Tao Te Ching

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a b "It's Not All Greek to Him". The Wall Street Journal. September 20, 2011. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013 . Retrieved October 22, 2013.

Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell | Waterstones

In addition to her fantastic commentary on the chapters of the Tao, Le Guin also brings her own insight to the questionable origins of the text through analysis of the poem structures within. At one stage, regarding Chapter 42, Ursula explains: ”The last stanza is uncharacteristic in it’s didactic tone and in assimilating the teaching to a tradition… I was inclined to dismiss it as a marginal note by someone who was teaching and annotating the text”.. Regarding Chapter 44, she states: ”The intense, succinct, beautiful language of the first verses of the poem is sometimes followed by a verse or two in a more didactic tone, smaller in scope, and far more prosaic. I believe some of these verses are additions, comments, and examples, copied into the manuscripts so long ago that they became holy writ”. What a keen mind. D.C.Lau comes to the same conclusion for similar reasons. The Tao Te Ching clarifies the concepts of Taoism, an ancient school of philosophy that continues to be relevant today. In the 6th century BCE, Lao Tzu created Taoism, passed down through the generations. Genies, Meanies, and Magic Rings: Three Tales from the Arabian Nights (illustrated by Tom Pohrt), Walker & Co., 2007, ISBN 0-8027-9639-7 Mitchell's translations and adaptions include the Tao Te Ching, [4] which has sold over a million copies, Gilgamesh, [5] The Iliad, [1] [6] [7] [8] The Odyssey, [9] The Gospel According to Jesus, Bhagavad Gita, [10] The Book of Job, [11] The Second Book of the Tao, and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. He twice won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His Selected Rilke has been called “the most beautiful group of poetic translations [the twentieth] century has produced” ( Chicago Tribune), his Gilgamesh was runner-up for the first annual Quill award for poetry, and his Iliad was one of the New Yorker 's Favorite Books of 2011. only to then immediately attempt to explain it anyway! They obviously never reached chapter 71: ”Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.”Mitchell is married to Byron Katie, founder and promoter of the self-inquiry method 'The Work.' [12] Books [ edit ] Poetry [ edit ] A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance. I was totally surprised to find out that this is actually a political treatise but less surprised to learn that quiescence is strength. Read more Compiled and adapted from the Chuang-tzu and the Chung Yung, with commentaries The Penguin Press 2009 The author also likens the paradox (and there are many, sometimes frustrating paradoxes, confirming the understanding can’t be grasped in one simple read) to that of the empty space between the spokes of a wheel. The power and mechanics of a wheel depend on the empty space.

Tao Te Ching : A New English Version - Google Books Tao Te Ching : A New English Version - Google Books

Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.” I have read Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching many times and it is for me the clearest statement of Lao Tse’s words that I have read. His commentary on Chuang Tzu enhances these texts as well. I haven’t read many others but I enjoyed and benefited from this work. The Tao Te Ching is the route in itself, the path to emptying the human mind of ambitions, schemes and desires and allow it to be flooded with the smoothness of humility and the exhilarating liberation of a simple life.The translation is well done, it captures the nature of the text well, and it flows fairly evenly. It's not overly flowery or ornate, it gives you the basics of what you need to understand the various entries and assist in understanding what Tao is (i.e. the the Tao named Tao is not the great, eternal Tao). With all due apology to Stephen Mitchell, who's translation was the basis for this, and, of course, Lao Tzu. The first book of the Tao (written by the perhaps legendary Lao-tzu) is the Tao Te Ching, that marvel of lucidity and grace, the classic manual on the art of living. What I wanted to create here was a left to its right, a yang to its yin, a companion volume and anti-manual. The Chuang-tzu had the perfect material for that: deep, subtle, with an audacity that can make your hair stand on end. If Lao-tzu is a smile, Chuang-tzu is a belly-laugh. He’s the clown of the Absolute, the apotheosis of incredulity, Coyote among the bodhisattvas. And the Chung Yung provided a psychological and moral acuity of comparable depth. There is recent scholarship that is making the argument that instead of meaning “way” or “path”, which is usually taken to mean how we as people conduct ourselves in accordance with a mysterious spiritual principle, that “tao” actually refers to the Moon and its various phases and paths in space, with particular emphasis on the darkness of the new moon and its significance as potential in darkness. The new moon “hides” its fullness. The fullness is there in potential, unspent. I like this. There’s something pleasingly primitive about it (gimme that old-time religion!), i.e. something real and tangibly mysterious, but also something practical and spiritual – a connector between eye and heart that through some subtle gravity guides our feet along a path. The reason I have great trouble is that I have a body. When I no longer have a body, what trouble have I?"

The Second Book of the Tao – Stephen Mitchell

These views regarding governance tie in with one of his more extreme ideas that education, innovation and progress are all things to be avoided. Ignorant people are easier to rule and one should also rule in ignorance. It’s essentially an expansion on the idea of not doing. There’s an anti-change and anti-intellectual leaning in his words. In Chapter 29, Lao says: ”The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it. Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it”. Le Guin says: ”As a model for the Taoist, a baby is in many ways ideal: totally un-altruistic, not interested in politics, business or the proprieties, weak [and] soft”. He is also coauthor of two of his wife Byron Katie’s bestselling books: Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy. www.thework.com You may be recalling that psych ē, the Greek word for “soul,” can also mean “butterfly.” But let’s leave the Greeks out of this. Chuang-tzu is definitely Chinese, he thinks. His butterfly is not a metamorphosis, not a metaphor; it’s just a butterfly. Just? How can we know what depths of joy lie hidden within that pinpoint of a brain? The whole world contained in a garden, in a single flower! All time contained in a summer’s day, and life one all-embracing multiorgasmic fragrance! What could be more useless than a flute with no holes? Yet, if you understand, you put it to your lips and the ancient clear music happens by itself. Had Chuang-tzu believed that there was anything to live up to he would have been too intimidated even to try. There was nothing to live up to. There was only a passion for the genuine, a fascination with words, and a constant awareness that the ancient Masters are alive and well in the mind that doesn’t know a thing. Thus the Master uses his skill to harmonize with both sides, and rests in the Tao, which makes all things equal. This is called “walking on two paths at once.”

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In the practice of butchery, he had learned how to step aside and let his body do the thinking. He followed the Tao into a world of unadulterated sensation, an Eden of the don’t-know mind. The vast universe, with its myriad chiliocosms within chiliocosms, became a single knife-blade gliding through empty space. What did it matter that his material was slaughtered oxen rather than sounds or colors or words? Nothing remained but the pure joy of the work.