Mark Saltveit
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Everything posted by Mark Saltveit
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You mean, like calling people "beyond the pale" and "stubborn" and talking about their "arrogance" because they don't agree with one's sweeping declarations of "truth"? Oh, wait. That was you.
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You know Brian Eno's famous quote about the Velvet Underground? "Only 30,000 people bought their first album, but every one of those people started a band." That's what I love about the Daodejing. It's so short, and from so long ago, but despite every kind of distance, widely varying translations, etc. that slim book is still endlessly productive of ideas and inspiration.
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Interesting. I look forward to reading some or all of your work. My effort is not a translation of the Daodejing; I don't speak classical Chinese and am no expert. it's a collection of short things like this and this currently titled "Philosophy Without All Those Words." I'm getting encouragement from agents and publishers, but they always want it to be longer. I'm like, what part of "without all those words" am I not making clear? Who ever hated a book because it was too short?
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When is a Christian not a Jew? Or an Israeli, if you prefer?
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kaaazuo: Is this a joke? Or is it opposite day?
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I believe he is an initiated of Quanzhen Daoism. His biography says "Professor Komjathy has conducted archaeological fieldwork on Shandong Daoism and ethnographic work on contemporary Daoist monasticism, which included living as a participant-observer in a variety of Quanzhen monasteries."
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Oh, there's a lot. I'm working on a book. ;-) Avoid comparisons, be humble about what you know, practice your craft diligently until you're not "in your head" any more, etc. I prefer Zhuangzi's approach though -- using stories and parables, rather than a linear analytical list of principles. If ZZ or Laozi thought you could just list it out logically, I'm sure they would have.
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Dawei, I think we may just see this differently, and that's fine. From my point of view, much of what you describe is simply Chinese culture rather than the roots of Daoism -- I think many Chinese who don't follow Daoism embrace TCM and qigong, and many who do follow Daoism don't embrace those traditions. They may actually be more entwined with Daoism in the U.S. these days, as China increasingly adopts Western ideas. I agree though that the article cited is not Komjathy's most careful work. If I remember correctly, that's just something he posted on the Center for Daoist Studies' web site, not a published paper. He is more careful in his wording in, for example, his article "Tracing the Contours of Daoism in America" (Nova Religio, 2004). But Sima Qian wrote around 100 B.C.E. and no one in the West even heard of Daoism until the 1800s, almost two millenia later. I have trouble believing that "the West" picked up a false picture from Sima Qian that no one in China believed.
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How are you going to predate Daoism? Well you have to date it first. And to do that, you have to define it. I think it's fair to consider Daoism one of the two main indigenous strains of Chinese philosophy, along with Confucianism. Most people are very comfortable dating Confucianism to somewhere between 600 and 400 BCE, and a lot of evidence puts Daoism - as a coherently expressed and developed school of thought -- in that same time frame. If you want to consider every influence that led up to it, or every influence that Daoists have ever pointed to throughout history and said, "No, that is where we started" -- then of course you're back into the prehistory of mankind, probably before language itself existed. But every philosophy makes similar claims, and that doesn't stop people from talking about Buddhism, Hinduism, or Existentialism.
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I agree with Komjathy's point there -- certainly one risk is a kind of exoticism, where we enjoy the novelty of a very different culture. I think this is part of what Laozi warns against in Chapter 47 (the farther people go, the less they know -- farther applying to time and culture as well as physical distance.) Buddhism and Hinduism appeal to this even more. But to my eye, the last thing Daoism should do is encourage escape from our daily life. Quite the opposite, it's about engaging it more directly.
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That's exactly what I mean, though. The connection is logical, and Jesus himself might well have agreed. But I don't think Abraham tells you very much about Christianity. (Some might also argue that Jesus isn't a big enough part of Christianity, compared to particularly St. Paul, and I might agree with that too.) I'm reading Steven Bokenkamp's book "Early Daoist Scriptures," which contains the first English translations of many of these works, and he points out a lot of examples of disagreement about these points throughout the history of Daoism. In particular, many later Daoist groups created Godlike figures, or claimed that older well-known figures had written new scriptures that they produced, in order to give them "authority" over the Laozi Daodejing. Wang Bi considered the Yijing a primary scripture, but the original Celestial Masters (as evidence in the Xiang'er commentary to the DDJ) did not; they had the DDJ as the primary scripture, and chanted it together. The Shangqing school held that one of their deities, the Great Lord of the Dao of Jade Dawn, was Laozi's teacher, and was the one who dictated their new scriptures around 364-370 C.E. to Yang Xi. The Lingbao then -- 30 years later -- claimed that Jade Dawn was "a disciple of their even higher God, the Celestial Worthy." All of these texts were part of the first Daozang assembled in 437 C.E. The point being that "this other God/text came first, and proves I'm right" is an ancient game in Chinese philosophy, one that appears to continue today as modern scholars like Kirkland assert that the NeiYe is the true first Daoist work.
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Wonderful topic, thanks! And always a pleasure to read Shanlung.
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I wrote: and Dawei responded: I'm not disqualifying anyone (or thing), just taking issue with the statement that every Chinese Daoist in history agrees that Fuxi and not Laozi is the creator of Daoism. (I know at least two who disprove that.) I favor humility about what we are able to know, especially about poorly documented events so long ago. Just because Fuxi is an earlier (some would say legendary or mythical) figure of Chinese culture, doesn't mean that everything in subsequent Chinese history started with him. Adam didn't create the New Testament, nor did Abraham, Noah or Moses. You could argue that it all started with any one of those four, which is sort of true if you squint, but what would that prove? Generalizations about Westerners are dangerous, too. Many Westerners, especially scholars, doubt that there even was a person named Laozi, especially given the oddity of the name. One theory is that, since classical Chinese apparently didn't signify plurals differently, Laozi could simply mean "The Old Masters" or "The Ancient Masters," which fits the academic consensus that the Daodejing is a compilation, not a book written by one person.
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Taomeow wrote I guess we may have to agree to disagree. Certainly, one very important message I get from Daoism is the importance of not digging in too rigidly on dogma, on things that one thinks are right. I don't see a single statement I could make that would be true about every one of the hundreds of millions of Daoists in China over the 2,500 years or more of the tradition (5,400 years if you're right about Fu Xi) except that they like the word Dao. That's what I dislike about that paper by Kirkland -- he is claiming absolute certainty about events two and a half millenia ago, when there is no way he could be sure. In fact he has (and cites) no evidence whatsoever. The fog of war is nothing compared to the fog of history. Exactly, people don't agree on even these major points, which makes me wonder what the source of your certainty is. The first Daozang wasn't assembled until 700 years after the Zhuangzi and Daodejing were compiled, so the judgment of Lu Xiujing in 437 C.E. that Yijing comes first is not the only valid opinion.
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All of them? Really? I think it might be a tiny bit more complicated than that. Fuxi is the serpent God who fathered the entire human race with his sister in the 29th century BCE, so I suppose he's utlimately the founder of all human things, including Daoism. But -- this is just what I hear, I wasn't there -- the Celestial Masters felt pretty strongly about Laozi's role starting in 142 CE, and all religious Daoism that we know of descends from that tradition. It's not like Benjamin Hoff made Laozi up in the Tao of Pooh.
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And you're ripped! Stigweard, you've really been working out. Are you using supplements, or some cool Daoist technique we should know about?
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Dawei; Yes. You should read the whole paper, which was linked earlier in this topic. It's certainly interesting, but Kirkland is throwing some wild punches with very little evidence (yet speaking as if he knew exactly what happened in 350 BCE. For example, p.9: The thing is, no one has evidence for any of these things he is saying -- that there was one "redactor" of the DDJ, who lived in a Northern city, modeled this on the Ney-yeh (which is very different), designed this as a marketing ploy, etc. That's why he has never been able to get this paper published -- it clearly didn't pass peer review. Look, I like Hunter S. Thompson as much as the next guy, but his entertaining, fire-breathing rhetoric was (usually) in the service of shrewd insights about events that he personally was living, at the time. That's why Harvard's Kennedy School of Government uses "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" as a text for its courses. Kirkland is attacking Western appropriation of Taoism by people from the West who he charges don't really understand it. Kirkland -- a White westerner and apparently not even a self-proclaimed Daoist -- makes his money issuing pronouncements like this without any evidence. See anything wrong with this picture?
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Are you saying that Kirkland's paper IS the fake meat, or that he's calling it out? Because that's a pretty extreme bit of writing (which no one has ever published, in 15 years). You may disagree, but arguing that the Daodejing itself distorted Daoism as part of "a marketing ploy" seems pretty inflammatory (and suspect) to me. I'm with you on the fake meat thing, though, ditto decaf coffee. Consume the real thing, or don't. These things are just "let's not and say we did."
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Nor am I, as you may have noticed. I'm a rather skeptical standup comedian, used to calling BS wherever I see it. But you misinterpret my words. I have lots to reason to think that various paths don't work for me and -- from my perspective -- appear to be full of crap. No one has managed to interest me in semen conservation yet, for example, though anyone's welcome to try. What I said was, That's a very different matter. Unless we are establishing a common set of references and standards -- which is what academia does -- or until you choose me as your teacher, it's not really any of my business. It seems like you may have taken offense at my discussion of the scholarly opinion of Wenzi. Well, that's an interesting example. The book -- like any ancient text -- has authority for two main reasons: its historical authenticity as an ancient spiritual/philosophic text, and the actual value that any of us get from it. I don't think either of us can tell the other how much value they get from it. We are ourselves the one and only expert on that subject. We can discuss what the historical lineage or history of the book is, whether it appears to have been written before or after the Huananzi or Zhuangzi for example. That is a factual issue, that scholars are best equipped to decide using archaelology, textual analysis, carbon dating, etc. I'm not a scholar so I defer to their consensus. But enough chit chat. Dish on some false paths! The negative is always more interesting, and usually funnier.
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Anyone we know? Now I'm curious. :-) When you say "anymore than you have," are you referring to me personally? I think there are many manifestations of Dao, many different approaches to following this path. I don't think I'm in a position to tell anyone their path is wrong. It kind of sounds like you do, however.
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Cause they're true? :-) Instinct is raw reaction. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes destructive (lashing out when our feelings are hurt) depending on how mature or developed we are. Wu-wei is much more subtle and trained. Sometimes I talk about well-honed instinct; you go from raw reaction, through training, discipline or practice of some kind for a long time. Eventually you react in a wu-wei-way, if done right, and it's as fast and automatic and unself-conscious as that original instinct, except you do the right thing. Natural law ... with all these questions, it matters a great deal how you define these terms, what frame of reference you are in, etc. But if the question is, can these two things be said simplistically to be the same thing, then the answer is an easy "no." harmony noise -- silence harmony -- again, meaning specifically what? But in some cases, clearly yes, so the answer is sometimes. Is that better?
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I'm curious, where do you see similarity between the Daodejing and Christianity? The parallels aren't obvious to me. Do you think any Westerners might just genuinely like and appreciate the philosophy of Daoism? Or find truth in it?
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Thanks again, that's excellent. That says it's from an upcoming book -- do you know what the name of the book is, and whether it's out yet?
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No. No. sometimes. sometimes.
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I agree, you Taoistic Idiot. A big part of Daoism's strength is NOT connecting all the dots for the reader, and avoiding fixed pronouncements. on the genocide question, I think the Dao (or Laozi or whoever) would say, "Boy it's really hard to imagine a situation where that would ever be right, but it's a big universe, so maybe conceivably, who knows? But YOU dude are no where near such a situation, so why are you wasting your time thinking about it? " If you're solidly on the path, you don't need to sit around and argue what-ifs, you just know what's right and you do it.
