tragblack Posted July 24, 2011 Good post, Steve. Is my complimenting you against Wu Wei? I am doing it out of spontaneity and enjoyment of your post. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lienshan Posted July 24, 2011 "The original text was burned during the Ch'in Dynasty, and therefore later the order of the chapters could not be determined.... My version: Lao Tzu's original manuscipt was kept in the library of Changsha, the capitol of a southern Chu state too named Changsha. The man in the nearby Guodian grave was a teacher. He tought new scribes in the library how to scribe. He read aloud from bamboo slips kept in the library and corrected afterwards, what the new scribes had brushed on their bamboo slips. Some of these dictates were found in his home and put into his grave together with his own bamboo slips books, when he died 312 BC. The Qin state defeated the Shu state in 278 BC and Lao Tzu' original manuscript was brought back to the Qin state, where Qin scholars editted Lao Tzu's original manuscript into a book of 81 chapters. Lao Tzu had earlier lived and worked in Qin, but preferred to move, when the legalist Shen Dao was engaged by Duke Xiao... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
steve Posted July 24, 2011 Good post, Steve. Is my complimenting you against Wu Wei? I am doing it out of spontaneity and enjoyment of your post. Only if spontaneity and pleasure go against your true nature! I've met some folks that may just fit that category... Are you one of the THOSE? Just teasing... i appreciate the acknowledgment Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Marblehead Posted July 24, 2011 Hello Chi and Marblehead, I have to laugh because I read your posts and I what I read was exactly what I posted, but somehow it was missed, or maybe not expressed clearly. Aaron Hey, I oftentimes repeat myself using different words so repeating you using different words is really no great accomplishment. Have a great day! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Birch Posted July 24, 2011 Excellent post Steve. I've found my experience of what I think might be wu-wei to be any action/speech/thought that comes when there is no pressure/contraction around them. I've found that thinking can spin me in or out of wu-wei. Also, many things that feel too "onesided" or from specific unidimensional emotions (like fear, which I figure might be one of the more useless ones). I just had a thought about one's nature hitting up against one's conditioning. Knowing which is which and when is IMO a great undertaking. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lienshan Posted July 24, 2011 (edited) 無為(Wu Wei) is Laotze's philosophy: Be natural, let Nature take its course. lienshan... You are translating the characters but not reading into the philosophy of Wu Wei. I think that Lao Tzu invented the term 無為 (verb 無 + 為) and its 4 possible meanings: 無之為也 (the verb "to not have" + the verb "to do") = has not done it 無之為 (the verb "to not have" + the noun "doing") = has no doing 無為也 (the verb "to not have" + the verb "to be") = has not been 無為 (the verb "to not have" + the noun "being") = has no being 為 means "to do" or "doing" if the pronoun 之 (his, its, their) is before 為 為 means "to be" or "being" if the pronoun 之 (his, its, their) is after 為 Yes, it's boring classical chinese grammar, but he used it to prove philosophical pointes. That'll say the term 無為 wu wei had originally four meanings depending of the other characters, because the other characters nomilized 為 wei as either "to do, doing" or "to be, being". The term 無為 wu wei must therefore be read in a context, because it's alone a duality!! EDIT: The term wu ming (the first two characters of chapter 1, line 3) is the same story: wu means "to not have" ming means either "to name, a name" telling what the subject is or ming means "to title, a title" telling what the subject does More characters are here too needed in order to discriminate "to be" and "to do". Edited July 24, 2011 by lienshan Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
