear heaven is a more accurate translation than sky in many cases

Yes, the meaning of 無为 is elusive. It is undefined, except in principle. I challenge you to find a meaning or translation that everyone will agree is perfect and correct. Meaning is in the reader, not in the text. It is in what the text makes us feel and think of based on our knowledge and conditioning. Even the greatest master's understanding cannot help me at all. I need to try my best to understand in a way that makes sense to me. I then need to put that understanding into action and see what happens, What does it mean to let nature take its course? Am I a part of that nature? If not, what am I? What is nature exactly? We all have different understanding and we manifest that understaning differently through our actions. Then there is the translation and how that can interfere or assist. The exact words in a translation are not that important. The way people relate to the word choice does matter. I've been enjoying Ursula LeGuin's translation lately, really beautiful. I love her first line.

How would you translate 天子 or 天师? How about words like 天命, 天問, or 天地? Or words like 理天, 氣天, and 象天 from 一贯道 (Yiguandao)?

One reason is that if I am trying to understand something translated from a different language, it does not help to use words that are never used in my own language and that I don't understand. Asking me to learn new words to translate foreign words and concepts compounds the difficulty. Just as I value your native understanding of the Chinese language and culture, ChiDragon, perhaps there is some value for you in the opinions of native English speakers? But at the end of the day, your translation - your choice. Do you grok my quale?

PS - some constructive criticism. If you are interested in an English translation that people can comprehend, that helps them understand the original, I would not use the words grok or quale. Only elderly science fiction fans would know the meaning of grok and quale is not a word in common usage.

I appreciate your effort but this is not an example of the same character used in the same line twice with different meanings.

In these examples the character translates the same in each case.